The heavy gate groaned shut behind them, cutting off the view of the muddy, monstrous RV and sealing them inside the quiet, warded world of the Eldren compound. The air within the fence always felt different—older, stiller, as if the sounds of the normal neighborhood were muted by an inch of antique glass.
Garath stopped just inside, a solid pillar of worn flannel and quiet intensity. "Gonna see my mom first," he rumbled, his voice the only sound in the sudden hush. Without waiting for a reply, he turned and strode with purpose towards his family's house, the one with the perpetually unkempt garden and the faint, welcoming glow in the kitchen window.
Axl, Ace, and Cedric veered left, towards Ace's home. As they approached the back door, the domestic scent of fried butter and brewing coffee washed over them, a stark, almost surreal contrast to the smell of road grit and cold metal they'd just left behind.
Sophie was at the stove, her back to them, humming a soft tune. The scene was so perfectly, painfully normal it made Ace's skin prickle.
Axl didn't knock. He shouldered the door open and struck a pose in the doorway, arms flung wide. "Surprise!"
The humming stopped. Sophie turned, her expression shifting through a rapid series of emotions: initial startle, then confusion, then sharp recognition, and finally, a deep, appraising scrutiny that lasted a full three seconds. Her eyes didn't just Axl; they cataloged him. The new, thin scar bisecting his eyebrow. The deep weariness etched around his eyes that even his sharp grin couldn't hide. The state of his jacket. Her smile was warm, but it didn't quite reach the worried crease in her brow.
"Axl?" she said, putting down her spatula. "Is that you?"
"In the flesh, Aunt Sophie," Axl declared, sauntering into the kitchen like he owned it. He gave a little bow. "Still alive and, as you can see, still kicking."
Her gaze then found Cedric, and her expression softened into genuine warmth. "Oh, Cedric, you're here too. Good."
Cedric offered a respectful nod. "Morning, Aunt Sophie."
She gestured towards the dining table with a flour-dusted hand. "Sit, sit. You must be starving. Come, eat something."
Axl was in a chair before the sentence was finished, moving with a predator's speed that made the wood scrape loudly against the floor. Cedric lingered, scratching the back of his head with an awkward, polite smile.
"Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass, Aunt. I just had breakfast."
Sophie frowned, hands on her hips. It was the universal mom-stance of nutritional authority. "Nonsense. A growing boy needs more than 'just breakfast.' Just taste a little."
Cedric shook his head, firm but gentle. "Really, I'm fine. Thank you, though."
Sophie sighed, the battle lost. "As you wish."
Ace reclaimed his abandoned seat and stared at his congealing omelette. The world had just been upended by living legends, and here he was, expected to finish his eggs. He picked up his fork with a sense of profound absurdity.
Sophie placed a heaping, fresh plate in front of Axl, who stared at it with something like reverence. She glanced towards the door. "Where's Garath?"
Axl's face fell. The sharp, mocking light in his eyes guttered out, replaced by a profound, somber darkness. He looked down at his plate, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly register thick with regret. "I'm so sorry, Aunt Sophie..."
The air in the kitchen froze. Sophie's hand flew to her chest. Her face lost all its color, her eyes widening in pure, unguarded horror. It couldn't be. Not Garath. Not her stoic, immovable nephew.
Axl's voice became a pained whisper. "He... he didn't make it. We tried everything, but the thing in the marshes—"
THWACK!
Cedric's palm connected with the back of Axl's skull in a slap that echoed in the silent kitchen. "Stop making unfunny jokes, you idiot!" Cedric snapped, his usual calm shattered by genuine anger. "Garath is fine! He's next door seeing his mom!"
The spell broke. Sophie gasped, a short, sharp intake of breath, then slumped against the counter. A wave of relief visibly washed through her, followed immediately by a flash of maternal fury. "Axl! Don't you ever do that again! My heart can't take it!" she scolded, swatting at his shoulder with her dish towel.
Axl, rubbing the back of his head, was already chuckling, the somber act gone without a trace. "Ah, but the look on your face, Aunt Sophie! Priceless! Absolutely worth the assault." He beamed, entirely unrepentant, and finally picked up his fork. "Now, let's see if your cooking is as deadly as your glare."
Ace watched the exchange, his own omelette forgotten. The joke was brutal, typical Axl. But in that second before Cedric intervened, he'd seen the real, bone-deep fear in his mother's eyes. It was a stark, unwelcome reminder: in their world, a joke like that was only funny because, sometimes, it wasn't a joke at all.
Ace finally took a gulp of his now-cold milk, the mundane act feeling bizarre. He set the glass down with a soft clink, the sound a tiny bell signaling the end of the dramatic interruption. He looked from his mother's still-flustered face to Axl, who was now shoveling omelette into his mouth with the single-minded focus of a man mining for gold.
"Mom," Ace began, his voice carefully measured, the way one might approach a sleeping dragon. "Since Axl and Garath are back... and who knows for how long... maybe I could skip school today? Just today?"
Sophie turned her gaze from the unrepentant Axl to her son. Her expression didn't change, but her eyes held the immovable resolve of continental plate tectonics. "No."
Ace activated his secret weapon: the Puppy Face. He let his shoulders slump, his eyes widen just a fraction, injecting a plaintive whine into his voice. "But, Mom... pleeease. How long has it been? Ten months? More? This is a family reunion!"
"The reunion can happen after school," Sophie said, crossing her arms. "You need at least eighty percent attendance to pass the year, and you are currently dancing on the edge of that cliff, young man. The answer is no."
"Just today," Ace pressed, the whine shifting to strategic bargaining. "They show up looking like they just crawled out of a ditch, the RV's got what looks like a giant claw mark down the side, and you want me to go sit in a room and diagram sentences? Doesn't that seem... unwise? Like, maybe I should be getting debriefed?"
From his seat, Axl let out a snort that was half laugh, half choked on egg. He didn't look up from his plate.
Sophie's lips twitched, but her resolve held. "Your debriefing can wait for your homework. They," she said, nodding at Axl, "aren't going anywhere."
Ace shot a desperate look at Axl—back me up here!
Axl finally glanced up, his cheeks bulging comically. He swallowed with an audible gulp and gave a lazy shrug. "Ah, she's got a point, kiddo. We'll be sticking around for a bit. Got some... local business to attend to."
Ace groaned, slumping in his chair. "Thanks for the assist," he muttered, dripping with sarcasm.
Axl gave him a grease-glistening thumbs-up. "Anytime."
He then turned his full, ravenous attention back to the food, pointing his fork at the last bites on his plate. "Seriously, Aunt Sophie, this is... this is ambrosia. I've been mainlining instant ramen and beef jerky for so long I forgot food could have layers. Another plate, please? And you have to teach me how to make this. Survival cooking is one thing, but this is an art form."
Cedric, who had been watching the spectacle with a mixture of amusement and disgust, finally spoke up. "Really? I mean, Aunt Sophie's cooking is great, but you're acting like it's the last meal on earth."
Axl paused, his fork hovering mid-air. He looked at Cedric, and for a second, the manic glee faded, replaced by something flat and serious. "You don't get it, Hawthrone. You really don't." He gestured vaguely with his fork, as if encompassing vast, empty landscapes. "Try eating the same freeze-dried garbage for ten months straight, in the back of a moving vehicle, usually in the rain, while you're bleeding from somewhere you'd rather not think about. Then you'll understand. This," he said, stabbing the last piece of omelette with religious fervor, "is a miracle."
He popped it in his mouth, chewed with his eyes closed in bliss, and then pointed the now-clean fork at Ace. "And she's right about the nutrition, kid. It's important." He rolled up the sleeve of his leather jacket, revealing a forearms crisscrossed with faint, silvery scars. He tapped one particularly nasty-looking line with the fork tine. "Lets you heal faster when things decide you look tasty. Eat your greens."
Then, as if he hadn't just delivered a life lesson wrapped in a horror show anecdote, he beamed at Sophie as she set a second, even larger omelette in front of him. "You're an angel, Aunt Sophie. A saint among women."
Ace stared, his own nutritional rebellion suddenly feeling very childish. Cedric just shook his head, a small, resigned smile on his face.
Cedric checked his watch and then looked at Ace, his voice cutting through the strange, breakfast-table tension. "We need to move. Get ready, or we'll be late... again."
The spell was broken. The world of hunters and miracles and scarred forearms receded, pushed back by the tyrannical schedule of the normal world. Ace stood up, the weight of his school bag suddenly feeling very real.
The heavy front door of Ace's house closed behind them with a soft, definitive click, severing the warm, chaotic world of the kitchen from the cool, orderly morning outside. The silence on the front step was profound. It was the silence of a decompression chamber.
Ace adjusted the strap of his backpack, the weight of textbooks feeling absurdly trivial. Cedric did the same beside him, the crisp lines of his school uniform a stark contrast to the memory of Axl's spiked leather and Garath's worn flannel.
They began the walk to school, their footsteps unnaturally loud on the quiet sidewalk. For a full block, neither spoke. The normal sounds of the neighborhood—a distant lawnmower, a dog barking, a car door slamming—felt like sounds from a different, simpler planet.
It was Cedric who broke the silence, his voice low and thoughtful. "So. Axl and Garath are here."
Ace nodded, his eyes fixed on the pavement ahead. "Yeah."
"Not a social call."
"Nope."
Another half-block passed. A sprinkler hissed on a perfectly manicured lawn, painting a rainbow in the morning sun. The sheer normalcy of it was almost offensive.
"The mud on the RV," Cedric said, his tone shifting into an analytical register. "That wasn't city mud. Too red. That's clay from the river basins. The ones up near the Selton."
Ace glanced at him, impressed. He'd registered the mud, but Cedric had already sourced it. "They drove through the night. No stops."
"And Garath," Ace added, picking up the thread. "He didn't say three words. He wasn't in 'visiting family' mode. He was in recon mode. Scanning the perimeter. Assessing the territory."
"Axl's joke," Cedric said, a faint, grim smile touching his lips. "Too dark, even for him. He was testing the air. Seeing how much tension was in the room already."
They were piecing it together like a crime scene, because that's what it was. The arrival was the evidence. Their family were the witnesses. The crime was still pending.
"So what do you think it is?" Ace asked, finally voicing the question that had been burning in his gut since the first rumble of the engine. "A nest? A major breach?"
Cedric shook his head, his brow furrowed. "If it was just a big nest, they'd have called for backup, taken it down, and been gone. They wouldn't have come back. They're regrouping. That means it's not a single target. It's a… situation."
"A situation headed this way," Ace concluded, the words leaving a cold taste in his mouth. He remembered the look in Garath's eyes as he scanned their quiet street. He wasn't looking at homes. He was looking at potential battlegrounds, evaluating defensible positions.
"Yeah," Cedric agreed, the single word heavy. "The epicenter's moving. And we're ground zero."
They reached the intersection where they usually turned towards school. Both of them stopped, as if by unspoken agreement, and looked back the way they came. From here, their street looked idyllic. Peaceful. A postcard of suburban safety. The warded gate of the Eldren compound was invisible from this distance.
Ace felt a surge of furious helplessness. The most important thing to happen in months—maybe years—was unfolding right now in his kitchen and next door, and he was being marched towards a pop quiz on The Great Gatsby.
"We gotta wait and see," Cedric said, voicing the frustrating, inevitable conclusion. There was no skipping this. No blowing it off. The world of hunts and hellscapes operated on its own cryptic schedule. Theirs was dictated by bells and attendance sheets.
Ace let out a long, frustrated sigh that seemed to come from his shoes. "Yeah. I guess."
They turned the corner, and the sprawling, brick-and-chain-link facade of their high school came into view. The sound of other students laughing, shouting, completely oblivious, washed over them like a wave of static.
Cedric looked at the building, then at Ace, his expression a perfect blend of dread and resignation.
"Fuck," he said, with profound feeling.
Ace didn't answer. He just shouldered his bag higher and kept walking, each step feeling like a concession. As they merged with the river of students flowing through the front gates, he cast one last look over his shoulder.
His house, his street, the whole neighborhood, was now out of sight. But the feeling wasn't one of leaving it behind. It was the feeling of having walked off a cliff in slow motion, waiting for the drop. The peace of the last two weeks hadn't just ended.
It had been a lie they'd all agreed to believe. And the truth was now parked in his driveway, eating all the eggs.