She walked alone. At least, that's how it felt. The floor creaked beneath her steps, fractured metal, veined like aged skin. Every footstep echoed down the tunnel, but no voice came to answer it. No Subaru. No Masha. They were there, somewhere behind. But Alya no longer heard anything from them. Nothing pierced the inner curtain she had let fall, whether on purpose or not.
The ceiling's neon lights cast a harsh, sickly white glow, slicing her shadow along the walls.Her own body felt foreign.As if it had been stolen, displaced, dropped here — in this maze of rust and soot.It wasn't fear. Not panic either.But an older, quieter feeling: abandonment.The kind of vertigo you feel as a child, when everyone forgets you at the edge of a train platform. Here, there was no platform.Only endless corridors. Alya kept her eyes forward, arms folded, breathing slow. She expected nothing. She walked because stopping felt worse. This world had no name, no markers.
No sky.
No hour.
Nothing to hold on to.
Nothing to prove she still existed.
And yet, she kept walking.As if, at the end, there would be something.A sound. A whisper. A door.
Subaru didn't think that simply putting one foot in front of the other, in a world this twisted, could still feel like a dream. He wasn't looking at the walls. Not at the blackened pipes, or the murky puddles scattered across the floor. None of that mattered. His eyes were fixed on her. Alya.A little further ahead. Always straight. Always calm.Her back tense. Her neck unmoving. Her stride steady, as if she were carving a line through the silence. She walked like someone crossing a storm: without bending, without hesitation. Her silver hair swayed lightly with each step, as if even the sick light of this world hesitated to taint it. Subaru didn't understand everything. But that—he could feel. She wasn't like him. He was still a kid, lost in an adventure too big for him. He still saw this world as an isekai — with its rules, its mysteries, its surprises. But the further he walked, the more that view cracked.There was no magic menu.
No quest. No good guys. No bad guys. Just them. And her. Alya didn't speak. She didn't even look back. But with every step she took, Subaru wanted to follow.Not to run away from something. Not to survive.But just… to stay in her wake. Because in this absurd, devouring world, she was the only thing still upright, still real.And he hoped she'd never stop.
"You're always watching her."Masha's voice rang softly, like a drop of water falling in an empty room.
Subaru barely flinched. He hadn't expected it.He turned toward her, a bit embarrassed, but she was smiling — no mockery, no malice.
A simple smile. Honest. Almost brotherly.—
"Huh? What? No, I—"
"No need to deny it."
She glanced up at Alya, still a few meters ahead. Still straight, still silent.
"I watch her too. Ever since we were little."
Subaru said nothing. Their steps echoed faintly on the floor. One step. Then another.
"She's always been like that. Closed off. Strong. Alone."
Masha spoke gently, not to hurt, not to judge. Just to say what was true.
"You know, even as a kid, she didn't want help. Even when she fell. She'd get up on her own."
Alya hadn't slowed down. She hadn't even turned her head.As if she didn't hear them.Or as if she did, but refused to exist within that conversation.
"She hates showing how she feels. So of course… we all end up guessing."
Masha gave a small chuckle, then glanced at Subaru out of the corner of her eye.
"And you, you've got quite the imagination."
He smiled despite himself, embarrassed.
"It's… not what you think."
"I don't think anything."
She shrugged.
"But it's obvious you need someone to believe in here."
Ahead of them, Alya kept walking. Unshaken. As if she were leading the world all by herself.
"And if it's her… you didn't choose too badly."
Alya came to a sudden stop.Subaru, lost in thought, nearly bumped into her. Masha, more alert, halted at once.She said nothing. She simply turned around. And for the first time in a long while, her eyes met Subaru's. No reproach. No surprise. Just a new tension, heavy, suspended in the air like a thread about to snap.S ubaru blinked, then followed her gaze.
"…What's…"
His voice faded.
In front of them, at the end of the hallway, stood a wall blackened by time. Of a different material — smoother, almost oily. And at its center, a vertical shaft, encased in metal, rose endlessly upward.A shattered hatch at the top let through a sickly, pale light, almost lunar.And most of all: a ladder.Long. Ancient.
Twisted in places, but still standing. Fixed like a spine into the hive.
"It's… a ladder?"
Masha whispered. Subaru stepped forward. He looked up. The metal creaked softly, as if alive. The rungs stretched on endlessly, up toward what looked — maybe — like another world.
"It goes… all the way up?"
"No one knows what 'up' means here,"
Alya replied, her voice flat.A silence.Subaru placed a hand on one of the rungs. The metal was cold. Dry. But solid.
"Do you think… it's a way out?"
"It's an answer,"
she said.Masha stepped closer.
"Or a riddle."
They fell silent.They stared at that column of steel the way one stares at an oracle.
"It's creepy,"
admitted Subaru.
"It's huge,"
added Masha.
"It's our only option," concluded Alya.
No one tried to climb. Not yet.But they knew.They knew that shaft, that ladder, would change everything.And that from this moment on, they weren't just lost in a dead world.
Then,
without warning, a sound. A slam. Dull. Heavy. Like a beam dropped from high up.The stillness shattered. Brutally.And instantly, a violent tension gripped them. Like a blow to the neck.The sound wasn't natural.It wasn't metal groaning. Not a machine waking up.It was something else.A living sound. Too loud. Out of time. Outside anything they'd heard since arriving.It came from far. But it was getting closer.
Subaru reacted without thinking.His fingers grabbed Alya's sleeve. His other hand pulled Masha, still frozen.
"This way. Quick."
He didn't wait for an answer. He dragged them, half-crouched, toward an opening beside the shaft. A door ajar, rust-eaten, leading to a low, lightless room.
They slipped inside. The darkness swallowed them whole.Nothing was visible anymore. Not the floor. Not the walls. Just the smell.Damp rot, crumbling stone, stale sweat.
Masha tripped over a cable or a ledge, her body hitting the ground with a dull thud.
"Ow…!"
Alya caught her without a word, lifting her swiftly. Subaru had already found a toppled metal desk. He slid underneath it, curled up, breathing in fits.His hands were shaking. His heart throbbed in his temples.
Outside, in the hallway…
The sound was back.Not ordinary footsteps. Metal footsteps. Too heavy for a human.They struck the ground with regularity. A slow, relentless rhythm.And among those boot-like thuds… a sharper sound. A scraping. Something was dragging behind the thing.Iron. A blade. A heavy object scraping stone.The noise pierced the ears like a silent scream.
They weren't breathing anymore.None of them.The world had shrunk to this dark room, to shallow breathing, to primal fear.
The steps were getting closer.And in that endless hive, for the first time… they understood that silence wasn't the enemy.Silence… was what protected them.
The thing arrived.It stopped abruptly, right at the ladder.Then a strike.A brutal crash against the wall. The wall vibrated, the floor trembled.A second blow, sharper, higher—like it was trying to break the structure.A third.Each of them echoed through their rib cages like detonations.
The creature—it was a creature, there was no doubt—wasn't moving aimlessly.It was searching.For something.For someone.
Alya, curled behind a pile of collapsed crates, felt her heart pounding against her tongue.Masha, balled up beside her, had her eyes shut so tight her eyelids quivered.And Subaru, beneath the desk, didn't dare breathe.
It wasn't the air that crushed them.Not the smell of metal, nor the damp rot.It was fear. Pure.Absolute terror.
Silence had been their refuge.But now, even silence seemed to belong to that thing.
Humanity had vanished.All that remained were erratic heartbeats, and a faceless horror hammering the world.
Then, sounds. Slow. Rhythmic. A creak, then another. A mechanical, broken cadence.The thing was climbing.It was ascending. Climbing the ladder.
Each impact on the metal made the air vibrate, resonating down to their bones.They could hear the steel twist, the wind whistle up the shaft.But more than anything… they heard the weight.The weight of a presence not of this world. Not of reality.
Minutes passed. And with them, the sound grew more distant.One floor. Then two. Then three.Until it vanished. Slowly. Quietly.
But in their minds… the silence never returned.The true silence. The one that soothed.
No.Because now, it wasn't silence.It was waiting.It was the fear of hearing it again.It was a void, tense like a string, ready to snap.
All three of them had one wish:That the silence would become real again.Not this kind of silence.The other one.The silence that hides nothing.The silence of an empty world...not of a haunted one.
They stayed frozen like that for what felt like hours, or what their minds perceived as days.Hunger, thirst, aches in their limbs… all gone.Only fear remained. Pure. Viscera-deep.A fear that drained them of humanity, as if their souls had stopped with their breath.
The thing had no face.No name.Only a sound. A twisted, metallic, inhuman noise.It wasn't a beast. Nor a machine.It was something else. Outside.Something that kept walking, even when the rest of the world had died.Something that never slept.
Alya stood up in silence, then held out a hand to Masha.She helped her to her feet slowly, in a silence almost reverent.Then she turned her head toward the desk.
"Subaru. It's okay. You can come out."
A suspended moment.Then a soft sound. Subaru half-crawled from his hiding spot, his face pale, his features frozen. His hands were shaking. He didn't speak. His eyes avoided theirs.
Alya stepped closer, stood in front of him, straight.
"Thank you. For rushing us here."Her voice was calm. Steady.
"But… you shouldn't have hidden alone. We could've faced it together. That would've meant something."
Subaru didn't answer. He had no words.There was nothing to say.
What he had felt wasn't fear of danger.It was naked fear. Absolute.Black fear.The kind you never talk about.
Even when facing Elsa, with her blades raised to gut him, he had screamed, begged—but there was still a meaning. A logic. A human enemy, tangible, predictable in her cruelty.
But this…There had been no gaze to kill him.No voice to answer him.Just a sound. A presence.Something that shouldn't exist.
Not a killer.A remnant.A faceless horror.
And in front of that, he had curled up like a child, unable to move, unable to think.
He felt filthy. Empty.Like he'd crossed an invisible threshold, too soon, too alone.
Masha laid a gentle hand on his arm.
"We needed you."
A silence. Then Alya turned her eyes back to the corridor.
"Let's go. Yuki and Masachika must be getting worried."
Her voice, this time, trembled a little.