People fear many things. The dark. Insects. Animals. The depths of the ocean. Death, hunger, sickness. But in this age, the thing people feared most could be summed up in a single word: Creatures.
Eren walked home through the dark, his footsteps slow and heavy. Beneath the flickering light of the street lamps, he passed an old man sitting in his front garden, hunched over a pumpkin he was carving into something meant to look frightening — a wide, jagged mouth cut into the orange skin.
Eren stopped for a moment and looked at it.
Right. It wouldn't be long now. People were already starting to put out their decorations.
He kept walking. It didn't matter. He needed to get home.
A few minutes later he reached the house — old, but large, and kept in better shape than its age suggested. He pulled his key from his pocket, slid it into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open slowly. Inside was dark. No one was there — of course. It was never anything else. He had lived alone for years now.
He lifted the glass cover of the oil lamp sitting on the table, struck a match, and held the flame to the wick. The lamp bloomed into soft yellow light. He hung his patched jacket on the hook by the door and walked toward the balcony.
When he stepped outside, the memories came back. They always did, out here.
They came in the same order every time.
First, the voice.
His father's voice. Calm, steady — the kind that never needed to be raised. "Eren, listen to me. Don't—"
The sentence never finished. It never did. The creature had taken his father's head in a single motion, and Eren had screamed — "DAD!" — but the sound had dissolved into the night before it could reach anyone. Then there were arms around him, lifting him. A young hunter, running. His voice cracked when he spoke.
"I'm sorry, kid. Your father was my captain. But I can't let you die too."
On the balcony, Eren's knees gave out. He sank to the floor. A single tear hit the wood beneath him. Breathing felt like work. He gripped the railing and pulled himself back to his feet.
His jaw tightened. He pressed his teeth together.
It felt like something from the past had reached up through the floor and grabbed hold of him — some old ghost that still knew his name. But this time he didn't let it keep him.
No. I'm done letting this happen. I made myself a promise. Tomorrow morning I'm going to that gate, and I'm going to do this.
* * *
In the morning, Eren pulled the chest out from under his bed. When he opened it, he lifted away the black cloth that had settled over everything inside — thick with dust, soft with age — and set it aside.
There were four things in the chest.
A short sword. A six-shot revolver. A box of ammunition. And a small glass bottle — inside, a faintly glowing liquid the color of old moss. A healing potion, and a decent one at that.
He strapped the sword's scabbard and the revolver's holster to his belt. The bottle and the ammunition went into his jacket pocket. Into his bag — already packed the night before — he loaded a bedroll, a box of matches, and a few canned provisions. He pulled on his patched jacket.
He stepped outside. The sun had just risen.
* * *
When he reached the south gate, he looked around. The only people in sight were a handful of guards — one of them visibly drunk, two others sharing a cigarette and not looking at anything in particular.
No sign of Raphael. No Luna. No Sahra.
He walked up to the drunk guard. "Excuse me. Did you see a group of young people around here? Mixed group, about my age."
The guard looked him over and let out a low grumble. The smell of last night's alcohol was still on him. He belched. "Yeah. There was a bunch of kids here a while ago."
"Do you know where they went?"
The guard dropped a hand onto Eren's shoulder. "No idea. But turn around — looks like they came back."
Eren turned. Sure enough, his friends were making their way toward the south gate — Raphael out front, Luna and Sahra behind him. No Kayra.
"Thank you." He turned from the guard and broke into a jog. "Raphael! I couldn't find you — I thought you'd already left."
Raphael grinned. "At this hour? We'd barely be past the gate. Besides, I knew you'd show up." His eyes dropped to the holster on Eren's belt. "Nice revolver, by the way."
"The engravings are first-rate work." Eren shrugged. "Anyway — where exactly are we going?"
Luna spun around. "Exactly! Raphael hasn't told us a single thing."
Raphael gave her a patient look. "I said I have a plan. I'll explain in a minute."
Before he could say anything else, Sahra jumped onto his back. "Stop dragging it out and just tell us!"
Raphael staggered, trying to keep his footing. "Get off my back and I'll tell you." He reached back, took hold of her, and lowered her to the ground with considerably more effort than dignity. "Right. I'll explain. But we're still one person short."
Eren exhaled. "Raphael — I'm sorry, but Kayra isn't coming. You know how he is. He hates this kind of thing. Unnecessary risk, bad odds." He paused. "And what we're about to do genuinely qualifies as a bad idea."
Raphael tilted his head back and pointed over Eren's shoulder. "Are you sure about that? Because I'm fairly certain that's him running toward us right now."
Eren turned.
It was Kayra. He was running hard, heading straight for them, and when he reached the group he stopped with his hands on his knees and stood there for a few seconds catching his breath. He had a bag over one shoulder, a light piece of chest armor, his sword at his hip, and a dark traveling cloak over all of it.
Raphael smirked. "Told you."
Kayra straightened up and fixed his hair. His expression offered no apology and no explanation. He was simply there.
"I'm not late."
Eren looked at him. "Last night you said—"
"Last night I told you what I thought." Kayra adjusted the strap of his bag. "This morning I'm telling you what I'm doing."
No one had anything to say to that. Raphael turned on his heel and started walking.
"Perfect. Let's go."
* * *
Raphael laid out the plan as they walked, a hand-drawn map unfolded in one hand, his finger tracing the route.
"I scouted this part of the forest earlier. The terrain rises sharply at the back — we'll put the rock face behind us. Three sides covered, only one direction they can come from."
"And how do we actually draw the undead in?" Sahra asked.
Raphael reached into his bag and pulled out a wrapped parcel. The smell hit them immediately — sour and thick, the kind that settles in the back of your throat.
Luna recoiled. "What is that?"
"Rotten meat." Raphael kept walking, swinging the parcel lightly. "Undead track decay. Not living flesh — rotting flesh. We set it out, we wait, they come to us."
Kayra stared at the parcel. "Where did you get that?"
"You don't want to know."
* * *
When they reached the rocky terrain, Raphael spread the meat out in front of their position. All five of them put their backs to the stone and waited.
Silence.
The moon was directly overhead. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.
Then — movement at the edge of the trees. Then another. A sound rose through the undergrowth: the dry, irregular knock of bone against bone, of joints that no longer moved the way they were meant to.
The undead were coming.
* * *
The fight was short.
Raphael had called it right — a small group, manageable, almost textbook. Kayra read every movement two steps before it happened, shifting and countering like he was following a script only he could see. Eren gripped his sword and held his ground. The blade didn't feel heavy — it just felt unfamiliar. Like it belonged to someone else and he was only borrowing it.
The last undead dropped.
Raphael let out a loud, relieved laugh — the kind that fills the space around it. "What did I say! What did I say? The plan worked, the plan actually—"
He stopped.
A sound came from inside the forest. Deep. Wet. Nothing like a human voice. Once. Just once.
All five of them turned.
Something was standing between the trees. It was large. It was not undead.
And Luna—