With every step the group pushed deeper into the alley, the towering concrete walls seemed to lean slowly inward, drawing closer together, turning the wide passage into a suffocating corridor that could barely fit two people side by side.132Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYMKt0cEZyv
The pale gray light that had followed them from outside began to drain away, surrendering the world to a thick, swallowing darkness. Only the dim glimmer of stagnant water remained, coating the wet floor.
The air changed entirely. It grew dense and trapped, saturated with the stench of rot. It was no longer just a smell—it was something you inhaled and felt settle inside your chest. Woven into it was the sharp reek of rust that stung the nostrils.
There was no sound but their hesitant footsteps, and a steady, rhythmic noise that hammered against their nerves with brutal precision:
Tap...
Tap...
Tap...
Drops of water fell from massive air-conditioning units suspended high above, striking rusted metal crates. The ringing... like a countdown. A slow rhythm... but enough to pull every nerve to the edge of collapse.
The survivors were trapped in a state of cognitive paralysis. Fear didn't drive them to run—it turned them into wooden statues at every sound.
The group stopped suddenly.
Not because of anything obvious—just... because someone heard the sound closer than it should have been.
They froze.
Breaths held.
Eyes wide.
Bodies turned to statues, waiting for something... they didn't know what.
Two seconds passed. Three. Nothing.
"...Move."
Richard's voice came low, but sharp this time. It wasn't a request.
One of them swallowed hard and moved first. Then the others followed slowly, as if forcing themselves to break the paralysis.
But the rhythm was broken.
Their steps were no longer synchronized... each one walking to the beat of their own fear. One eye forward... another glancing back... and a third—if they could—toward the sky above.
Any small sound... was enough to stop them.
This wasn't caution anymore... it was paralysis.
Arya, moving like a ghost along the side of the caravan, noticed the silent collapse in the group's cohesion. Their bodies were trembling involuntarily. The hands clenched around crude weapons were beginning to lose their strength. For them, the danger was no longer just monsters—the place itself had become an enemy pressing down on their chests.
In the midst of this silent terror, Richard's voice moved through the ranks like a hidden whip. He wasn't shouting, but his whispers carried a sharpness they hadn't grown used to.
"Don't stop. Keep walking," he said, his tone dry, shoving Samer, who had frozen in place. "The sound you're hearing is just water. Don't let your minds play tricks on you. We're finishing this route."
His words carried no comfort this time—only pressure, pushing them forward... no matter what.
Arya didn't comment.
Her gaze wasn't on the walls... or the path. It was on the empty space between their movements. The rhythm they had lost.
The place hadn't attacked them... it had stolen their focus.
But the tension didn't stop there. The rhythm they had lost was no longer just a feeling—it had become visible in every step. Their steps were erratic... each one on the beat of their own fear. One of them whipped his head back every few seconds with sharp urgency, as if expecting to see something chasing them at any moment. Lisa clung to Richard more than before, nearly colliding with him with every step. Her hand was clutching the edge of his coat without thought, as if afraid he would vanish if she let go for even a moment.
As for Samer... he was different. His grip on his weapon was so tight his knuckles had gone white. His shoulders were raised with visible tension. He wasn't just looking forward... but at everything—randomly, desperately.
The alley wasn't long... but it seemed endless. Every step they took forward, the distance seemed unchanged. The same walls. The same shadows. The same sound—
Tap...
Tap...
Tap...
In a side corner... Arya moved.
Without sound.
Her steps were light, measured, barely touching the ground, as if she didn't belong to the same space that was crushing the others. She wasn't entirely close to them... nor far. Just positioned where she could see everyone.
But her eyes weren't only on the path. They rose for a moment toward the rooftops, then slid into the narrow gaps between the walls, then returned to the rear... watching the void that swallowed their traces.
She wasn't searching for anything specific. Just... anything unnatural.
While they walked—she watched.
The difference wasn't in strength... but in awareness. They moved because they were forced to. She moved because she chose where to place every step.
---
Suddenly, the monotonous rhythm of the water drops was broken by a different sound.
From the crumbling rooftop on the right side, there came a quick, light scraping—as if something weightless had passed across the metal boards. It wasn't a heavy sound. It was sudden and sharp, like a knife drawn across rough fabric.
Before a second had passed, a thin, fast shadow slid over their heads, cutting through that weak gray light creeping from above, and vanished in the blink of an eye behind the edge of the opposite roof.
The reaction was immediate and chaotic.
Half the group froze in place as if struck by lightning. A muffled gasp escaped Lisa as she pulled Richard's coat tighter, while one man lost control of his nerves. He raised his iron bar randomly toward the empty rooftop, waving it in the air as he spun around frantically, his breaths coming fast and loud in that confined space.
In the middle of this collective panic, Arya was the only still point.
She didn't retreat. She didn't raise her weapon. She didn't take a hasty combat stance. She stood in place with cold stillness, her body still submerged in the shadow of the wall. The only thing that moved was her head. She raised it slowly toward the edge where the shadow had disappeared.
Her eyes didn't search randomly like theirs—they stopped at a specific point above them, where that sound had passed.
For the others, this was an announcement of a lurking monster.
For Arya, it was the first signal confirming that the silence had never been empty.
One second. Two seconds. Then her eyes narrowed slightly.
Something... was there. Even if only for a moment.
"Steady," Richard's voice came low and tight, his eyes still fixed on the path ahead, though his grip on his weapon had tightened as well.
But Arya didn't turn toward him. Her eyes stayed locked above, where waiting was beginning to transform into tangible anticipation.
---
At the end of the alley, the light began to change. It was no longer entirely gray... a pale layer of cold white appeared—a sign that they were approaching an exit leading into the residential alleys.
But it brought no relief. The opposite.
The air grew more tense, as if the place itself was refusing to let them leave.
Tap...
Tap...
The water drops still fell, but their sound seemed farther away, as if something else was beginning to rise above it.
Then—
Movement.
From above.
Too fast to think.
The first monster dropped from a narrow ledge above the wall, its landing unsteady, but its trajectory direct—straight toward the group.
Then another followed. Then a third.
In moments, the silence collapsed into chaos.
"Behind you!" someone screamed.
But the cry came too late.
The attack didn't come from the front, but from where Arya's eyes had been fixed above. From the edges of the crumbling rooftops and from behind the corners of rusted chimneys, five or six shadows pounced at once. They weren't massive monsters—they were of the low ranks, Rank F and Rank E—but their speed as they dove from above made them look like black arrows falling into the middle of the group.
Chaos detonated in a second.
Muffled screams rose and choked in throats before they could finish. The survivors stumbled backward blindly, colliding with each other in the tight space. The men began striking the air with their iron bars and knives in wide, random swings—fear was moving their arms, not skill. One man dropped to his knees, covering his head. Another kept waving a metal scrap while the monster had already passed him.
But at the rear of the alley—there was no chaos.
Arya moved first.
A small sidestep.
An arrow.
Released.
A monster dropped instantly, almost without a sound.
[Target Eliminated: Common Monster — Rank E]
One second only.
She didn't wait for a reaction. A simple twist of her body, her arm returning back smoothly, as if the movement was part of her breathing.
Another arrow. A different target. A second fall.
[Target Eliminated: Common Monster — Rank F]
She wasn't increasing her speed... she was preventing waste. Every movement calculated. Every arrow with an angle. Every target... a clear weak point.
Draw... anchor... release.
Her first arrow didn't miss. It pierced the eye of the monster that had been preparing to leap over Kai, dropping the creature as a lifeless corpse before it could touch the ground. And without a flicker of her eyelid, her other hand was already drawing the next arrow.
While Samer and the others were burning their strength on strikes that hit nothing but air or only grazed the monsters' skin with shallow wounds, Arya was targeting the weak point directly. An arrow under the jaw. Another into the temple. She killed with mechanical coldness—without noise, without wasting a single excess movement.
Every arrow meant certain death.
In less than a minute, the movement stopped. The monsters that had attacked were corpses scattered between the trembling survivors' feet. The men stood gasping violently, their faces covered in sweat and terror, their weapons dripping black blood as they looked around in disbelief.
Arya lowered her bow calmly and swept the ground with a quick glance before re-anchoring her position at the rear.
She didn't look at the bodies. She didn't wait for thanks from anyone.
The difference was staggering between fighting for survival and exterminating to pass through.
Richard, gripping his long dagger, stared at one of the corpses where Arya's arrow had landed with surgical precision. Then he raised his eyes toward her. He didn't say anything. But the tight lines of his face said he was beginning to understand that the bow this girl carried was not just decoration.
"Move," Richard said, his voice hoarse, trying to regain his balance. "The exit is right ahead of us."
Arya stepped past the dead monster at her feet without looking back.
---
Everything fell still.
But this silence wasn't rest... it was a void stretched tight as a string about to snap.
One of them was panting in trembling bursts, trying to reclaim his breath as if it were something he had just lost. Another bent forward, hands on his knees, his body barely holding him upright.
"...Is it over?"
It wasn't a full sentence. It was a question that escaped before its owner had thought it through.
No answer.
Arya didn't stop at looking. This was the third time. But this time... it was no longer a passing instinct.
The first had been a meaningless feeling. The second had been monsters falling without understanding their direction. But now... everything had become unsettlingly clear.
Not coincidence. Not what Richard thought.
Her eyes narrowed as she caught a detail no one else had noticed: the attacks weren't searching for an opening... but for something else. For a reaction.
And above them... there was a shadow.
Not looking at the corpses. Not at the fight. But at her.
So... I'm the target.
It wasn't a question. It was a conclusion.
---
The sound came again. A faint scratching over the concrete, as if something was withdrawing overhead without showing itself.
"Arya! Move!" Richard's voice was sharp this time. "No time to stop!"132Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSW44xYmdCM
But she didn't move right away. She only bent, picked up her arrow from the corpse, then raised her gaze upward. To the point where the shadow had disappeared.
And in her mind, the image settled with cold clarity:
They weren't on an escape route. They were in a course being measured. Tested. Narrowed around them, step by step.
When the fighting ended, everything went still. But the silence wasn't rest. It was taut.
One man was panting as if he had just emerged from underwater. Another was bent over his knees, unable to stand.
"...Is it over?"
The words came out broken, without certainty.
No answer.
But Arya wasn't looking at them. Or at the corpses.
She looked only at the result.
Five or six. One timing. One direction. Then complete disappearance the moment the counterattack began.
Not a trap. Not an attack. A test.
They weren't attacking...
The thought paused for a moment.
Then it completed itself:
...They were measuring the path.
One of the survivors raised his head suddenly, but what he saw was nothing. The passage behind them looked normal... and that was what was wrong. No pursuit. No movement. Only the feeling that something hadn't finished yet.
Arya raised her gaze slowly upward. The rooftops were still. But the stillness itself wasn't clean.
Then the sound came. Very far. Low. Intermittent. Not a scream... and not movement. A signal.
One of them spun quickly: "Did you hear—"
The sound vanished before the question could finish.
Silence returned. But this time... it was no longer empty.
Arya took one step forward. Then she said, calm:
"...We're not done yet."
She paused a moment.
Then she added, as if reading a truth that could no longer be ignored:
"And he hasn't started yet."
---
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