Day 0, Night.
The footsteps didn't stop. Three, four, five, always the same weight coming down, and I couldn't tell anymore if the ground was actually moving or if that was just my own heartbeat doing it for me.
I had my hand clamped over my mouth. Nobody told me to. I just didn't trust myself not to make a sound.
Through the gap in the wall I caught pieces of it going by. A flank first, then part of a leg, too thin, ribs standing out under skin burned dark and split in patches. No eyes on the head anywhere I could find, no mouth either. Just black, and it didn't catch any of the little moonlight coming through the gap.
Next to me Daisuke went stiff. I felt it more than saw it, his shoulder locking against mine. Then his hand came up between us, three fingers raised where I could just make them out. He wanted to talk.
I would've told him no, but I didn't get the chance.
Nikita's hand cut sideways in the dark. Flat. Don't. Across the shelter Amina's eyes found Daisuke and stayed there, the kind of look that should have been enough by itself.
He said it anyway.
"On three, we run."
Nobody answered. I'm not sure anyone had the air to. Then his voice came again, fast, no room in it for anyone to argue.
"Three, two, one, go!"
We were up before I'd decided to move. We burst through the gap and out into the open, and the thing screamed loud enough that my ears rang straight through it, then it came after us.
"Where the hell are we even running?" Amina's voice, off to my side, boots slapping hard against the dirt.
"I have no idea!" Daisuke yelled back.
"Are you serious?" That was me. I don't even know why I said it, since I didn't have anything better sitting ready either.
The trees came at us fast, all of them the same, until it hit me: the ruins. I'd already been down there once. There was a gap in the stone too small for anything that size.
"The ruins," I said. "Follow me!"
Carmen, right behind me: "Aleks, what are you planning?"
"I have an idea!"
Nobody asked twice. Feet everywhere on the dirt behind me, and behind that, cracking through branches, breathing hard, gaining on us or not, I genuinely couldn't tell.
Then the archway was there between the trees, black stone standing where it always stood, and something in my chest let go for one second before I remembered we still had to get inside it.
"Almost there!" My legs didn't want to keep going. They kept going anyway.
We went through the gap one after another, turning sideways, someone's shoulder scraping the stone right behind mine. I went last, and turned around just in time to see it slam into the archway.
Its claws went into the stone at the edges, dragging deep gouges. Both shoulders jammed into the gap and stuck there. Teeth snapped somewhere close enough that I felt the air move.
We made it.
Daisuke stepped right up to the gap and stuck his tongue out at it. "Blah, blah, blah. Can't get us."
It went still.
Then, without any sound at all, it reached up and started tearing itself apart. Its own arm first, gripped and ripped free at the shoulder. Then the leg. Wet, cracking sounds bounced off the stone around us and didn't stop.
Daisuke wasn't grinning anymore. "Oh, shit."
"Down the stairs. Now." I was already moving.
We didn't argue about it. Feet on stone, one flight after another. Every step down, the light behind us got smaller, until there wasn't any. Just the sound of our own breathing, boots on stone, and my hand out in front of me finding nothing.
Then the stairs gave out into somewhere bigger. I felt it before I saw anything, the air went open, the sound stopped bouncing back so close. Enough grey light came down the stairs behind us to show shapes: columns, too many to count, and cut lines across every wall. They had to be carvings, though I couldn't make out what they were yet.
"What is this place?" Amina's voice, low.
Carmen didn't answer that. She was already walking toward the far wall, following the carved lines with her eyes. "Look at this..."
Stone cracked somewhere above us, then something heavy hit the floor of the room we'd just left.
Daisuke spun toward the stairs. "It's coming!"
I ran for the biggest thing in the room, a door built from doubled wood beams, taller than any door had a right to be, and threw my shoulder into it. "Help me with this door!"
"You've gotta be kidding." Daisuke didn't move. "You remember the scream? From before?"
"We don't have a choice. You wanna stay here and die?"
"What are you two talking about?" Amina, closer now, looking between us.
"Nothing," Daisuke said.
"It doesn't matter right now!" I shoved harder, and the door didn't care.
Nikita came without a word, planted his feet next to mine, and pushed. Cealith followed a second later, still half lost, but his hands went to the wood anyway. It moved. An inch, maybe, wood grinding hard against the floor.
Something screeched from the stairs, closer than the last one.
"Come on, it's almost here!" Amina's voice cracked at the edges.
"Shut up and help push," Nikita said through his teeth.
Another inch. Carmen and Amina broke off from the wall and ran for us, boots loud on the stone.
"It's right there!" Carmen shouted, and behind her the thing's shadow stretched huge across the wall.
"Push!" Nikita said, and we did, all of us, until the gap was wide enough. One after another we went sideways through it. I grabbed Amina's arm and hauled her through just as the thing lunged for the doorway.
The door slammed shut behind her.
It hit the wood again, and again, claws raking down it every time, the sound running straight through the floor into my feet. Inside, it was black enough that I couldn't find my own hand in front of my face. My chest wouldn't slow down no matter how many times I told it to. We'd made it through the door. My body hadn't caught up to that yet.
Then, without warning, the room went bright. Two torches lit on their own, one on each wall, flame already going.
Amina's breath came out shaky. "What the hell." A few seconds later it steadied, and so did her voice. "Honestly? After everything else tonight, I'm not even gonna ask how the torches did that." She dropped straight down onto the floor, pushed her hair back with both hands, and just sat there, flat. "So. What's the plan. We're kind of just trapped in here."
The door took another hit behind all of it, hard enough to make the hinges shriek.
"Guess we're staying a while," Nikita said, dry enough that it took me a second to realize he meant it as a joke.
"You think that's funny?" Amina said it from the floor, not even lifting her head.
"Hey." I kept my eyes on the door. "You don't actually think that thing's gonna get through, right?"
"We can hope," Nikita said.
"I was thinking maybe we barricade it. With something."
Nikita looked around the room, slow, in no hurry to prove me wrong. "You see anything in here we could use for that?"
I looked too. Bare stone, bare floor. Nothing.
"No."
"Then don't ask stupid questions." He lay down right there on the ground, hands behind his head, and shut his eyes. "Wake me up when it's gone."
He was snoring inside a minute.
What a guy.
From the far end of the room Daisuke's voice came, quieter than I'd heard it all night. "Aleks. Come here."
He was standing dead still in front of the wall, which for Daisuke meant something was actually wrong, or actually enormous. I went over. It was both.
The carving took up more wall than anything we'd seen upstairs, and next to it, cut into a flat block of stone, ran lines of text.
On one side, rows of figures fought in a line, shoulder to shoulder, pushing forward together. Above them, more figures hung in the air on wings, fighting the same way. One of those stood taller than the rest, set dead center among the wing-shapes. Every line the carvers had cut elsewhere on that side ran back toward it.
The other side I didn't need explained. Things like the one still clawing at the door two rooms back, dragging across a battlefield in every wrong shape a body could take, some of them off the ground entirely, wings or not.
Daisuke's hand hovered near the text block. "Want me to read it?"
I nodded, because I didn't trust my own voice yet.
He read it out loud. "O The Angel of Flame, Hero of Eden, Light of the Highest, merciful angel, you shall be the one to guard the being from the unbeing, the breath from the silence. You shall lead heaven and earth in the final days. O The Angel of Flame, you shall call back the One who departed and make existence live once more."
"What are you two doing?"
Right next to my ear. My whole body flinched, hard enough that I bit the inside of my cheek.
Carmen. Standing close enough that I could feel her breath.
"Ah, shit, you scared me," Daisuke said, voice cracking on the last word. Then his whole face changed. "Sorry. Language. I'm, uh. Usually more charming than that."
I wasn't about to tell him he hadn't been the only one about to scream.
Carmen's eyes went to the wall. "Huh. What is this?"
"That," Daisuke said, already back to his normal self, "is one of the carvings me and Aleks found the other day, when we snuck down here and..."
I shot him a look before he got any further. We'd had a deal about that. Apparently the deal only counted until he forgot it existed.
Whatever. I left them to it and went to find the others.
The creature was still going at the door somewhere behind all of this, a steady sound I'd almost stopped hearing. Cealith and Amina sat against the far wall, talking low. Near them, flat on his back, Nikita snored on, undisturbed by any of it.
"Hey, Aleks," Cealith said when he saw me coming.
I sat down next to him without much of an answer.
Three of us then, backs to the stone, waiting the thing out.
"If it doesn't leave soon," Amina said, eyes on Nikita, "we should just sleep through it like he's doing."
"And if it's still out there after that?" Cealith asked.
"Problem for future us."
"Hey, Aleks." Cealith tilted his head at me. "How'd you even know this place was here?"
Amina leaned in for that answer too.
I'd made a promise to Daisuke not to tell anyone we'd already been down here once. Considering he'd just broken that himself two minutes ago, I didn't feel much like keeping my half of it.
"The reason it took me and Daisuke so long getting firewood," I said, "is we were down here already. Checking the place out." I looked at Amina. "Sorry. The bear thing wasn't real."
Amina barked out a laugh, half disbelief, and slapped my shoulder hard enough to sting. "No shit. And here I thought he actually sold that one."
"What's a bear?" Cealith asked.
That stopped both of us cold. Amina and I looked at him at the same time.
"You don't know what a bear is?"
"Should I?"
"Guess not everywhere has them," I said. "Big animal. Teeth, claws. Mean if you catch it wrong."
Cealith took a second with that, turning it over before he answered. "We don't have those where I'm from."
"What do you have instead?"
"Wolves. Worse wolves, probably, than whatever you mean by wolves."
Amina pulled her phone out of her pocket, out of habit more than anything, and lit the screen just to see it still worked. Cealith went rigid next to me, staring at the little square of light with his mouth open.
"What," he said, very carefully, "is that?"
"It's a phone." She turned it so he could see. "You've never seen one?"
He leaned in slow, one hand half-raised, then pulled it back before it touched the screen. "Nothing where I'm from does that. Nothing."
"It's not that impressive, it's just a..."
"It's light. Just sitting in your hand." His voice had gone thin. For a second I thought he might actually go down.
"Okay, easy," Amina said, and pocketed it again. "See? Gone. You're fine."
He didn't look fine. His breathing had gone quick and shallow, and he didn't seem to notice he was doing it.
Carmen and Daisuke wandered over eventually, and the four of us turned into six. Daisuke wasted no time.
"Can we talk about how it's supposed to be six months? That's what the sky said. Six months before anything shows up, and it's day zero and something's already trying to eat us through a door."
"Maybe it didn't get the memo," Amina said.
"Maybe the whole six months thing was a lie," Daisuke said, and nobody had an answer for that. So he moved on to the murals instead, going back over what he'd read out to me. He guessed at what the rest of the writing meant. None of it landed on anything solid.
That's when Nikita's voice came from the floor, flat and half-asleep. "Some of us are trying to sleep."
"Some of us are trying to figure out why we almost died tonight," Daisuke shot back.
"You can figure it out quieter."
"You can shut up and let me talk."
It was heading somewhere loud fast, both of them sitting up now, and Carmen cut in before it could get there. "Enough. Both of you." Just enough edge in it that they actually stopped.
We settled down after that, one by one, onto the cold stone.
Lying there, I had the creature's pounding in one ear and Nikita's snoring in the other. Between the two of them I was fairly sure I'd lost my mind by the time either one let up. Eventually, somehow, sleep won anyway.
Daisuke's hand hit my shoulder before his voice did. "Hey. I think it stopped."
I got everyone up. My back was stiff enough that standing straight took actual effort. Nobody moved toward the door right away. We just stood there in a loose half circle, looking at it, looking at each other, waiting for somebody else to go first.
Nikita was the one who finally moved. He got a hand flat on the door and pushed, and it swung easier than I expected for something that size.
We crowded in behind him anyway. Nobody wanted to be the one still hanging back if something came through.
"Hey, you scaredy-cats, stop hiding behind me," Nikita said. "See? There's no one here."