A roar exploded behind them without warning.
It was not a horse.
The sound did not carry the full shape of a real animal's cry. It was closer to something dead—
something clumsy—
trying to imitate a memory of a beast it once knew.
There was no rise and fall of breath.
No rush of air forced through lungs.
Only a dry vibration, grinding between throat bone and spine,
forming again and again,
failing each time,
and collapsing the moment it took shape.
The noise came out broken and hollow,
as if it were rolling loose inside an empty skull.
Chun had no time to react.
Her wrist snapped tight as a brutal force yanked her forward.
Wei.
He dragged her straight into his chest. Her feet kicked wildly, nails scraping uselessly at the air. Broken sounds spilled from her throat—half-sobs, half-choked gasps.
It wasn't crying.
It sounded more like someone being strangled while trying to scream for help—
shattered, incomplete, unable to form a whole sound no matter how hard she tried.
"Move!"
Wei's voice was pressed close to her ear, raw and hoarse, as if scorched by fire.
"If you want to live, move!"
Her body had gone weak. She could barely stand. He half-carried, half-dragged her out of the collapsed house.
Her feet crunched over shattered tiles and burned beams, each step making a soft cracking sound.
A narrow path.
A few scattered houses.
Then—
a crossroads.
Two dirt roads split apart in the darkness.
The road to the left led downhill, toward the edge of the village. It was wider. The houses along it still stood intact. At the far end, the black outline of the forest was barely visible.
The road to the right was different.
A narrow alley, dark and tight, leading toward the center of the village—
the place everyone knew without saying
was where people went to die.
Several houses along that alley were already burning.
Flames licked at the eaves. Wooden beams snapped and popped. Fences had burned black and twisted out of shape. Sparks drifted down from thatched roofs, flashing briefly as they landed on ruined wood before dying out.
In some places, entire sections of roof had collapsed, broken timber and tiles squeezing the alley until only a gap barely wider than an arm remained.
Behind them, hoofbeats were getting closer.
This was not the moment to freeze.
Chun clenched her teeth. She wiped her face hard, smearing away tears and mucus, forcing herself to look ahead.
She pointed toward the left road—the one leading out of the village. Her voice shook, but she forced the words out.
"That way… goes downhill. It leads out."
She hesitated. Her throat felt blocked, as if something were lodged there. Then she pushed out another sentence.
"This isn't the time to go back."
When she finished, she turned to look at Wei. Her eyes were full of fear and doubt.
She didn't know if he was thinking the same thing she was—
that some part of them wanted to run back, no matter how foolish—
and simply didn't dare admit it.
Wei didn't answer right away.
He stood still, shoulders tense, his gaze flicking between the two roads. It was as if he were listening to something only he could hear.
—Too quiet.
The left road had no sound at all.
Not the silence of abandonment,
but the silence of something being forced down,
pressed flat,
waiting for them to step into it—
so it could surge back all at once.
The right road would be chaos.
Fire. Smoke. Noise.
The left road felt… emptied.
—If the things chasing them could think, then the left road was death.
But if this enemy was nothing more than a killing machine—
no judgment, no fear—
then choosing the fire meant walking straight into a trap.
What was the right move?
Wei knew he was gambling.
If he chose wrong—
if that silence wasn't emptiness, but breath waiting just out of sight—
they wouldn't even get the chance to turn around.
The next instant—
He didn't say a word.
He tightened his grip on Chun's hand, spun sharply, and dragged her into the burning alley.
"You—?"
She stumbled, barely able to keep her footing. Her voice dropped low, trembling despite her effort.
"The monsters will be ahead!"
Flames rolled along both sides of the alley. Waves of heat slammed into them. The air was thick with the smell of burned wood and ash. Chun stared straight ahead, terrified that at any second something would burst out of the fire.
Wei pressed his lips together.
He didn't slow down.
If anything, he pulled her faster. Their footsteps were swallowed by the crackle of flames.
The alley was long.
Every breath was full of heat and ash, scraping the throat raw, begging for a cough. But neither of them dared make a sound.
Firelight wavered at the far end—
but no shape came charging toward them.
That crushing pressure she had been bracing for never arrived.
Then—
The hoofbeats behind them stopped.
Not abruptly.
It was as if something invisible had drawn a line at the mouth of the alley.
Silence replaced the sound, sudden and heavy, pressing against the ears until they rang.
Chun couldn't help it.
She looked back.
Beyond the mouth of the alley, in the darkness untouched by firelight, the skeletal warhorse stood perfectly still.
It neither retreated nor advanced.
Its bone hooves rested squarely on the ground, aligned with unnatural precision, as if it were deliberately standing on an invisible boundary.
The skull tilted slightly away, avoiding the brightest reach of the flames.
Yet the hollow eye sockets remained fixed on the depths of the alley.
On the direction they had fled.
"It won't go into the fire…"
Chun whispered. Relief trembled in her voice, barely contained, as if it might spill over at any second.
Wei did not turn around.
He only felt the pressure behind him ease all at once, as though something massive had loosened its grip—if only temporarily.
They kept running.
Behind them, the fire crackled and snapped, beams collapsing with dull pops.
In the darkness, the skeletal horse scraped the ground lightly with one hoof.
Once.
Then again.
The third scrape was so soft it was almost swallowed by the sound of burning wood.
After that, it stood still.
It did not follow.
As if it had already seen enough.
-----------------
Only when the skeletal horse remained outside the firelight did Wei realize—
What he had grabbed just now
might not have been a road at all,
but a boundary
they dared not cross.
His pace slowed a fraction.
"They don't enter fire," he said quietly. The words sounded half like confirmation, half like relief.
"At least… not right now."
Only then did Chun realize she had been holding her breath for far too long. She finally exhaled. Her legs shook, nearly giving out, but Wei's grip stayed firm, steadying her as they kept moving.
Behind them, the flames continued to burn.
The skeletal horse remained at the mouth of the alley. Its shadow stretched long across the ground, pulled thin by the firelight—but it did not step forward.
It did not cross that unseen line.
They had gambled.
And for now—
They had chosen right.