The sun rose over the wreckage of the night, not to offer solace, but to provide testimony.
Fadi's face was a ruin of splintered bone and congealed red, stripped of almost every human identifier. The cranium had ceased to be a vessel for thought, reduced to a bifurcated mass of pulp. The stone lay nearby, a jagged, heavy witness that explained the mechanics of the end without the need for prose.
Adam remained where he had settled. He sat in a state of profound dissociation, severed from the immediate reality. He offered no denial, no frantic justification. His hands were literally steeped in blood—a visceral evidence that rendered a trial redundant. His eyes were hollow, reflecting neither terror nor remorse, but a total, chilling absence.
No one possessed the kinetic energy for outrage. Even shock felt like a metabolic extravagance they couldn't afford. Fatigue had effectively eroded their capacity for morality.
After a period of paralyzed hesitation, they dealt with the remains. They lashed the body to desiccated branches and dragged it toward the silt bog with a slow, agonizing effort. The earth seemed to resist them, the dry soil unyielding, as if the landscape itself were sated and refused to swallow more. Before they committed him to the mire, they paused.
They looked at him one last time.
Fadi had been more than a burden; he had been a component of their collective anatomy. In the crucible of the circle, a pathologically tight bond had formed—the kind of intimacy that is only fully comprehended once it has been severed. No eulogies were spoken. The silence performed the ritual.
When they returned to the concrete, the consensus was already formed—cold, surgical, and absolute.
Adam had to go. Either he would leave the perimeter, or he would be bound and left to desiccate under the noon sun.
He didn't argue. He didn't petition for mercy. He simply took a step back. Then another. Until he crossed the invisible threshold and exited the circle. He did not know if his exile was a formal death sentence or a microscopic chance at survival. But waiting within the lines for a deferred end felt worse. All trajectories were terminal; he chose the swiftest.
When the rotation shifted, Elias ventured out alone. He walked toward the forest's heart, the shadows of the canopy reaching out like skeletal fingers. He wasn't certain what he was scavenging for. Sustenance? A signal? A reason to continue the charade?
Movement had become his only remaining necessity.
Then, the sound returned.
"Father."
The blood turned to slush in his veins. He turned with agonizing slowness.
There she was. A young girl, standing perfectly still amidst the rot. She watched him with a steady, crystalline gaze that was entirely devoid of childhood's typical fragility. It was a look of ancient, terrifying recognition.
Elias collapsed, his knees striking the dirt as his mind recoiled from the visual data. He scrambled up, fueled by a surge of pure, primal adrenaline, and ran. He ran without looking back, fleeing toward the circle as if he were trying to outrun his own shadow.
He collapsed inside the perimeter, his body immediately succumbing to a violent, incinerating fever. His temperature spiked until his skin felt like parchment on a hearth—as if his biology were trying to purge a contagion that had entered deeper than any physical virus.
And for the first time, they understood: the threat was no longer merely outside the circle.