Lila
Standing together did not make the island safer.
It only made the silence feel shared.
For a long time, none of us spoke. The darkness over the island clung to the sky like wet cloth, refusing to lift. The forest felt tight and listening. Hana's hand stayed wrapped around mine like ivy. The boy, Ethan, was at the front, the others close to him the way Hana stayed close to me.
It felt strange, being five now instead of two.
Strange… and necessary.
"We should keep moving," Ethan said quietly at last. "Staying in one spot feels wrong."
He was right. The ground here didn't sleep.
But moving without a direction was just wandering inside fear. The thought pressed down on me harder with every step.
"My dad…" The words slipped out before I could stop them. "He might still be looking for us."
Ethan looked at me, really looked, like he understood how heavy the sentence was.
"Where would he go?" he asked gently.
There were a thousand wrong answers.
And one right one.
"The college," I said. "Nako College. It's the only one here. He never leaves campus for long. Even when he's home… half of him is still there."
"What does he teach?" Alexa asked softly.
"Biology." I swallowed. "He's a lecturer. Research too. He… studies living systems."
Living systems.
The irony stung.
Ethan was quiet for a moment before he nodded slowly.
"My mom works there too," he said. "Chemistry. She left early today. We never saw her after that."
My chest tightened.
Two parents.
One place.
One chance.
It was more direction than we'd had since the ground first shifted.
"That's where she'd go," he said quietly. "If anything was happening. If she thought she needed answers."
I nodded. "Same with my dad."
A shared understanding settled in the space between us.
We weren't just running anymore.
We were going somewhere.
The ground pulsed softly beneath our feet as if it had heard us make the decision.
A reminder.
A warning.
We walked anyway.
Because fear could chase us forever.
But hope could at least give us a direction to run toward.
And for the first time since this began, the path out of the forest didn't feel endless.
It felt like a road.