Inside, the house was empty. No furniture, no pictures, no scavenger's footprint. Walls the color of old bones. Dust, but not enough dust for the years the exterior claimed. Kade ran a palm along a windowsill and made a clean line, then held up his gray fingertip with a half-smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"See? Nothing here. Just a stage set."
Serena searched methodically, corners, baseboards, the underside of the stair lip. Dorian kept to the windows, watching, posture angled toward the street. Liam moved slowly, cataloging small wrongness's he couldn't yet give names. On the second step of the stair, his boot scuffed something. He crouched. In the wood, almost erased, a shallow mark like a child's hasty drawing: two lines crossing to make a lopsided star.
He put his thumb over it and stood. He said nothing.
They completed their sweep without finding a single human trace beyond that faint carved star and the feeling, hard to prove, impossible to dismiss, that the house had been assembled from the exact idea of a house rather than from timber and time. On the way out, the floor sighed once, as if relieved at their leaving.
Serena touched Liam's sleeve. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he lied, because his unease felt personal and he wasn't ready to hand it over. "Just tired."
By consensus, they made a plan that had the plain good sense of people who expected to survive: two on watch, two sleeping, rotate in three-hour blocks; speak quietly; keep to open sightlines; if anything appeared the way the house had, no one approached alone. Kade and Serena unrolled thin bedrolls they had scavenged. Dorian and Liam took first watch at the edge of the half-collapsed supermarket that had become their temporary shelter.
Night pressed in and made the city sound hollow. Somewhere far off, something metallic clanged and then went quiet, the way a dropped pipe quiets after the final bounce. For a while, no one said anything. Dorian's gaze inventoried shapes and exits. Liam's mind kept circling the house and the star cut into the stair like a secret he was already failing to keep.
"You should say it out loud," Dorian said without looking away from the street. His tone held no pressure, only fact. "Whatever you swallowed back in there."
Liam considered the easy answer and discarded it. The silence felt heavy with shared risk and therefore earned honesty. He told him, voice low. Not a speech, just the string of bare details that, together, made a door: when he was small, his father had taken him to a place that was no one's address but theirs; a mark under the second riser that only someone who had crawled there would know.
Dorian absorbed this, then nodded once. "So, the world pulls places tied to us. Not random."
"Feels like it," Liam said. "But I don't know why."
"How before why," Dorian said. "If what you are saying is true then this place is definitely not made by humans. We need to know its rules."
Liam exhaled, something unclenching in him at the solidity of that. "Then rule one: it can echo places from our lives."
"Agreed," Dorian said. He finally looked over. "And if that's true, we set another rule right now: we name what we notice. No secrets that could get someone killed."
Liam glanced toward the sleeping shapes, the rise and fall of Serena's breath, the restless twitch of Kade's foot even in sleep. "Okay," he said. "No secrets."
The city creaked once, like an old ship settling its ribs. Somewhere, a loose sign swung and thumped. The night wore on.
Behind Liam's ribs, the house sat like a photograph he had not meant to carry, edges soft from handling. He told himself that in the morning he would show them the carved star and say the thing plainly. For now, he let the rule settle between them like a third watcher and kept his eyes on the street. The supermarket's roof was half-collapsed, moonlight spilling through the cracks like silver rain.
Serena and Kade slept near the back, their outlines softened by the dim glow of the dying fire. Liam and Dorian sat just outside, their backs against the cold wall, keeping vigil.
For a while, neither spoke. The silence of this world was deep, it wasn't the peaceful quiet of night but something hollow, like the world itself was holding its breath.
Dorian broke it first. "You ever think this place feels... intentional?"
Liam glanced at him. "Intentional how?"
"Like we're not just here. Like we were placed." Dorian's voice was calm, but there was a heaviness beneath it. "Every turn, every path, it all feels arranged."
Liam hesitated. "I've thought about it." He drew a line in the dirt with a stick, absently. "The house wasn't random. It was mine. At least, it looked like it."
Dorian's head turned. "Tell me more about that,"
Liam nodded slowly, staring at the ground. "When I was little, my dad used to take me there. A small, rundown place at the edge of the woods. It was ours. We'd fix things together, broken radios, lamps, junk he found on the roadside. It wasn't much, but... it felt safe."
Dorian's eyes softened. "And it appeared here?"
"The same porch, the same uneven steps." Liam's voice dropped. "Even the scratch under the stair. It shouldn't be possible. But it was."
Dorian nodded. "Which means it's connected to who we were... or what we're running from."
Liam leaned his head back against the wall, the weight of the realization sinking in. "Then it's not just a world. It's a mirror."
The fire crackled softly, and the wind sighed through the ruins.
After a while, Dorian spoke again, his tone quieter. "You know... I used to think punishment looked like fire and brimstone. Now I think it looks like this. Empty streets. Silence. Just enough hope to keep you moving."
Liam studied him. "You think this is punishment?"
Dorian's jaw tightened. "Feels like it."
Liam didn't respond. He didn't need to; there was something in Dorian's voice that said the man had seen his share of damnation already.