Nezgad emerged from the back room carrying several worn pages folded beneath his arm. Judging by the creases and notes covering them, he and Kevin had clearly been studying them for a while.

“Alright,” Nezgad said, placing the papers onto the table. “Me and Kevin have been thinking.”

Zeke leaned against a nearby shelf with visible disinterest already settling into his face.

“Since none of us can leave Ravenport,” Nezgad continued, “what if you tried creating some kind of shield around yourselves? Something that could allow you to cross beyond the city safely.”

Zeke picked up one of the pages and stared at it blankly.

He looked more confused than interested.

“Our last informant managed to reach a market outside the city,” Nezgad said.

That caught Zeke’s attention immediately.

“A market?” he asked.

Nezgad nodded slowly.

“And according to him… there were wonders there.”

Zeke’s boredom vanished almost instantly.

“What kind of wonders?”

“People,” Nezgad replied, “who can see anomalies. Communicate with them. People like you, Zeke.”

The room grew quieter.

“But,” Nezgad added carefully, “they lacked knowledge. Real knowledge. Nothing close to the things you’ve collected over the years.”

He stepped closer.

“So I’m asking you, old friend… go there. Find something useful for us.”

For the first time since entering the bunker, Zeke actually looked interested.

A grin slowly formed across his face.

“Well,” he said casually, “I am bored.”

He folded the papers and tucked them beneath his arm.

“And leaving Ravenport sounds new enough to keep me alive mentally.”

His eyes shifted toward Amanda.

“So me and Amanda will go.”

Amanda blinked.

“Wait wha—”

“Nezgad,” Kevin suddenly interrupted from the nearby table. “Come look at this.”

Everyone turned.

Amanda, KayJay, and Kevin stood around the strange book spread open beneath the dim overhead light.

KayJay pointed toward one of the pages filled with symbols.

“Haven’t you seen something similar before?” he asked.

Nezgad stepped closer and carefully turned the book toward himself.

The symbols seemed almost uncomfortable to look at for too long.

“I’m not sure,” Nezgad muttered.

Zeke stared at the pages silently.

Amanda noticed his expression shift slightly.

Recognition.

The symbols from her room.

“I think…” Kevin suddenly said.

Everyone looked at him.

“I think I’ve seen these before.”

Amanda stepped closer immediately.

“Where?”

Silence.

Kevin frowned hard, gripping the edge of the table.

His expression tightened strangely.

“I…” he muttered.

A sharp pain crossed his face.

“I don’t remember.”

He pressed a hand against his forehead.

The room remained silent for a few seconds longer than comfortable.

Then Zeke shrugged lightly.

“Well, no point wasting time standing around.”

He turned toward Amanda.

“Come on.”

“Wait,” KayJay said quickly, reaching for a notebook. “Let me copy a few of the symbols first.”

Amanda hesitated before slowly handing him the book.

As KayJay began sketching the strange markings onto paper, Kevin remained still beside the table, rubbing his temple quietly.

Like something inside his mind had almost opened—

and then sealed itself shut again.

Zeke and Amanda climbed out of the tunnels and back into the afternoon light of Ravenport.

The city felt unusually bright after the underground darkness.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

“I just realized,” Zeke muttered eventually, adjusting the papers Nezgad had given him beneath his arm, “I forgot where the place is located.”

Amanda stared at him.

“You forgot?”

“I remembered the mission part,” Zeke replied calmly. “The directions were apparently not emotionally important enough for my brain to preserve.”

Amanda sighed.

“We’ll ask people.”

They started walking down the crowded sidewalk while traffic rolled slowly through the streets nearby.

“Are we at least going home first?” Amanda asked. “For supplies or something?”

“Worry not,” Zeke said casually. “I have everything I need.”

Amanda looked him up and down.

“You literally have nothing.”

“I have pockets.”

“That is not equipment.”

Zeke ignored her completely.

The deeper they moved through Ravenport, the stranger the city began to feel.

Not wrong enough to stop walking.

Just wrong enough to notice.

A traffic light stayed red for nearly five minutes despite there being no cars crossing the intersection.

Nobody complained.

Nobody even seemed to care.

Further ahead, a man stood beside a newspaper stand arguing loudly with the vendor.

“The northern roads are closed again,” the man snapped.

“They’ve BEEN closed,” the vendor replied.

Amanda glanced toward Zeke briefly.

Neither said anything.

A few streets later, they stopped beside an old woman selling cigarettes beneath a faded umbrella.

“Excuse me,” Amanda asked politely. “Do you know where the outer highway checkpoint is?”

The woman pointed east immediately.

“Take Markileven and keep going straight.”

“Thank you.”

They walked for another ten minutes before asking someone else for confirmation.

“The outer checkpoint?” the man repeated.

He frowned.

“There’s no checkpoint east.”

Amanda blinked.

“It should be near Markileven.”

“No,” the man replied confidently. “That road leads south.”

Zeke looked at Amanda.

Amanda looked back at him.

Neither spoke.

They kept walking anyway.

The city slowly became quieter the further they traveled.

Buildings grew older.

The streets widened strangely.

At one point Amanda noticed a woman in a long grey coat standing near a pharmacy entrance watching traffic silently.

Something about her face lingered in Amanda’s mind for reasons she couldn’t explain.

Twenty minutes later they passed another intersection.

The same woman stood there again.

Same grey coat.

Same posture.

Same expression.

Amanda slowed slightly.

“Zeke.”

“Hm?”

“That woman…”

Zeke glanced briefly toward the sidewalk.

His eyes rested on the woman for only a second before returning forward.

“I know.”

Amanda waited for him to say more.

He didn’t.

That somehow made it worse.

They continued deeper into Ravenport.

Somewhere along the way, Amanda began noticing the headaches.

Not painful at first.

Just pressure.

A strange tightness behind her eyes.

Occasionally symbols from the book flashed briefly in her mind without warning.

Sharp.

Incomplete.

Gone before she could fully focus on them.

She rubbed her temple quietly.

“You alright?” Zeke asked without looking at her.

“Yeah.”

“You’re lying.”

Amanda exhaled softly.

“Just a headache.”

“Mhm.”

The streets around them looked unfamiliar now.

Older.

Dirtier.

Amanda frowned suddenly.

“…Zeke.”

“Hm?”

“Aren’t we supposed to be heading north?”

“We are.”

Amanda slowly turned in a circle.

A rusted district sign stood near the road.

SOUTHERN RAVENPORT.

Her stomach dropped slightly.

“That’s impossible.”

Zeke stopped walking.

For the first time since leaving the tunnels, genuine confusion crossed his face.

He looked around carefully.

The buildings.

The broken bridge nearby.

The flooded roads.

The old railway tracks.

Southern Ravenport.

They had somehow crossed nearly the entire city without realizing it.

“That’s…” Amanda muttered.

Her voice trailed off.

Zeke remained unusually silent.

Not philosophical.

Not curious.

Just observing.

Like part of his brain was trying to reconstruct missing steps and failing.

“We should’ve noticed,” Amanda whispered.

“We should’ve,” Zeke agreed.

Neither of them could remember when the streets changed.

Or how long they had been walking.

A cold breeze passed through the empty roads.

Amanda suddenly reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.

“What are you doing?” Zeke asked.

Amanda pulled out her phone while they walked.

“I’m just gonna use a map,” she said. “At this point we’re clearly not getting anywhere by asking random people.”

Zeke shrugged.

“Fair enough.”

The streets slowly became emptier the further they traveled.

At some point Ravenport stopped feeling like a city and started feeling like long stretches of forgotten road stitched together badly.

Huge trees lined both sides of the street now, their branches hanging over the road like dark ribs. The afternoon light barely reached the ground beneath them.

Amanda kept checking the map on her phone every few minutes.

Something about it bothered her.

The route line kept shifting slightly whenever she looked away.

Not enough to prove anything.

Just enough to feel irritating.

“You noticing anything weird?” she asked quietly.

“Besides existing?” Zeke replied.

Amanda ignored him.

The road ahead curved slightly.

Then the motel appeared.

Old Mire Motel.

Half the letters on the sign no longer worked.

The place looked abandoned for years.

Broken windows.

Collapsed fencing.

Dead grass growing through cracks in the pavement.

And directly in the middle of the road ahead—

barricades.

Old metal barriers thrown together carelessly as if someone had tried to block passage in a hurry.

Amanda slowed first.

Someone sat against the barricade.

Still.

Head lowered slightly.

Zeke walked forward without much reaction.

“Oh,” Amanda muttered. “So this is the informant.”

The body sat unnaturally upright.

No blood.

No visible wounds.

No signs of violence.

Just dead.

Amanda stared at the corpse quietly.

Then—

it blinked.

Amanda froze instantly.

A tiny movement.

Fast.

Human.

Her stomach tightened.

She looked toward Zeke immediately.

He wasn’t even paying attention.

Instead he had wandered toward the motel entrance looking through scattered objects near the doorway.

Amanda slowly looked back toward the corpse.

Still motionless.

Dead again.

A small headache pressed behind her eyes.

Not painful.

Just enough to demand attention.

Then—

the informant blinked again.

This time slower.

Amanda’s breath caught in her throat.

For one horrible second, she genuinely felt like he was trying to say something to her.

Not move.

Not attack.

Communicate.

“Amanda.”

Zeke’s voice snapped her attention away immediately.

She turned.

Zeke stood near the motel entrance holding an old folded map.

“Oh, found one,” he said casually.

He unfolded it against the hood of an abandoned car nearby.

“This guy actually had useful information.”

Amanda forced herself to walk toward him while trying not to look back at the corpse.

The headache lingered faintly.

Zeke studied the map carefully.

The roads around Ravenport were marked unevenly with handwritten notes scribbled beside several routes.

Some roads were crossed out entirely.

Others ended abruptly.

Zeke traced one of the highways with his finger.

“So if this road keeps going straight,” he muttered, “it should lead outside the city.”

Amanda leaned beside him, staring at the map.

Then something caught her attention.

“What’s Old Ravenport?”

Zeke frowned.

“I don’t know.”

Amanda pointed directly at the map.

“It’s right there.”

Zeke looked where she pointed.

“…That’s a mountain.”

Amanda stared at him.

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is.”

“Zeke.”

Amanda tapped the map harder.

“It literally says Old Ravenport.”

Zeke looked again.

For a second his expression remained unchanged—

then subtly shifted.

Confusion.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

“…Wait.”

Amanda watched him carefully.

Zeke leaned closer toward the paper.

Slowly—



the outline of a location became visible to him.

OLD RAVENPORT.

His face darkened slightly.

The road they currently stood on led directly through it.

And beyond Old Ravenport—

past the mountains—

was the outer highway leading beyond the city itself.

The wind moved softly through the trees around them.

Neither spoke for several seconds.

Then Amanda quietly glanced back toward the corpse again.

This time—

its eyes were open.



--------------------------------------------

What he saw around him was the place as it once was.

Not Ravenport as it stood now — but something softer. A version that shouldn’t have survived in memory this clearly.

The air felt lighter. The buildings were clean in a way he didn’t remember them being. Even the light had a warmer tone, like the world had decided to pretend it was harmless again.

For a moment, Lethe smiled.

It wasn’t happiness exactly — more like recognition without resistance.

A time when the world still felt small enough to misunderstand.

Back when he was younger… when curiosity didn’t yet have consequences.

The thought drifted in without effort. School corridors. Noise behind thin walls. The strange thrill of being unnoticed.

And then—briefly, uninvited—those small, absurd fragments of memory surfaced. The kind that don’t form a story, just impressions: hiding under desks, the irrational curiosity of youth, the way attention used to feel like something stolen rather than something feared.

A car passed nearby.

The sound snapped through the moment like a thread breaking.

Lethe blinked.

The warmth didn’t vanish immediately — it receded, like it had been embarrassed to stay too long.

He kept walking.

The corridors between the two buildings came into view as he moved forward, and with each step the atmosphere shifted again. The air grew tighter. The space between sounds became noticeable.

Voices.

At first, normal.

Then layered.

Then wrong.

Not shouting. Not panic.

Something softer — too soft. Intimate in a way that didn’t belong in an empty corridor.

Lethe slowed.

He approached carefully, his steps losing confidence without him deciding to.

The sounds resolved into something closer to presence than speech.

He leaned slightly, enough to see through the edge of the corridor.

Inside—

Two figures.

Sine.

And someone else.

They were close. Too close for the tone of the place. The moment didn’t match the corridor. It didn’t match Ravenport. It didn’t match anything Lethe could comfortably place in reality.

His chest tightened.

A sudden spike of heartbeat, sharp and uncontrollable.

Then—

They noticed him.

The shift was immediate.

Everything stopped.

Sine turned.

“Lethe,” she said.

His name landed wrong in his ears, like it had been stored somewhere else and brought back damaged.

She stepped away from the other figure as if nothing had mattered before this moment.

“I’ve missed you, Lethe,” she continued softly. “Where have you been?”

She walked toward him.

Slowly.

Carefully.

Like she was testing whether he would still exist if she got close enough.

“Aww, Lethe…” she said, tilting her head slightly. “You came back to me…”

Her hand reached up.

Her fingers brushed his neck.

Not gentle.

Not comforting either.

Something closer to possession — like she was checking whether he was still real.

“Do you still love me?”

The words didn’t feel like a question.

They felt like pressure.

Lethe’s throat tightened.

His voice came out unstable.

“…Can you see me?”

Sine smiled faintly.

“I can,” she said.

A pause.

“I can see all you’ve become.”

The corridor felt colder after that sentence.

Not physically — but in the way meaning disappears from space.

Lethe blinked.

---

The corridor was empty.

No Sine.

No figure.

No warmth.

Only rats moving across broken tiles, fighting over a piece of bread that didn’t belong to anyone anymore.

And the space between the buildings felt like it had never contained anything human at all.

----------------------------------


Old Ravenport didn’t behave like a place that was simply abandoned.

It behaved like a place that was still deciding whether it wanted to be seen.

The deeper Amanda and Zeke went, the more the environment stopped acting like background and started acting like awareness.

The wind no longer moved in straight lines.

It bent around corners that shouldn’t have held air.

Sometimes it brushed past Amanda’s ear and carried something that almost resembled speech — not words, but the shape of someone trying to form them.

The ruined streets tightened into uneven corridors between collapsing structures. Stone walls leaned inward as if listening. Doorways without doors stood half-open, not inviting, but expectant — like something had just stepped out and forgotten to close itself properly.

And the shadows…

They weren’t consistent.

They did not belong to anything stable enough to cast them.

Amanda began noticing them first in reflections — broken glass embedded in walls, shallow puddles trapped between cracked stone.

A silhouette would pass behind her in the reflection.

She would turn immediately.

Nothing.

Zeke’s footsteps slowed without him noticing.

Not because he was afraid.

Because the rhythm of walking itself was starting to feel misaligned with the ground.

“Do you feel that?” Amanda asked quietly.

Zeke didn’t answer at first.

His eyes were locked forward, scanning, but not focusing.

“It’s just wind,” he said, too quickly.

But neither of them believed it.

Between the ruins, figures kept appearing at the edge of perception.

Not solid.

Not fully formed.

Just almost people.

A shoulder turning behind a broken archway.

A head disappearing behind a cracked pillar.

A child-sized shape standing still in a corridor that vanished the moment it was looked at directly.

Each time Amanda tried to focus on them, her vision seemed to hesitate — like the world refused to render them completely if she insisted on seeing.

Zeke stopped again.

He lifted the map, but his hands were no longer steady in a normal way. It wasn’t shaking — it was like his grip kept recalibrating, as if the idea of holding something physical required repeated confirmation.

“The layout is wrong,” he muttered.

Amanda stepped closer. “What do you mean?”

“There are intersections here that shouldn’t connect,” he said. “But they do. And… they didn’t earlier.”

He turned the map slightly.

Then paused.

For a moment, he just stared at it like it had changed while he wasn’t looking.

Amanda leaned in.

The ink lines looked… darker than before.

Not smudged.

Deeper.

As if the paper itself had become more saturated with intent.

And then, without warning—

the light changed.

It didn’t dim gradually.

It failed.

Like something had removed the concept of illumination rather than reducing it.

The sky above the ruined canopy shifted from a dull dusk into something heavier — a compressed grey that swallowed contrast. Shadows did not lengthen; they multiplied, detaching from objects entirely and pooling in places where nothing was standing.

Amanda felt her stomach tighten.

“This wasn’t happening a second ago,” she whispered.

Zeke looked up slowly.

And for the first time, he seemed unsure whether he could trust his own sight.

“It’s getting dark,” he said.

But it wasn’t normal darkness.

It didn’t come from the sun leaving.

It came from the environment deciding it was no longer necessary to show detail.

Shapes became suggestions.

Distances became guesses.

Even sound changed — footsteps didn’t echo anymore. They were absorbed, as if the ground was swallowing evidence of movement.

Amanda reached out instinctively.

Zeke was still beside her, but the space between them felt less certain than before, like it might not hold together if they stopped paying attention to it.

Then she saw it again.

A figure between two broken walls.

Closer this time.

A human outline, perfectly still.

Watching.

Amanda froze.

“Zeke,” she whispered.

He didn’t respond.

Not because he didn’t hear her.

But because his attention had already drifted somewhere else, pulled by something in the environment that demanded priority over conversation.

The figure shifted slightly.

Not walking.

Not retreating.

Just… acknowledging that it had been noticed.

Amanda blinked once.

And the figure was gone.

Not moved.

Not hidden.

Gone in the way a thought disappears when you try too hard to remember it.

Zeke exhaled slowly.

“I think…” he began.

Then stopped.

Like the sentence had lost its ending.

The darkness pressed closer.

Not around them.

Through them.

And Old Ravenport continued to exist in that strange state where everything felt present— but nothing was willing to remain fully real.

Lethe couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t felt real.

Sine’s voice still lingered somewhere inside him, stuck like an old song echoing through an empty room. Even now, part of him could still feel the warmth of her fingers around his neck.

But what disturbed him more was not how real it felt.

It was why it had happened here.

Why Ravenport kept dragging old pieces of him back into the open like something digging through graves.

Lethe wandered through the corridors without direction, searching for something he couldn’t even name himself. The buildings stretched on in silence behind him while the memory of Sine slowly decayed into uneasiness.

Eventually, he emerged onto the other side.

A normal street.

People walking.

Cars passing.

The distant sound of conversations and footsteps.

For a moment, Ravenport looked ordinary again.

Like the city had briefly remembered how to imitate life.

Then—

A hand grabbed his shoulder.

“Help! Help!”

Lethe turned sharply.

A child stood before him, breathing hard, eyes wide with panic.

“Please! Come!”

The kid pulled at him desperately before Lethe could even answer properly.

“What is it?” Lethe asked.

“Come!”

The child dragged him across the street toward a small house pressed tightly between two old buildings. The front door was already open.

Something about the inside felt colder than outside.

Not temperature.

Presence.

The kid rushed deeper into the house and Lethe followed.

The walls were stained with age. The lights flickered weakly overhead. Somewhere deeper inside, yelling echoed through the rooms. They entered a bedroom. A woman was standing over a man on the floor. She was screaming at him.

The man barely defended himself as she struck him again.

“Please help!” the child cried.

Then—

Something happened.

The faces of both parents distorted violently.

Not physically.
Perceptually.

Like reality itself slipped for half a second.

The woman’s face glitched— And suddenly Lethe wasn’t looking at the man anymore.

He was looking at himself.

Himself on the floor.

Himself being beaten.

The sound in the room became distant.

Muted.

His chest tightened violently.

A pressure rose inside him so quickly it almost felt external, like something forcing itself upward through his ribs.

The woman raised her hand again—

And Lethe moved.

He grabbed her violently and threw her backward onto the ground.

The room shook from the impact.

Before she could react—

He kicked her.

Again.

Again.

Again.

His breathing became uneven.

The child was screaming now somewhere behind him, but the sound no longer processed correctly in his head.

He stepped on her face hard enough to feel bone shift beneath his shoe.

Again.

Again.

Until the smell of blood and sweat clung to the bottom of his shoes.

Then silence.

Lethe staggered backward before collapsing into a sitting position against the wall.

His breathing trembled.

His hands shook violently as adrenaline drained from his body.

The room felt wrong now.

Too quiet.

Too empty.

The child wasn’t crying anymore.

In fact—

There was no child.

Lethe slowly looked up.

The room around him had changed.

No furniture.

No lights.

No family.

Only rotting walls and collapsed ceiling boards hanging overhead.

Dust floated through the stale air.

An abandoned house.

His breathing slowed.

Then stopped.

Next to him—

A body.

A dead man.

Lethe stared at it silently.

The corpse was old enough for the skin to have darkened around the neck and jaw, but not old enough to decay completely.

The face looked strangely peaceful.

Too peaceful.

Like it had died before understanding it was dead.

Lethe’s eyes slowly shifted downward.
The man’s hands.

Bruised.

Defensive wounds.

Then higher—

Marks around the mouth.

Not from fists.

From fingers.

As if someone had forced his jaw shut while he tried to scream.

Lethe’s chest tightened.

No.

Something felt wrong.

Not with the body.

With the presence.

He tried imagining the man alive.

Nothing came.

No emotional shape formed in his head.

No sense of personality.

No lingering humanity.

Just blankness.

Like the corpse had never truly belonged to a person at all.

Then he noticed something else.

The room itself felt empty around the body.

Not respectfully empty.

Artificially empty.

Even the dust seemed unwilling to settle near it.

Lethe stared harder.

The dead man’s face twitched.

Just slightly.

Not movement.

Correction.

Like reality had adjusted something imperfectly.

And then Lethe finally understood what disturbed him.

The corpse looked human.

But the silence around it wasn’t.

Human death leaves something behind.

Grief.

Weight.

Memory.

This thing left nothing.

It occupied the shape of a dead man the same way clothing occupies a body.

Imitation without presence.

Then slowly—

The corpse smiled.

Not emotionally.

Mechanically.

Too evenly.

Like it had learned the expression from observation rather than feeling.

Lethe’s breathing stopped completely.

And the thing on the floor spoke without opening its eyes.

“You noticed."



They continued walking deeper.

The shadows grew denser between the broken structures.

Sometimes Amanda thought she saw figures standing between ruined walls.

Not approaching.

Not retreating.

Just present in a way that didn’t fully commit to being seen.

Once, something brushed against dried leaves behind her.

She turned instantly.

Nothing.

Zeke finally stopped.

He unfolded the map again, turning it over to check the back.

“That’s strange,” he muttered.

Amanda leaned closer.

“What is it?”

Zeke didn’t answer immediately.

On the back of the map, written in faint ink, was a number.

5319.

Amanda froze.

“…That’s my handwriting,” Zeke said slowly.

Amanda stared at it.

“No,” she said quickly. “It’s similar.”

Zeke looked at her.

“Isn’t it weird,” he said quietly, “that the informant had handwriting like yours too?”

Amanda didn’t respond.

Her eyes drifted across the ruined street again.

The feeling of being watched hadn’t left.

Somewhere between the broken buildings, she thought she saw a child.

Small.

Standing still.

Partially hidden behind a collapsed wall.

When she blinked, it was gone.

“…No,” Amanda whispered to herself.

Zeke folded the map again.

“I don’t like this place,” he said simply.

For the first time, his voice wasn’t analytical or amused.

Just flat.

They eventually reached the far edge of Old Ravenport.

And then—

the world changed again.

No transition.

No boundary.

Just one step forward… and suddenly only trees remained.

No ruins.

No structures.

No Old Ravenport behind them.

Just forest and empty road stretching onward.

Amanda stopped.

“…Where did it go?” she asked.

Zeke didn’t answer right away.

He was staring forward.

Then slowly, he blinked.

“…We should head back,” he said.

Amanda turned toward him.

“What?”

Zeke looked tired.

Not emotionally.

Structurally.

Like something had loosened inside his thinking.

“I said we should go back,” he repeated.

Amanda shook her head slightly.

“No. Look—there’s smoke over there. There must be people.”

Zeke didn’t respond.

He turned slightly.

Already stepping back the way they came.

“Zeke, come on,” Amanda said quickly. “We’re so close.”

He paused.

For a second, it looked like he was about to continue forward.

Then his expression shifted.

Softened.

As if a decision had already been made somewhere behind his thoughts.

“…I think I’m tired,” he said.

Amanda frowned.

“What?”

Zeke didn’t look at her anymore.

“I just want to go back home and rest.”

And with that, he turned and began walking away.

Not toward the smoke.

Not toward the exit.

Back into Ravenport.

Amanda stood still for a moment, watching him go.

Then slowly followed.

But the road behind them no longer felt like the same road they had arrived on.