The hallway to the ration room was quiet. The echoes of their footsteps stretched out like threads through the broken corridors of the mall that once glowed with neon luxury. Shattered glass crunched beneath their boots as mannequins stood half-melted beside each cracked display window, their eyeless faces pointed toward the ceiling as if silently screaming at the light which no longer came.
The young man led Aaron through rows of steel shelves loaded with dust-coated cans and bottles and a few torn packets. The air held a faint smell of rust and old oil.
"Here," the young man said, handing him a one-liter bottle of water and a small pack of dried meat and beans. "That's all you get for two days. We're running low."
Aaron didn't bat an eyebrow. "Understood."
The young man's eyes darted to Aaron's armor; even in the dim light, its smooth black surface reflected no brightness, as if it were something that consumed the light itself. Awe and unease combined in the young man's tone. "This way, sir."
They turned into a narrow corridor beside what had once been the management offices. The room into which Rin took him was small, almost empty. There was a single mattress against one wall, frayed around the edges and stained dark with age. The overhead light was dead, the only light a faint rectangle of afternoon sun falling through a cracked window.
"I'm sorry," said Rin, scratching his neck in an awkward manner. "This is the only one left that's… decent. The others sleep on the first floor. Floor's cold there.
Aaron glanced through the open doorway. He saw shapes of men and women lying on blankets across the tiled floor, some using rolled-up clothes as pillows while others were curled up, pale, hollow yet peaceful in exhaustion.
"It's fine," Aaron said.
Rin nodded once and quietly left.
When he left, the silence pressed in. Aaron sat on the mattress, his armor creaking faintly as he leaned back. The fabric was coarse, cold beneath him. For a time, he stared at the ceiling's cracks.
Then, a soft, mechanical tickling stirred from his wrist.
"Hey," Quanta's voice whispered. "Before you go… how about you leave me here?
Aaron turned his head slightly. "Why?"
"I still don't like ghost domains," she said. The tone was almost anxious. "They distort electromagnetic fields. My sensors, my processors, they flicker. If that thing on the third floor is what I think it is… it could deactivate me. Permanently."
Aaron let his breath out, his voice even. "Then you should just turn yourself off right now.
The sound of Quanta's gears clicked faintly, as though offended. "I will. When we go up there. But for now, I'm staying awake. I don't like this silence."
Aaron closed his eyes. "You're the one who said silence is efficient."
"That was before I learned silence can have teeth," she murmured.
Aaron said nothing. His mind slipped beneath the heavy blanket of exhaustion.
---
The light faded.
And then there was something else.
The air grew colder. The weight of the armor felt wrong, heavier. When Aaron opened his eyes, he wasn't in the room anymore. He stood in the mall corridor, though the air was dense with mist. Neon signs-long dead-flickered weakly, bleeding red and white across the walls.
There was a humming noise. A woman's hum. Soft, melodious, faraway.
He followed it.
His boots echoed in the fog. The mannequins had moved; now they stood in lines, all facing him. Their cracked faces were smiling widely, their glass eyes gleaming faintly as though wet.
The humming drew closer.
Then he saw her.
Standing ahead of him was a young woman, barefoot, in what could have once been a white dress. Her hair floated slowly, strands moving as if underwater. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and from her back something like black veins stretched upward into the mist.
She turned her head slowly towards him.
She had no longer a human face. Her eyes had become empty sockets with lights within them, and small blue sparks danced as if trapped souls. When she opened her mouth to speak, her voice came from everywhere, her tone multiple and layered with echoes.
"Do you remember me?"
Aaron froze, with his mind flickering in pain: images he did not recognize-a corridor drenched in red light, someone screaming his name, the sound of static and glass shattering.
He drew back a step.
Her head twitched violently. "You touched me," she said. The words were half sob, half growl. "You burned me… you tore me apart…"
The mist thickened, hands reached out from the ground, pale and cold, clutching at his boots. The heads of the mannequins twisted, all of them, to face him.
Aaron tried to move, but his legs were sinking into the mist as of quicksand. The woman floated closer, her smile stretching unnaturally wide.
"Touch me again," she whispered, her tone trembling somewhere between longing and hate. "Let's see who disappears this time."
Then her face split open-literally. A crack ran from her chin to her forehead, spilling black light that screamed like static. The world warped inwardly.
Aaron awoke with a gasp.
– – –
The ceiling was there again. The cracked window. The mattress beneath him.
His breathing was hard and cold. He couldn't tell for several moments whether he was still dreaming. The shadows in the corners seemed to shift, slow and deliberate.
Then, there came a knock, three times on the wall beside the supposed door.
He turned. The laser locks on the door frame were dead-just thin red lines flickering weakly.
"Sir," the muffled voice of the young man came from the hall. "You were sleeping in your armor. You must have been tired."
Aaron hauled himself upright. "Yeah."
They went together down the long hall to the old man's room, afternoon sunlight filtering in, gold and dim, through the broken glass.
Inside, the old man was dismissing a few survivors. When the others were gone, he made a signal for Aaron to sit.
"I thought," the old man began, his voice even but weighted, "since we're to fight together, we should know each other better."
Aaron nodded once.
The old man smiled faintly. "My name, again, is Elias. I'm… a follower of the Moon."
Aaron blinked. "The Moon?"
"Yes," Elias said quietly. "Its light doesn't burn like the Sun's. It shows what hides beneath. Yet the shadows still fear it."
Aaron didn't say anything, but his mind remembered the catchphrase of that man: Blessed by the Sun.
Now the man's eyes indeed appeared pale-like light reflecting off still water. "And you?" Ravan asked softly. "Which god do you follow? Whomever it may be, if they grant you strength against the malevolent supernaturals, we are friends." Aaron stared at his hand. The one that could touch the dead, that had burned the ghost's form without divine symbols or prayer.
"I don't know," he finally said. "But… I can touch them. The ghosts. The supernaturals. I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse." Elias studied him for a long moment. The sunlight on his face flickered, almost silver.
Then he smiled, slow and tired. "Then perhaps," he said, "your god simply hasn't shown itself yet."
Outside, wind howled through broken vents, and somewhere deep below the floor creaked as if something moved. And in the quiet that followed, Quanta's faint tickling trembled in warning.