They slept there through the night.
Cold enough that their hands ached. Cold enough that breath fogged and lingered. They stayed close to the vent—not alive, not working, but still bleeding a thin breath of warmth from somewhere deep inside the building. It was enough to survive on. Barely.
When they woke, the sky was already pale.
They had enough.
They went back down. Back into the streets. Back to the Target.
Inside, the air smelled like dust and plastic and rot. They moved through the aisles with purpose, their left eye light blue and sharp, catching edges, angles, things that could be turned into other things.
Wood first—pulled from loose frames, splintered and dry.
Yarn, tangled and forgotten.
A high-end fishing rod, bent but strong.
Bolts.
Worn-down metal spoons, edges thinned from years of touch.
They broke the wood down, striking it against concrete until it snapped clean. Shaped it into a rough T. They took block-shaped scraps, dowels scavenged from a display, and sharpened their ends against stone until the tips bit back.
A binder clip became tension.
Yarn became string.
Four arrows, crude but straight.
Then more. A plastic tube. Tape. A curtain rod. Duct tape layered thick, sticky and gray. The bolt—metal, heavy—was fixed to the arrow with string, looped so it could be pulled back again, retrieved instead of wasted.
A working crossbow rested in their hands.
A creak echoed down the aisle.
They froze.
Listened.
Something shifted. A sound too careful to be nothing.
They moved faster.
A trowel—just a shovel head, really. A broomstick snapped free of its brush. They cut a slit into the pole, slid the tang in, tightened it down with hose clamps. Duct tape wrapped tight—not pretty, but solid.
A spear.
Off to the side of the aisle—
The mannequin.
Standing.
Watching.
It hadn’t been there before.
They rose slowly, crossbow lifted, steps measured. Their left eye caught the shine of plastic, the faint bend of its posture.
The mannequin waited.
Then—
BOLT.
It lunged.
They fired. The arrow struck its shoulder, plastic cracking sharp and loud. They dropped the crossbow, seized the spear, and threw it hard. The point buried itself into the mannequin’s head with a dull, hollow sound.
They pulled the string with one hand, dragging it closer.
The axe came next.
It sparked as it swung—electric bite flashing white as the blade struck the collar. The mannequin twitched, fingers scraping uselessly at the spear shaft.
They tore the axe free.
Dropped it.
Gripped the spear with both hands and kicked.
The mannequin lost balance, released the shaft, and crashed to the floor in a stiff, lifeless sprawl.
They stood over it, chest rising slow, the store silent again—aisles of things meant for living, repurposed for surviving.
The mannequin moved.
It tore a shard of broken shelving from the aisle and swung. The impact caught their knee hard. Pain buckled them down, breath knocked thin from their chest.
They answered without hesitation.
The spear drove forward—once.
Twice.
A third time.
Then again.
And again.
They pinned joints, not flesh. Elbows. Knees. Ankles. Wrists. Each strike precise, mechanical, until the mannequin’s movements broke into useless spasms.
The spear punched into its head.
They switched weapons.
The axe came down, blade biting into the neck. Plastic split. They wrenched the head free, skewered it on the spear, and hurled it upward.
It stuck in the roof.
They stood still for a moment, letting the silence return. Then the axe was powered down. The crossbow lifted. They left without looking back.
Outside, the world widened.
They reached the freeway and walked along it—down from the Belt Parkway, off an exit not far along, onto Shore Parkway. A park opened up beside the road. A baseball field, weeds choking the bases. A sign leaned sideways.
Six Diamonds.
Beyond it—Home Depot.
They kept moving.
At the corner of the road, half-swallowed by vines, stood a small house. Gates surrounded it, iron lost under green growth. Bushes clustered thick at the base. Inside, the structure waited—unfinished, exposed. No door. Walls raised but never painted.
They stepped in.
Drywall sheets lay loose, curved slightly with age, light enough to drag and stack across the opening. One room felt like a bedroom. Another held exposed pipes—meant to be a bathroom once. The last, narrow and deep, looked like a walk-in closet.
No windows.
Outside, a narrow path ran along Bay 52nd Street—old cars rusting in place, cargo boxes split open and empty. Dirt packed down by time. Vines crawling over everything.
They watched.
Listened.
Nothing moved.
This would do.
Home Depot could wait. Better gear would help—but defense mattered more than reach, and for now the axe and crossbow were enough.
Across from the store lay a scrap yard. Two bridges crossed a dark river. One path led back onto the highway, another toward Cropsey Avenue. A Parkview diner sat not far off, with yet another route looping behind it.
A small area.
Contained.
Quiet.
Good enough.
For now, the danger felt distant—like something holding its breath.
They took their time studying the building.
The fence.
The gate hinges.
The cracks in the walls.
The yard was mostly dirt, hard-packed and uneven. Weeds pushed through in stubborn clusters. Off to the side sat a red shipping container, paint flaking, doors half-rusted. Empty inside. Hollow.
Inside the small structure, they found a room without windows. Enclosed. Contained. Safer. A slab of fallen wall—drywall layered over thin frame—lay tilted near the hallway. Not too heavy. It scraped loudly when moved, but it could block the doorway if angled right.
They tested it twice.
It would hold. For something small. Maybe not for something determined.
After mapping the exits in their mind, they left for Home Depot.
The building loomed larger up close. The front doors had to be forced open, metal grinding against warped tracks. Inside smelled like wet wood, fertilizer, dust thick enough to taste. Vines crawled through broken ceiling panels. Sunlight filtered in through cracks like thin blades.
They moved aisle by aisle, scanning for stronger materials. Better tension cords. Metal brackets. Something sturdier than duct tape.
Then—
A heavy thud.
The shelves trembled.
Another thud.
Closer.
Each step carried weight. Not footsteps—impacts. The kind that rearranged air.
They crouched.
Listened.
The next aisle over.
Through narrow gaps between boxed fans and coiled hoses, they saw it.
Gray. Massive.
Its body was bulky, the size of a van—maybe larger. Its skin wasn’t scaled, but layered like stone, thick and segmented, as if carved from quarry rock and given muscle beneath. It moved on all fours. Eyes partially covered by hardened ridges of skin. The same armor plated over where a nose should have been.
It passed slowly.
Each step deliberate. Powerful. Controlled.
They watched it through their left eye, pale blue and steady, reflecting the dim light and the moving mass beyond.
They didn’t breathe.
When it cleared their row, they rose carefully, silent, every movement measured.
They took one step back.
Then another.
The creature exhaled.
The heat reached them from across the aisle—thick, animal, furnace-warm. It inhaled again, and its head twitched slightly, as if tasting something in the air.
It crossed past their aisle.
Didn’t turn.
Didn’t see them.
After a long moment, it moved out of sight entirely.
They didn’t wait.
They edged toward the exit, careful not to disturb loose tools or hanging metal. Every shift of weight felt too loud. The doors were ahead.
The second they stepped outside—
They ran.
Across broken pavement. Past the scrap yard. Past the bridges. Back to the unfinished house swallowed in vines.
Inside, they dragged the fallen drywall slab into place, sealing the windowless room. The house smelled like old wood and dust. The floorboards were worn and gray. The walls raw and unpainted.
They set their gear down.
Leaned against the wall.
Alive.
But for how long?
Every monster they saw meant more existed. Not just here. Not just this neighborhood.
Was it the whole country?
The whole earth?
Were there places untouched?
What were they?
And that bunker they had seen before—the one that felt wrong. Too reinforced. Too deliberate.
Not normal.
They rested through the day. Muscles heavy. Mind running.
When the sun began rising—strangely angled, light bleeding from farther north than it should—they left again.
They walked to the Six Diamonds field.
The baseball diamond sat abandoned. Bases half-buried in dirt. Foul poles leaning slightly.
Something waited near home plate.
A skull.
Human.
Cleaned by time or teeth, they couldn’t tell.
It sat alone in the open field, facing nothing, watching nothing—yet somehow placed, not dropped.
Their left eye caught the hollow sockets.
The wind moved softly through the grass.
Nothing else did.
They didn’t like the skull.
It was too clean.
No dirt packed into the cracks. No vines curling through the eye sockets. It sat upright in the grass as if placed there carefully. Even if it had been filthy, that would have meant something violent happened.
But this?
This felt arranged.
Their left eye—light blue, sharp—rested on it one second longer.
Then they turned away.
They headed for the bridges.
If the field held trophies and Home Depot held beasts, maybe the water held something quieter. They didn’t want the stone-skinned creature. They didn’t want the skull. Distance felt smarter than answers.
Cars still sat stranded across the bridge, doors open, windows cracked, rust creeping along their edges. Wind moved faintly between them.
They walked the center line.
They thought of the knight.
The champion.
The one who left the scar.
They thought of Sky Arc.
Every human decision they had made—run, hide, fight—what had it changed? The world still cracked. Monsters still roamed. The sun still rose wrong.
A movement under a car made them pause.
A blue shape slid out.
It wasn’t solid. Not fully. It looked like light trapped inside jelly. Translucent, faintly glowing, the color of shallow ocean water. It moved slowly—almost lazily—stretching forward and pulling the rest of itself behind.
Then another emerged from beneath a different car.
The creatures didn’t rush. Didn’t twitch. They simply… advanced. Very. Very. Slowly.
They watched for a long moment, studying the way their edges shimmered, how the light bent through them. No eyes. No mouth. Just motion.
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Slow meant survivable.
They adjusted their path and walked past.
The blue forms continued drifting toward where they had been, always delayed, always behind.
Not a threat.
Maybe a problem later.
Eventually they reached Surf Avenue.
The Starbucks stood hollow, windows dusty but intact. They stepped inside. Chairs overturned. Counters stripped. The air stale but still.
They lowered themself into one of the old chairs.
Rest.
On the wall, something caught their eye.
A faded map.
Sun-bleached, edges curling.
They peeled it free carefully.
New York Aquarium marked clearly.
SBH – Coney Island Hospital Emergency Department circled in red ink.
Hospitals meant supplies.
But time—how much did they have before something found them again?
They folded the map and kept it.
When they returned to the unfinished house, they entered the windowless room and leaned their head back against the wall.
They kicked it once.
A dull thud.
Mentally, could they keep doing this?
They picked up a loose shard of wood and began scratching into the drywall. Slow. Careful. Deliberate.
Days passed.
When they stepped back out, the wall behind them held words carved deep:
One full day equals thirty-six hours. The sun rises from the north or west.
Proof. Not madness.
Then they went back to Bensonhurst Park.
The white ring waited in the grass. The sword glowed faintly where it stood embedded in the earth.
They carried rope and wood.
Standing at the edge of the ring, they swung the rope inward, looping it around the blade. They circled, repeating the motion from each diagonal point—four anchors. Each time, wrapping tighter.
They pulled the lines taut and hammered wooden stakes into the ground outside the ring, driving them deep with blunt force until the ropes hummed with tension.
The sword stood bound.
Satisfied, they set their gear down.
Then stepped inside.
The air shifted instantly—cooler, heavier.
They looked down.
The white-glowing blade pulsed faintly at their feet.
Then they looked up.
The knight stood there.
Armor silver edged in dark gray. Heavy. Scarred. Silent.
The knight stepped toward the sword, gaze lowering to the ropes coiled tight around it.
Without hesitation, they kicked the sword upward into their hand and gripped it hard.
The knight placed one gauntleted hand along the flat of the blade.
Then wrapped their fingers around the hilt.
They tugged once.
The ropes strained—but held.
The knight wobbled the sword slightly, testing the tension. The stakes creaked but did not give.
A pause.
The knight lifted one hand to the side of their neck.
A loud crack split the air.
Then another.
The blade steadied.
The knight shifted into a fighting stance.
And the ring felt smaller than before.
They didn’t hesitate.
They rushed the knight.
The blade rose high above their head and came down in a clean, brutal arc.
Metal met motion.
The knight caught their wrist mid-swing. Iron fingers clamped tight. A backhand struck their stomach—hard enough to hollow the air from their lungs—then the world flipped as the knight threw them over a shoulder.
They hit the ground flat on their back.
Impact rang through bone.
They rolled just as a plated boot crashed down where their ribs had been.
Up again.
Backpedaling.
The knight turned, steady, precise.
One step forward.
They darted left.
The knight lunged to grab them—but they flicked the blade fast, sharp, precise. Steel bit into the knight’s upper arm, carving between plates.
They didn’t pause.
They moved behind, planted a foot against the knight’s back, another against a shoulder, climbing in one fluid motion. The sword ripped free and drove downward into the helm—straight where a face would have been.
The knight shuddered.
Then hands locked around their ankles.
They were yanked down hard and slammed against the ground.
The sword remained lodged in the helm.
The knight reached up—
They tackled the knight before it could pull the blade free. The impact only shoved it back a step, but it was enough.
They grabbed the knight’s shoulder plate and tore it loose with a wrenching twist. Metal screamed as it separated.
They reversed it and jammed the jagged edge into the exposed joint.
The knight flinched.
They seized the sword’s handle, ripped it from the helm, and drove it into the knight’s chest.
The blade sank deep.
The knight staggered—
Then a gauntlet shot out and clamped onto their shoulder.
Hard.
Too hard.
Their left eye flashed pale blue as pain flared white-hot.
Crack.
Something shifted wrong inside the joint.
They tore the sword free and stabbed into the knight’s ribs.
Once.
The knight’s grip loosened just enough.
They wrenched themself backward, stumbling free, one hand clutching their shoulder.
The knight swayed but did not fall.
It reached to its side, gripped the blade embedded in its ribs, and pulled it out slowly.
Then it threw the sword behind itself.
The blade skidded across the white-lit ground, spinning to a stop beyond reach.
The knight stepped forward again.
Deliberate.
Unstoppable.
And the ring felt tighter than ever.
They didn’t rush.
There wasn’t much left to do except survive and wait.
The knight wasn’t charging. Wasn’t pressing. It moved slower now—measured, deliberate. Weaker than they had feared, but still heavy with intent.
They circled, watching for an opening to reach the sword.
Instead, the knight turned toward the edge of the white ring.
It grabbed one of the ropes.
And pulled.
The stake tore free from the ground.
The moment they saw that, they moved.
They sprinted for the glowing white sword as the first rope fell slack. The knight had already yanked the pin loose, fibers unraveling.
Their hand closed around the hilt.
The knight spun fast, forearm swinging wide in a brutal arc. They ducked under it, feeling the wind shear over their back.
They drove the blade into the knight’s waist.
Then planted a foot against the embedded sword and pushed upward, launching themself high enough to seize the helm.
They tore it free.
They hit the ground hard with it in their grip.
For the first time—
A head.
Gray hair, pushed back, a few short bangs fallen forward. Black eyes reflecting the pale sun like polished glass. A sharp jawline. Smooth, porcelain skin untouched by age or war.
Human.
Too human.
Their left eye—light blue—fixed on him, stunned for a fraction too long.
He showed no reaction.
No anger. No pain.
He pulled the sword from his waist and stabbed it point-first into the ground as he stepped toward them.
They reacted first.
The helmet flew from their hand.
He caught it easily—
But in that same breath they lunged, grabbing him by the ears, jumping upward and driving their forehead into his.
A crack of bone on bone.
They dropped back.
In that narrow instant, they seized the sword again.
He let the helmet fall and reached for them—
They swung.
Not clean.
Not elegant.
But firm.
The blade tore across his neck—deep, nearly through.
Black blood spilled down his collarbone, thick and wrong.
Their body trembled.
This man.
This knight.
This monster.
A kick exploded into them.
They dropped to one knee.
A right hook followed, snapping their head sideways and sending them to the ground.
They looked up.
He had stepped back.
His posture changed.
The strength drained from him visibly, shoulders lowering, hands slackening.
He swayed once.
Then fell.
Thud.
They stayed down, watching.
His body began to crumble. Not rot. Not decay.
Ash.
From the edges inward, armor and flesh alike turning to fine gray dust. Within seconds, nothing remained but a faint smear darkening the grass.
The white markings of the ring flickered.
Then vanished.
Only normal grass remained.
But the sword—
The sword stayed.
Still bound in loosened ropes. Still solid. Still real.
Why didn’t it vanish?
That question could wait.
They pushed themself upright slowly. Their knee screamed. Their shoulder throbbed deep and hot. Their jaw ached with every breath. The shoulder wasn’t broken—but it felt close.
They limped forward.
The wind moved through Bensonhurst Park as if nothing had happened.
They stared at the place where the knight had fallen.
Empty now.
Only ash sinking into soil.
And the sword waiting.
They untied the ropes.
One by one.
The stakes lay loose in the grass as they stepped toward the sword still buried in the earth. The blade stood steady, patient.
They stripped the last of the rope from it and stared.
They didn’t know what they expected. Light. Resistance. A shock.
They placed a hand on the hilt.
Cold.
Not cool metal—freezing. The kind of cold that seeps into bone.
They tugged once.
Loose.
They pulled again, slower.
The sword slid free of the ground without protest.
Dark metal formed the handle and guard, worn but unbroken. The blade itself was silver, clean, its edge precise enough to hum in the air. No glow now. Just steel.
Holding it—
Something shifted.
The cold traveled up their arm, into their chest. Not weakening. Not draining.
Strength.
Not loud. Not explosive.
Just a quiet certainty beneath their skin, like the sword recognized them—or tolerated them.
They didn’t question it.
They walked back to the base.
Each step hurt.
By the time they reached the unfinished house, their vision felt heavy at the edges. They entered the windowless room and sank down where they stood, resting the sword in front of them.
They pressed carefully against their shoulder.
POP.
They jolted forward, breath snapping sharp in their chest. The joint slid back into place, pain flaring hot before settling into a deep throb.
Their knee ached. Their jaw pulsed.
But they were intact.
They thought of the Sky Arc.
It had avoided the champion. Circled. Watched. Waited.
The knight had been different.
Eerie. Controlled. Personal.
They knew—if they had fought a Sky Arc directly, they would not be sitting here.
So why had this one fallen?
They let the question dissolve.
Exhaustion pulled heavier than thought.
Their left eye, pale blue even in the dark, drifted to the slab of wall blocking the doorway.
Still in place.
Still holding.
They leaned back.
And slept.
A room.
Dusty blue walls. Wooden plank floors. A plant near an archway leading into another space.
They were standing inside it.
The couch faced them.
Someone sat there.
Blue jeans. White shirt. Brown-and-tan flannel hanging loose. Light brown hair brushing the neck, soft and unkempt.
They were looking at themself.
Not now—but before.
Before the broken streets. Before wrong suns. Before monsters.
The version on the couch blinked—
And vanished.
No fade.
No ash.
Just gone.
They stepped forward and pressed a hand to where the body had been.
Air.
Only air.
On the small table beside the couch sat a frame.
Family.
Their sisters.
They turned toward the next room beyond the archway.
A coat rack stood near the door.
An apron hung from it—light brown, dark lettering stitched across the front:
Silent Café Homes.
A heartbeat began.
Slow at first.
Then faster.
Faster.
Faster.
Faster—
Then silence.
The room shifted.
White.
Walls. Floor. Ceiling. All white.
No edges. No corners.
Nothing.
They turned.
And felt it.
Behind them.
They looked.
A figure stood there.
Tall—impossibly tall. Six and a half feet, maybe more. Pure black. Not shadow cast by light—shadow as substance. No features. Only shape.
Horns curved faintly from its head. Long hair, dark and heavy. Sharp nails catching no light. Loose, baggy clothing blending into what looked like the tails of a suit coat.
It looked down at them.
No eyes visible.
No mouth.
It stepped forward.
Walked past them.
And kept walking into the white nothing.
Snap.
They woke.
Still night.
Cold sweat soaked through their clothes. The unfinished room pressed in around them. The sword lay where they had placed it.
Their chest rose slowly.
The darkness felt thicker now.
