Morning came quietly, the way it always did—soft gray light slipping through the boarded windows of the gas station, brushing over the bunker ladder still open from the night before. Levi emerged first, stretching until his shoulders cracked, his body protesting another night spent with half his attention tuned to the screeches above.
Ariana climbed out behind him, yawning into the collar of his shirt. She blinked at the muted daylight and scrubbed a hand through her curls.
"I so need a coffee." She murmured with a big stretch that showed her curves. Teasingly, Levi poked her side, making her yelp in the middle of her stretch. "The diner probably still has some." He answered, but she didn't answer, instead getting a pouting glare.
"That's not coffee," she said. "That's punishment."
Levi didn't disagree.
They cleaned up the bunker, folded the blankets, and closed the floor panel with practiced ease. Another night survived. Another day begins.
He studied Ariana as she tied her hair back into a loose ponytail. Even tired, she was beautiful, the kind of beautiful you found in someone who'd fought through everything with you and still managed to smile about it.
When they stepped outside, the world felt deceptively normal. Cool air. Bright sun. The smell of pine drifting in from the forest. A couple of people walking near the diner, quiet conversations blending with the background sound of everything else that was wrong with this town.
Ariana slipped her hand into his. "Are you going to check the traps today?"
"Yeah," Levi said. "I heard a couple of screeches, so I must've gotten something during the night."
"Or annoyed something," she corrected with a small smile.
"That too." Levi nodded, a smile on his face. "Wanna come along?"
"Unfortunately, or fortunately, depends on how you see it, I have to help out in the diner today," Ariana told him, and Levi hummed. "You can drop in later, I'll have some omelet for you."
His smile grew, gently grabbing her wrist and pulling her cheeks to his height, he kissed. "Gracias."
"Para eso estamos," she replied, returning the kiss.
Ariana brushed her thumb against his cheek once more before stepping back. "Go before this escalades."
"I'd love that, actually."
"Oh, I know." Ariana shot back, straightening herself with a teasing smile. "But let's escalade that after our chores."
He snorted and squeezed her hand before letting her go. "Deal."
Ariana headed toward the diner, her braid bouncing lightly with each step, while Levi turned toward the treeline.
He walked with the quiet confidence of someone who'd memorized every broken branch and every subtle path through the undergrowth. After months of work, the forest had become something like a second home, an extremely hostile, unpredictable, monster-infested home, but still a home.
The first trap he checked was the spring snare closest to town, tucked between two mossy trunks. The ground around it was disturbed. Leaves kicked aside, a fresh tear in the dirt where something had clearly yanked hard.
Levi crouched low. The wire loop was bent unnaturally, like something had twisted against it with far more force than any animal could manage, with some exception of course. The anchor point on the tree had splintered slightly. His lips tugged upward in a satisfied smirk.
"Someone had a fun night," he muttered.
A faint scrape on wood caught his attention. He followed the line of the snare to where the sapling had whipped upward on release, its bark scarred, fibers stripped away as if clawed in pure irritation.
Annoyed monsters.
Good.
He marked the snare for repair later and moved deeper in. Making sure there weren't any traps in his footsteps.
The pit trap near the old oak grove was an even better news. Broken stakes. Dirt churned like something had thrashed violently at the bottom. Some spike had snapped clean in half, the tip missing and probably inside the monster that fell into the pit.
He looked around and found some thrown in the surroundings, a scene playing in his head already, while a petty smile bloomed on his face.
He'd made the stakes so it would be extremely hard to pull out. If a human were stabbed with them, the only way to get them out would be surgery due to the tips being very similar to the tips of a fishing hook. It would pull organs and meat if they pulled it with brute force.
"Definitely stepped in the wrong place," he said, satisfied.
He continued making his rounds. Most traps had triggered. Some barely. Others spectacularly. One tripwire trap had absolutely not gone according to plan, the counterweight was missing entirely.
He found it ten minutes later, lodged halfway into the trunk of a pine tree.
Levi blinked slowly. "…Huh."
Either the branch had snapped at the wrong angle, or a monster had hurled it across the forest like a toddler flinging a toy in a tantrum. Frankly, both options amused him. But he hoped it was the monster one. That would have been funny.
After a few minutes, he had reset just the trip wire to make them trip and fall face down to humiliate them, not being in the mood to find another counterweight. But then he froze.
A voice.
Human. Male. Soft. Off-key.
Lev's breadth quickened, muscles going sharp and taut. His hands immediately went to his mace, unclipping it from his belt.
No one from town should've been out here. And certainly not humming. The sound drifted between the trees like it didn't belong in the world it occupied.
He straightened slowly, gaze sweeping between the trunks.
Nothing. Just sunlight, dust, the occasional flutter of leaves.
That's when he heard it. It was low and barely audible, but his paranoia spiked as he felt something behind him. Then leaves crunched.
Levi didn't hesitate or confirm; he swung and ducked at the same time. The air whooshed past him, and a glimmer of yellow caught his eye, a flash of fabric as a man moved, swift and silent like a shadow.
The mace hit the man in the side, but no reaction. Before he could move, Levi kicked his thigh, stopping the man in yellow's advance while pushing himself away from him to create more space between them.
"Who the heck are you?" Levi asked, low and ready to both run and fight as the man- no as the thing in front of him smiled cruelly and chuckled. "Just a passerby," the man replied, his voice smooth as silk but laced with menace. "Here to have a little fun."
The alarm bells rang in his head, instincts sharpening even further as his muscles tensed, but Levi. He couldn't help but match the man in yellow's smile. Cruel and amused.
Levi lifted his mace again, tightening his grip. The man in yellow's smile widened just a fraction, the kind of grin someone wore when they'd already decided how the next few seconds would play out.
That was all Levi needed to know.
He was facing the so-called boss of the smiling creatures.
No matter how much Levi wanted to beat its face with his mace and then bury it six feet under. He couldn't. He wasn't killing it today. Not because he didn't want to, but he didn't have the capability.
A blunt weapon would be useless, same as guns would be on the smiling creatures.
He'd be lucky to walk away. But he did have the resources to attempt it.
"Fun," Levi echoed, breath steadying. "Yeah. I'm not interested."
The man tilted his head. "That's the problem with you. You're never interested in the right things."
Leaves rustled. Not behind the man.
Behind Levi.
Another presence. Or maybe just the monster's doing. Or it was simply paranoia.
It didn't matter.
Levi spun and ran.
Not a retreat. A tactical, unapologetic sprint for his life.
Branches slapped his arms and face as he tore through the underbrush, feet digging into the dirt hard enough to kick up dust clouds behind him. He didn't waste a second looking back. He didn't need to. He could feel the man in yellow watching him- like a spotlight against his spine.
But there was no chase.
Not yet.
That was somehow worse.
The forest felt tighter as he ran, the air thick, every shadow too still. His lungs burned, his heartbeat loud enough to drown out the rustle of leaves. He leapt over one of his snares, skirted the edge of another pit, ducked under a low branch, and didn't stop until he saw the clearing open ahead.
The town.
He burst out of the treeline, boots skidding on gravel as sunlight hit him full in the face.
Only when his feet touched the packed dirt of the road did he dare turn.
The forest edge was still.
Empty.
Silent.
But Levi knew better than to believe silence.
He took a long, shaking breath, grounding himself, then wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. His pulse refused to slow. That's when he noticed it; he was shaking, just like when he had climbed the tree to escape the monster.
But he wasn't only filled with terror. There was some sort of excitement, a new clue after a year and a couple of months of nothing. Not even supernatural things. The monsters had to break their rule to give him a warning.
A warning meant one thing:
Something had changed.
Levi forced himself to inhale deeply, letting the air burn its way into his lungs before exhaling through clenched teeth. The trembling in his hands eased, but didn't disappear. He rolled his shoulders, cracking the tension out of them, then shook out his fingers.
The road was quiet. Too quiet but that was normal in this nightmare. A couple of townsfolk walked near the road that he was on, chatting, oblivious to the fact that something old and terrible had just stepped into their world wearing a bright yellow coat.
His heart kicked harder.
Ariana.
He started moving without thinking, long strides eating up the distance between him and the town. His boots hit the gravel in a rhythm too fast to be casual but too controlled to be a sprint.
His hand brushed the mace now hanging at his belt. Useless against that thing. Completely useless. And yet he clung to the weight of it like a lifeline.
He passed Khatri as he stepped out the diner's side door, wiping his hands on a rag.
"You look like you ran from a bear," he commented, eyeing the leaves tangled in Levi's white hair now.
"Something like that," he said, barely slowing.
Khatri squinted at him. "Everything okay?"
"Fine." His voice came out a little too sharp.
He lifted a brow but said nothing more as he pushed past him and slipped into the diner.
The diner smelled like coffee and delicious things.
Ariana's POV - The Diner
Ariana stood behind the counter, her hands moving with practiced efficiency as she plated scrambled eggs for a family that had arrived three days ago. The mother looked hollow-eyed, the father kept checking the windows, and their twin daughters, maybe eight years old, hadn't spoken a word since they'd gotten here.
Ariana knew that look. Had worn it herself eighteen months ago.
"Here you go," she said gently, setting the plates down. "There's more if you need it."
The mother managed a weak smile. "Thank you."
Ariana moved back behind the counter, wiping down surfaces that were already clean. She'd been helping out at the diner for the past few weeks, partly to contribute, partly to stay busy. Levi was in the forest setting traps most of the time, and sitting alone in the gas station made her think too much.
She just had to handle the front so Sara could have a day or two off. Kenny's mother was at the back making some pancakes for the twins just to make them smile. Ariana smiled at her thoughtfulness.
Her braid was slightly messy already, curls escaping and framing her face. She hummed something under her breath, a soft tune.
Levi's chest tightened as he entered. The sound of her voice grounded him instantly, like a hand pulling him back from the edge of a cliff.
She glanced up. Her expression brightened, then froze the moment she saw him.
"Levi…?" she whispered.
He must've looked worse than he thought.
He stepped up to the counter, forcing his breathing into something approaching normal as people looked at him. "In the back. Now."
Ariana didn't argue. She set down the cloth immediately, wiped her hands on her apron, and followed him into the back. As soon as the swinging door shut behind them, she cupped his jaw with both hands, searching his face with wide, worried eyes.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice quiet but demanding. "Are you hurt?"
"No. Not hurt." Levi swallowed hard. "But something different's out there."
Ariana paused. Her hands fell slightly from his face, but she didn't step away.
"One of them?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No. Not a normal one."
"Then what?"
Levi exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair. "A guy in yellow."
Ariana frowned. "I've never heard of-"
"I know, which means we poked the bear."
Ariana's breath caught. "Levi…"
"How close did he get to you?" she asked.
"Close enough," Levi answered. "Too close."
She stepped toward him, hands gently landing on his arms, grounding him. "Are you sure it wasn't-?"
"It wasn't a hallucination," he cut in, voice calm but cold. "It was real. And he let me walk away."
Ariana held his gaze for a long moment, trying to analyze the pieces, trying to understand what this meant.
Levi looked toward the front of the diner, where voices murmured and plates clinked. Life. Routine. Humans pretending this place didn't want to swallow them whole. Just like he was pretending now.
He leaned closer to her, voice dropping.
"Do not walk alone today."
Ariana nodded once.
"What are you going to do?" She asked, and Levi stayed silent for a few moments.