The laugh came again—Hee-hee-kkhhh—closer this time. It didn't sound like an animal. It sounded like dry leaves being crushed inside a wet throat.
"Back up," I hissed, the air burning my lungs. I shoved Vikram behind me, his designer silk shirt slick with cold sweat. "Everyone, get behind the van!"
The fog didn't just swirl; it pulsed, syncing with the grinding rhythm of the massive stone gears in the sky. Through the mist, the creature stepped into the trembling circle of Vikram's flashlight.
It was a nightmare stitched together from rejected biology.
It stood on two legs but crouched low, its spine curved into a permanent, agonizing question mark. Its skin was the color of wet ash, stretched so tight over its ribs that I could see the frantic beat of a black heart beneath. But it was the face that froze the blood in my veins. It had no nose—just two wet, pulsating slits above a mouth that was too wide, grinning with rows of needle-thin, yellow teeth.
It sniffed the air, twitching. It wasn't looking at me. It was looking at Javed's shattered leg.
"What is that?" Riya whimpered, her voice cracking. She clamped both hands over her mouth, stifling a scream.
"Hungry," Kabir said. His voice was terrifyingly calm, cutting through our panic like a blade. He stood perfectly still, head tilted, tapping his white cane against the mud—tap... tap...
"It weighs... maybe sixty kilos," Kabir whispered, his blind eyes tracking something we couldn't see. "Muscle density is high. Light on its feet. Fast."
The creature's head snapped toward the sound of the tapping. It heard him.
It didn't roar. It unhinged its jaw with a wet pop and lunged.
It moved faster than physics should allow—a blur of grey violence cutting through the fog. It ignored me completely. It launched itself straight over my shoulder, aiming for the fresh blood. Aiming for Javed.
"Javed!" I screamed.
My body moved before my brain could catch up. I swung the rusted iron axle with everything I had. It was a clumsy, desperate haymaker.
CLANG.
The iron bar connected with the creature's midsection. It felt like hitting a bag of wet cement reinforced with steel. The impact jarred my dislocated shoulder, sending a bolt of white-hot lightning down my spine. I screamed, vision swimming, but the blow was enough.
The beast crashed into the side of the overturned van, scrabbling for grip. Its claws—long, obsidian hooks—screeched against the metal, gouging deep sparks.
"Vikram, shine the light on it!" I yelled, my voice raw. I adjusted my grip on the makeshift spear, my hands shaking violently.
"I... I can't..." Vikram was hyperventilating, the light swinging wildly between the twisted black trees and the mud.
"DO IT!"
The beam stabilized on the creature just as it coiled to spring again. This time, it looked at me. Its eyes were milky yellow, devoid of pupils, devoid of soul. It didn't see a student. It saw an obstacle.
It sprang.
Time diluted. The adrenaline dumped into my system made the world slow down. I saw the string of saliva flying from its jaws. I saw the tattered, ancient loincloth clinging to its waist.
Physics, my brain screamed, grasping for logic in the madness. Mass times acceleration. Use its momentum. Brace the spear.
I dropped my hip, wedging the rusted end of the axle into the mud, angling the sharp tip upward. A pivot point.
But I miscalculated the variable I couldn't see: Strength.
The creature didn't just run into the spear. It swiped it aside with a forearm that hit like a sledgehammer. The iron rod flew out of my hands, spinning into the darkness. I stumbled back, my sneakers finding no purchase in the oily black mud.
I fell hard. The air left my lungs. Before I could draw a breath, sixty kilos of hate landed on top of me.
It was heavy, hot, and smelled of sulfur and old, coagulated blood. Its claws pinned my shoulders to the ground, piercing the fabric of my jacket. I stared up into its maw, seeing the serrated rows of teeth descending toward my throat.
"Dhruv!" Riya screamed, a sound of pure terror.
I brought my right arm up, jamming my forearm against its throat, trying to hold back the snapping jaws. Saliva dripped onto my face—it burned like acid. It was strong. Impossibly strong. My injured shoulder screamed in protest. My arm began to buckle.
I'm going to die, the thought was crystal clear. I'm going to die in a forest that shouldn't exist, over a 74.8% attendance record.
Then, the air whistled.
THWACK.
A heavy white cane struck the creature perfectly behind the ear with the precision of a surgeon.
The beast screeched—a sound that vibrated in my teeth—and its head snapped to the side, stunned.
"Left side! Under the ribs!" Kabir shouted, appearing out of the darkness like a vengeful spirit. "Soft tissue! Strike now!"
I didn't question how the blind man knew the anatomy of a monster. I didn't hesitate.
I reached down to my belt. My keychain. It had a small, foldable Swiss Army knife—a gift from my Appa when I started college. For opening parcels, he had said.
It was pathetic against a monster. But it was all I had.
I fumbled it open, jammed the two-inch blade into the soft grey skin under the creature's ribcage, and twisted.
Black blood sprayed over my face, hot and metallic.
The creature shrieked, scrambling off me. It thrashed in the mud, clutching its side, black ichor pulsing from the wound.
"Finish it!" Javed roared from the ground. He dragged himself forward, grabbed a jagged rock from the mud, and hurled it. The stone struck the creature's knee with a sickening crunch, shattering bone.
The beast collapsed, hissing, trying to crawl away.
I scrambled to my feet, lungs burning, wiping the toxic blood from my eyes. I grabbed the iron axle from the mud.
The creature looked up at me. There was no fear in its eyes. Only malice.
I stood over it. I thought about the silence in the van. I thought about my parents waiting for a call I might never make. I thought about the sheer, brutal unfairness of the universe.
I didn't just kill it. I executed it.
I drove the iron spear down.
There was a wet, final crunch. The creature stopped moving.
For a moment, there was only the sound of our heavy, ragged breathing and the distant, oppressive grinding of the gear-sky.
Then, reality glitched.
A chime, clear and synthetic like a notification bell, rang directly inside my skull. It wasn't a sound; it was a data packet uploaded to my brain.
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ]
ENEMY DEFEATED: Lesser Rakshasa Scout
EXP GAINED: 15
FIRST BLOOD BONUS: +10 EXP
[ SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE ]
[ ATTRIBUTE POINTS UNLOCKED ]
I blinked, rubbing my eyes. The text didn't vanish. It floated in the air above the corpse, a translucent blue box composed of hard light.
"Did... did you guys see that?" I gasped, leaning on the spear, my legs turning to jelly.
"The text?" Vikram whispered. He was staring at the empty air, eyes wide, pupils dilated. "Yeah. It says... Enemy Defeated?"
"What is this?" Riya asked, her voice trembling as she backed away from the carcass. "Is this a game? Are we hallucinating?"
Kabir knelt beside the corpse. He didn't touch it, but he hovered his hand over the black blood, feeling the heat radiating from it.
"No," Kabir said softly. "Games have rules. Games have mercy. This is... older."
I looked at my phone. The cracked screen was glowing with a light that didn't come from the backlight.
[ STATUS WINDOW ]
NAME: Dhruv Iyer
CLASS: None
LEVEL: 1 (25/100 EXP)
STATUS: [INJURED] (Dislocated Shoulder: AGI -40%)
ATTRIBUTES:
STR: 4
AGI: 5 (-2)
INT: 7
VIT: 4
AVAILABLE POINTS: 0
"It knows," I muttered, a chill running down my spine. "It knows exactly how hurt I am."
I looked around at the others. "Javed, check your phone. Everyone, check your phones."
Javed pulled his device out. "Screen's smashed. But... I can see the text in the air. It says my leg is 'Broken'. And... weird. It says I have 'Berserker Potential'?"
"Mine says 'Seer'," Kabir said quietly. He stood up, turning his unseeing eyes toward the dense, impenetrable tree line.
Riya was staring at the space above her trembling hands. "I see it too," she whispered, her face pale. "It says... 'Healer Potential'. Dhruv, what does yours say?"
I looked back at my own status window. I scanned it twice. Name, Class, Level, Attributes.
"Nothing," I said, a frown creasing my forehead. "I don't have a Potential section."
"Maybe it's because you're Level 1?" Vikram suggested, his voice shaking.
"We're all Level 1, Vikram," I snapped, the unease settling deep in my stomach. "But you guys have Potentials. I don't."
"We are not alone," Kabir interrupted, his voice dropping an octave.
"What?" Vikram squeaked, swinging the light frantically.
"There are more," Kabir stated. "Stronger ones. And they are close."
The beam of Vikram's flashlight cut through the fog, sweeping over the wreckage of the Traveller. The light didn't just catch trees; it caught the silent, twisted shapes scattered around the ravine.
Fifteen of us had climbed into that van in Bangalore. Fifteen friends, laughing, fighting over the aux cord, singing along to Arijit Singh.
Now, the silence from the wreckage was heavier than the monster's corpse.
"Samir..." Vikram choked out, the light trembling on a hand sticking out from under the crushed chassis. The fingers were still curled, as if reaching for something. "Priya. Rohan. They're... they aren't moving."
Riya let out a sob that sounded like something tearing deep inside her chest. She took a step toward the van, her hands reaching out. "We have to check them. Maybe they're just unconscious. Maybe—"
"They're gone, Riya," Kabir said. His voice was gentle, but it had the finality of a tombstone. "I can't hear their heartbeats. I can only hear ours. Five. Only five."
Vikram collapsed to his knees in the mud, dropping the flashlight. It rolled, casting long, erratic shadows that looked like grasping claws. "It was my idea," he whispered, pulling at his hair with muddy hands. "The trek. The off-road shortcut. I convinced everyone. I paid for the driver."
He looked up at me, his face a mask of snot, tears, and mud. "I killed them, Dhruv. I killed all of them because I wanted a cool Instagram story."
I looked at the bodies. Friends I'd shared lunch with yesterday. People who had parents waiting for them to call. The weight of it threatened to crush me right there in the mud. I wanted to scream at Vikram. I wanted to blame him. It was his idea.
But then a sound drifted from the darkness. A chorus.
Hee-hee-kkhhh.
Then another, answering from the left. Kkhhh-raaa.
It was deeper this time. Louder.
"The pack," Kabir said urgently, grabbing Vikram's arm and hauling him up. "That scout marked us with its blood. The smell is calling the soldiers."
"We can't leave them!" Riya screamed, struggling as I grabbed her arm. "We can't just leave them here to be eaten!"
"If we stay, we join them," I said, my voice cracking. I forced myself to look away from the wreckage, locking eyes with Riya. "Riya, look at me! If those things come back—the big ones—nobody goes home. Nobody tells their parents what happened. We have to live. For them."
"The van is a trap," Javed grunted, dragging himself upright against the metal, his face grey with pain. "We're cornered against the ravine."
"Move where?" Riya asked, tears streaming down her face. "It's pitch black, Dhruv. We don't know where we are."
I looked at the floating blue arrow on my phone's map. It had stopped spinning. It was now pointing steady and true, a glowing gold line cutting through the dark forest like a lifeline.
It pointed deeper into the woods. Toward the distant sound of rushing water.
"The System," I said, the word tasting like copper. "It's giving us a waypoint. A safe zone, maybe."
"Or a slaughterhouse," Javed spat, but he shifted his weight, grabbing a piece of wreckage to use as a crutch. "I can't walk far, man."
I looked at the group. A rich kid broken by guilt. A girl paralyzed by grief. A guy with a broken leg. A blind man. And me—a scholarship student with a dislocated shoulder and a rusted stick.
"We help you," I said, my voice hardening. "Vikram, get up. Put your phone away. You're Javed's crutch. Shoulder under his arm. Now."
"I can't..." Vikram sobbed.
"You owe them!" I snapped, pointing at the silent wreckage. "You want to make it right? You get Javed out of here. MOVE!"
Vikram flinched, but the order cut through his panic. He wiped his face on his ruined silk sleeve and moved to Javed's side, hoisting the big man's weight.
"Riya," I said, softening my voice. "I need you to carry the supplies. Water bottles, whatever food Javed has, the first aid kit. Can you do that?"
Riya took a deep breath, looked one last time at the van, and nodded. She wiped her face, smearing the mud. "Okay. I can do that."
"Kabir," I said.
"I'll take point," Kabir said, turning his ear to the wind. "I can hear the gaps in the trees."
"You're blind, bro," Vikram muttered, his voice thick with misery.
"And you're loud," Kabir retorted calmly. "In this place, eyes are a liability. The darkness lies to you. The sound does not."
I took a step forward, the mud sucking at my sneakers. I looked up at the sky one last time—at the massive, grinding gears that had replaced the stars, indifferent to our suffering.
"Let's go," I said. "Before the pack gets here."
We stepped away from the wreckage of our old lives, leaving ten friends behind in the dark, and walked into the throat of the Khandava-Prastha.
[ QUEST STARTED ]
OBJECTIVE: Survive The Night
REWARD: Class Selection