"Wolfie."
Maya was doubled over, tears streaming down her face, her cropped hair catching the pale light filtering through the trees. She'd been laughing for a solid minute—that deep, helpless, can't-breathe kind of laughter that came from somewhere real.
"WOLFIE!" She gasped, wheezing. "He's going to kill her. He's actually going to kill her when we get back."
Eva's lips twitched. Just slightly. A small smile, polite and distant—the kind she'd been wearing for months now. The kind that never reached her eyes.
Maya noticed.
The laughter faded slowly, replaced by something quieter. She straightened, wiping her eyes, and looked at Eva with an expression that held none of the previous amusement.
"That's not your real smile."
Eva blinked. "What?"
"That smile." Maya gestured at her face. "It's polite. It's pretty. But it's not you."
Eva was silent for a moment. Then she looked away. "I don't know what you mean."
Maya crossed the distance between them. She didn't speak—just stood there, looking at Eva with those eyes that had seen too much, survived too much, become too much.
Then she reached up and grabbed Eva's cheeks, squishing them together.
"Come on," Maya said. "Laugh. Really laugh. Not that fake 'I'm fine' crap."
Eva's eyes widened. "Maya, what are you—"
"You've been carrying everything for everyone. Lily. The group. The whole damn world." Maya's voice was fierce but gentle. "When's the last time you actually laughed? Not smiled. Laughed."
Eva stared at her.
Something cracked.
It started small—a hitch in her breath, a tremor at the corner of her mouth. Then it built, spreading, warming, until a sound escaped her that she hadn't made in months.
A real laugh.
Not loud. Not long. But real—the kind that came from somewhere deep, somewhere untouched by grief and responsibility. It shook her shoulders, crinkled her eyes, made her gasp for air.
Maya grinned. "There she is."
Eva grabbed her, pulling her into a hug that was too tight and too desperate and exactly what both of them needed. Maya held on, letting her, being there.
For a moment, just a moment, the weight lifted.
Then they felt it.
A presence.
A pressure so heavy it was monstrous—a weight on their chests, their shoulders, their souls. The air itself seemed to thicken, to press against them. Every instinct they had screamed one word:
DANGER.
They turned.
It stood between the trees, maybe thirty feet away. Six feet tall, but wrong in every way that mattered.
Its body was made of strands—dense, writhing fibers in deep crimson that darkened to near-black in places. The strands moved constantly, coiling and uncoiling like something alive beneath the surface. A pale grey-white region marked where a face should be—a compressed, beak-like protrusion that seemed to be the only solid part of it. Dark spike-crests exploded from its crown, rigid fiber bundles that gave it a mane-like silhouette.
And the eyes.
They floated in the fiber mass, not fixed to any skull. Two at head level—large, luminous orange-gold with vivid red pupils. Another at chest height on the right side. And more, hidden deeper, glowing faintly through the crimson strands.
It was looking at them.
All of them.
The smell hit them next.
Rotting. Something was rotting—not the creature itself, but something near it. Something it had killed. The stench was thick, cloying, filling their lungs with every breath.
Eva's hand went to her weapon. Her eyes locked onto the thing's primary eyes.
It stared back.
Neither moved.
In Maya's mind, the Omega stirred. Let me out.
Maya didn't hesitate. She'd learned, over the years, when to fight and when to surrender to the thing inside her.
Her eyes shifted—white dots appearing in the depths, the Omega rising to the surface.
This thing is strong, the Omega observed. It doesn't belong to Lily.
Eva's attention didn't waver. She kept her eyes fixed on the creature, matching its stare with her own. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I know."
We need to run.
"We can't. It'll catch up."
The creature took a step forward.
Its movement was wrong—not walking, but flowing, the strands rearranging themselves to propel it forward. No legs. Just that serpentine mass of fibers coiling and uncoiling.
It stopped.
Stared.
The rotting smell grew stronger.
Eva's hand tightened on her weapon. Maya's body thrummed with the Omega's power. They stood together, two against something that shouldn't exist, waiting for it to make the first move.
The creature's head—that pale, beak-like protrusion—tilted slightly. Studying them. Assessing them.
Then, slowly, impossibly, one of its strand-arms reached toward them.
Not attacking. Just... reaching.
The orange-gold eyes watched, waiting to see what they would do.
The forest was silent.
But it was screaming.