Chapter 15: The Night Everything Burned
Elifero burst through the front door, nearly stumbling over the threshold as he rushed inside. "Mom!" His voice echoed through the house, but no answer followed. He stood in the doorway, struggling to catch his breath after the frantic journey home. Dirt streaked his clothes, fresh scratches covered his arms and knees, and the flowers he had picked for Bloom and Raim remained clenched in one hand, their delicate stems crushed beneath his tightening fingers. For a moment, he simply listened, expecting to hear the familiar sounds of his family somewhere inside.
Nothing.
The lights were off, and an unsettling silence hung over the house. Elifero frowned, unable to understand why everything seemed so unnaturally still. Usually, he could tell his sisters were home before he even stepped through the door. Bloom and Raim were almost always arguing about something—who had taken what, who had started a fight, or some insignificant disagreement that somehow became the most important matter in the world. Their bickering was so constant that their voices often carried into the street. Tonight, however, there was not even the faintest sound of movement.
"Bloom?" Elifero stepped farther inside, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. "Raim?" His voice grew quieter as he waited for an answer, but neither sister responded. An uneasy knot tightened in his stomach until he remembered something his mother had told him earlier. Mom said she was going out to buy groceries. Perhaps she simply hadn't returned yet. It was a reasonable explanation, and he clung to it because he desperately wanted it to be true. But even if his mother was still out, Bloom and Raim should have been home. Where else would they be at this hour?
He swallowed and tried to summon his usual confidence. "Stop hiding. I brought you—" The words caught in his throat as he glanced down at the flowers. He had intended to apologise to his sisters for refusing to let them accompany him into the forest. It was a small gesture, nothing more than a handful of flowers, but he had hoped it would be enough to make up for the way he had treated them. After everything that had happened in the forest, he had almost forgotten about his promise to make things right.
Elifero tightened his grip on the flowers and continued through the house, checking one room after another. Every room was empty, and most of the doors had been left wide open. The farther he went, the more the silence seemed to press against him. It was no longer merely the absence of familiar voices; it felt as though the house itself were holding its breath. Only the twins' bedroom door remained closed, which wasn't particularly unusual. If Bloom and Raim were hiding from him, their bedroom would have been an obvious choice. He approached it, trying to convince himself that he was about to discover the two of them waiting to burst into laughter at his expense, yet the closer he came, the heavier his chest felt.
The memory of the forest surfaced without warning: the dead deer, the blood staining the ground, and the grotesque creature standing beside the carcass. He remembered the unnatural shape of its body and the way it had turned towards him. His steps faltered as the image flashed through his mind, vivid enough to make the dark hallway seem suddenly unfamiliar. No. He shook his head sharply, forcing himself to concentrate on the present. He was home now. Whatever he had encountered in the forest was behind him. This was the place where he had grown up, where his mother waited for him, where Bloom and Raim argued over the smallest things. Nothing in the forest could change that.
Home was safe.
"Bloom? Raim?" Elifero reached for the bedroom door, but his hand trembled before he could touch the handle. He stared at his fingers, confused by the fear creeping through him. He had never been this frightened simply standing inside his own house. Why am I shaking? He clenched his hand into a fist and took a steadying breath before reaching forward again. His fingers wrapped around the handle, and he slowly pushed the door open.
The moment the gap widened enough for him to see inside, his entire body went rigid.
Blood.
For a few seconds, his mind refused to make sense of what lay before him. His eyes moved across the room, registering the crimson stains on the floor, the smears across the walls, and the bedding soaked through with blood. There was so much of it that the details seemed to blur together, leaving only one terrible truth in his mind: something had happened here, something beyond anything he could comprehend. His fingers loosened involuntarily, and the flowers slipped from his hand, scattering across the bloodied floor. Pale petals drifted between the stains, their delicate beauty horribly out of place in a room that looked as though violence had consumed it.
Then he saw them.
Bloom and Raim were huddled together near the opposite side of the room, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. Their bodies trembled, and tears glistened on their faces. Neither screamed when they saw him, and neither called his name. They simply stared at him, their eyes wide with a terror so profound that Elifero could barely recognise the expressions on their familiar faces. "Bloom...?" His voice emerged as little more than a whisper. He took a hesitant step towards them. "Raim..." The twins didn't move. Instead, their frightened gazes remained fixed over his shoulder, as though something behind him held them completely captive.
Elifero noticed the direction of their eyes, and the first cold tendrils of dread wound around his heart. Something was wrong. Not merely with the blood or their silence, but with the way they seemed unable to look away from the darkness behind him. Slowly, he turned his head.
A shape shifted in the darkness beyond his sisters.
Elifero froze. For an instant, he could neither breathe nor move. His body seemed to recognise the danger before his mind could understand it, dragging him back to the forest and the horrible sight he had fled from only moments earlier. He remembered the torn flesh of the deer, the blood soaking the earth, and the creature that had stood beside it as though the slaughter meant nothing. Moonlight broke through the clouds outside, slipping through the window and spreading across the bedroom floor. The pale light crept towards the darkness behind Bloom and Raim, briefly revealing something that made Elifero's blood run cold.
It was there.
The thing from the forest.
His foot shifted backwards, followed by another hesitant step. His breath grew quick and shallow as he tried to retreat without taking his eyes off the darkness. Bloom's lips moved, and he thought she might be trying to say his name. Perhaps she was warning him. Perhaps she was begging him to run. He couldn't hear her; the pounding of his heart drowned out everything else. Elifero retreated another step, but his heel caught against something behind him, making him lose his balance.
"Huh—?"
He lurched backwards, reaching desperately for the curtain beside him. His fingers closed around the fabric just as he began to fall, and for half a second, it held his weight.
Then the curtain tore free with a violent RRRIP!
Elifero crashed onto the floor with a pained cry. "Agh!" Cold wetness spread through his clothes where his body struck the ground. His hand landed in something warm, and the sensation made him flinch. The torn curtain had fallen aside, allowing more moonlight to spill into the room, and he blinked against the sudden brightness before looking down. His palm was covered in red. Blood streaked his arm, soaked through his shirt, and smeared across his chest. He stared at himself, unable to understand how he had become covered in it so quickly.
"No..." His voice shook as he slowly turned his head.
Someone was lying beside him. At first, he could only stare at the body, his thoughts struggling to process the shape sprawled across the floor. Then his eyes moved over it, searching for something that might explain what he was seeing. There was no head, and one hand remained curled around the handle of a kitchen knife. Elifero's gaze caught on the clothes. Recognition came before understanding, and the blood seemed to turn colder beneath his skin.
"No..." He repeated the word, his lips trembling. His eyes travelled down towards whatever had caught his foot, and the sight waiting there stripped the last remnants of certainty from his world. Dark hair. A familiar face. Eyes that would never blink again. His mother's severed head lay beside him, her lifeless face turned towards him.
For one suspended moment, Elifero couldn't react. He simply stared at her, waiting for something impossible to happen—to see her move, hear her speak, or watch her open her eyes and tell him that everything was all right. But nothing happened, and the silence that followed seemed more unbearable than any scream.
Everything inside him shattered.
"AAAAAAAH!"
The scream tore from his throat as he kicked backwards, desperately trying to escape. His hands slipped across the floor, and he dragged himself away from the body with frantic, uncoordinated movements. The metallic stench of blood filled his nose and mouth, making his stomach twist violently as he struggled to breathe. "No! No! No!" He shoved himself farther away, his limbs shaking so badly that he could barely control them. His thoughts dissolved into a chaotic blur. He couldn't understand what he was seeing, couldn't accept that it was real, and couldn't comprehend how the home he had left that morning could have become a place of such unimaginable horror.
"Mom!" Silence answered him. "MOM!" His voice cracked on the second cry. He stared at her face, waiting for a response that would never come, while broken sobs tore through his chest. In his panic, he reached out and pushed her head away from him. The instant he realised what he had done, he recoiled, horrified by even that small, desperate movement. "Mom..." The word came out weakly, barely audible beneath his sobbing.
Then he remembered his sisters.
Elifero's head snapped towards the far side of the room. Bloom and Raim remained huddled together, still staring at the darkness behind them. He wanted to crawl towards them, pull them into his arms, and carry them out of the house. He wanted to tell them that everything would be all right, even though he no longer knew what those words meant. But the darkness moved, and every instinct in his body screamed the same command.
Run.
Elifero scrambled to his feet, nearly collapsing as his legs struggled to support him. He stumbled towards the doorway, slipping on the blood beneath him, while the sound of movement behind him sent another wave of terror through his body. He didn't look back. He couldn't. He fled through the hallway, burst through the front door, and ran into the night, leaving the flowers he had brought for Bloom and Raim scattered across the bedroom floor beside the blood and the bodies of the family he had left behind that morning.
Far beyond the village, a horse thundered across the earth. Pedro pulled sharply on the reins when something caught his attention beyond the treetops. A dark column of smoke climbed into the evening sky, spreading above the distant horizon. For an instant, he stared at it, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Then recognition struck him.
The village.
"No..." His expression changed immediately. The horse shifted beneath him, sensing the sudden tension in its rider, but Pedro was already driving his heels against its sides. "Go!" The animal surged forward, its hooves hammering against the ground as Pedro leaned low over its neck. Branches whipped past him, and the wind tore through his blondish hair while he urged the horse to move faster. The smoke seemed impossibly distant, and every second that passed made the growing dread inside him harder to ignore.
The smell reached him before the village came into view: smoke, burning wood, and something else, foul and unfamiliar, mingling with the evening air. Pedro's heart began to pound. "Come on!" He tightened his grip on the reins and urged the horse onward. The distant cries of animals carried through the forest, growing clearer as he approached the village. Then another sound reached him, cutting through the noise with a familiarity that made his blood run cold.
Screams.
Human screams.
"Elifero!" His voice disappeared into the wind. "Bloom!" The horse galloped harder beneath him. "Raim!" Pedro leaned farther forward, his jaw clenched as he forced the animal to run faster. Fear gnawed at him with every passing moment, and he could no longer pretend that the smoke might have some harmless explanation. Please. His grip tightened around the reins. Please don't let me be too late.
By the time Pedro reached the house, an unnatural silence had settled over it. The village beyond was filled with the sounds of destruction, yet the house itself seemed eerily still. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of an ordinary evening; it was the silence that followed something terrible, the kind that made a person dread what they might discover if they took another step. Pedro dismounted before the horse had fully stopped, his boots striking the ground as he rushed towards the entrance.
"Elifero!" No answer. "Bloom! Raim!" Nothing.
He reached the doorway and stopped. Blood stretched across the floor in a trail leading deeper into the house. Pedro's breathing changed as he took in the sight, and the fear he had been fighting throughout the journey settled heavily in his chest. "Elifero...?" He crossed the threshold. The smell struck him immediately, thick and metallic, and Pedro's expression hardened as he followed it through the house. His steps slowed as he approached the bedroom, though every part of him seemed to urge him to hurry. He needed to know where his family was. He needed to find Elifero.
When he reached the doorway, he stopped.
Bloom and Raim lay motionless near the other side of the room. His sister-in-law lay nearby, her body separated from her head. For several seconds, Pedro couldn't move. His eyes travelled across the room, taking in the blood, the bodies, and the destruction surrounding them. He seemed unable to reconcile what he was seeing with the family he had known, the people who had been alive only hours earlier. His hands slowly curled into fists, and a low sound escaped his throat, rising from somewhere deep inside him. It wasn't quite a cry, nor was it a scream. It was the sound of a man struggling to contain something that threatened to consume him entirely.
Rage.
Pedro turned sharply and searched the room again. He hadn't seen Elifero's body. That meant—
He rushed back towards the entrance. Outside, he spotted a trail of bloody footprints leading away from the house. The prints were small, unmistakably belonging to a child, and Pedro recognised their size immediately.
Elifero.
But the footprints weren't alone. Deeper impressions ran alongside them, tearing into the earth with irregular, claw-like marks. Pedro crouched and examined the ground, narrowing his eyes as he tried to determine what could have left such tracks. He couldn't identify the creature that had made them, nor did he understand what had happened in the house or what had driven Elifero to flee into the night. Those questions would have to wait.
Elifero was alive.
Or at least, he had been alive when he left the house.
Pedro rose and ran towards his horse. He mounted quickly, seized the reins, and turned the animal towards the trail. "Come on!" The horse surged forward, carrying him into the burning village.
Elifero ran without knowing where he was going. The village was collapsing around him, its familiar paths transformed into a maze of fire, smoke, and desperate screams. Homes burned on either side of the streets, sending thick clouds rolling through the air. People rushed past him in every direction, some crying out for help, others fleeing from something he couldn't see. Beside one burning house, a person lay motionless on the ground.
Elifero didn't stop. He couldn't.
His mother's face remained trapped in his mind, appearing every time he blinked. Then he saw Bloom and Raim, huddled together in terror, their tear-streaked faces fixed on something behind him. The images came one after another, leaving him no room to think about anything else. "Mom..." His voice emerged as a broken whisper. He stumbled over the uneven ground, struggling to keep his legs moving. "Bloom..." A burst of burning wood sent sparks scattering into the night. Elifero flinched at the noise, his body recoiling instinctively, but he continued running until another name escaped his trembling lips.
"Raim..."
He stopped.
For the first time since fleeing his home, Elifero looked around and truly saw what was happening. This was his village, the place where he had grown up, played with his friends, and lived among people who knew one another. These were the streets he had walked almost every day, the homes he had passed without giving them a second thought, the place he had believed would always be there.
Now it was burning.
Flames climbed across rooftops, consuming the buildings beneath them as smoke swallowed the sky. Bodies lay scattered between the houses, some completely still, others moving weakly against the ground. The familiar village paths had become unrecognisable, buried beneath ash and littered with the remains of a world that had existed only hours earlier. Elifero couldn't understand it. Yesterday, everything had been normal. That morning, he had been annoyed because his sisters wanted to follow him into the forest. He had complained, refused to let them come, and left them behind. He could still remember their insistence, their arguments, and the way he had walked away without giving the matter another thought.
Now he couldn't even return home to apologise.
His chest tightened painfully. "No..." He struggled to breathe as the truth pressed against him. His mother was dead. His sisters were dead. The thought was too terrible to accept, yet the blood on his clothes and the faces he had seen in that bedroom refused to let him escape it. A shadow moved somewhere behind him, but Elifero didn't notice. He remained frozen, staring at the burning village, as though some part of him still expected the flames to disappear and everything to return to normal.
Then a familiar voice tore through the chaos.
"ELIFERO!"
His head snapped around. Through the smoke, a horse raced towards him with a rider leaning forward in the saddle.
"UNCLE—?"
Pedro.
"Elifero! Hold on!"
Elifero barely had time to comprehend what he was seeing before something moved behind him. Fast. Pedro saw it, and his eyes widened with alarm.
"ELIFERO!"
He drove the horse towards the boy and leaned dangerously from the saddle, stretching out his arm. Elifero felt a powerful hand seize him, and suddenly his feet left the ground. The world spun around him as Pedro hauled him upwards and pulled him against his body.
"I've got you!"
The horse surged forward, and Elifero clung desperately to his uncle. "Uncle—" "Hold on!" Behind them, something pursued them through the smoke. Elifero heard the heavy movement drawing closer, far too fast for anything he could understand. Terror seized him, and he buried his face against Pedro, unable to bring himself to look at whatever was following them.
The horse raced through the burning village, carrying them away from the destruction.
Then something struck.
The animal screamed as its front leg collapsed beneath it, and the sudden loss of balance sent both riders lurching forward. Pedro's eyes widened as he tried to react. "Hold—!" The world flipped. Elifero felt himself falling, but before he could brace himself, Pedro twisted his body around the boy, shielding him as they crashed into the ground. Dust and ash exploded into the air, momentarily obscuring the firelight and filling Elifero's mouth with grit.
For several seconds, he couldn't hear anything. A high-pitched ringing filled his ears, his vision blurred, and his chest tightened as he struggled to draw breath. He coughed and tried to lift his head. "Uncle...?" Something heavy lay partially over him.
Pedro.
His uncle's arms were wrapped tightly around his body, protecting him from the worst of the fall. Elifero stared at him, still struggling to understand what had happened, then reached towards his shoulder. "Uncle Pedro?" Pedro stirred and slowly pushed himself upwards. His arm trembled violently beneath his weight, and his face tightened with pain. He tried to draw breath, but a violent cough interrupted him.
Blood splattered onto the ground.
Some of it landed across Elifero's clothes.
"Uncle!"
Pedro coughed again, and more blood spilled from his mouth. Elifero's eyes widened as he stared at the crimson stains spreading across the dirt. "No, no, no—" He reached towards his uncle, desperate to help, but Pedro caught his wrist with a sudden, forceful grip.
"Listen..."
His voice was strained, barely rising above the surrounding destruction.
"Uncle, you're bleeding!"
"Elifero." Pedro tightened his grip. "Listen to me."
Tears filled Elifero's eyes. He looked at the blood running from Pedro's mouth, then back at his uncle's face, desperately searching for an explanation. Pedro tried to stand, but his body refused to cooperate. Pain twisted across his features, and his strength seemed to be draining away with every passing moment. Even so, he forced himself upright enough to look directly into Elifero's eyes.
"You... live."
Elifero stared at him, confused and terrified. "What?"
"You only get one..." Pedro broke into another cough, blood gathering at the corner of his mouth. He struggled to finish the sentence. "...one life."
"Stop talking! We need to—"
"Listen!"
Elifero froze. He had rarely heard Pedro speak to him with such force. The sharpness of the command silenced him, but it was the expression that followed that made his chest ache. Pedro's anger faded almost immediately, leaving behind an exhausted tenderness that Elifero had seen many times before.
"Remember this."
Around them, the village continued to burn. Flames roared through the buildings, screams echoed between the houses, and something moved through the smoke behind them. Pedro shifted his hand from Elifero's wrist to his shoulder, holding him firmly enough to make certain the boy was listening.
"Run."
Elifero shook his head. "No."
"Run, Elifero."
"What about you?"
Pedro didn't answer.
That silence frightened Elifero more than anything else. He searched his uncle's face, desperately looking for reassurance, for some indication that they would escape together. He wanted Pedro to stand up, pull him to his feet, and tell him they could still get away. He wanted this to be another frightening moment that would eventually pass, something they could remember later without feeling the same terror.
"Uncle..."
Pedro glanced towards the darkness behind them, then looked back at the boy. "Don't look back."
Elifero's lips trembled. "No..." Pedro shoved him away.
"GO!"
Elifero stumbled, barely managing to remain upright. "UNCLE!"
"RUN!"
Something emerged through the smoke. Pedro turned towards it, placing himself between the approaching danger and the boy. Elifero stood frozen, unable to tear his eyes away from his uncle. Every part of him wanted to go back, to grab Pedro's hand and somehow pull him to safety. He had already lost his mother and sisters. He couldn't leave his uncle behind as well.
But Pedro's command echoed through his mind.
Run.
Elifero turned and fled. Tears blurred his vision as he ran, his lungs burning and his legs threatening to give way beneath him. He could barely see through the smoke, yet he forced himself onward, stumbling across the dirt while the firelight illuminated the ruined village behind him.
Pedro's voice followed him through the night.
"You have to survive."
Elifero ran harder.
"No matter what you see."
His feet struck the ground as sobs shook his body. He wanted to stop. He wanted to turn around, to see Pedro one last time and make certain his uncle was still alive.
"No matter who you lose."
He wanted to see his home again. He wanted his mother to emerge from the darkness, Bloom and Raim to come running after him, and the whole night to become nothing more than a terrible dream.
But he kept running.
"Never look back."
The words followed him as he fled farther from the village, each step carrying him away from everything he had ever known. Behind him, smoke rose into the sky, and the night groaned beneath the relentless sounds of destruction. His home was gone. His family was gone. And the only person he had left had ordered him to leave him behind.
Elifero wanted to look back more than anything in the world.
But he didn't.
Morning eventually found him beside an unfamiliar road, kilometres away from the village he had once called home. Elifero lay curled on the ground, too exhausted to move. He didn't know how long he had been walking, nor could he remember the moment his body had finally given out. At some point, his legs had simply refused to carry him any farther, leaving him stranded beneath the pale morning sky.
His clothes were stained with dirt, ash, and dried blood. His knees were scraped, his palms torn, and his throat felt raw from screaming and crying. Even breathing seemed to require more effort than his battered body could manage. He lay motionless as the morning light spread across the horizon, illuminating the unfamiliar road and the ground beneath him.
Then he heard an engine.
Elifero's eyelids fluttered. A vehicle approached along the road, its engine growing louder as it drew nearer. He barely understood what he was hearing; the sound seemed distant and unreal, as though it belonged to a world he could no longer reach. He tried to lift his head, but his neck felt too heavy to move. The vehicle slowed, its tyres crunching against the gravel before it came to a stop nearby.
Elifero squinted as bright headlights pierced his eyes. Everything beyond the glare was blurred, and he could barely make out the vehicle's shape. A door opened, followed by the sound of footsteps approaching him. Someone was coming. He tried to focus on the stranger, but he could see only their lower half through the harsh light: trousers, boots, and slow, deliberate steps closing the distance between them. He wanted to move away, but his body refused to respond.
The stranger stopped beside him. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a rough hand reached down, and Elifero flinched weakly at the unexpected touch. The stranger lifted him from the ground with surprising ease, leaving his feet dangling as his head fell against the person's body. Elifero wanted to ask who they were. He wanted to explain where he had come from and tell them what had happened. He wanted to warn them about the village, the blood, and the thing that had followed him through the night.
Most of all, he wanted Pedro.
His mother.
His sisters.
Home.
But his mouth wouldn't cooperate. The words remained trapped somewhere inside him, buried beneath exhaustion and the memories that continued to torment him. The vehicle's engine hummed nearby, and the smell of fuel mingled with the cold morning air. As the stranger carried him towards the vehicle, Elifero's eyelids grew heavier, and fragments of the previous night flickered through his fading consciousness.
Fire.
Blood.
Bloom and Raim.
His mother's face.
Pedro coughing blood.
Run.
His eyes closed.
The stranger carried him the remaining distance and placed him inside the vehicle. Elifero felt the cold touch of metal beneath his fingers before the door shut, sealing him away from the morning air. The engine grew louder, and the tyres shifted against the gravel as the vehicle began to move. It carried him farther and farther away from everything he had ever known, leaving the ruins of his former life behind.
Elifero had survived the night.
But the boy who had left home that morning, carrying flowers for his sisters and believing he would return to an ordinary evening, was gone.
At last, exhaustion claimed what remained of his strength, and he sank into darkness.