They did not return to the road immediately.
The forest felt different now.
Not safer.
Just less tense, like something immense had shifted its focus elsewhere, at least for the moment.
Rei walked slower than before.
Every step felt deliberate, like the ground itself was asking him to justify moving forward.
No one pushed him to talk.
Aira stayed close, her presence steady without being intrusive.
She watched Rei the way someone watches a cracked structure, not waiting for it to fall, but aware that it might.
Zeke finally broke the silence.
"That thing," he said, keeping his voice low.
"It didn't feel hostile."
Suki snorted softly.
"That's worse."
Kai nodded.
"Yeah. I prefer enemies that want to kill us. You know where you stand with those."
Rena stopped walking and turned to face Rei.
"Whatever spoke to you back there," she said,
"It wasn't lying."
Rei met her gaze.
"I know."
"That's what scares me," she replied.
They resumed moving, heading deeper into the outskirts beyond the city.
The buildings here were older, half-swallowed by nature.
Vines wrapped around broken streetlights.
Collapsed homes leaned against one another like tired survivors.
Aira frowned.
"This area was evacuated years ago," she said.
"Before awakenings started appearing openly."
Zeke raised an eyebrow.
"Then why does it feel like we're late?"
Rei felt it too.
The sense that something had already happened here.
Something unresolved.
They found signs soon enough.
Symbols scratched into walls.
Not graffiti.
Not warnings.
Records.
Each mark was precise, repeated again and again.
A circle broken by a vertical line.
Rena's breath caught.
"That's not random."
Rei's mark pulsed faintly in response.
Aira studied the symbols carefully.
"This is a containment seal," she said slowly.
"Or at least an attempt at one."
Kai looked around.
"Attempt implies failure."
They reached what had once been a transit station.
The roof had partially collapsed, sunlight spilling through broken concrete.
In the center of the station floor was a massive circular scar, cracked and blackened.
Suki crouched beside it, touching the edge.
"This isn't fire damage," she said.
"It's… absence."
Rei stepped forward.
The moment his foot crossed the circle's boundary, the air shifted.
A sound emerged.
Not loud.
Not sharp.
A hum.
Low and constant, vibrating through bone rather than ear.
Zeke swore under his breath.
"There it is again."
The hum intensified, and with it came pressure.
Memories not their own pressed at the edges of awareness.
Aira clenched her jaw.
"People tried to suppress something here," she said.
"They didn't destroy it. They buried it."
Rena's eyes widened.
"And it's still awake."
The ground trembled.
Cracks spread outward from the center of the circle.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
Kai raised his hands instinctively, lightning sparking.
"Rei," he said,
"I don't think this thing wants to stay quiet."
Rei closed his eyes.
The presence from before was not here.
This was different.
This was hunger.
Not for power.
Not for destruction.
For sound.
The ground split open.
Something rose slowly, not emerging fully, but enough for them to see its shape.
It had no face.
No defined limbs.
It was a mass of fractured light and shadow, constantly shifting, as if struggling to maintain form.
When it moved, the hum became a distorted echo, like voices layered over each other, speaking at once.
Suki stepped back.
"Okay. I officially hate this place."
The entity did not attack.
It reached upward, tendrils of light stretching toward the open air above the station.
Aira realized it first.
"It's trying to escape."
Zeke planted his feet.
"Then we don't let it."
Rei felt the mark flare sharply.
Pain shot through his chest.
The entity reacted instantly.
Its attention snapped to Rei.
The hum sharpened into something closer to recognition.
"You," it echoed, voices overlapping.
Rei staggered but stayed upright.
"Me," he answered.
Rena shouted, "Rei, don't engage it directly."
Too late.
The entity surged forward.
Not violently.
Desperately.
When it touched Rei, the world fractured again.
But this time, he was not alone.
He saw flashes of lives.
People whose awakenings had gone wrong.
Voices that had never stabilized.
Power that had overwhelmed identity.
They had been sealed here.
Not to be studied.
Not to be saved.
To be forgotten.
The weight of it nearly crushed him.
Rei screamed, not in pain, but in refusal.
The mark burned brighter than ever before.
The entity recoiled.
Aira shouted something, her voice distant.
Kai's lightning struck the ground, anchoring the station.
Suki's fire surged, not to burn, but to contain.
Zeke grabbed Rei, pulling him back.
"Focus," he growled.
"You're still here."
Rei gasped, clinging to that truth.
The entity writhed, unstable.
Its form began to collapse inward.
Rena stepped forward, eyes glowing faintly.
"It's breaking apart," she said.
"If it destabilizes completely, the backlash will level this entire sector."
Aira made a decision.
She turned to Rei.
"You can't destroy it," she said.
"But you can give it a boundary."
Rei understood instantly.
He stepped forward again, ignoring the pain.
This time, he did not resist the hum.
He shaped it.
Not with force.
With intent.
The mark responded, not as a weapon, but as a frame.
The entity slowed.
Its voices faded into a single tone.
A question.
"What are we?"
Rei swallowed hard.
"People," he said.
"Who were never taught how to stop."
The entity shuddered.
The light condensed.
The cracks in the ground sealed themselves, reshaping into a smaller, stable containment ring.
Silence returned.
Not absence.
Rest.
The station stopped shaking.
Everyone stood frozen, afraid to breathe.
Finally, Suki laughed shakily.
"I'm voting we never come back here."
Kai nodded.
"Seconded."
Zeke looked at Rei.
"You okay?"
Rei nodded slowly.
"I will be."
Aira watched the sealed circle carefully.
"That thing isn't gone," she said.
"But it won't spread."
Rena exhaled.
"You didn't silence it," she said to Rei.
"You acknowledged it."
Rei looked down at his hands.
"That voice back there," he said quietly.
"The one in the forest."
Aira stiffened.
"Yes?"
"It wasn't lying," Rei continued.
"Some things survive by disappearing."
He looked back at the sealed ground.
"But this," he said,
"Survives by being heard."
They left the station behind as the sun dipped lower in the sky.
None of them noticed the faint glow beneath the concrete.
Or the way the mark on Rei's chest no longer pulsed alone.
Something had learned how to listen back.