The sun didn't rise that morning.
It tried—weak bands of sickly gray fighting through thick, bruise-colored clouds—but they only seemed to stain the land darker. Even the wind was dead. The trees stood silent and skeletal, every branch like a grasping finger.
David washed blood and dirt from his face in the black stream. The water was bitter cold, numbing his hands to the wrist. For a moment he wanted to just stay there, bent over like an animal, breathing in ragged sobs.
He forced himself up. He couldn't afford weakness now.
Behind him, Priya sat on a half-rotten log, knees drawn to her chest, hair tangled and matted with blood. She stared at nothing. Her eyes looked burned out, as if the horror of the Vault had permanently scarred them.
David spoke without turning. "We can't stay here."
She didn't answer.
He knelt, digging into his torn rucksack. The old leather-bound journal was still there, the one his grandfather had filled with warnings and lunatic ravings. He flipped through shaking fingers, smearing dirt on the pages.
"The Vault holds not death but hunger. The First Ones were not gods, but mistakes. What bleeds in shadow drinks from all bloodlines."
It had sounded like gibberish for years. Now he understood.
"They feed on everything," he muttered.
Priya didn't move.
He turned, his eyes raw. "They killed the werewolves like animals. Drained the vampires. I watched it eat Lucien's second-in-command. It took his face, Priya. That thing in the sarcophagus? It's not a vampire. Not a werewolf. It's older. It's… wrong."
She trembled, hugging herself tighter. "I saw it too. When it killed that vampire, it didn't just drink his blood. It drank him. His memories. His voice."
David clenched the journal so hard it nearly tore.
"It's going to keep feeding. Learning. Changing."
Priya blinked slowly, tears finally falling again.
He exhaled shakily. "We need to warn someone. Anyone."
Priya's laugh was brittle as breaking glass. "Who? The vampires? They'll blame us. The werewolves will kill us for trespassing in their lands. We're dead, David. Everyone is."
David slammed the journal shut. "I'm not rolling over and waiting to die."
He stood and offered his hand. She didn't take it. He dropped it limply to his side, voice hardening.
"Come on. Get up. We're leaving."
She sniffled and looked away.
"Priya," he growled. "Please."
After a moment, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and staggered to her feet.
He nodded once.
They didn't speak again for a long while.
They walked for miles through the silent forest.
The Blood Moon had finally set, leaving the world a dim, colorless wasteland. Every tree looked dead. Ash clung to the undergrowth.
Here and there, they found signs of slaughter.
A half-eaten werewolf corpse sprawled in a ditch, its ribs split open like a flower. A vampire pinned to a tree with its own shattered femur through its heart. Black blood soaking the roots.
Priya covered her mouth and turned away. David forced himself to look.
Not because he wanted to. Because he had to.
He needed to remember what they were up against.
At one point, they passed a clearing where a battle had raged. Charred ground. Melted silver. Dozens of corpses. Vampires and werewolves both.
But no sign of the abominations.
They had moved on.
They were hunting.
As dusk fell, the sky turned the color of old bruises.
David led them toward a ruined church on a lonely hill, its steeple snapped in half like a broken finger. The doors hung from their hinges. Moss grew thick between the stones.
Priya hesitated at the threshold.
"This place is wrong."
David's voice was flat. "It's shelter."
She shivered but followed him in.
Inside, the pews were rotted. The altar was black with mold. Broken stained glass littered the floor like colored ice.
David set his pack down, checking the corners. No movement.
He turned to Priya. "We'll rest here tonight."
She hugged herself. "And tomorrow?"
He took a deep breath.
"Tomorrow we find the Ashroot."
Her head snapped up. Her eyes were wild. "No. No, David, that's suicide. That forest eats anyone who enters it. It's cursed. Even the werewolves avoid it."
He stared at her grimly.
"That's exactly why it might have answers."
Priya's voice cracked. "There's nothing there but ghosts and old magic. No one's come back out."
He didn't blink.
"Then we'll be the first."
She sank onto a pew, defeated.
David lowered himself beside her. He took out the old journal and turned the pages until he found the map. It was crude—just charcoal lines and half-faded symbols. But there, in the center, was the word his grandfather had circled a dozen times.
ASHROOT.
The old man's scrawled note beside it read:
"Oldest warded place left. The pact with the First Ones was broken there first. Answers lie in its rot."
David traced the letters with a finger.
Priya sniffled. "Your grandfather was insane."
"Yeah," David whispered. "But he was right about the Vault."
She buried her face in her hands. "We're going to die in there."
David shut the book and let his hand fall onto the rotted wood of the pew.
"Probably," he admitted. "But if we don't find out what these things are? How to stop them? It won't matter. Because everyone dies."
The wind howled outside, rattling the broken glass.
They heard the first scream just before midnight.
It wasn't human.
It was too layered. Too wrong.
Priya jerked upright. David shot to his feet, knife in hand.
Outside the church, something moved through the trees.
Dozens of feet. Claws scraping bark. Wet laughter.
David killed the lantern. Darkness swallowed them.
He held Priya's shaking hand.
"Quiet," he breathed.
A shadow passed by the doorway, blocking the moonlight for an instant. It paused. Sniffed the air.
Priya's breath caught.
The thing turned slowly.
Eyes blinked open across its torso. Dozens of them. All at once they locked onto the church.
It smiled with too many mouths.
"Found you."
It lunged.
David shoved Priya back. The door exploded inward in a shower of splinters.
The thing squeezed through, bones cracking and reforming to fit.
David slashed wildly with his silver-edged knife. Sparks flew as the blade cut through skin that hardened like stone.
The abomination howled. It backhanded David across the room. He hit a pillar and felt something crack in his ribs.
Priya screamed.
The thing turned to her.
"So much memory. So much blood. I will taste it all."
David forced himself up, vision swimming.
"Priya—RUN!"
She bolted through a side door.
The creature laughed and followed.
David staggered after them, pain screaming in his side.
He burst through the door into the overgrown graveyard. Moonlight lit everything in a corpse-pale glow.
Priya sprinted between toppled headstones. The abomination loped after her, its body twisting, growing extra limbs to scramble over obstacles.
David ran after them.
He saw it reach for her hair. She ducked, tripped, fell.
David howled in fury and launched himself at the monster.
His knife sank deep into its back.
It shrieked.
Black ichor sprayed his face.
The thing spun, throwing him off like a ragdoll. He crashed against a mausoleum door so hard it cracked.
He tried to get up but his vision went black around the edges.
He heard Priya screaming.
The last thing he saw was her being dragged away into the trees, her eyes locked on his.
"DAVID!"
Then everything went dark.
He woke alone.
Face in the mud.
Ribs screaming.
The moon had passed. Only thin gray dawn remained.
Priya was gone.
The forest was silent except for the distant, mocking echo of that thing's laughter.
David forced himself to stand.
He pressed a bloody hand to his side.
His knife was gone.
He looked at the broken mausoleum door and for a second wanted nothing more than to crawl inside and close it behind him forever.
But instead he turned toward the Ashroot Forest, far on the horizon, its black canopy rising like a waiting maw.
He wiped the blood from his mouth.
"Hang on, Priya," he rasped.
And he started walking.