Week 1, Day 1, Morning.
The door stayed open behind us, and nothing came through it. Nikita was already three steps ahead, headed for the stairs, done with the whole night as far as he was concerned.
I made myself follow. My legs weren't fully convinced the thing was actually gone, and honestly, neither was the rest of me. We kept a gap behind him anyway, close enough to run back to the room if we had to, far enough that he'd hit whatever came first. Nobody said a word going up. Every step bounced off the stone louder than I wanted it to.
I envied him more than a little. Not big envy. The kind where you know exactly what you're missing, and it's not close.
My head wouldn't stop pounding somewhere behind my eyes, in time with my own steps. None of it had settled into anything real yet.
Back on Earth I used to picture this exact scenario more times than I'd ever admit out loud. Isekai, magic, some overpowered class nobody saw coming, a guild, a dark lord to put down by the end of it. Maybe even an elf who actually wanted to talk to me. Turns out the real version comes with a dead phone, a sore back, and a six-month deadline that had already lied to us once.
No magic. Not one weapon between the six of us, not even a knife. And ruins instead of a city, ones that wanted to eat us the second the sun went down. My parents were probably dead and I hadn't let myself think about that directly yet, not once, not really.
"Hey, Aleks. You okay?" Carmen's voice, and I came back into my body fast enough to almost trip on the step.
She had her hands folded behind her, and the question in her face was a real one, not the polite kind. I wasn't about to give her a real answer, not with everyone in earshot, and not really ever if I could help it.
If she knew half of what she actually did for me just by existing in this specific hallway, she'd probably never talk to me again out of pure secondhand embarrassment. I kept that thought exactly where it belonged, which was nowhere near my mouth.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, and scratched the back of my head for no reason at all.
"Good then." She glanced at the ground. "You just looked really depressed a second ago."
"No wonder," Amina called back. "Boy didn't sleep a wink. He was right next to Nikita, and Nikita snored into his ear all night."
"I don't snore," Nikita said, not bothering to turn around.
"You absolutely do," Amina said. "I want a real apology once we're safely out of here."
From the back, Daisuke's voice, pitched low. "Hey, can we maybe not talk until we're actually outside? In case that thing decides round two sounds fun?"
I'd genuinely forgotten he was even back there. That's how quiet he'd gone.
"Sounds like someone's scared," Nikita said. I couldn't see his face, but I could hear the grin in it.
"Shut up," Daisuke shot back, voice suddenly steady again, all the nervous quiet gone out of it.
"Enough, both of you," Amina said, not even bothering to sound annoyed about it anymore.
Light hit us before I was ready for it, a hard white wall at the top of the stairs. I put a hand up and squinted through my fingers until my eyes caught up.
Outside didn't match anything from the night before. Wind actually moving. Air that didn't carry that flat mineral taste of stone anymore. Daisuke was already flat on the ground, forehead pressed to the dirt.
"I thought we were stuck in there forever," he said, and his voice cracked on it.
I couldn't stop looking for it anyway. The creature. There wasn't a single mark of it anywhere, no blood, no print, nothing.
We walked back to the shelter. It hadn't changed one bit since we'd left it, which felt almost insulting after the night we'd had. The fire pit had gone cold, just a black ring of ash. Our few piled-up branches sat untouched, right where we'd dropped them the day before. Nobody said much. I think we all just needed a minute where nothing was actively trying to kill us.
Nikita broke the quiet first. "Fire's out." Then, already moving: "Let's go find that old guy. The one with the lighter."
Right. I'd nearly forgotten there was anyone else on this planet besides the six of us. Other groups, other shelters, whatever had been out here when the sun went down. Had the same thing come for them too?
I stood up, brushing dirt off my jeans. "Hey. Anyone else notice we're the only ones here?"
Cealith looked around, slow, taking it all in for the first time. "You're right. Where did everyone go?"
We split up and searched. Half-built shelters everywhere, frames of branches leaned together, a rope strung between two trees for a tarp that had never gone up. Not one person in any of them. The quiet sat wrong on all of it. Nothing moved. No one had come back for any of this.
We gave up eventually and sat back down.
"Where the hell is everyone?" Amina said, twisting a piece of her hair around one finger, probably the closest thing she had to sitting still.
"Let's get a drink," Nikita said.
"Huh?"
"We haven't had water all day." He was already walking. "Come on. There's a stream."
Nobody argued. We got up and followed him.
Nobody had voted on it, but somewhere in the last two days Nikita had ended up in charge anyway. Strong, calm under pressure, and he actually knew what he was doing out here. That was apparently all it took.
I'd be lying if I said that didn't get under my skin a little. Even out here, new planet, new rules, and somehow I'd still ended up exactly where I always end up. Not the guy people follow. The guy at the back of the group, hoping nobody asks him anything important.
I wasn't built for main-character stuff, and I'd made peace with that a long time ago. Can't fight. Not funny on purpose, not really. Strangers make my chest go tight before I've said a single word to them, and looking someone in the eye for more than a couple seconds still takes actual effort.
With this group, somehow, none of that happened. Didn't stutter, didn't spend three minutes rehearsing one sentence before I said it. No idea why. Maybe because everyone here started from exactly the same nothing I did.
By the stream we all just dropped and drank straight from it, hands cupped, faces half in the water. I hadn't realized how thirsty I actually was until the first mouthful hit, and after that I couldn't make myself stop. The water was cold enough to hurt my teeth and I kept drinking anyway.
"We probably shouldn't drink too much of this," Cealith said.
"Screw that." Daisuke didn't even look up. "Barely had anything yesterday. I don't know how it works where you're from, but I could drink this entire stream by myself right now."
Cealith didn't answer that one. He'd gone quiet again, the same quiet from whenever anyone brought up the elves who'd jumped him. I still didn't know the actual story there. Just that there was one.
Something moved in the bushes past the bank. I almost let it go, but something made me get up and check anyway.
A little girl was crouched in there, maybe six years old. Black hair, skin gone pale under all the dirt, and she looked East Asian, though it was hard to tell much past how filthy her clothes were. She had a teddy bear clamped in both arms, the kind of grip that wasn't letting go for anything. Hadn't noticed me yet, either, still watching the rest of the group down by the water, knees pulled up tight against her chest.
Then I stepped on a twig.
Her head snapped around and found me. Whatever was on her face, it wasn't relief. I tried a smile, lifted one hand, kept my voice low. "Hey. You okay?"
She bolted. Dropped the bear halfway into the trees and didn't look back once.
Shit. Good going, Aleks.
I picked the bear up off the ground. Missing an ear, one seam split open at the shoulder, dirt ground into the fur so deep it had probably stopped being white a long time ago. Whatever. Wasn't about to leave a six-year-old out here alone, not with actual monsters loose half the time after dark.
Went after her.
Cealith's voice cut through behind me, sharp with surprise. "Aleks! Where are you going?"