Shadyside Mall
 

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Shadyside Mall is a haunting relic of a once-thriving era, frozen somewhere between the late 80s and early 90s. Its exterior is built in a cold, utilitarian brutalist style—a blocky concrete structure with tall, vertical paneling that looms like a fortress over its cracked parking lot. The sign reading “Shadyside Mall” is mounted above a squat entrance, lit at night by dim golden floodlights that cast long, unsettling shadows across the facade.

Inside, the mall still functions—barely. The main wing is dimly lit with aging tile floors, faded skylights, and a mix of national chains and local businesses, their signage glowing in flickering neon. Teenagers loiter near the dry central fountain, and the food court, lined with stalls like Slice Spot Pizza and Sweet & Swirl, hums with a tired rhythm.

But past the food court, down a half-lit hallway, is the closed wing—the site of the infamous 1994 massacre. It’s been barricaded for years, but the stories linger. The lights flicker more there. The air grows colder. Old storefronts like Westridge Records and Ink & Spine Books sit behind rusted gates and broken glass. Police tape still clings to corners, and the floor bears the faint, sticky memory of blood. Time doesn’t move the same in that hallway.

Locals say the mall is cursed. Most pretend they don’t believe it. But everyone knows—Shadyside Mall remembers.

After finding out that Eli had been keeping secrets from her, she’d been in a bad mood all day. When it came time for her break, she didn’t want to wander the mall to find him. They had stupid arguments here and there, but he had never done anything to upset her this much. Max ignored the first of his text messages, but when she didn’t answer, Eli came venturing into the record store. Not wanting to cause a scene, Max grabbed her book bag and flung it over her shoulder before following him out.

Once they got a few feet away from the entrance, Max let him have it. She glared at him, “You said you’d never keep secrets from me!” Eli was the only person she had, and now it felt like she couldn’t trust him. “I’m talking about Benji looking for the witch! Why are you playing stupid?” She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s looking for the witch because he believes what I’ve been saying this entire time! Mitchie didn’t do this!” Despite already knowing Eli only kept this from her to keep her safe, she was still furious with him.

“It’s a small town, Elijah. How do you think I found out?” She rolled her eyes at Eli when he finally started to give in and admit to knowing a lot more than Max thought he did. A bit stunned, “He found a tunnel?” Max sat down on the closest bench. Her mouth hung ajar as she stared off, trying to process everything her boyfriend had told her.

Elijah thought he'd been doing the right thing by not including Max in Benji's wild conquest to bag some Sunnyvale cheerleader. However, Max's actions were telling him that he'd fucked up. He didn't feel bad though, he knew that nothing good ever came from messing with the witch. He didn't mind Max having a blog because she knew better than to get tangled up with actually digging too deep. So, when he didn't hear back from her, Eli wasted no time getting to the record store. He didn't want Benji to have roped her into helping him.

Trying to play dumb clearly wasn't working but he had to at least try. "How'd you find out?" he asked once he knew he was busted. "Fine. I'm sorry. I thought... I just didn't think anything would come of it, alright? I had hoped that Benji was just trying to get laid, you know? He met some crazy Sunnyvale girl in the graveyard and there might be some tunnel that has to do with the witch or something." Elijah realized he was feeding too much into this whole witch thing when he'd really rather pretend it didn't exist at all; it seemed safer for some reason. "I don't know who found them and I honestly don't care. I just wish everyone would drop it with this witch shit."

Some mall patrons walked by and stared, clearly eavesdropping and Eli shot them a look to get them to pick up their pace. Lowering his voice to avoid drawing any more attention, he continued. "I'm really sorry I didn't tell you, but I was trying to protect you the best way I know how. No, I don't believe that Mitchie would do what he did but that doesn't mean I'm ready to accept that it is because of a witch yet. And even if I were to believe it, I feel the best way to keep out of trouble is to not go digging."

“I'm not a porcelain doll,” Max was annoyed with the current situation and shook her head in disbelief. “You don’t always have to protect me. I was doing quite fine before we started dating.” Honestly, she was surprised Eli hadn’t broken up with her yet. It didn’t matter how much she tried pushing him away. He always ended up coming back loving her harder. Sometimes it was difficult for Max to reciprocate those feelings.

Max side-eyed the mall patrons as they passed in front of them. She waited until they were out of earshot before continuing. “They’re not just tunnels, Eli,” Max said numbingly, ignoring his apology. “They’re Solomon’s. The ones that he forged with dark magic,” she informed her boyfriend. “What else did Benni say?” The tone in her voice was a bit more concerned. “I only ask because in ‘94, after the whole Deena and Samantha incident. The police department never recovered the Black Widow’s book. They went back to get it, but it was already gone.”

Max sighed as Eli expressed his feelings about wanting to protect her and not wanting to get involved. “It’s too late for that,” she said, standing. “It’s been a quiet 19 years, and suddenly a Shadysider goes crazy? You can sit here and watch me walk out those doors, or you can come with me, so we don’t lose another friend.” Max was going to leave with or without her boyfriend. It was up to him what he wanted to do. “Benji has no idea what the fuck he’s gotten himself into.”

Max may have done fine before he came along but in his mind, that no longer applied. She had stolen his heart and Elijah was going to do whatever it took to make sure she was safe because that meant his heart remained safe as well. Elijah rolled his eyes, ran his fingers through his hair and looked away when Max insisted on continuing with all this witch bullshit. It hadn't bugged him before because to him, her blog was simply a silly little thing that made her happy. Ever since what happened with Mitchie and now Benji going all Sherlock Holmes, he was starting to wish she liked reality tv or something safer.

His eyes darted back to her immediately when she mentioned going after Benji. "No! I refuse to let you go." Eli growled at her as he grabbed her arm. He had a much darker side of him he tried to not bring out when around her but he'd had about enough at this point. First his best friend completely ignored him telling him to leave it alone and now his girlfriend was doing the same thing and he felt out of control at this point. In his household, when no one listened to you, you got angry in order to get their attention.

When he saw the look in her eye, he dropped his grip on her and instantly began apologizing before she could get a word in. "I'm so sorry, babe. It's just... This whole thing is fucking crazy... and too much. We were supposed to just finish high school and get the hell out of here, not go running around hunting down witches and magic books!" He no longer cared if anyone heard them, he had plenty of anger he would happily unleash on someone.

Max had only ever seen Eli get this upset at other people, never at her. She looked down at his hand on her arm and then looked back at him. It hurt. He'd never made her want to cry until now. Still in shock when he finally let go, Max shook her head. "No. That's not okay!" Max wasn't going to accept Eli's apology quickly because she didn't want him to think it was acceptable to do something like that. "You're really starting to make me hate you right now," Max warned.

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked over at him. "Well, that's navie of you," she told him. "You should've known better. The witch would be back, whether everyone believed or not." Everyone assumed that the curse ended with Sheriff Nick Goode, but Max had a hunch it wasn't over.

It was not Sarah Fier responsible for the new killings. It was whoever had the book. Anonymous sources had confirmed that Nick was responsible for Nightwing and the 1994 massacres. "It's really not the witch. It's a real person," she tried to convince her boyfriend. "Whoever has the book made a new deal. I'm being serious, Elijah! I'm not some fucking crazy person like everyone thinks!"

'Fuck' he thought to himself as he stared into the fear in her eyes. Elijah knew he'd fucked up and he was going to be beating himself up over that for a while. Anything to make sure he didn't act up like that with her again. "I know. I'm so sorry. I really am... I... FUCK! I hate all of this!" He motioned away from them and toward Shadyside as a whole. "Naive? I prefer to think of it as optimistic. Is it so terrible of me to want us to not have to deal with this? I don't think so. And until Benji and that girl started digging around, we weren't involved. We were this close to achieving my dreams."

Eli sighed and pushed back his hair with his hand before looking back at her while she tried to explain to him about the witch, book, and new deal, all things he really didn't want to hear but since he loved her, he was listening. "I don't think you're crazy. Something fucked up is clearly happening, so, yeah, let's go get Benji before it's too late." Elijah had no idea how the hell he was supposed to protect his girlfriend from some supernatural deal shit, but it seemed she was going whether he liked it or not, so he was just going to have to try his best.

The emergency exit hallway swallowed them whole the second the door swung shut behind them.

The air shifted—denser, colder, heavy like wet wool draped over her shoulders. Max tugged her sleeves down to her wrists without thinking, fingers brushing the worn strap of her backpack, grounding herself in the scrape of fabric against skin.

Overhead, the dead fluorescents loomed like broken teeth. Only their flashlights pushed back the dark—narrow beams jittering across scuffed concrete walls and the maze of exposed piping overhead.
The place felt wrong.
Like a body hollowed out from the inside and left standing.

Max led them without looking back.
She could feel the others behind her—Benji’s steady weight, Heather’s restless shifting, Caleb falling easily into step with Alice Mae.
And Eli, always Eli, a quiet, steady gravity at her side.

When the floor changed, she knew.

The concrete dipped—barely perceptible—but enough that her instincts snapped taut.
She stopped short, boots scuffing against grit and grime.

Ahead, half-swallowed by dust and cracked cement, lay the grate.
Thick. Iron.
Bolted into the floor like someone thought they could lock hell itself underground.

Max knelt slowly, the blueprint crumpling between her fingers.
The cold hit her first, radiating up from the metal like a living thing.
Colder than it should be.
Colder than it had any right to be.

Her gloved fingers skimmed the edge, catching on grooves worn deep into the frame.
Tampered bolts.
Fresh enough to gleam dull under the beam of her flashlight.

Someone had been here.
Someone who knew.

Max exhaled, the sound thin and shaky in the vast, dead air.
She pressed her palm flat against the grate, feeling the faint, chilling pulse of air leaking from below.

She swallowed hard, voice scraping up from somewhere low and raw.

“This is it,” she said, rough and sure and a little wrecked. “This is where it starts.”

Behind her, she felt the others shift—the tremor of bodies instinctively tightening around a threat.

She leaned closer, nose nearly brushing the rusted bars.

“You wanted proof?” she muttered, not caring if they heard her. “Here it is.”

The Widow’s mark was barely visible, etched into the cement beneath the grate, worn down by time and hate and something older than either.

Max let her head hang for a second, breathing slow through her teeth, letting the weight of it all settle into her bones.

Then she flexed her fingers against the metal, testing it.

“We’re not supposed to open this,” she whispered.
A dry, broken laugh scraped out of her throat.

“Which means we have to.”

She braced herself against the floor.
And pulled.

The emergency exit hallway was colder than it should’ve been.

Alice Mae shifted her flashlight higher, the beam cutting weakly through the dust-choked air. The walls seemed to press in tighter the deeper they walked—exposed pipes overhead, grime slicking the concrete floor, the long hum of the mall’s empty body rattling faintly in the distance.

Benji stuck close to Max, practically glued to her side without even realizing it. Heather hovered nearby, pretending she wasn’t doing the same thing. Caleb drifted a step behind Alice Mae, his fingers brushing the back of her jacket every now and then, the way he always did when he thought she might disappear if he wasn’t careful.

Eli moved like a shadow at Max’s right hand.
Solid. Tethered.
But there was a coil of something tight and uneasy in Max’s shoulders that not even Eli’s presence could smooth out.

Alice Mae noticed.
She always noticed.

She kept her distance as Max led them further down the hallway, not bothering to ask if this was smart. None of this was smart. That had been obvious since the second they decided to come back to this place.

Max stopped suddenly.

Alice Mae caught herself before she crashed into Caleb’s back, muttering a silent curse under her breath. Her flashlight beam darted forward, catching on something low and jagged in the floor.

The grate.

Thick iron, half-swallowed by dust and time.
Bolted into the ground like a bandage over a wound.

Alice Mae watched as Max crouched low, fingers running along the edges like she was reading Braille.
The others inched forward too, drawn like moths to a flame none of them could see yet.

Alice Mae stayed back.

She caught the way Max’s fingers lingered over the bolts—the way her whole body stilled, a shiver running along her spine that had nothing to do with the cold.

Something was wrong down there.
Alice Mae didn’t need a blueprint or a creepy Widow’s mark to feel it clawing up from under the floor.

Max leaned closer, her breath fogging the rusted metal.

“This is it,” Max said, her voice low and sure, cutting through the thick, buzzing silence.

The words sank like stones in Alice Mae’s gut.

Max shifted, pressing her palm flat against the grate, knuckles whitening under the strain.
No hesitation.
No second-guessing.

“You wanted proof?” Max muttered, rough-edged. “Here it is.”

Alice Mae tightened her grip on her flashlight, shifting her weight, eyes flicking over the others.
Benji, tense but locked in.
Heather, chewing the inside of her cheek, fists bunched in her sleeves.
Eli, steady and sure, too focused on Max to notice the way the air down here tasted wrong.

Only Caleb met her glance for half a heartbeat—something flickering there, wary but inevitable.

The breath burned in Alice Mae’s lungs before she could stop it. She spoke, voice low but razor-sharp.

“Max,” she said, the name a warning, brittle at the edges, “this isn’t just old tunnels. It’s something else.”

Max let her head fall forward briefly, breathing hard like she was bracing for impact.

Then she said it—softer, like the words tasted like blood:

“We’re not supposed to open this.”

Alice Mae’s fingers twitched around the flashlight.
Her voice came again, quieter this time, more to herself than anyone else:

“Some things are buried for a reason.”

Max laughed—sharp, broken—and finished it:

“Which means we have to.”

Alice Mae watched as Max dug her fingers under the edge of the grate and started to pull.

And deep beneath the concrete, beneath the rust and the rot and the stupid Shadyside stories everyone told to scare each other—

something shifted.
Something answered.

The farther they went, the worse the air got.

Benji tightened his grip on the flashlight, sweeping it low across the cracked concrete. The beam jittered against the grime-slick walls, the exposed piping overhead casting long, crooked shadows.

Every instinct he had was screaming at him that this wasn’t right.
That it was too quiet.
That the mall itself felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for them to screw up.

Max moved ahead of him, sharp and fast, her shoulders locked stiff.
Benji stuck close without thinking.
Heather hovered just a little behind him, the air between them buzzing faint, electric. Caleb and Alice Mae fell into a rhythm behind them—easy, practiced, worn into their bones after years of crashing back together.

And Eli—silent, focused, a shield at Max’s side.

Benji kept them all in his peripheral.
Counting bodies.
Keeping score.

The emergency exit hallway narrowed, and Max pulled up short.

Benji stopped a second after her, flashlight cutting sideways and catching it—the grate.
Heavy iron.
Sick with rust.

He didn’t need Max to say it.
He could feel it, thrumming low and wrong in his gut.

Max dropped to a crouch without hesitation, her hands skimming the edges of the grate like she was waking something up just by touching it.
The others slowed, pulled closer like gravity had shifted around her.

Benji planted himself nearby, knees bent slightly, flashlight aimed steady at the hatch even when his heart kicked harder against his ribs.

Max pressed her hand flat against the metal.

“This is it,” she said, voice low and sure, almost too sure.

Benji swallowed hard.

Max shifted, leaning closer, her breath fogging the iron.

“You wanted proof?” she muttered. “Here it is.”

Benji exhaled through his teeth, voice breaking out rougher than he meant.

“Not the kind I was hoping for, Max,” he muttered.

Heather edged closer, her sleeve brushing against his without meaning to.
He didn’t move away.
Didn’t want to.

Max let her head hang forward, breathing like she was steeling herself against something she couldn’t dodge.

“We’re not supposed to open this,” she whispered.

Benji shifted his weight, glancing once at the others, at Heather—at the way her fists curled inside her jacket sleeves like she was trying to hide how bad she was shaking.

He forced his voice out low, grim.

“Doesn’t mean it’s gonna stay closed.”

Max laughed then—a short, splintered sound—and finished it:

“Which means we have to.”

Benji tightened his grip on the flashlight until his knuckles ached, watching as Max dug her fingers under the edge of the grate and started to pull.

The floor under them seemed to hum with it—
with the weight of every bad decision that ever got made in Shadyside.

And somewhere deep below, something old and furious and not quite dead was waiting for them to crack the world open again.

The dark suited him.

Eli kept a half-step behind Max as they moved deeper into the emergency exit hallway, his boots soundless against the grime-slick floor.
The others made noise—scuffing, breathing, the low static of nerves—but Eli moved like a shadow, stitched into the ribs of the building itself.

Overhead, the exposed pipes rattled faintly.
The fluorescents buzzed and flickered, barely hanging on.

The farther they went, the worse the air got.
Thicker. Colder.
Like the mall itself was rotting from the inside out.

He could feel the tension radiating off Max—sharp, crackling—but she didn’t look back.
She didn’t have to.

Benji stuck close to her side, reliable as gravity.
Heather and the Sunnyvale kids drifted behind, quieter now, adrenaline bleeding out into something heavier.

Eli didn't trust them.
Not fully.

Power in numbers—sure.
But when it went bad (and it would), he wasn’t betting on Sunnyvale loyalty.
He was betting on Max’s stubbornness.
Benji’s fists.
And his own blade, if it came to that.

They reached the grate.

Eli felt the shift before he saw it—the way the air changed, the floor buckling slightly under the weight of something waiting.

Max stopped.

The others pulled up short behind her, jostling quietly for space.
Eli slid to Max’s right shoulder, angled just enough to keep her and Benji in his line of defense.

His flashlight swept low, catching the grate—thick iron, sick with rust, the edges slick with something darker than water.

He watched as Max crouched low, her hands moving over the metal like she was memorizing it by touch.
No hesitation.
No fear she was willing to show.

When she pressed her palm flat against it, Eli caught the way her fingers trembled—just once, just enough.
A fracture too small for anyone else to see.

But he saw it.

> "This is it," Max said, voice rough and sure.

The others inched closer.
Eli stayed exactly where he was—guarding her back without needing to be asked.

Max leaned closer, breath ghosting over the grate.

> "You wanted proof?" she muttered.

Benji answered—low and grim—but Eli barely registered it.

His focus tunneled inward.
He could feel it—the hum of something old and vengeful clawing up from under the concrete, scenting blood, scenting weakness.

When Max let her head drop forward, breathing hard, Eli tensed automatically.

> "We’re not supposed to open this," she whispered.

Alice Mae’s voice cut in, quieter but edged sharp:

> "Some things are buried for a reason."

Eli agreed.
Not that it mattered.

Max laughed—a sound like a blade being dragged across stone—and said:

> "Which means we have to."

Eli shifted his weight, free hand ghosting over the knife tucked inside his jacket.

Max dug her fingers under the edge of the grate and pulled.

And somewhere far below them, the dark moved—
slick and greedy—
like it had been waiting just for them.

Eli didn’t flinch.
He didn’t run.

He just braced himself, already choosing the side he would bleed for when the world cracked open again.

At first, Heather thought it was just the old mall breathing.

The hum of dead air through broken vents.
The creak of pipes settling overhead.
The scuff of their footsteps.

But the deeper they went, the less sense it made.

Whispers crawled along the walls—thin, scratchy, wrong.
Not words she could grab onto.
Just the sense of being called.
Pulled.

Heather kept her mouth shut, jaw tight enough to ache.
One wrong noise from her, and the others would look at her.
Would see how close she was to breaking.

So she kept moving—one foot in front of the other—flashlight aimed low, sweeping over cracked concrete and discarded trash.

Max moved ahead of them, sharp and certain.
Benji stayed glued to her side, steady as bedrock.
Eli flanked Max’s other side, quiet and coiled like he expected a fight.

Heather hovered behind Benji without meaning to, the faint buzz of his body heat grounding her better than her own breathing.

The Sunnyvale kids hung back—Caleb brushing Alice Mae’s jacket, Alice Mae flicking sharp, worried glances up the hall.

Heather didn’t trust them.
Not with this.
Not with what she was hearing.

The voices got louder the farther they went.
Not screaming—no, worse.
Soft.
Familiar.

Her mother’s voice, once.
Then a teacher from Sunnyvale Prep.
Then something else—something guttural and wet, whispering right against her ear.

Heather clenched her jaw harder.

She wasn’t going to be the weak link.
She wasn’t going to be the freak.

Max stopped.

Heather skidded to a halt behind Benji, flashlight catching on the grate embedded in the floor—thick iron, slick with rust, swallowing the light like a wound that never healed.

The whispers cut off all at once—
like a blade shearing through silk.

Heather flinched so hard she almost dropped the flashlight.

She caught it just in time, fingers locking tight around the handle.

Max crouched low, tracing the grate’s edges with gloved hands like she was waking something up.

The others crowded closer.
Heather hung back, heart jackhammering so hard she thought it might crack her ribs.

Max pressed her palm flat against the metal.

> "This is it," Max said, low and sure.

Benji shifted slightly, body tensing—but not running.

Heather latched onto that, breathing through her teeth, willing herself to mirror him.
Stay.
Stay.

Max leaned closer, breath ghosting against the rust.

> "You wanted proof?" she muttered.

Benji answered rough, but Heather barely heard it.
The silence where the whispers had been was louder now, somehow.
More dangerous.

Max let her head fall forward, breathing like she was already bleeding from a wound none of them could see yet.

> "We’re not supposed to open this," she whispered.

Alice Mae’s voice chimed in—small, scared:

> "Some things are buried for a reason."

Heather swallowed hard.

Benji shifted again, closer this time, a solid presence in the fraying dark.

Then Max laughed—sharp and broken—and said:

> "Which means we have to."

Heather didn’t think.
Didn’t hesitate.

She reached out and grabbed Benji’s hand—fingers threading through his, squeezing hard enough to hurt.

He didn’t pull away.

And for the first time since the hallway swallowed them whole, Heather didn’t feel like she was about to splinter apart.

Not yet.

If he'd had it his way, none of them would’ve been here.

They would've kept their heads down.
Graduated.
Left Shadyside behind like smoke in a rearview mirror.

But Alice Mae had dug her heels in.
And Heather, too.

And Caleb—well.
Once the people you loved picked a fight, you didn’t just stand there.

So here he was.
Trudging through a half-dead mall hallway that stank of rot and regret, sweeping his flashlight over cracked concrete and rusted pipes, pretending he didn’t feel like the walls were closing in.

The air got worse the deeper they went—heavier, colder, laced with something sour that stuck to the back of his throat.

Ahead, Max moved sharp and fast, a girl on a mission.
Benji was a step behind her, locked in tight.
Heather and Alice Mae hovered nearby—too brave for their own damn good.

Eli ghosted Max's side like a stitched-on shadow, all silent calculation.

Caleb didn’t trust him.
Didn’t trust any of the Shadysiders.

But he'd protect them anyway.
Because that’s what you did when things got ugly.

You didn’t pick and choose who you saved.

Max stopped dead.

Caleb caught himself before he barreled into Alice Mae, dropping his free hand to the small of her back without thinking, steadying her.

His flashlight jerked upward—and there it was.

The grate.

Iron-thick, rust-sick, bolted into the floor like someone had tried to pin the devil under their boots.

The hair on the back of Caleb’s neck stood up.

He knew—same way you knew when a storm was about to crack the sky open—that whatever was waiting down there wasn’t sleeping anymore.

Max dropped to a crouch, fingers ghosting the grate’s edges.

The others slowed, clustered close.

Caleb shifted forward instinctively, angling himself between Alice Mae and whatever was coming.

Max pressed her palm flat against the metal.

> "This is it," she said, voice low and carved out of stone.



Caleb’s grip tightened around his flashlight.

He watched her lean in closer, her breath fogging over the rust.

> "You wanted proof?" she muttered.



Benji muttered something back—grim, resigned—but Caleb barely heard it over the static humming in his blood.

Max bowed her head, breathing hard.

> "We’re not supposed to open this," she whispered.



Alice Mae’s voice cut through the cold, soft and scared:

> "Some things are buried for a reason."



Max laughed—a sound that didn’t belong in human mouths anymore—and said:

> "Which means we have to."



Before she even started to move, Caleb was there—kneeling beside her without waiting for permission.

Without waiting at all.

He dropped his flashlight, wedged his gloved hands under the edge of the grate beside hers.

Max blinked at him once—quick, surprised—but she didn’t argue.

Because in a place like this, trust wasn’t something you earned anymore.

It was something you decided.

Caleb set his jaw, muscles locking tight.

"On three," he said, voice steady, even though the ground seemed to hum with every terrible thing waiting below.

Max nodded.

They pulled.

And somewhere deep beneath Shadyside Mall, the world started to wake up.

The grate groaned under their hands, the sound ripping through the silence like a wound tearing open.

Max felt Caleb’s weight braced beside her, felt Eli hovering just a breath away, felt the way the others locked into a tight, silent orbit around her without even meaning to.

She hadn’t asked for this.
Hadn’t asked them to follow her down into the dark.
But they were here anyway.
Choosing it.
Choosing her.

Max clenched her jaw against the burn rising in her chest.

The metal shifted—gave just enough for cold air to spill up from below, curling around her wrists, dragging the smell of old earth and something fouler with it.
Something that didn’t belong to the living.

She dug her fingers in deeper, muscles trembling from the effort.

“Don’t stop,” she rasped under her breath, more to herself than to anyone else.

The ground vibrated faintly under her knees.

Not an earthquake.
Not a trick of adrenaline.

Something else.

Something waiting.

Max sucked in a breath through her teeth and heaved.
Caleb matched her strain, silent and stubborn.

The grate shifted again, heavier now, like the mall itself was trying to hold it down.
Like it knew what they were about to do.

She glanced once, quick and sharp, at the people around her—Benji’s jaw locked tight, Heather’s white-knuckled grip on his hand, Eli’s flashlight pinned steady on her like he was willing the world not to touch her.

And Caleb—gritting his teeth, braced alongside her without hesitation.

Max smiled—small, cracked, fierce.

“You picked the wrong group to bury,” she muttered, voice shaking with effort and something hotter beneath it.

The final bolt tore free with a screech.

And the grate fell back into the darkness, swallowed whole by the thing waking up underneath them.

The screech of the bolts tearing free set Alice Mae’s teeth on edge.

The grate clanged backward into the dark with a hollow, hungry sound, the kind that didn’t bounce—it just got swallowed.

Max and Caleb leaned over the hole they’d made, shoulders tense, breathing hard.
Everyone else edged closer, the circle tightening without anyone saying a word.
The air spilling up from below was colder now, sharper, carrying the copper stink of old blood and wet stone.

Alice Mae inched forward, angling her flashlight toward the opening.

The beam barely touched the bottom—just enough to catch the edge of a ladder bolted into the wall, rusted and crumbling like everything else in this damn town.

The smell got worse the longer she stood there.

She cleared her throat, voice rough from the dust and nerves scraping her raw.

“You ever think,” she said flatly, “that maybe stuff like this stays buried because it’s smarter than we are?”

No one answered.
Max didn’t even flinch.
Of course she didn’t.

Alice Mae huffed out a breath, a sharp sound too small to be a laugh.

“Awesome,” she muttered, dragging the flashlight back toward her chest. “Just making sure we’re all on the same page before we start crawling into hell.”

Caleb straightened slightly, shooting her a look she didn’t bother returning.
She wasn’t trying to pick a fight.

She was trying to survive it.

Alice Mae shifted her stance, scanning the others out of habit.

Benji was locked in tight to Max’s left, jaw clenched so hard it had to hurt. Heather hovered just behind him, pale but standing steady, fingers still laced with his.
Eli flanked Max like he was wired into her heartbeat—ready to move, ready to fight, ready to bleed if he had to.

And her.

The Sunnyvale girl who should’ve run the second the ground started breathing.

Instead, she was still here.

Still choosing this.

Alice Mae flicked her flashlight once more over the open mouth of the tunnel.

The dark swallowed the light like it didn’t even notice.

She stepped forward before she could talk herself out of it, boots scraping against the battered floor.
Stopped at the edge.
Stared down.

“Whatever’s down there,” she said quietly, glancing at Max without blinking, “it’s not just old air and ghost stories.”

Her fingers twitched on the flashlight handle.

“It’s hungry.”

The words slipped out before she could shove them back down.

Max met her eyes across the circle of flickering lights, something sharp and knowing flashing between them.

Alice Mae squared her shoulders, forcing the rising dread back down her throat.

Fine.

If they were already in this deep, she wasn’t going to be the first to blink.

Not now.
Not ever.

She jerked her chin toward the hole.

“So what’s the move, Captain?” she said, the faintest thread of a smirk ghosting across her mouth.
“Or are we flipping a coin for who goes first?”

The second Alice Mae said it, Benji felt the weight of it land on Max’s shoulders like a brick.

Captain.
Leader.
The one who dragged them here without dragging her feet.

He hated how alone she looked, crouched over the edge of that open pit like it was daring her to jump.

Max didn’t flinch, didn’t crack, but Benji knew her too well to miss the way her fingers tightened slightly around the flashlight.
She was thinking it through already.
Calculating how bad it could go.
Calculating how many of them she could drag back out if it did.

Benji didn’t wait.

He stepped forward, shifting the beam of his flashlight squarely onto the rusted ladder bolted into the tunnel wall.

The metal was rotted through in places, the rungs warped and slick with who-knew-what.
It didn’t matter.

Benji adjusted his grip on the flashlight, letting it slide into the crook of his arm.

“I’ll go,” he said, voice steady, leaving no room for argument.

Max’s head snapped up, mouth parting like she was about to tell him no.

Benji beat her there with a look—a tilt of his head, the kind of look that said Don’t waste time. You know how this goes.

Heather squeezed his hand tighter—still holding on from before, knuckles whitening—and he could feel the tremor she wasn’t letting reach her face.

Benji turned his hand in hers, squeezing back once, solid.

Then he let go.

He didn’t look at her when he did.
Couldn’t.

Not when she already looked like the world was trying to pull her apart at the seams.

He crouched low beside Max instead, flashlight jammed awkwardly under his arm as he tested the first rung with his weight.

It groaned but held.

Good enough.

He looked sideways at Max once, catching her in his periphery—the way her jaw was set, the way her body was leaning forward like she wanted to grab him and anchor him back.

Benji smiled, rough and brief.

“Someone’s gotta,” he muttered under his breath, just loud enough for her to hear.

Max didn’t answer.
Didn’t stop him either.

Benji gritted his teeth, gripped the edge of the ladder tight, and swung himself over the lip of the tunnel.

The cold swallowed him whole.

The second Benji disappeared over the edge, Heather moved like she was going to follow.

Eli caught the twitch in her body first—the quick intake of breath, the half-step forward—and so did Caleb.
He snagged her by the elbow before she could pitch herself in, murmuring something low and steady that Eli didn’t bother listening to.

His focus shifted automatically—
to Max.

She was leaning forward, muscles coiled like she was two seconds from jumping after Benji herself.
Her flashlight trembled once in her hand, barely noticeable.

But Eli noticed.

He moved before anyone could stop him.
Silent. Certain.

Stepped up to the lip of the tunnel like he belonged there.

Max’s head whipped toward him, but Eli just tipped his chin once—calm, deliberate.

I’ve got him.
Stay up here.
Lead.

The words passed between them without sound.

Max’s jaw locked, frustration flashing behind her eyes.
But she didn’t argue.
Didn’t reach for him.

Eli adjusted his grip on his flashlight, jamming it tight under his arm, hands free to climb.
He tested the first rung of the ladder with the toe of his boot—felt it groan, felt it hold.

Good enough.

He glanced once down into the dark.

No sound from Benji yet.

No screaming.

No snapping bones.

Eli swung over the edge, boots hitting the ladder rungs with barely a scrape.

The cold coming up from below hit harder this time—wet, earthy, metallic.
Like old blood and older water.

The rusted rungs bit into his gloves as he moved down, quick but careful.

Benji’s flashlight bobbed somewhere below him, a faint, ghostly flicker in the dark.

Eli didn’t look up again.
Didn’t hesitate.

He just kept climbing down into the belly of the dead mall, into whatever had been waiting under Shadyside for too damn long.

And in the brief, breathless moment before the dark swallowed him whole, he thought—
If something’s down there…
It’s not gonna get them without going through me first.

The second Benji swung himself over the edge, Heather’s heart tried to tear its way out of her chest.

The cold, the dark, the endless stink of rust and rot—it didn’t matter.

She didn’t think.
Didn’t weigh consequences.
Didn’t care that the ladder looked like it would snap under the wrong breath.

She just moved—a half-step, ready to launch herself after him.

But before she could even shift her weight, a hand closed around her arm.

Caleb.

He didn’t yank her.
Didn’t bark at her.
Just anchored her there, firm and steady, like he knew if he let go, she’d crack straight down the middle.

Heather twisted, fire sparking low and ugly in her chest.

"Let go," she snapped, voice rough, breaking on the edges.

Caleb didn’t.

He just shook his head once, small and sure.

Heather tried to pull her arm free, tried to shake off the panic clawing up her throat.

Benji was down there.
Benji, with his stupid, steady hands and his too-good heart and the smile he thought could outrun curses.

And she wasn't ready.
Not to lose him.
Not to watch him disappear into the dark while she stood there and did nothing.

"Goddammit, Caleb," she hissed, under her breath but vicious, the words shaking. "He’s down there."

Caleb just held on, not tight, but enough.

Heather’s chest heaved.

She could feel the others watching—Alice Mae tensing behind her, Max locked at the edge of the grate like she was two seconds from throwing herself in after them.

Eli moved past without a word, slipping over the edge like smoke.

Heather barely registered him.

All she could see was the dark swallowing Benji whole.

All she could hear was the blood pounding in her ears.

Caleb’s hand squeezed her arm once—brief, solid.

> "You’re not gonna help him by falling apart," he said, voice low, calm in the storm she couldn’t quiet.

Heather squeezed her eyes shut for half a second, forcing air into her lungs.

She hated him for being right.
Hated herself more for needing to be held still.

But she stayed.

She stayed.

Because that’s what you did when you were scared.
You stayed anyway.

When she opened her eyes again, she wrenched her arm free—sharply, but not enough to throw Caleb off balance.

She scrubbed a hand over her mouth, rough.

Then she muttered, bitter and low:

"Next time, I'm punching him in the face before he can play hero."

And she meant it.
God, she meant it.

Her hand curled into a fist at her side, the only thing keeping her upright.

Heather stared down into the dark, where Benji had disappeared.

And waited for her chance to follow.

The dark yawned open at his feet.

Benji was already gone.
Eli too—silent as a knife between ribs.

And Caleb—
every part of him screamed to follow.

But he didn’t move.

Not because he wasn’t scared.

Because he was.

Because he was scared enough for all of them.

Heather stood at the edge of the grate, shaking but holding, jaw locked tight against the terror clawing up her throat.
Alice Mae hovered close, eyes sharp, shoulders squared like she could punch her way through whatever came next.
And Max—Max looked like she was two seconds from hurling herself into the abyss out of sheer defiance.

Caleb gritted his teeth so hard it ached.

He wanted to go.

God, he wanted to.

Wanted to charge down that rusted ladder, shoulder to shoulder with Benji, back to back with Eli, fists ready.

But he couldn’t.

Because someone had to stay topside.
Someone had to make damn sure that if the dark came pouring out of that hole, it didn’t take the whole damn town with it.

And it wasn’t gonna be Heather.
It wasn’t gonna be Alice Mae.
And it sure as hell wasn’t gonna be Max.

It was gonna be him.

Caleb adjusted his stance, flashlight gripped tighter in his fist, the other hand hovering near the crowbar slung through his belt loop.
A stupid weapon for a stupid plan.

Didn’t matter.

He threw a glance sideways at the girls—at the only family he had left standing.

> "Nobody goes in alone," he said, voice rough, steadying.



Heather jerked her chin in a silent agreement, breathing hard but staying put.
Alice Mae’s mouth twitched like she wanted to argue, but didn’t.
Max—
Max’s fingers flexed around her flashlight, a muscle ticking in her jaw, but she nodded once, curt.

Caleb let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

He dropped into a crouch beside the grate, flashlight sweeping slow, steady arcs across the mouth of the tunnel.

Waiting.

Guarding.

If anything tried to crawl out of that dark, it was going to meet him first.

The dark swallowed the sound of their boots faster than it swallowed the light.

Max shifted her weight forward, the balls of her feet burning with the need to move.
To follow.
To do something.

But Caleb’s voice echoed against the inside of her skull, steady and immovable.

“Nobody goes in alone.”

Max tightened her fingers around the flashlight until the plastic creaked in protest.

She flicked a glance sideways—Heather breathing like she was running a race she hadn’t signed up for, Alice Mae coiled tight, every inch of her ready to spring.

And Caleb, crouched by the lip of the tunnel like a sentry out of some story no one survived.

Max swallowed against the burning knot lodged behind her ribs.

The cold bleeding up from the open hole felt sharper now.
Like it knew she was hesitating.
Like it could smell the crack forming under her skin.

She shifted the flashlight down into the pit again, beam cutting across the broken ladder, the darkness pressing back harder now.

Her voice, when it came, was rough and dry and too loud against the waiting quiet.

“We don’t leave them,” Max said, not looking away from the hole.

The words weren’t a question.
They weren’t a reminder.

They were a promise.

She bent her knees slightly, grounding herself—not to jump, not yet—but to be ready.
For whatever came clawing back out of the dark.
Or for the moment when standing still stopped being an option.

Max let out a breath, slow and measured, even though everything inside her was burning fast and bright.

“We hold the line,” she muttered, mostly to herself, mostly to the dark. “Or we bury it.”

Her flashlight beam trembled once—and then steadied.

Max didn’t move again.

Not yet.

But when the time came?

She’d be the first one in.

No hesitation.
No fear she was willing to show.

Not for them.
Not for Shadyside.
Not for the thing waiting with its mouth wide open below their feet.

The air coming out of the tunnel didn’t just smell wrong—it felt wrong.
Slick and heavy, dragging across her skin like oil.

Alice Mae adjusted her grip on her flashlight, feeling the familiar, sharp bite of the rubber casing against her palms.
The only thing real right now.
The only thing solid.

Max stood rigid at the edge, her shoulders carved out of iron and spite, every muscle humming with barely contained motion.
Heather hovered nearby, one breath away from a full-body collapse she didn’t even realize she was holding back.
And Caleb—Caleb crouched low, steady and patient, like he could absorb the shaking in everyone else if he stayed rooted deep enough.

Alice Mae flicked her flashlight once down into the open hole, catching only blackness yawning wide in response.

Benji and Eli were down there somewhere.

Two good guys in a place that didn’t deserve good things.

Alice Mae set her jaw.

Max’s voice broke the silence—raw, scraping against the cold.

“We don’t leave them.”

Alice Mae didn’t argue.
Didn’t roll her eyes.
Didn’t offer some clipped, Sunnyvale-bred rebuttal about living to fight another day.

Because she knew Max was right.
Knew it in the marrow of her bones.

Max shifted slightly, feet planting, body tightening like she was holding herself together with sheer force of will.

“We hold the line,” Max muttered, quieter now. “Or we bury it.”

Alice Mae swallowed, the taste of rust thick in the back of her throat.

The cold bleeding up from the tunnel wasn’t just cold anymore.
It was hungry.
It was waiting.

Alice Mae dragged her gaze across the others again, scanning like she was still a Sunnyvale girl sizing up competition.

Heather, fists clenching and unclenching like she could fight the dark with her bare hands.
Caleb, breathing slow, anchoring them without saying a damn word.
Max, flashlight locked steady even when her whole body shook like a live wire.

Alice Mae tightened her jaw.

Fine.

If the world wanted a blood price, it would have to come through her first too.

She shifted her flashlight back to the hole, her voice low and flat but cutting through the tension like a blade.

“First thing that tries to climb out of there?” she said, voice steady. “It’s getting a crowbar to the face.”

Heather let out a breath that might’ve been a broken laugh.
Caleb just nodded, one sharp jerk of his chin.

Max didn’t say anything.

She didn’t have to.

Alice Mae squared her shoulders against the cold weight pressing down from the ceiling, against the hum in the walls, against the thing breathing up from the pit.

And she waited.

The ladder rattled under his weight, every rung slick with rust and something worse he didn’t want to think about.

Benji dropped the last few feet, boots hitting the tunnel floor with a muffled thud.

The impact shuddered up his spine, but he stayed crouched low for a second, flashlight pinned between his shoulder and jaw, hand braced against the dirt.

The cold was worse down here.

Not the kind that scraped your skin raw—
the kind that sank into your bones and stayed there, carving you out from the inside.

He pushed slowly to his feet, sweeping his flashlight in a slow arc across the tunnel walls.

The beam barely cut through the dark, swallowing the light just a few feet ahead.

Stone walls, slick and crumbling.
Old maintenance pipes overhead, some burst open, leaking slow, greasy drips onto the floor.
Worn tracks in the dirt—boot prints, maybe.
Not fresh.

But not ancient either.

Benji adjusted his grip on the flashlight, muscles tense.
Every step he took forward felt wrong—like the ground under his boots didn’t want him there.

He forced himself another few feet down the tunnel, careful, deliberate.

Eli’s flashlight bobbed down from above, a faint flicker, getting closer.
Good.
He didn’t want to be down here alone longer than he had to be.

Benji swept his light across the ground again—and caught it.

A mark.
Scratched deep into the dirt and stone.

Not random.
Not natural.

Symbols.
Old.
Mean.

His stomach twisted.

He crouched low, letting the flashlight skim over it—careful not to step too close.

The mark was jagged, carved by hand, maybe.
Something that looked like a half-broken chain and a spiral curling inward, blackened at the edges like it had been burned into the rock itself.

Benji’s throat felt tight.

He straightened slowly, heart pounding harder now, not from exertion—but from the thing rising in the pit of his stomach, that old, primal instinct that said:

Leave it alone.
Get out.
Now.

He didn’t move.
Didn’t call out.

Just stood there, flashlight trembling slightly against his gloved hand, watching the dark press closer.

Waiting for Eli to land beside him.

Waiting for whatever else was already awake down here to show its teeth.

The ladder groaned under his weight, the rusted metal shuddering with every careful step.

Eli moved fast but silent—
flashlight gripped tight in one hand, knife in the other, the beam tucked against his forearm to leave his palm free if he needed it.

The air thickened the deeper he dropped.

It wasn’t just cold.
It was wet.
Dense.
Clogging the back of his throat with the taste of iron and mold and something older than rot.

He hit the bottom with a low thud, knees bending to absorb the shock.
Stayed low for a second—sweeping the beam in a slow, tight arc around his boots.

Benji stood a few feet ahead, stiff as a wire, flashlight trembling faint against the dark.

Eli clocked the tension in his spine instantly—
the way his body was angled half-back toward Eli without even meaning to, like he'd been waiting for backup.

Eli rose silently to his feet.

The tunnel stretched around them—stone walls slick with moisture, old maintenance pipes spiderwebbing overhead, the floor stained with ancient, greasy streaks.

The smell was worse down here.
Closer.
Feral.

He stepped forward slowly, scanning every inch of ground between them.

That’s when he saw it.

The mark.

Etched into the dirt and stone—blackened, burned.
Jagged spiral.
Broken chain.

It felt wrong just looking at it.
Like it wasn’t meant for human eyes.

Eli’s fingers flexed against the knife hilt once—tight, instinctive.

Benji didn't say anything.

Neither did he.

They didn’t have to.

The dark around them thickened—
pressing closer.
Listening.

Something deep in the tunnels shifted—
a scrape, faint but sharp.
Metal against stone.

Eli’s flashlight jerked toward the sound—
but the beam caught nothing.
Just more dark.
More empty space that didn’t feel empty at all.

Benji shifted his stance, breath catching barely audible in the close air.

Eli moved to stand at his side, close enough that their shoulders almost brushed—
a silent formation, a line drawn in the dirt.

Not alone.
Not anymore.

The scrape came again—louder this time, closer.

And beneath it—
something softer.

A whisper.

Not words.

Just sound.

Breath.

Eli flicked his eyes sideways at Benji once—
sharp, measured.

Benji’s mouth was a grim line, flashlight locked on the tunnel ahead like he could will the dark to back off.

Eli tipped his chin once—
a silent ready?

Benji nodded.

No bravado.
No plan.

Just two idiots and a promise:

Nobody dies alone.

Eli adjusted his grip on the knife, angled his body slightly forward, weight light on the balls of his feet.

Whatever was coming, he’d meet it standing.

And if the dark wanted them?

It was gonna have to bleed for it.

The dark kept breathing.

Heavy. Wet. Wrong.

Heather stayed frozen near the edge of the tunnel, fists clenched so tight her nails bit into her palms through her gloves.

She hated it.
Hated standing still.
Hated the way her heart hammered against her ribs like it wanted out.

The cold coming up from the hole felt sharper now.
Colder.

Almost... curious.

She shifted slightly, flashlight slipping in her sweaty grip—

—and that’s when she heard it.

A whisper, threading up from the dark.
Scratchy. Slithering.

Her blood iced.

Not random.
Not echoes.

Words.

"Goode girl."

Heather’s breath hitched hard in her throat.

It was Benji’s nickname for her.
Benji, grinning like an idiot, teasing her the night they got inked together—
his thumb brushing the inside of her wrist, warm and stupid and hers.

But this wasn’t Benji’s voice.

It was lower.
Twisted.
Wrong.

Something oily and old trying to fit itself into his skin and falling apart in the attempt.

Heather’s knees locked.
Her chest crushed inward.

She couldn’t move.

Couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t—

Her fingers fumbled, almost without thought, finding the spot on her side—
the sharp, hidden place just under her ribs where the ink still burned warm when she touched it.

Their tattoos.
Their promises.
Their defiance stitched into skin and memory.

Heather pressed her palm flat against it, grounding herself.

Not Sunnyvale’s.
Not the curse’s.
Not anyone’s.

Just hers.

Just his.

The panic cracked slightly under the pressure of it—
enough for her to suck in a shaky breath.

Below, the first scrape of boots on stone echoed up—
too sharp.
Too fast.

Not cautious.

Running.

And then another sound.

Not footsteps.

Something else.

Something bigger.

Heather didn’t think.
Didn’t hesitate.

She pushed forward toward the edge of the tunnel, fingers curling tighter around her flashlight, voice ripping free from her throat before she could stop it:

"Hey, Benji! You better not be getting murdered without me, you asshole!"

The words cracked through the silence, half-sassy, half-savage, everything she didn’t know how to say.

Max’s head snapped toward her, eyes wide.
Caleb surged instinctively closer, ready to catch her if the world started breaking open.

Alice Mae’s flashlight swung toward the dark.

Heather stayed where she was—
still shaking, still furious—
but standing.

Waiting.

Listening for Benji to yell back.

Praying he could.

Heather’s voice tore up out of the hole like a firecracker.

"Hey, Benji! You better not be getting murdered without me, you asshole!"

For a half-second, the whole world just—
stopped.

Max’s head snapped toward her so fast Caleb swore he heard her neck pop.
Alice Mae froze mid-breath, flashlight swinging wild across the mouth of the tunnel.

And Caleb—
Caleb just blinked at Heather like she’d lost her goddamn mind.

She was standing there, wild-eyed, flushed, shaking, practically vibrating out of her boots—
and still somehow heckling the darkness.

He scrubbed a hand down his face, exhaling slow through his nose.

God help him, he loved these idiots.

He straightened up from his crouch, tossing Max a sidelong glance like "you seeing this?"
Max just stared back at him, eyes wide, half-murderous, half-panicked.

Caleb rolled his shoulders, shifted his weight back onto his heels, and said—loud enough for all of them to hear:

"Yeah, cool, love the energy. Maybe next time we save the trash talk for after the demon tunnel stops breathing?"

Heather shot him a look—sharp, alive, the ghost of a real grin flickering at the corners of her mouth.

Alice Mae huffed out something that might've been a laugh or might've been her soul leaving her body.

Even Max’s jaw unclenched slightly, the murderous gleam in her eyes softening just enough to be human again.

Caleb rolled his Maglite once across his palm—heavy, solid, dependable.

Inside, he was coiled tighter than a tripwire.

But he grinned anyway—easy, loose, the way you did when you were scared shitless and pretending you weren't.

He tipped an imaginary hat toward Heather, deadpan:

"Points for style though, Goodwin. Really setting the bar high for worst battle cry of all time."

Heather flipped him off without missing a beat.

Caleb chuckled under his breath—
and shifted slightly closer to the others.

Maglite ready.
Heart hammering somewhere down in his boots.

Heather’s shout cracked the world open for a second—
wild, reckless, stupidly brave in the worst possible way.

Max’s heart punched into her ribs hard enough to leave bruises.
She snapped her head toward the sound, flashlight jerking sideways, nearly taking Caleb out with the beam.

Everything froze.

Caleb, standing there like the human equivalent of an exhausted sigh.
Alice Mae, somewhere between hysterical and homicidal.
Heather—vibrating with fury and fear, middle finger raised high like a flag she refused to lower.

And for half a breath—

Max almost laughed.

It bubbled up sharp and bright behind her teeth, cracked loose by sheer force of how goddamn ridiculous they all were.
Wading chest-deep into something none of them could understand—armed with crowbars and sarcasm and a loyalty sharp enough to draw blood.

She swallowed it down before it could break free.

Caleb deadpanned something about Heather’s “worst battle cry,” tipping an invisible hat, all loose shoulders and half-baked bravado.

Heather flipped him off so hard it was almost graceful.

Max let herself breathe—just once.
A shallow, rough inhale that didn’t reach all the way to her lungs.

The tension in her chest eased by a fraction, the knot behind her ribs loosening enough to let her flashlight steady again.

They were scared.
They were stupid.

They were still standing.

Max shifted her weight, sliding closer to the edge of the tunnel, beam slicing into the dark again.

No sound from below yet.
No yell.
No crash.
No confirmation that Benji and Eli hadn’t been swallowed whole.

The fear crawled back up her spine slow and steady, wrapping around the base of her skull, coiling behind her eyes.

Max tightened her grip on the flashlight until her fingers went numb.

No more waiting.

No more hoping.

If the dark wanted to rip them apart, it was going to have to get through her first.

Max rolled her shoulders once—shrugging off the worst of the shake—then braced herself at the lip of the tunnel, knees bending, body ready.

“Get ready,” she muttered under her breath, the words barely making it past her clenched teeth.

Not loud.
Not a rallying cry.

Just a promise.

Because if whatever was slithering around down there decided to come up for them—
if it decided it liked the taste of their fear—

Max was going to make damn sure it choked on it.

The humor cracked the tension for maybe half a heartbeat.

Heather flipping Caleb off.
Caleb deadpanning like they weren’t all seconds away from maybe getting eaten by whatever the hell was crawling under Shadyside.

Max breathing again, barely.

Alice Mae clocked it all without shifting so much as an inch.

But it didn’t ease the knot curling tighter in her gut.

Because the dark hadn’t stopped moving.

It pulsed at the edge of the grate—
heavy, wet, breathing.
Not noise.
Not wind.
Breathing.

Max’s flashlight jerked sharper, cutting a more deliberate line across the pit.

“Get ready,” Max muttered under her breath, voice tight enough to snap.

Alice Mae tightened her grip on her own flashlight, shifting the beam downward without taking her eyes off the gaping black.

She didn’t need to be told twice.

Heather bounced slightly on her toes, trying to look tougher than she felt, still jittering with adrenaline she couldn’t burn off.

Caleb shifted back a half-step, crowbar raised in an easy arc across his body—casual if you didn’t know what you were looking at.
Caleb was ready to swing for blood.

Max moved closest to the edge, bracing herself like a shield, muscles drawn tight enough that Alice Mae half-expected her to lunge in headfirst.

Alice Mae positioned herself slightly off-center from them—
not front and center, but not back either.
Flank.

Guard.

She swallowed down the rush of her own heartbeat in her ears and let her instincts do what they’d been honed to do since the day she learned fairy tales lied.

The bad thing was already here.

It was just deciding when to make itself known.

Alice Mae slid one foot back, angling her body sideways without a sound—reducing her target, opening her stance, breathing slow through her nose.

Fight, flight, freeze.

Sunnyvale had taught her to pick flight.
Shadyside had made her too stubborn to run.

She steadied the beam of her flashlight, locking her jaw tight.

If the dark wanted a fight—

fine.

She’d give it one.

Heather’s voice cracked down the tunnel like a spark through gasoline.

Rough. Wild. Fierce.

Benji froze mid-step, head jerking slightly toward the noise—
the rough edges of her words, the way she threw herself out across the dark like she could pull him back just by sheer force of will.

For half a heartbeat, it steadied him.

Made the walls feel a little less like they were caving in.

Eli moved up closer at his side, silent, tense, flashlight beam slicing the dark into narrow pieces.
No words passed between them.
None were needed.

Benji adjusted his grip on the flashlight, forcing himself forward, boots scuffing against the dirt floor.

The tunnel twisted left, then right, narrowing sharply.

The walls here were rougher—jagged stone where old cement had crumbled away.

His beam caught something—
a strange glint against the raw wall.

He swung the flashlight back, slower this time.

Closer.

At first, he thought it was just cracks.
Age.
Stress fractures.

But no.

They were letters.

Scratched deep.
Carved over and over until the marks bled into each other.

Names.

He leaned in, heart hammering against his ribs.

Each name gouged with the same frantic, broken hand:

Cyrus Miller.
Billy Barker.
Harry Rooker.
Ruby Lane.
Tommy Slater.
Ryan Torres.
Samantha Frazier.

The names bled downward—rougher, messier, angrier.

Every cursed name Shadyside tried to bury and forget.
Every killer that clawed their town’s name into infamy.

Benji dragged the beam lower—

and there, at the very bottom, fresh enough that the stone still looked raw where it had been gouged—

another name.

Heather Goodwin.

His stomach twisted, sharp and violent.

Benji jerked backward instinctively, boots scraping hard against the dirt.

Eli was at his shoulder in a second, flashlight catching the carved letters too.

Benji didn’t look at him.

Couldn’t.

The weight of the truth pressed down harder than the walls, harder than the stink of blood and rust.

Heather’s name.

Already carved.
Already claimed.

Benji’s knuckles whitened around the flashlight, the plastic creaking.

“No,” he muttered under his breath, voice cracking out raw. “No fucking way.”

He turned, flashlight snapping back toward the shaft, toward the way up, where Heather and the others waited, where Max was probably already halfway down the hole in sheer defiance.

Benji clenched his jaw hard enough it ached.

Not again.

Not her.

Not anyone.

Not if he had anything to say about it.

He flicked a glance sideways at Eli—sharp, fierce—and Eli just nodded once.

Silent agreement.

Fight first.
Break later.

Benji tightened his grip on the flashlight.

And moved.

He saw it at the same time Benji did.

The names.

Etched deep into the wall—
desperate, brutal, angry.

Every cursed soul Shadyside ever bred, bleeding down the stone like a roll call of everything they tried to bury and failed.

Benji moved closer, flashlight trembling faintly in his hand.

Eli stayed half a step behind—
watching the dark, watching the walls, watching the way the air twisted colder the deeper they went.

When Benji’s breath hitched—
sharp, broken—

Eli knew before the beam even shifted.

Knew it was bad.
Knew it was worse than anything they'd seen so far.

The flashlight dipped lower—
caught the last name scratched into the stone.

Heather Goodwin.

Fresh.
Jagged.
Claimed.

Eli’s fingers flexed against the knife hilt tucked into his jacket.

He watched Benji stagger back, boots scuffing against the dirt, rage snapping taut across his shoulders like a pulled wire.

Eli didn’t say anything.
Didn’t try to stop him.

Some things didn’t need words.

He just moved—
closing the distance between them, placing himself slightly between Benji and the stretch of tunnel that still lay ahead.

The air shifted.

Subtle.

Wrong.

Somewhere deeper, something stirred—
a scrape across stone.
A drag.
A slither.

Eli flicked his flashlight toward the sound.

Nothing there.

Yet.

Benji turned back toward the shaft, toward the thin slice of light far above them where Max and the others waited.

His face was set—hard, grim, fierce.

Eli caught his glance.
Answered it with a nod.

No speeches.
No promises.

Fight first.
Break later.

The dark pulsed again—
heavier this time.
Hungrier.

Eli tightened his grip on the knife, shifting his stance slightly forward—ready to move, ready to kill, ready to die if he had to.

He scanned the tunnel again—low, fast, efficient.

There were no good exits.
No fallback plan.
No safety net.

Just stone, dark, and the names of the dead clawing at their heels.

Eli breathed once—
slow, steady—
and stepped into the space between Benji and the dark.

Whatever came out of that hole?

It was going to have to get through him first.

Benji didn’t answer.

Not a shout.
Not a whisper.
Nothing but silence—and the dark breathing up at her from below.

Heather’s feet wouldn’t move.
They were welded to the concrete, useless and traitorous. Every muscle screamed to jump, to run, to do something besides stand there shaking like a goddamn coward.

But she couldn’t.
Because even if she did—Caleb was watching. Max was ready. Alice Mae was coiled tight enough to snap.
They’d drag her back, she knew it.

She wasn’t going anywhere.
And neither was Benji.

The air thickened again, heavier than before, cold slicking across her skin like ice water.

Then the whispers started again—
thin, scraping, hateful.
Curling against her ears like a caress she never wanted:

“He’s gone.”
“Already ours.”
“Too late, Goode girl.”

She clenched her fists so tight it hurt, nails biting deep enough to draw blood.
Her jaw locked so hard she felt her teeth might crack.

The voices slithered louder, closer, mocking:

“Always too late.”
“Just another dead girl.”

Heather’s breath came sharp, ragged. Her throat burned, words clawing their way out before she could stop them.

“Shut the hell up!” she snapped, voice raw and cracked open. “You don’t get to talk about him like that!”

The words echoed sharply against the tunnel walls, bouncing off the stone, crashing through the dark.

And then—silence.
Horrible, perfect, blistering silence.

Caleb’s head whipped toward her instantly, flashlight beam jittering wildly as he stared, wide-eyed, exasperation mixing with something sharper behind his gaze—concern, fear, again, really?

Max jerked sideways, her stance shifting subtly—ready to move if Heather cracked wide open.

Alice Mae froze, eyes cutting toward her sharply, assessing.

Heather stood there, chest heaving, heat flooding her cheeks, heart pounding hard enough to crack ribs.

They couldn’t hear it.
They hadn’t heard any of it.

Just her.

Just her, yelling at the air like a fucking lunatic while Benji was somewhere down there, silent, probably—

She cut off the thought before it finished, swallowing hard against the bile rising in her throat.

Her voice dropped lower, tighter, cracked with shame and stubborn fury.

"They’re—” she started, then stopped herself. Closed her eyes for half a second, pulling her shit back together. “The whispers are back.”

Caleb’s eyebrows rose higher—half skeptical, half worried—but he didn’t say a word.

Heather shifted her weight, fists clenching again. Her chin came up, defiant, angry, daring the dark to try her again.

She was done running from ghosts.
She was done letting the dark whisper anything it wanted without fighting back.

“If you're gonna taunt me,” she muttered through gritted teeth, low and fierce, “you better come ready to bleed.”

The dark didn’t answer.

But she could swear it smiled.

Heather stayed where she was—
trembling, furious, anchored by a promise she couldn’t break, and a boy she wasn’t going to lose.

Not tonight.
Not ever again.

Heather’s shout ripped across the air like a live wire snapping.

Caleb jerked his head toward her on instinct, flashlight beam swinging wide, crowbar lifting automatically in his other hand.

She was just—
standing there.
Screaming at nothing.

Again.

Caleb exhaled slowly through his nose, tightening his grip on the crowbar so he didn’t hurl it into the nearest wall out of sheer frustration.

"Again with this shit?" he muttered under his breath, not loud enough for anyone but himself to hear.

If she could just keep it together for five goddamn minutes—
maybe they wouldn’t all end up dead in a mall basement straight out of a cursed Goosebumps special.

But then—

Heather’s voice cracked lower, broken around the edges.

"The whispers are back."

And just like that, the irritation curdled into something heavier.
Something colder.

Caleb didn’t say a word.
Didn’t make a sound.

He just watched—silent and steady—as Alice Mae moved in.

She touched Heather’s arm lightly—steadying, grounding—and murmured something Caleb couldn’t hear.
Didn’t need to.

Heather jerked slightly under the touch, breathing hard, but she didn’t bolt.
Didn’t break.

Caleb shifted his stance subtly, adjusting the flashlight to free up his crowbar grip again.

He scanned the dark automatically, the habits built bone-deep by now:
Check the perimeter.
Watch the exits.
Count the bodies.

One idiot screaming at ghosts.
One stone-cold Sunnyvale girl holding her together.
One defiant Max, braced at the edge like she could hold the world back with sheer stubbornness.

And him.

The backup plan.
The line they couldn’t afford to lose.

Caleb rolled his shoulders once, easy, loose.

Then he turned—angling toward Max, flashlight dropping slightly to keep the beam tight and focused.

"We got this?" he asked—low, calm, no panic in it.

Because they had to.

Because the two idiots crawling around in the dark below them—
the ones who hadn’t made a goddamn sound since dropping out of sight—
needed them to.

Max didn’t answer right away.
Didn’t even glance at him at first.

Just kept her eyes locked on the tunnel, body tense, breathing steady.

Finally, she nodded once.

Small. Sharp. Unbreakable.

Caleb let out a breath, slow and controlled, and tightened his fingers around the crowbar.

If something came clawing up out of that hole—
if the dark wanted a fight—

they were ready to give it one.

Heather’s shout ripped through the stale air like a blade.

It rattled all of them—Caleb snapping toward her with a grunt of disbelief, Alice Mae stepping in fast and sharp, tension snapping tight between them like a stretched wire about to fray.

Max didn’t move at first.

Didn’t flinch.

She just watched.

Heather stood there—red-faced, trembling, fists balled so tight her gloves creaked—and something inside her had cracked wide open.
Not fear this time.

Not panic.

Fight.

Max saw it clear as daylight—
the way Heather shook but didn’t fold,
the way she cursed the darkness back to hell with nothing but her voice,
the way she pressed a hand to her ribs like she could remember who she was if she pressed hard enough.

Max felt something pull in her chest.

Not pity.
Not concern.

Respect.

Real, hard-earned, blood-and-teeth respect.

It was one thing to survive Shadyside by running.
By ducking your head, by praying the bad luck passed you by.

It was another thing entirely to stand up when the darkness whispered your name and called you dead already.

Heather stood.

Even if her whole body shook with it.

Max angled slightly toward her without thinking—subtle, instinctive—shifting her weight to cover the space between them a little more, like she could absorb any blow meant for her if it came.

She didn’t say anything.

Didn’t need to.

The dark was still breathing against their skin, heavy and wet and waiting.

But Heather breathed back now—loud, ragged, alive.

Max’s mouth tightened into something almost like a smile.

Tiny. Fierce.
Gone in a blink.

When Caleb muttered, “We got this?”
Max didn’t hesitate.

She flicked a glance at Heather—chest heaving, fists steady.

At Alice Mae—shoulders squared, eyes sharp.

At Caleb—crowbar in hand, loose and ready.

Then back to the mouth of the tunnel.

Waiting.

“Yeah,” Max muttered under her breath, voice low and sure, more a promise than a command.

“We’ve got this.”

And if the dark didn’t believe them—

Max would make it.

For half a second, the whole world balanced on a knife’s edge.

Heather, trembling and furious, fists clenched like she could punch the dark straight out of the air.
Max, braced solid at the edge of the tunnel, not loud, not flashy, just there—unbreakable in a way Alice Mae couldn’t help but notice.
Caleb, loose and ready, crowbar swinging low in his grip, already betting his life that Max would hold the line if it broke.

And her.

Standing a half-step out, caught between instinct and choice.

Every muscle in Alice Mae’s body screamed to cut and run.
To grab Caleb by the arm, shove Heather toward the exit, drag Max kicking and screaming if she had to.

Because this place wasn’t just wrong.

It was hungry.

The kind of wrong you didn’t fight.
The kind of wrong you didn’t survive if you stayed too long.

But Heather’s voice—
raw and vicious, tearing at the silence like it owed her something—

and Max’s voice—
quiet, brutal, promising not just survival but defiance—

they changed something.

Not loud.
Not dramatic.

Just… real.

Alice Mae swallowed hard, feeling the weight of it settle under her skin like a second heartbeat.

This wasn’t just bad luck.
This wasn’t just cursed history.

This was a war.
And you didn’t survive wars by running solo.

You survived them by standing with the ones willing to bleed beside you.

Alice Mae shifted her stance slightly—subtle, practiced—bringing her flashlight higher, realigning her body to cover Heather’s left side without saying a word.
If something came out of that pit, Heather wasn’t going to face it alone.

Neither was Max.
Neither was Caleb.

Neither was she.

Alice Mae’s jaw tightened as she squared her shoulders, feeling the fear lodge itself deep but manageable inside her ribs.

This wasn’t Sunnyvale anymore.

There were no trophies for surviving pretty.

Only scars for surviving at all.

Her fingers flexed once against the flashlight.

Fine.

If the dark wanted them—

it better be ready to lose.

The second the dark shifted behind them, Benji ran.

No warning.
No plan.

Just pure, wired instinct screaming Move.

His boots hit the dirt hard, kicking up dust and loose pebbles, flashlight beam slamming wild across the walls as he sprinted for the ladder.

Eli was at his shoulder instantly—silent, fast, knife gleaming dully under the jerky swing of their lights.

The tunnel groaned around them, the sound deep and wet and wrong—
like the stone itself was breathing.
Like the ground under their feet wanted to open up and swallow them whole.

Benji didn’t look back.

Didn’t need to.

The cold was crawling up his spine faster now—slick and clawing, dragging greedy fingers across his ribs.

Something shifted just out of range of his light.
Fast. Low. Wrong.

He shoved harder with his legs, burning every ounce of strength in his body to keep moving.

The ladder came into view—
a crooked silhouette against the sickly sliver of light filtering down from the mall above.

Benji locked onto it like a lifeline.

Almost there.

Almost—

A shape peeled itself from the dark.

Benji caught it half-formed in the corner of his vision—
long, broken-limbed, dragging itself across the wall like it didn’t remember how to be human anymore.

He didn’t stop to stare.

Didn’t hesitate.

He barreled forward, shoulder slamming into the ladder with enough force to rattle the bolts loose.

Benji gritted his teeth, grabbed the first rung, and shoved himself upward.

The metal groaned under his weight—old, rusted, ready to tear free—but he didn’t slow down.

Not with that thing behind him.

Not with Heather’s name still fresh on the wall.

Not with the promise he hadn’t even spoken yet burning under his skin:

Not her.
Not this time.

He hauled himself up another rung, muscles screaming, lungs burning.

Somewhere below, he heard Eli hit the ladder too—the low, rough scrape of boots, the grunt of weight shifting fast.

The dark shrieked behind them—

high and wet and furious.

Benji didn’t dare look.

He just climbed.

Hand over hand, rung after rattling rung, the mall ceiling growing fractionally closer with every desperate pull.

Above, a shape leaned over the grate—
flashlight beam swinging wildly—
Max.

Max, braced like she could drag him up by sheer force of will if she had to.

Benji locked his jaw, shoved his body harder, and kept climbing.

Because there was no other option.

Because if he didn’t get back—

Heather was next.

For half a heartbeat, Eli hesitated.

Not from fear.

From calculation.

The ground shuddered faintly under his boots—
not an earthquake.
Something worse.
Something alive.

The dark behind them bloomed wide and wet and furious, rushing up their backs like a second heartbeat turned inside out.

Benji bolted first.

Eli followed.

No orders.
No plan.
Just the only choice that mattered.

He pivoted sharp and hard, boots scraping against the dirt floor as he took off after Benji—
silent, fast, his flashlight beam slashing sideways as he moved.

The air thickened instantly—
heavy, slick, dragging at his limbs like tar.
The stench of blood and rust and something fouler clawed at his throat.

Still, he ran.

Kept half an eye over his shoulder even as he sprinted—
because he’d rather see what was about to kill him than let it carve into his back.

But there was nothing there.

Just shadow.

Just wrongness.

Just the sound of breath that wasn’t his slithering through the air behind them.

The tunnel twisted—left, right, narrowing—and Eli forced his body harder, faster.

Benji’s flashlight wobbled ahead, jerky and wild, catching the broken silhouette of the ladder against the low, crumbling ceiling.

Thank God.

Benji reached it first—hit the rungs like a battering ram, climbing fast, metal groaning and shuddering under the strain.

Eli slammed into the ladder half a second later, boots scraping hard against the dirt.

He paused only long enough—
just a flick of his head back.

Not to look for what was chasing.

To make sure it hadn’t already caught them.

The dark gaped empty behind him—
but it breathed—
it watched—
it waited.

Eli ground his teeth and shoved upward—
hand over hand, hauling himself into the crumbling mouth of the mall’s dying heart.

Below, something shrieked.

High. Wet. Furious.

Real.

Or not.

It didn’t matter.

They weren’t staying to find out.

The ladder rattled under both their weights, bolts groaning and flecks of rust snowing down with every desperate pull.

Above—
a slash of wild light, a silhouette braced hard against the edge—
Max.

Max, ready to yank them back to the living if she had to.

Benji climbed faster, driven by something furious and feral.

Eli kept pace—
silent.
Focused.
Breath burning in his chest like ice.

There was no room left for fear.
No room for hesitation.

Just the thin, broken ladder.
Just the cold teeth of the dark licking at their heels.

And the promise—
silent, violent, absolute:

Not today.
Not them.

The second a hand broke through the lip of the tunnel, Heather moved.

No hesitation.

No thought.

She dropped to her knees hard enough to bruise, scraping her palms against the rough concrete as she lunged forward—grabbing for Benji’s wrist, hauling him up with more desperation than strength.

He scrambled the last few feet, boots skidding against the edge, fingers locking tight into hers like he needed her to tether him back to the world.

The second he was free of the dark, he collapsed forward—straight into her.

Heather caught him awkwardly, both of them half-crashing to the cold ground, a heap of ragged breath and shaking limbs.

For a second—
just a second—
she didn’t care who was watching.

She curled into him fiercely, arms tight around his neck, forehead pressing hard into his shoulder like she could brand him alive with sheer will.

"You jerk,” she muttered, voice muffled and trembling against his jacket. “You absolute, grade-A, selfish asshole. Making me worry like that.”

Benji let out a rough exhale—part laugh, part sob—and buried his face against the curve of her neck, fingers fisting tight into the back of her jacket like he couldn’t tell if he was still falling.

The ground vibrated again—a soft, sick tremor—and Eli’s boots slammed against the edge as he hauled himself out behind them, landing solid and silent like a shadow finally unspooling from the dark.

Heather barely registered it.

For a second, there was nothing but Benji.
His heartbeat hammering wild against hers.
The cold stink of the tunnels still clinging to his skin.
The sheer, electric relief of him alive, here, real.

She pulled back slightly, just enough to see his face.

And froze.

Because Benji was looking at her—

not the way he usually did.
Not with mischief or affection or that stupid half-smirk that made her want to kiss and punch him all at once.

This look—
this one—

was cracked.

Hollow.

Like he was already mourning her.

Heather’s stomach twisted, sharp and cold.

A chill spidered up her spine, colder than anything the tunnels had spat out.

She blinked at him—breathless, caught—and before she could stop herself, the words slipped out:

“Why are you looking at me like you’ve already seen my ghost?”

Soft.
Curious.
Broken wide open.

Benji’s mouth parted—like he was about to speak.
About to explain.

But the mall groaned deep beneath them—
a slow, awful sound like something shifting under the weight of a hundred forgotten sins.

And the moment shattered.

Heather dragged her fingers tighter into the front of his jacket—
still clinging, still furious, still alive.

But somewhere inside her chest,
something cracked open too.

Something she didn’t know how to name yet.
Something the dark already had a name for.

Caleb didn’t move at first.

Didn’t even blink.

He just stood there, crowbar loose in one hand, Maglite beam locked steady on the edge of the tunnel, watching.

Waiting.

Benji broke through first—half-shoved, half-dragged up by Heather, both of them crashing into a messy, desperate heap on the concrete.

Caleb clocked it.
Didn’t flinch.

Next—
a heavier thud.

Eli hauled himself up clean, boots hitting the ground with a solid scrape, body already turning like he expected to have to fight the dark back up the ladder.

For half a second—
just a hair longer than he was proud of—
Caleb stayed frozen.

Then he breathed.
One shallow inhale.

Counted bodies fast:

Max.
Heather.
Alice Mae.
Benji.
Eli.

Six.

All here.

Still standing.

Still breathing.

Good enough.

Without waiting for discussion—or permission—Caleb stepped forward, shouldering the crowbar higher, and slammed it under the edge of the grate.

It groaned in protest—rusted bolts and warping metal—but Caleb didn’t give it a choice.

He grunted low under his breath, muscles straining, and heaved the damn thing back into place.

The heavy clang echoed through the mall like a gunshot, rattling down dead corridors and bouncing off empty storefronts.

Sealing whatever the hell they'd stirred up back where it belonged.
For now.

Caleb braced a boot against the concrete and jammed the edge tighter, just to be sure.

He didn’t trust it.
Not for a second.
But it was better than standing around with their asses hanging out.

He wiped a grimy hand down the front of his jeans, exhaling slow.

Then he turned, crowbar swinging lazily over one shoulder, and surveyed the group—
Heather still clinging to Benji like she might physically fight the universe if it tried to take him again.
Alice Mae hovering close, flanking them with sharp, silent defiance.
Max standing solid, but the twitch in her jaw said she was two seconds from throwing herself back into the pit if she had to.
Eli—silent, steady, eyes darker than Caleb had ever seen them.

A real party.

Caleb raised an eyebrow, deadpan.

"Not to kill the vibe or anything," he drawled, "but maybe we save the group hugs and trauma bonding for somewhere that doesn't feel like it’s actively trying to eat us?"

Max shot him a look—half exasperated, half relieved.

Benji let out a rough, choked laugh against Heather’s hair.

Alice Mae cracked the ghost of a grin.

Even Eli’s mouth twitched, barely.

Caleb shrugged, loose and easy, but kept the crowbar ready in his grip.

Because joking or not—

if this place wanted a second round?

They were ready.

The clang of the grate echoed through her bones.

Max didn’t flinch.
Didn’t move.
Just stood there, breathing slow through her nose as Caleb jammed the rusted thing back into place like he could hammer the darkness shut for good.

It wouldn’t hold.
She knew that.

But it bought them seconds.

Maybe minutes.

And right now, that was enough.

The silence that followed was brutal—heavy and twitching, like the mall itself was holding its breath.

Max scanned them one by one:

Benji—slumped against Heather, shaking in that way only someone who just barely survived shakes. His eyes wild, his face open and raw in a way she’d never seen before.
Heather—curled into him like a shield and a promise all at once, rage humming under her skin so loud Max could feel it from here.
Eli—stone-still, not breathing like the rest of them, just watching, like he hadn’t let go of the fight yet.
Alice Mae—silent, lips pressed in a flat line, her stance angled protectively but her eyes scanning for the next threat already.
Caleb—crowbar slung casual, but his knuckles were white.

They were all rattled.

Max was too.

She just didn’t have the luxury of showing it.

Caleb cracked a joke—dry, grim, perfectly timed.
It scattered the tension like glass, just for a second.

Benji laughed. Heather didn’t.
Alice Mae almost smiled.
Eli didn’t blink.

Max didn’t laugh either.

But she felt the snap inside her unwind a little.

She let her flashlight drop slightly, casting a jagged halo of light around their battered circle.

And she said nothing.

Because there was nothing left to say that would matter.

Not yet.

Instead, she stepped forward.
Just one step.
Enough to make a point.

Her voice, when it came, was low. Even.

“Nobody splits up. Not again.”

It wasn’t a request.

Max looked each of them dead in the eye—Benji first, then Heather, then the others—slow, steady, silent.

Then she nodded toward the mall doors.

“Let’s move.”

She turned without waiting for agreement.

If they wanted to fall apart, they could do it somewhere safer.

Somewhere the floor didn’t breathe.

Somewhere the walls didn’t whisper names they weren’t supposed to know.

But until then—

she would lead.

Even if her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Even if her name ended up carved next.

“Let’s move,” Max said.

No debate. No softness.

Just the tone of someone who’d already decided what came next.

Alice Mae watched her turn—tall and lean and frayed at the edges, like someone held together with tension and adrenaline and sheer, unshakable will.

And for the first time since this whole mess began,
Alice Mae felt something settle under her ribs.

Not trust.
Not yet.

But the shape of it.

She shifted slightly, falling into step without needing to be told. The others followed suit—some slower than others.

Benji peeled himself off the ground first, helped more by Heather’s stubborn grip than his own strength. His eyes were distant, body moving like it hadn’t quite decided if it belonged here yet.

Heather stuck close, chin high, jaw locked, practically vibrating with the effort not to unravel in front of them all.

Eli didn’t say a word.
Just moved when Max moved.
Shadow and muscle and a knife still tucked where it belonged.

Caleb followed last—crowbar slung casual again, but his eyes never stopped moving. Neither did his fingers, twitching like they were counting exits with every step.

Alice Mae took rear flank without thinking.
Not because she didn’t trust Max.
Because someone had to watch the back.

She kept her flashlight low, sweeping the shadows at the corners of the mall as they passed broken kiosks and shuttered storefronts.
Her boots echoed faintly against the tile.
No one spoke.

The silence was tight now.
Pressed between them like glass.
Cracked but not shattered.

Alice Mae flicked her eyes forward again—toward Max’s shoulders, squared and forward-facing, like she didn’t care how badly she was shaking.

She respected that.
Respected the hell out of it.

Max hadn’t asked to lead.

But she was doing it anyway.

And Alice Mae, for once, wasn’t inclined to fight her.

They were walking on borrowed time.
They all knew it.

But for now—
they walked together.

And that mattered more than she wanted to admit.

His legs moved.

He wasn’t sure how.

The mall shifted around them in broken silence—flickering exit signs, cracked tiles, old gum stuck to the soles of his boots.

Heather walked beside him—close, steady, still brushing his arm every couple steps like she didn’t trust him not to vanish.

He didn’t blame her.

Benji felt like a ghost in his own skin.

Each breath burned sharp against the back of his throat.
His flashlight hung useless at his side, barely catching the edges of Max’s silhouette ahead.

Max, who hadn’t flinched.
Max, who just kept going.
Max, who turned into a warpath when things went sideways and somehow expected them all to fall in line.

And they did.

Because what else were they supposed to do?

He glanced behind him once—Eli trailing like smoke, gaze razor-sharp, unreadable.
Alice Mae bringing up the rear, steps quiet but deliberate.

Caleb had fallen into rhythm too, crowbar still swinging like a threat and a shield all at once.

They looked fine.

Or they looked functional.

Benji wasn’t sure which was worse.

His gaze flicked sideways.

Heather.

Still breathing.
Still furious.
Still gripping the edge of herself like she could hold it all together if she just stayed angry enough.

God, he loved her.

It hit like a bruise when he let himself think it too hard.

She hadn’t seen it.

She didn’t know.

Didn’t know her name was already carved into the bones of the town, buried with the rest of the monsters, written in stone like it was destiny.

And he hadn’t told her.

Couldn’t.

Not yet.

Not while her fingers kept brushing his arm, not while she kept looking at him like he was solid, like he’d made her real again just by climbing back up that ladder.

His stomach twisted.

The guilt tasted like rust.

He swallowed it back down.

Now wasn’t the time.

Now was never the time.

Benji blinked, breathing harder than he meant to, pulse thudding behind his eyes.

He forced himself forward—step after step—shadows shifting on either side.

But the wall stayed with him.

The names.
The carvings.
The last one burned deepest of all.

Heather Goodwin.

Benji clenched his fists so hard his knuckles cracked.

He would find a way to stop it.

He had to.

Or he’d die trying.