The air inside Colony House felt electric, charged with anticipation and with whatever the military voice had planted in the minds of the survivors.
"Does anyone here know anything about this cave?" Randall, tense as a fighting dog, was the first to ask.
The residents began murmuring among themselves. No one there was accustomed to exploring deep into the forest; survival had always boiled down to staying indoors once the sun went down.
Boyd exchanged a quick glance with Khatri across the room, and the priest responded with a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head, but enough to convey his message: no, not now.
"Sheriff." Dale approached. "You've been through this forest more than anyone. Have you ever seen any sign of a cave around here?"
Even under everyone's attention, Boyd kept his face impassive. His mind was already searching for an excuse, any argument he could use to stop unprepared people from venturing into an unknown and potentially dangerous place.
Before he could formulate an answer, however, the atmosphere in the room changed drastically.
The lamps scattered throughout the room suddenly flared with blinding intensity for a fraction of a second before exploding almost simultaneously.
The sound of shattering glass was drowned out by the screams of panic erupting throughout the room, as several people threw themselves to the floor and covered their heads with their arms to shield themselves from the shards flying in every direction.
Tabitha wrapped her arms around Ethan, covering the boy with her own body to protect him.
"Ah! My eye! My eye!"
The scream came from Clara, a heavyset woman standing near the wall. She stumbled backward with both hands covering her face until Donna approached and pulled them away firmly.
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As she examined the injury, her expression shifted in shock at the thin shard of glass embedded in Clara's eye.
Realizing the severity of the situation, the sheriff immediately took control.
"Donna, give me the van keys. I'll take her to the clinic."
Donna didn't hesitate. She pulled the key from her pocket and handed it to him.
"Be careful."
Boyd grabbed Clara by the arm and quickly guided her toward the exit. As soon as they opened the door, the freezing wind hit them like a physical blow, forcing them to stagger backward for a moment.
The storm was raging outside, turning the lawn into a muddy mess and making every step difficult.
They moved toward the side of the house, fighting against the gusts that threatened to push them back.
When they were only a few yards from the van, a deafening crack of splitting wood echoed directly above them.
They both looked up at the same time, staring in shock at the danger.
The gigantic wooden antenna, built with so much sacrifice, had been ripped from the roof by the force of the wind and was now crashing straight toward them like a massive projectile.
In the middle of its fall, however, the structure jerked violently and came to a halt, suspended only by a thick black electrical cable.
The sharpened tip of the wood slammed into the side of the house with tremendous force, nearly piercing the window, but the boards nailed over it absorbed part of the impact.
Even so, the heavy structure continued swaying in the wind, swinging menacingly right over their heads.
Clara froze. Terror seemed to lock her muscles in place as she breathed heavily, unable to look away from the structure creaking above her head.
With his heart pounding and adrenaline flooding his body, Boyd had no time for delicacy.
He grabbed Clara's coat with a tight grip and yanked her hard, snapping her out of her trance and pulling her out of the impact zone.
"Move!" he shouted, pushing her toward the passenger door of the van.
…
Inside the motorhome, Daniel and Julie watched everything through the monitor.
Minutes earlier, the two of them had been talking about what had been said over the radio and how suspicious the information seemed, but their conversation came to an abrupt halt when Boyd and Clara appeared on the external camera.
Julie let out a startled scream and covered her mouth with her hands the instant the antenna came crashing down, nearly impaling them on the lawn.
When Boyd finally managed to drag Clara into the van and speed away, tires skidding through the mud, Daniel and Julie let out a collective sigh of relief.
"My God... that was close," Julie murmured. "Why did they go out in the middle of this storm?"
"I don't know," Daniel answered honestly. "Visibility wasn't good because of the rain, but the woman looked injured."
…
A little over two hours passed, and the violence of the storm had subsided, giving way to a steady, melancholy rain.
Sprawled across the gigantic bed in the suite, Daniel and Julie finished watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on the television that took up nearly an entire wall.
When the credits began to roll to the sound of the vibrant music, Julie found herself torn between irritation over the open ending and excitement over the discovery she had made.
With the town's calendar at 2022, she had discovered that the TV's catalog extended all the way to 2025, precisely the year Daniel had died in his old world. To her, it was practically a window into the future.
Without wasting any time, Julie began scrolling through the list until she selected Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, a movie that would not be released until the end of that year.
Daniel smiled as he watched his girlfriend's excitement, noticing how much more relaxed her features had become.
"I'm going to let you enjoy the movie by yourself for a while. I've already watched it," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Daniel leaned over and left a lingering kiss on her neck, feeling her skin prickle beneath his lips.
"My Spiritual Energy has already recovered. I'm going to test the invisibility cloak idea."
Julie turned her head and returned the gesture with a quick kiss on his lips.
"Okay. Go do your thing," she replied cheerfully, adjusting the pillows behind her back.
Daniel walked over to the kitchen table. With a thought, he opened the System's shop and bought a full-length cloak with a hood for fifty coins, reducing his balance to 510.
For the next sixty minutes, he focused on drawing the Stealth Rune onto the inner lining of the cloak.
When the final stroke was completed, the rune glowed faintly before merging into the fabric.
Taking a deep breath, Daniel put on the cloak. The fabric was heavy, but it carried a comforting sensation.
After pulling the hood over his head, he sent a pulse of Spiritual Energy into the rune to activate it.
The effect was immediate.
Satisfied with the result, he silently walked toward the bedroom.
Julie remained focused on the screen, distracted by the movie while eating a bag of chips.
She did not notice him approaching until she felt the mattress sink beside her body, as if an invisible mass had just sat down on the bed.
The surprise made her jump backward as Daniel deactivated the energy and his figure materialized in front of her.
"Fuck!" Julie exclaimed, throwing a chip at his chest before bursting into laughter. "That's fucking awesome! I want to try it. Give it to me."
Instead of refusing, he simply raised an eyebrow and held the cloak out to her, a smile already anticipating the result.
Julie eagerly grabbed the garment and threw it over her shoulders. Since the garment had been sized for Daniel's 6'0" height, the black fabric practically swallowed her whole.
The hem dragged comically across the floor, while the hood collapsed over her head, hiding half her face.
"So? Am I invisible?" she asked, waving her hands through the air.
"You look like a miniature Sith Lord," Daniel retorted, resting his elbows on his knees. "And no, I can still see you perfectly. The rune requires a pulse of Spiritual Energy to activate. Since you don't have any energy yet, it's just an expensive piece of leather on your back."
Julie crossed her arms beneath the cloak and let out an annoyed huff.
She pushed the hood back, revealing the frustrated expression of someone who had just discovered they were not tall enough to ride a roller coaster.
"Come here," Daniel said, letting out a laugh at her impatience.
He rested his right hand on her left shoulder, injecting a small spark of Spiritual Energy.
Her figure, along with the oversized fabric, simply vanished from his sight.
"Wow!" The exclamation came from nowhere, filled with pure wonder. "I disappeared! Dan, I literally disappeared!"
"Yeah, you did." He groped through the empty air until he found her arm, and upon feeling her body, sent another small amount of energy into the cloak to deactivate the effect. "And to be able to do this on your own, all you need is a little patience. With our... nighttime training method, you'll get there faster than you think."
She blushed slightly at the insinuation but kept her eyes fixed on the cloak.
"How long can you stay invisible with this?"
"Approximately twenty minutes."
"Twenty whole minutes? That's so fucking broken."
He shrugged.
"The universe dumped me in a cursed town full of monsters. If the game is unfair, I don't see a problem with using a few cheat codes. Balance of power."
…
While peace reigned inside the vehicle, the atmosphere back at Colony House was a chaotic mixture of conflicting emotions.
Upstairs, Donna watched the gentle rain through the crack of a window, torn between relief and concern.
The storm had brought one of the things they needed most at that moment: water. On the other hand, in all the years she had spent in that town, she had never seen rain that intense and violent.
Just thinking about what might have happened to the crops, she was already mentally preparing herself to find part of the harvest destroyed once the storm finally passed.
Few people around her seemed to share the same concern.
The fear caused by the lamps exploding out of nowhere and Clara's accident had already been replaced by a growing euphoria.
Small groups gathered around the hall, discussing possible routes and trying to figure out where the supposed cave might be.
Even Jade and Jim were taking part in the conversations, both excited to finally have something concrete to follow.
"Listen." Jim gestured, trying to bring some reason into the discussion. "You all saw what happened to Mark. That bull made him lose his leg. There are dangerous things in the forest besides the creatures."
"So what?" Randall shot back. "You guys said those things aren't supernatural. They're just angry animals, right? If that's what's standing between me and getting out of this hellhole, I'll take the risk."
A murmur of agreement spread through the group. To them, taking some risks seemed worthwhile if the reward was a chance to escape that nightmare.
Dale took advantage of the opening to reinforce the argument, gesturing as he spoke.
"The new guy's right. And there's more: if we go out in well-armed groups, like last time, and manage to catch another animal, we can trade it with Daniel. I'm tired of drinking that god-awful homemade liquor."
Another nearby resident nodded frantically in agreement.
That was when Father Khatri, who had been observing the discussion, decided to step in.
"We need to be careful. We don't know if what was said over the radio is true."
Khatri did not believe the cave they had found was anything good.
There was also a possibility that it was another cave, somewhere else in the forest. The information transmitted had been far too scarce to draw any conclusions.
"Oh, come on, Father." Jade rolled her eyes. "It was a military captain cross-checking real records about missing people in a government database. Obviously the information is true. Do you think the creatures have learned how to hack a military server now?"
Many people in the hall nodded, their faces brightening at the logic.
Khatri realized that, at that moment, it hardly mattered how many reservations he voiced.
For them, the mere existence of a possible way out was enough to turn incomplete information into certainty.
The priest sighed heavily, keeping his tone as diplomatic as possible.
"The information may have been true in the past. But we don't know what has changed since those supposed people managed to get out of here. That cave might not even be there anymore. Or it may have become the nest of something even worse."
Jim intervened, running a hand through his messy hair.
"With all due respect... that's the only lead we have. The only tangible thing we can follow. We can't just ignore it."
Donna, who had come down the stairs and heard the end of the discussion, decided to speak up. She did not want to simply kill everyone's excitement, but she carried the weight of a veteran survivor who had already seen too many people die because they believed they had finally found an answer.
"The priest has a point." Her hoarse voice cut through the murmuring. "If the magical solution to all of this were just finding a hole in the ground and marching inside... do you really think we'd have spent this long rotting here? Use your heads before they get ripped off your necks."
Silence fell over the hall for several seconds. Khatri, however, was observant enough to realize that her words had convinced almost no one.
The expressions on their faces and their rigid shoulders betrayed the residents' impatience, while the possibility of escape had already begun taking deep root in their minds.
After years of being trapped in that town, a concrete lead was enough to fuel a hope that would be difficult to contain.
If they blindly ventured into the forest in search of that place, it would be dangerous. Khatri knew that, and precisely because of that, he needed to speak with Boyd before the excitement at Colony House turned into an irreversible decision.
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