There was something about silence that made Kale nervous.
Not the usual kind of silence — not the peaceful, library kind. The kind that makes you feel like the whole world's holding its breath. Like even the air is waiting for something to go wrong.
That's the silence Kale heard now.
He stood just outside the shattered remains of what used to be a school. The sign above the gates still read "Bridgemoor Elementary," though most of the letters had either fallen off or been eaten by acid rain. Now it just said:
"B__dg____r ____nt__y."
Which, honestly, sounded more appropriate for a dungeon.
Kale chewed the inside of his cheek.
"Ah, yes. My favorite after-school club: death and mana corruption. I bet they had great bake sales."
The school sat inside a shallow mana crater — not too deep, but just enough to warp the ground. The surrounding area was twisted, plants growing at impossible angles, and there was a soft buzz in the air like a radio trying to pick up a lost frequency.
He hadn't come here for fun.
There were rumors — whispered over flickering comms and shaky survivor broadcasts — about a "safe zone" that used to exist in this district. A real one. Before the monsters adapted. Before the zones turned on the people they were supposed to protect.
Most zones didn't last.
Neither did the people.
Kale stepped through the gate. The grass hissed under his boots. Not like snakes. More like… steam. He didn't stop moving.
The interior of the school had been partially gutted, probably by a mana storm. Hallways twisted in angles that didn't match the outside structure. Doors led into walls. Lockers hummed with faint blue light. He passed a classroom filled with suspended desks, all floating mid-air, turning slowly as if waiting for a bell that would never ring.
He chuckled once, bitterly.
"I always said school was hell. Guess I was right."
But even as he made the joke, his hands didn't leave his machete. They were tight on the grip. White-knuckled. His laughter was just a ghost now — not even convincing to himself.
There was something wrong about this place.
More than usual.
He passed a classroom where the chalkboard kept writing something on its own, over and over again:
"Remember."
Over and over, in spidery white chalk. The handwriting looked like it was done by a left-handed goblin with arthritis. Each time it finished the word, it erased itself and began again. Looping.
Kale leaned against the doorway.
"Yup. Definitely cursed. But points for commitment."
He turned away, but the unease didn't.
It had started maybe an hour ago, just after he entered this quadrant. The sensation that something was watching him. Not directly — not like a predator — more like… waiting. Observing him from just out of sight. Not hostile. Not friendly either. Just there.
He'd seen shadows move in the corners of his eyes. Thought he'd heard footsteps once. Light ones. Careful ones. Like a child sneaking through a hallway after curfew.
He told himself it was nothing.
Then he saw it again.
Just as he entered the cafeteria — or what was left of it — his boot crunched on broken tile. His eyes scanned the ruin. The far end of the room was collapsed inwards. A dozen overturned tables were warped and covered in strange mold.
He caught it in his peripheral vision.
A flash.
Movement.
Just around the corner of a pillar. Gone in a second.
He froze.
"…Hello?" he called out.
"Listen, if you're a mimic pretending to be a kid, I'm not emotionally available for that kind of commitment right now."
Silence.
He stepped forward carefully, machete drawn. The cafeteria was dead still. Nothing stirred — no growls, no shifting of limbs, no movement at all. He reached the pillar, took a breath, and spun around it, weapon raised.
Nothing.
No monster. No trap. No shadow child.
Just a torn, dirty stuffed rabbit on the floor.
He stared at it.
Pink. One ear missing. Eyes made from mismatched buttons.
His stomach twisted.
"Okay. That's not funny," he muttered, voice lower now.
"Whoever's running this dungeon, just know: therapy is a valid option."
He left it there. He didn't touch it. Something about it felt… deliberate.
The deeper he went into the school, the stronger the atmosphere got. Not mana — not quite. It was more like pressure. Grief, maybe. Old fear. The weight of everything that used to be here.
And the more time passed, the harder it was to keep the jokes flowing.
He passed a mural drawn by children — bright colors faded into strange shapes. Smiling stick figures. A sun with too many rays. A family holding hands. One of the heads had been scratched off. Messily. Angrily.
The words underneath were almost invisible now.
"When we're together, we're safe."
Kale kept walking. No jokes this time.
He entered the old gymnasium. It still had some of its original floorboards. A collapsed basketball hoop. A pile of bones in one corner — too old to be recent. Human. Small.
He didn't linger.
There was a set of stairs behind the gym. Leading downward. Into the old basement level. No power, of course. No lights. Just shadows and dust and the sound of his own heartbeat, steady and too loud in his ears.
He flicked on a flashlight.
The beam cut through the dark like a blade.
Down he went.
The basement was quieter than upstairs. Oppressive. Like the walls had ears.
His breath fogged faintly. It was colder here. Unnaturally so. At the far end of the hallway, a heavy steel door sat slightly ajar.
Faint light leaked from inside. Not firelight.
At the far end of the hallway, a heavy steel door sat slightly ajar.
Faint light leaked from inside.
Not firelight. Not electric. Something else. Something soft and wrong. Like moonlight filtered through ash.
Kale approached slowly, every instinct screaming.
He was good at ignoring instincts. That's how he survived this long.
"Please don't be a dimensional rift. Please don't be a dimensional rift," he whispered, machete at the ready.
"Let it be a vending machine. With Skittles."
He reached the door and eased it open with the tip of his boot. It creaked with theatrical volume. Inside was…
A classroom.
Or something that used to be one.
The desks were all pushed to the edges of the room, forming a strange circle around a glowing pattern scorched into the floor. Not a ritual circle. Not really. Just messy lines, symbols scratched in a child's hand — frantic, looping, some in blood.
There were papers everywhere.
Drawings. Crayons. Marker scribbles. All of them variations of the same theme:
A girl standing alone. Always alone.
Sometimes in a room. Sometimes in a crater. Sometimes beside a man with no face.
One page sat in the center, pinned beneath a stone:
A stick figure girl. Red scribbles all around her.
Underneath, written in blocky, childish handwriting:
"I didn't mean to. I was just scared. Please."
Kale stared at it.
The silence in the room suddenly felt suffocating.
He took a step back.
Something shifted in the air behind him.
He whirled around — flashlight snapping up — but again, nothing. Just the hallway behind him. Empty.
Except… the stuffed rabbit.
Sitting just outside the door now.
He hadn't brought it with him. He knew he hadn't.
"…Alright. Nope. Not hallucinating. Not again. I have a very strict policy about haunted plushies, and it involves setting them on fire."
He backed away from the door and shut it quietly.
His heart was thudding too fast now.
The jokes weren't coming anymore.
He started back up the stairs, every footstep echoing too loudly. The rabbit stayed at the bottom, watching. Somehow.
Once outside again, he didn't look back.
By dusk, Kale had found a rooftop and made camp. The sky overhead was orange and bruised, cut by streaks of mana lightning in the distance. Somewhere across the city, a dungeon core collapsed with a boom like thunder.
He sat on the edge of the roof, eating a can of something gray and probably meat-adjacent. He barely tasted it.
He'd laughed a little earlier, at a broken sign that now read "GET REKT COFFEE", but the sound felt forced.
There was too much rattling around in his head.
The pictures. The drawings.
The rabbit.
And the feeling — the conviction — that someone had been following him all day. Not trying to hurt him. Not even hiding well. Just… staying back. Quiet.
He reached into his pack and pulled out the photograph again.
Crinkled. Faded.
His crew. His old life. Lou flipping off the camera. Andre with his arms crossed. Himself in the middle, smiling with teeth he didn't even remember having.
He stared at it for a long time.
"Hope you're proud," he muttered.
"I'm making jokes to dead lockers and possibly being stalked by a haunted eight-year-old."
No one answered, obviously.
He lay back on the rooftop and stared up at the stars.
If you could call them that. Some were red now. Some blinked in code.
He closed his eyes.
And somewhere, below — hidden in the dark, on another rooftop or maybe even closer — tiny feet shifted against gravel.
Watching.
Waiting.
A girl's voice, distant, nearly a whisper:
"…Why did you leave me?"