Ji-hoon didn't slow down.
His boots slammed the ground as he rushed out of the tunnel, breath sharp, heart hammering. The Hollowed merchant was gone—melted into black rot—but that didn't make him feel safer. If anything, it meant he'd just stabbed something that didn't need flesh to move.
He ducked past the broken crates, climbed through the storage yard fence, and sprinted across the dim camp. Lanterns still burned. Guards still stood at their posts. But now Ji-hoon knew—some of those guards weren't guards anymore.
They were masks. Hollow behind the eyes.
He burst into Ada's tent.
She already had her rifle on him before he could speak.
"Whoa!" Ji-hoon gasped. "It's me!"
She lowered it, slowly. "Tell me what you found."
Ji-hoon didn't waste time. He told her everything—the broken shed, the shrine underground, the Hollowed merchant, the black mirror pulsing with… something. How it wasn't just infection. It was a system breach. Something old. Something deep.
Ada's eyes narrowed as he spoke.
"You're sure?" she asked quietly.
"Too sure. That wasn't a glitch. That was design—just not ours."
She pulled a map from her shelf and slammed it on the table.
"I thought we had more time. I was wrong."
She grabbed a red pencil and circled several points.
"These five people—missing or acting strange. We didn't connect the dots because they were all in different areas. But they were all scouts. They knew the terrain."
Ji-hoon stared at the map.
"It's spreading by role," he muttered. "Not just location."
Ada nodded grimly. "Which means we've got less than six hours before this whole camp starts turning."
He hesitated. "Can we stop it?"
"No," she said, without hesitation. "But we can escape."
They moved fast.
Ada packed only essentials: maps, ammo, water, her encrypted data logs. Ji-hoon grabbed food, spare blades, and rope. No one noticed them. Not yet.
But the silence was cracking.
A scream echoed near the west fence.
Then two more.
By the time they reached the stables, the night was thick with shouting.
"We're out of time," Ada hissed.
They reached the horse pens—and stopped.
The horses were dead.
All of them.
Not torn apart. Not eaten.
Empty.
Ji-hoon stepped closer. Their eyes were open. Still. Blank.
Ada looked at the ground. No hoofprints. No drag marks. Just that same shimmer on the dirt he'd seen by the shed.
"They drained them," she whispered.
Suddenly, a voice behind them:
"Going somewhere?"
They spun.
A young man stood at the stable gate. A guard.
Ji-hoon had seen him earlier, laughing with others. But now his body twitched with tiny spasms, like something inside was shifting wrong.
Ada reached for her rifle.
The man smiled.
Then split.
Not physically. Not visibly. But something peeled off him—an invisible presence that surged toward them with the weight of a freight train.
They didn't wait.
Ji-hoon hurled a lantern into the hay.
Flames burst up instantly.
The Hollowed thing shrieked, stumbling back, and the two bolted for the side gate.
Shouting rose behind them. Chaos. Some of it human. Some of it not.
They reached the gate and climbed fast.
Ji-hoon dropped down first, then reached for Ada. She jumped—hit the ground hard—and they ran.
No horses. No wheels.
Just feet and fury.
They didn't stop running until the camp was just smoke behind them.
Later that night, they sat under a low cliff, catching their breath. The sky above was endless and cold.
Ada leaned against a rock, cradling her shoulder.
Ji-hoon stared at the stars. "We lost it."
"No," she said. "We survived it."
He looked at her.
She added, "That's step one."
He opened his system panel again. The infection flag was still there—but now it had a trace route. A direction.
The system wanted to be found.
And Ji-hoon was going to find it.