The daylight began to surrender its sharpness, shadows stretching across the dirt in a slow, predatory advance, as if the darkness were impatient to claim the earth a step ahead of schedule. They were hollowed out—famished, dehydrated, their metabolisms downshifting into a state of emergency. Speech had become a luxury no one could afford; silence was the only currency left.
Suddenly, a silhouette detached itself from the gloom at the forest's edge.
Nour froze. Hallucination? Fever performed such cruel tricks. Starvation rewired the brain, inventing phantoms to keep the psyche from slipping into permanent dormancy.
But the shadow didn't dissipate. It approached.
The footsteps were heavy, irregular—a rhythmic, dragging sound of boots over dry loam.
It was Elias.
Nour squinted through the haze of her exhaustion. He was carrying something, a weight that threatened to buckle his knees with every stride. A kill? The thought was absurd, born of desperation, but it took root nonetheless. The others watched, paralyzed by a mixture of hope and primal dread. No one dared to break the stillness.
Elias drew closer. His shoulders were slumped, his head lolling as if his neck could no longer support its own weight. He wasn't walking so much as hauling his own carcass forward.
When he reached the perimeter, the nature of his burden finally crystallized.
It wasn't a hunt. It was carrion. Or what remained of it.
An animal, perhaps. Ribs protruded like white daggers through graying hide. Patches of sinew and dark, stringy meat clung to the frame, but the remains had been ravaged—torn with a violence that suggested something had feasted upon it long before Elias found it. No fur remained to identify the species; no features survived to give it a name.
Elias dropped the mass onto the dirt without a word. He collapsed immediately afterward, falling onto his back with a heavy, final thud.
He pressed a trembling palm to his forehead. He didn't speak. No one asked where he had found it. The sweat on his brow glistened in the dying light, and the deep, dark hollows beneath his eyes gave him the appearance of a corpse that had dragged home the remains of another.
Nour was the first to move. Instinct overrode her shock. She scrambled to the fire pit, her hands shaking as she tried to coax a flame to life before the darkness turned absolute. The fire was no longer about comfort; it was the only barrier between them and whatever inhabited the night.
Adam had already crawled toward the remains.
He pulled the carcass toward him, his movements devoid of hesitation or dignity. He plunged his bare hands into the cold, tattered flesh, tearing at muscle and viscera with a frantic, mechanical efficiency. He didn't flinch. He didn't pause to breathe.
He turned the ribs over, squinting, trying to determine what this thing had been. But the mutilation was too total; the creature was beyond classification.
His hands were coated in dark, tacky blood. He didn't care. He briefly, furtively licked his fingers—a sharp, animalistic motion that was gone as quickly as it appeared. Then he returned to the butchery. The hide was stubborn, leathery, but he worked it with a desperate focus. Not because he sought a clean cut, but because every gram of organic matter had become a holy necessity.
Elias remained sprawled on the ground, his eyes open and glazed, staring at the canopy. He offered no commentary. He did not participate.
Adam brought a strip of the meat to his nose. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, inhaling deeply.
It wasn't rotten, but it wasn't fresh. There was a faint, pervasive scent of time passed—a metallic, ancient odor that sat heavy in the back of the throat.
He lifted his gaze slowly toward Elias. It was a brief, accusatory look, heavy with suspicion. Elias lay there, his chest heaving with labored breaths, staring at nothing. He did not turn. He did not justify. He did not confess.
Adam said nothing. He lowered his eyes and went back to his work.
The fire began to catch. And the night moved in.