The silence between us was so heavy it felt like I could chew it.
The woman kept the iron bar resting on her shoulder as if it were part of her body. Her eyes — cold — didn't stay exactly on me. They swept everything around us, every shadow, every corner, as if the whole world were an ambush waiting for the right moment to jump on our necks.
Behind her, the other three spread out in a semicircle.
And I was in the middle.
"Perfect."
One of them coughed, breaking the silence. The sound was dry, and a shiver crawled up my spine like someone had scraped a nail along it.
"I asked who you are."
She repeated, not raising her tone.
Her voice had the texture of metal scraping against concrete. The kind of voice you obey out of fear… or pure survival instinct.
I tried to swallow, but the taste still carried bile.
Who am I?
The question echoed inside my head as if someone had whispered it right into my ear.
I tried to pull something — anything — from my memory, but all that came was that horrible sensation of being an empty hole.
Nothing.
As if someone had carved out the middle of my skull and taken everything away.
The only thing I remembered were the last minutes… the church, the smell of rotten flesh and old blood… and the purple flash.
"I…"
I tried to speak, but my voice came out weak, trembling, like it didn't belong to me.
"I don't know."
The woman frowned.
The others exchanged quick glances and, as if rehearsed, adjusted the weapons in their hands. They all stared at me like I was a bomb about to explode.
"Amnesia… or trauma," muttered the one with the torn mask — hollow-eyed and thin as a stick wrapped in skin. It looked like a stronger wind could carry him away.
"Or another one of the Marked," said another, full of disdain.
Marked…
The word glued itself inside my head. Just another label for something I didn't understand.
The whispers began to grow, overlapping into anxious murmurs. I couldn't catch everything, but a few words slipped through: "church," "crazy."
None of it helped. At all.
The woman raised her hand.
Silence.
She stepped forward.
The ground creaked under her boots, and the sound echoed along the empty street like it was too loud for such a dead world.
"Look at me."
There was no anger in the command. No kindness either. Just… apathy.
My heart tried to leap out of my throat, but I obeyed.
The rhythmic tap of the iron bar against her shoulder — almost irritating — was a great incentive.
She stared at me for long seconds.
Her gaze was so direct it felt like it was drilling through my face and digging inside, between bone and whatever thought I had left. I genuinely felt like, if I blinked, she'd ask for my head as a souvenir.
I'm not lying…
Just when I thought I might faint, she nodded slightly. As if she'd found something only she could see.
"Seems like it's true."
The others relaxed — a few millimeters, no more. Only the hollow-eyed thin man kept staring like he was waiting for me to do something unbelievably stupid.
"But if you're lying…"
She moved the iron bar closer and pressed the tip against my chest.
"You'll wish you weren't."
The cold metal cut straight through me.
"Where did you come from?"
"A church."
I whispered.
"I was in a church."
She hesitated.
The iron bar lifted and tapped under my chin, forcing my face upward.
"A church…"
She repeated the word to herself, then turned to the others.
"Was there any church near here?"
The three of them looked at each other and shook their heads almost at the same time.
"No way… not anymore," muttered the older one.
The iron bar pressed harder against my throat. The pain in my wrist felt small compared to the cold crawling up my neck.
"Don't play with me…"
This time, her voice carried anger.
"I'm not in the mood."
"What?… I… I'm not playing."
Panic took over everything. Every part of my body felt awake and ready to run in the opposite direction. Cold sweat slid down my back, but the icy wind only made me shiver more.
"Tell me the truth."
But I am telling the truth.
I wanted to say it with conviction.
But…
I wouldn't believe me either.
I swallowed and forced the words out.
"I… I'm not lying. I was there and suddenly I was here. There was… there was something…"
The images came back sharp.
"A monster…"
I continued, tripping over the words:
"Bigger than this building. I swear. It was huge… and had that… yellow thing…"
As I spoke, their expressions changed.
The thin older man grew even paler. The others looked around, nervous, as if whatever I was describing could crawl out of the fog any moment to say hello.
"Quiet."
The woman cut them off, a hiss in her tone.
Silence returned — different now. Like an elastic stretched to its limit.
She looked at me again.
"So you saw a Risonte…"
She spat the word out.
"And you're still standing? You expect me to believe that?"
Risonte?
So that thing had a name.
I repeated it without realizing:
"Risonte…"
The iron bar pressed against my throat again, snapping my focus back painfully.
"It's true," I blurted, fear pushing the words out. "It's true, I swear. There were bodies too… they were on the stairs… like… like…"
The sentence died in my mouth.
"Echoes?" one of them asked, disgust and sadness tangled in his voice.
Echoes.
Another word that meant nothing — and somehow felt like it belonged in my head.
"Captain…"
Murmured the chubby man behind her, voice low, almost pleading.
"If they're really Echoes, we can't leave them like that. They still—"
"Shut up, Ian."
She cut him off without breaking eye contact with me.
"Did you see anything else?"
I thought of the yellow, thick fog… the dark holes that looked like eyes.
"I did…"
I whispered.
"After the monster… the Risonte screamed… I saw a yellow fog."
Her expression changed.
Barely — but it changed.
A flash of fear.
The others reacted immediately. They shifted, restless, like they wanted to run.
For a second, she looked at me like I was a much bigger problem than a stranger with amnesia.
"So the Risonte is moving again."
She murmured to the others, not to me.
"And you saw it."
The wind blew harder, swirling the gray fog around us.
I wanted to say maybe I'd imagined it, maybe I was delirious, maybe nothing was real — but the memory was too vivid, too sharp.
She seemed to decide something.
She slid the iron bar back behind her shoulder.
"Take him."
My body reacted before my mind did.
What?
"Wait! Where are you taking me?"
"To a safe place," she answered, not even looking at me. "It's getting dark, and trust me — you don't want to be out here."
She paused for a second, turned slightly, and gave me a half-smile that didn't touch her eyes.
"Come on. I'm not a monster."
Debatable.
Two men grabbed my arms, one on each side. Their hands were cold, their grip too strong to be comforting.
They pulled me forward.
The dead streets stretched out ahead of us, covered in that same stubborn gray. As we walked, the daylight died too fast, like someone was rushing to turn the sky off.
The fog swallowed signs, cars, storefronts.
Above, between the clouds, a purple aurora spread. I couldn't tell if it was beautiful or terrifying.
It looked like a wound torn open in the sky.
No one spoke.
Only the sound of footsteps, debris crunching under boots. Sometimes a distant noise made everyone freeze — then keep going as if nothing had happened.
Eventually, I started noticing the walls.
Burned phrases. Symbols I didn't recognize. Dark-red letters, almost brown, written in a rush. Some were readable. Others didn't look like any language I'd ever seen.
But one phrase repeated everywhere, always in red:
RETURN TO THE ARMS OF THE FLESH.
My stomach flipped.
"What is that?" I asked, before deciding whether I really wanted to know.
The woman answered without turning back:
"Nothing. Just a bunch of lunatics."
The others laughed. Short, dry, humorless laughs. That's when I noticed one of the people holding my arm was a woman. Her grip was firm, like a fighter's, but when she laughed, her voice was surprisingly melodic.
Somehow, that made things feel even more wrong.
She noticed my discomfort.
"That was the church's promise," she said, almost explaining. "In the early days, they thought they had something that could save us."
"And… did they?" I asked automatically.
They laughed louder — not the laugh of someone amused, but of someone way past the point of crying.
"Guess," she replied, looking at the markings in disgust.
The captain — because I was now sure that's what she was — stopped and turned to face me.
"For someone who claims to have come from the church, you don't seem to know much."
I opened my mouth.
I was about to say "I'm not from the church," but something froze inside me.
What if I am?
Before I could argue with myself, she had already turned away.
The others followed, and the heavy silence fell again, broken only by our footsteps.
Until… the air changed.
The fog seemed to vibrate, like it had a life of its own.
And then we heard it.
The same call.
Far… but not far enough.
The same deep, distorted sound I'd heard before. Now it felt like a lament echoing across the entire world. The ground trembled — barely, but enough for my body to notice.
Everyone froze for a moment.
The air thickened. I couldn't tell if I'd stopped breathing or if the air had simply given up entering my lungs.
The captain raised her hand before speaking urgently:
"Run. Now."
No one argued.
They moved all at once, dragging me with them. I stumbled, trying to keep up. Boots slammed against damp asphalt, each step too loud, too exposed.
The sound came again. Louder.
One of the men behind us tripped and fell.
"Get up, Malik!"
The woman beside me shouted, her voice trembling.
He didn't get up.
He started convulsing.
His body bent backward in a way no body should bend.
His hands clawed at his chest, arms, neck — like he was trying to rip something out from inside.
The man holding my arm let go for a second, ready to help… until he saw what was happening.
"Shit…" the captain muttered, running back with the iron bar in hand.
"Shit, shit, shit…"
I heard bones breaking. Wet cracks.
Unmistakable.
Even from a few steps away, a hot, rotten breath hit my face.
Malik opened his mouth as if to scream, but what came out was a guttural, rasping noise. His neck stretched. His fingers fused, melting together like hot wax.
His flesh bubbled.
His eyes rolled back, turning a sick yellow. His jaw opened past normal limits, splitting, while his skin stretched until it tore.
I didn't understand why no one was running.
I wanted to run. I should run.
But the two people beside me held my arms so tightly it felt like my limbs were theirs now.
The thing that had once been Malik spasmed one last time. It stopped expanding and stayed there — trembling, twisted into an impossible shape with a frozen expression of pure despair.
Silence.
"Echo…"
The captain whispered.
"He turned into one of the Echoes."
The others looked shaken, but not surprised. It was the kind of horror they were used to — a routine nightmare.
"It's getting dark…" she said, tired. "Do it."
The thin older man pulled out a bottle filled with a yellow liquid. I knew what it was before I smelled it.
Kerosene.
He poured it over what remained of Malik and lit a match.
The hiss of burning flesh almost made me vomit again.
They watched for a few seconds in silence. It looked like a ritual they hated — but knew by heart.
I don't know how long it lasted. For me, it was an eternity.
Finally, the captain said:
"Let's go."
We walked again.
The image of Malik's deformed body burning on the roadside burned itself into my skull. I smelled it even when we were far away. And I was sure I still heard the crackle of flesh right next to my ear.
When night swallowed everything, we reached a slightly slanted street. Ahead, a fallen sign, half-covered in ash and moss, still showed rusted letters:
CENTRAL STATION — LINE 3.
Without explaining anything, the captain hopped over the sign and yanked aside a layer of overgrown vegetation hiding a staircase.
The smell rising from below was iron, mold… and something older.
Faint lanterns lit the stairs.
It looked like the mouth of something.
The captain didn't hesitate. Before descending, she said:
"Finally home."
Home…
If that was home, something was very wrong with this world.
Or with me.