It had been four years since Zero had fallen into this hell.
Four years of choking fog, endless nights, and creatures that killed without mercy. He no longer kept track of time with a clock—time here was broken. Instead, he counted by the storms. Every day, a streak of red lightning split the blackened sky at least once. Four years. That meant over 1,400 bolts. And still, he knew nothing of this place.
Nothing… except how to survive it.
He stalked the charred wastelands like a ghost now—no longer just a boy lost in the dark, but something else. Something forged in blood, bone, and fire. The boy who'd fallen into the Upside Down was long dead. In his place stood a predator.
The tunnels had changed. The terrain had warped. And so had he.
His body had adapted far beyond what was natural. From the Demodogs he'd killed and consumed, he had learned how their senses worked. From the Demogorgons he had hunted—and eventually killed—he had learned how they moved, how they smelled, how they thought. Bit by bit, through trial and agony, he had stolen pieces of their biology. Crafted them into himself.
Not literally. He wasn't a monster.
But mentally? Strategically? He'd become their equal.
His greatest weapon, however, was still the ability he had come into this place with his Absolute Hypnosis—a power that didn't just deceive the eye, but rewrote the rules of perception. With it, he could erase himself from a creature's senses entirely, make them forget they were even hunting him. Or make them believe their own pack members were enemies.
He had once made an entire Demogorgon nest kill itself from the inside out.
That had been year two.
Now, in year four, even the monsters had begun to avoid him.
But this world… it never stayed quiet for long.
Yesterday, he'd fought a new kind of beast—massive, winged, with an echoing scream that could rupture bones. It wasn't in the stories. It wasn't in the files. It was something new he never seen before.
Blood still trickled down his ribs where the creature's claws had pierced through his armor. His gear—crudely built from Demodog bone, vine-wrapped carapace, and sharpened obsidian—had taken the brunt of it. But he wasn't invincible. Not yet.
As he limped through a field of twitching, pulsing fungi, Zero muttered to himself, "Four years. And still no exit. No answers. No end."
His voice vanished into the air, devoured by the hungry silence.
He paused, scanning the haze ahead. The terrain felt… off. Warmer. Lighter. That was never a good sign.
Then he heard it.
A voice.
Human.
Weak. Fragile. Real.
Zero stopped moving.
Hallucination? Mimic? Or was it… an actual human?
He activated Hypnosis instantly, fading into the surrounding mist. His body stilled. His heartbeat slowed. Not even the spores floating around him reacted.
Then, from the trees—someone stumbled out.
A girl.
panting, terrified.
She was real. He could feel it in the way her footsteps crushed the fungus. The way her breath moved the mist. She wasn't part of the realm.
She didn't belong here.
Which means something brought her in.
Zero didn't hesitate. He shadowed her from the side, silent as death. She ran right past him, completely unaware.
Then he moved.
A shift in air. A blur of motion. His hand came over her mouth before she could scream. She struggled wildly—but his grip was firm, careful, measured.
"I'm not your enemy," he whispered in her ear.
"But if you scream, everything in a five-mile radius will find us. And then we both die."
She stilled. Her breath caught, shoulders shaking.
Zero stepped into view—face hidden by a soft distortion, energy muted by his hypnosis. Not even the air dared move around him.
She looked at him like she'd seen a ghost. Or something worse.
He didn't flinch. His voice came low and detached, the same way this world whispered death.
"How did you get here?"
Her lips trembled. "I… I don't know. I was in the woods—searching for something. A creature. I thought I saw it near the creek. When I followed the noise… there was this tree. Hollowed out. Wrong. I stepped closer, and the air—just twisted. Next thing I knew... I was here."
Hawkins
The name rang a distant bell. Files.
Experiments. Rumors.
Zero narrowed his eyes.
If people were still falling in, then the door wasn't just open—it was bleeding.
He glanced at the sky, lightning flashing crimson.