The first thing Lena learned was that running didn't make you safe.
It just delayed the moment you tripped.
When the blue screen appeared, she'd been on the third floor of a logistics office, coffee in one hand, phone in the other. Someone screamed. Someone laughed. Someone dropped a mug that shattered across the tile.
Then the windows broke.
Not from an explosion.
From something pushing through.
She didn't fight her first monster.
She watched it kill someone else.
A man she'd shared an elevator with not ten minutes earlier tried to shield himself with a chair. The thing tore through it like paper and kept going. The System chimed as his body hit the floor.
That sound stayed with her.
Lena ran.
Down stairwells filled with smoke and shouting. Through streets already clogging with people who thought numbers would protect them. She grabbed what she could—a kitchen knife from a food stall, a backpack torn from an abandoned car.
She didn't level quickly.
She survived carefully.
By the time she reached Level 5, the city had already fractured. Groups formed fast—too fast. Loud men with weapons and louder promises. They talked about strength. About ownership.
They never talked about food.
Lena joined one anyway.
It lasted a day.
The leader got drunk on power. The guards argued over loot. Someone tried to take what wasn't offered. When monsters hit that night, the walls weren't finished and the exits weren't clear.
She left before dawn, slipping away while they slept.
The forest had been a rumor at first.
Someone mentioned trees. Clean water. A valley just outside the city where monsters didn't swarm as heavily. No one could say why. No one had stayed long enough to find out.
So she walked.
She avoided roads. Followed streams. Fought only when she had no choice. Her jacket tore on a branch while running from wolves. The blood on her sleeve wasn't hers—but the bandage on her thigh was.
By the third night, exhaustion blurred her vision.
That was when she saw the light.
Not fire.
Structure.
Straight lines where there shouldn't have been any.
Walls.
A watchtower.
A boundary she could feel even before she saw it.
Lena stopped.
Every instinct screamed at her not to rush forward. Claimed land meant rules. Rules meant authority. Authority meant risk.
But it also meant food.
Shelter.
Sleep.
She waited.
And when the man came down from the tower, she understood immediately why the place felt different.
He wasn't watching her like prey.
He was watching her like a variable.
That scared her more.
And yet—when he didn't invite her in, when he didn't demand anything, when he simply told her the truth and let her leave—
That was when she decided.
She walked the long way around the forest. Tested the perimeter. Watched the traps catch things that never reached the walls. Heard alarms ring once and stop.
The place held.
By the time she returned, her legs were shaking and her pack was nearly empty.
But the valley was still there.
Still quiet.
Still standing.
Lena stopped at the boundary and looked at the man again.
This time, she didn't doubt herself.