The void quivered like a living wound, the rails around them cracking with each tremor. The survivors stood together—or what was left of them—faces pale, bodies trembling. But their eyes carried something new. Not just fear. Not just despair. Defiance.
Evelyn shut her eyes, gripping the lifeless lantern to her chest. "Don't feel it," she whispered. "Don't give it anything. No fear. No hope. Nothing."
Her words spread through them like a mantra.
Alex bit down hard, silencing the panic clawing at his throat. Leo forced his breathing steady, fighting back the madness gnawing at the edges of his mind. For the first time since boarding, they resisted—not the train itself, but themselves.
The effect was immediate.
The whispers faltered. The walls twisted, but their voices wavered. The rails shrieked as though under strain. The heart thundered louder, faster—angry. Hungry.
Then came the retaliation.
The void split open, birthing new horrors. Figures crawled from the black—Sophie's face among them, stretched into a grotesque mask of sorrow and rage. Dozens of versions of her, each one whispering a different memory, a different plea:"Don't abandon me… Don't forget… Don't leave me alone…"
Alex's jaw trembled, his body shaking with the urge to scream. Leo clutched his head, blood dripping from his nose as the train forced every regret, every buried desire into his mind. Evelyn's knuckles turned white around the lantern.
"Stay empty," she hissed. "Don't give it anything!"
But the train screamed. Its hunger was endless, its wrath unbearable. The carriages began to collapse inward, tracks twisting like serpents. Every inch of the void seemed to bite, snapping at them with jagged jaws of steel and bone.
The survivors held their ground, their emotions walled off, their humanity dimmed to embers. For the first time, the train didn't consume. It recoiled.
And in that single instant, in that breath of silence, Evelyn realized the truth:
They couldn't destroy the train. But they could starve it.
The question was… how long could they last before starving themselves too?