The old stories whispered of the walls. Not the crumbling fortifications of ancient cities, or the crude barriers thrown up in wartime, but the walls. The ones that defined the world, the horizon itself, stretching into the infinite blue above and the shadowed depths below. They had always been there, or so everyone believed.
Milena lived in a small village nestled close to one of these walls. Serbia cradled her, the rolling hills green and gold in the summer, stark white under winter snows.
Life moved to the pulse of the seasons, predictable, comfortable. Yet, even here, in this pocket of apparent peace, the walls loomed, a constant, silent presence.
They were beautiful, in a terrifying way. Swirls of color, like stone bruised and bleeding into itself – ochre, crimson, deep violet, and shades no name existed for. Textures shifted across their surfaces, from glassy smoothness to rough, jagged edges. They seemed to breathe, though no one ever spoke of it aloud.
Children played near the base of the wall, their laughter echoing against the colossal structure, oblivious to the unease it stirred in the hearts of their elders. Milena, even at seventeen, felt it – a prickle of something unidentifiable under her skin whenever she stood too close, a cold spot in her chest that the sun could not warm.
"Don't go too near the wall, Milena," her grandmother would say, her voice raspy with age, her eyes clouded with memories Milena could only guess at. "It's not… right."
Milena never questioned it, not really. It was just one of those things, like not stepping on cracks in the pavement or always knocking on wood. Superstitions, whispered warnings. But lately, the whispers seemed louder, the warnings edged with a sharper fear.
It started subtly. Livestock vanishing from their pens overnight. Dogs barking at the wall at all hours, hackles raised, teeth bared at an unseen threat. Then, people. Old Man Jovan, who always sat on his porch, whittling wood – gone. Little Lena, with her bright ribbons and infectious giggle – disappeared on her way home from school.
The village elders convened, their faces grim, their voices low and troubled. Milena, pretending to sweep the floor in the next room, strained to catch snippets of their conversation.
"More than usual," her grandfather muttered, his voice heavy. "Too many, too close together."
"The wall is… restless," another woman said, her tone thick with dread.
Restless. It was a strange word to use for a wall. Milena pictured the vast stone surface, unmoving, impassive. How could something so solid, so permanent, be restless?
That night, sleep evaded her. The village was unnaturally quiet, even the crickets were silent. A heavy stillness pressed down, broken only by the distant, lowing cry of a cow. Milena got out of bed and went to the window. The wall dominated the night sky, a black behemoth against the faint starlight. It seemed closer than usual, pressing in on the village.
A sound reached her ears, a soft, scraping noise, like stone grinding against stone. It was coming from the wall. She leaned closer to the window, heart hammering against her ribs. The scraping grew louder, then a low rumble, deep and guttural, vibrating in her chest.
Terror, cold and sharp, pierced through her. This was not just a wall. This was something else, something alive.
The next morning, the village was in an uproar. More people were missing. Two families, vanished completely from their homes. Doors stood open, meals half-prepared on tables, beds empty. It was as if they had been… taken.
Panic began to bloom, rank and suffocating. People spoke of leaving, fleeing to other villages, further from the walls. But where could they go? The walls circled the entire world. There was nowhere farther to go.
Milena's grandmother grabbed her arm, her grip surprisingly strong. "We need to listen to the old ways," she said, her eyes wide and urgent. "The stories… they warned us."
The stories. Milena remembered them now, fragments of tales whispered in the dark, dismissed as folklore, as the fanciful fears of simple people. Stories of the walls as slumbering giants, of sacrifices to appease them, of rituals forgotten over generations of false peace.
"What stories, Baba?" Milena asked, her voice barely a whisper.
"Stories of what they are," her grandmother hissed, pulling her deeper into the house, away from the open door. "They are not stone, child. They are… sleepers. And they are waking."
Her grandmother began to gather herbs, chanting words Milena had never heard, ancient phrases that tasted of dust and forgotten gods. She prepared a bitter tea, forcing Milena to drink it, claiming it would sharpen her senses, protect her.
That night, Milena could not stay inside. The air was thick with dread, the silence broken by frantic whispers and the occasional sob. She slipped out of the house, the village deserted, everyone huddled indoors, barricaded behind locked doors and drawn curtains.
She walked towards the wall, drawn by a morbid fascination, a terrifying pull she could not resist. The scraping sound was back, louder now, constant. As she got closer, she saw it – movement on the wall's surface. Not a cascade of stone, but something organic, undulating beneath the colorful crust.
The colors seemed to writhe, to rearrange themselves in grotesque, shifting patterns. Cracks appeared, spiderwebbing across the surface, widening, revealing glimpses of something darker beneath, something slick and black and alive.
A section of the wall bulged outward, the colors stretching and thinning, like skin about to tear. The scraping intensified, becoming a grating screech, the rumble deepening into a monstrous growl.
Then, it opened.
Not like a door, but like a mouth, a gaping maw tearing itself open in the stone. Rows of jagged edges, like teeth, lined the opening, and from within, a darkness poured out, a viscous, oily blackness that swallowed the starlight.
The smell hit Milena then, a stench of rot and decay, mingled with something else, something metallic, like blood and old iron. She gagged, bile rising in her throat, but she couldn't look away.
From the opening, things began to emerge. Not creatures in the familiar sense, but extensions of the wall itself, tendrils of living stone, tipped with razor-sharp edges, or thick, club-like protrusions that slammed against the ground with sickening thuds.
They moved with a horrifying, fluid grace, the stone flowing like water, reshaping itself into monstrous forms. They were hunting.
A scream ripped through the night, followed by another, and another. People were running from their homes, blinded by terror, stumbling into the path of the wall-things.
Milena watched, frozen, as one of the tendrils wrapped around a villager, its stone surface tightening, crushing bone and flesh with ease. The blackness flowed over the victim, engulfing them, drawing them back into the opening in the wall.
It was feeding. The wall was eating them.
Milena finally moved, not in flight, but in a desperate, primal surge of action. She had to warn others, to help them. She ran back towards the village, screaming, "The wall! It's alive! Run! Run!"
Few heard her, or if they did, they were too paralyzed by fear to react. The things from the wall were everywhere now, moving through the village with terrifying speed, their stone bodies leaving trails of dust and crushed earth.
Milena saw her grandmother's house, the door still slightly ajar. She raced inside, calling out, "Baba! Baba, we have to go!"
Her grandmother was in the main room, kneeling before a small, makeshift altar, chanting, her eyes closed, oblivious to the screams and the sounds of destruction outside. Milena shook her, desperation clawing at her throat. "Baba, please! We have to leave!"
Her grandmother opened her eyes, her gaze unfocused, distant. "It is too late," she whispered, her voice calm, resigned. "They have awakened. There is nowhere to run."
"But we can fight! We can do something!" Milena pleaded, grabbing her grandmother's hands.
Her grandmother smiled sadly, a faint, knowing smile. "No, child. We cannot fight the world itself. We can only… offer ourselves."
Before Milena could understand, a tendril of stone snaked through the doorway, swift as lightning. It wrapped around her grandmother, lifting her into the air, her chanting abruptly cut short.
Milena screamed, reaching out, but it was too late. The tendril pulled her grandmother towards the gaping maw in the wall, the blackness reaching out, engulfing her. In moments, she was gone.
Milena stood there, alone in the ruined house, the screams of her village fading, replaced by the grinding, crunching sounds of the wall feeding. Tears streamed down her face, hot against the cold dread that had settled in her bones.
She understood now. The stories were not just stories. The walls were not just walls. They were ancient, slumbering monsters, and they had finally woken up. Generations had lived in a fragile peace, ignorant of the true nature of their world, comforted by the illusion of permanence, of safety.
It had all been a lie.
Milena walked outside, into the devastation. The village was a wasteland, buildings collapsed, fires burning, the air thick with dust and the stench of death. The wall-things moved amongst the ruins, their feeding frenzy slowing, their stone bodies retracting back into the opening in the wall.
The maw was closing, the colorful surface flowing back together, cracks mending, the monstrous mouth disappearing as if it had never been there. Soon, the wall would be whole again, beautiful and terrible, silent and waiting.
Milena walked towards it, drawn by a strange, desolate curiosity. She reached out, touching the cool, smooth surface, the colors swirling beneath her fingertips. It felt… inert, now. Asleep again.
She leaned her forehead against the wall, the cold stone pressing against her skin. What was the point? Everyone she had ever known, everyone she had ever loved, was gone, swallowed by the living stone. The world was not a home, but a prison, surrounded by hungry giants, waiting for their next meal.
A faint whisper reached her ears, a sound from the wall itself, or perhaps from inside her own mind. It was soft, almost inaudible, a rustling of stone, a sigh of something vast and ancient.
Sleep… rest…
The words were not spoken in any language she knew, but she understood them, felt them deep within her. A terrible weariness washed over her, a longing for oblivion, for an end to the pain and the fear.
She closed her eyes, picturing her grandmother's face, her gentle smile, her knowing eyes. She remembered the stories, not just the warnings, but the other tales, the ones of sacrifices, of offerings, of appeasement.
Perhaps that was the only way. Not to fight, not to run, but to offer herself, to become part of the wall's slumber, to join the endless cycle of feeding and sleep.
A small crack appeared in the wall before her, widening slowly, a dark line snaking across the colorful surface. The air grew cold, the scent of rot returning, faint but unmistakable.
Milena opened her eyes, looking into the deepening crack, into the darkness within. There was no fear now, only a profound sadness, a sense of utter resignation.
She stepped forward, into the crack, into the mouth of the sleeping monster, offering herself to the walls that defined her world, the walls that had always been hungry, and always would be.
The stone closed around her, cold and final, swallowing her whole, leaving no trace behind, not even a whisper. The wall was silent once more.