The guardian didn't roar again.
For several minutes, all we heard were the sounds of the battle: blunt impacts, shrieks that abruptly faded, and the thunderous noise of something heavy being dragged across the ground. Every impact made the fortress tremble. Dust fell from the ceiling in little clouds that gathered on our hair and shoulders.
No one spoke.
The man who had told the story held the child tightly against his chest. Sofía was still standing in front of me, one hand extended behind her to keep me from approaching the door. Tommy remained on the other side, breathing hard.
Then there was a much louder impact than the ones before.
The wall vibrated.
Something fell onto the roof.
The child let out a whimper.
“Don’t make a sound,” Tommy whispered.
A scratch traveled across the wood covering the walls of the hallway. It was slow and deliberate, as if someone were dragging a fingernail across the surface just to remind us that it could come in whenever it wanted.
Sofía crouched and took the knife strapped to her boot.
“Is it the guardian?” I asked.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
She looked toward the ceiling.
“Because the guardian doesn’t need to scratch the walls.”
The sound stopped.
For a moment, I thought the creature had left. Then I heard wet breathing at the beginning of the hallway, just on the other side of the wooden door. It wasn’t as deep as the guardian’s. It was faster. More impatient.
Tommy pressed one hand against the door.
“It can’t get in,” he said. “The room is protected.”
“Protected by what?”
“For the same reason the fortress is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to understand. You just have to stay still.”
The breathing turned into a hiss.
Several people stifled cries. Sofía grabbed my arm and pulled me back into the corner. The man covered the child’s head with both hands.
I wanted to be brave. I wanted to think about something else—my apartment, the dinner I’d left on the table, any memory that didn’t have claws or sharp teeth. But fear wouldn’t let me escape. It filled my entire body and made me feel small, trapped inside skin that no longer belonged to me.
Tommy suddenly stood and braced his full weight against the door.
“Sofía, get Abigail ready!”
“For what?”
“To run!”
“Where?”
“To the main room!”
Sofía took my hand.
“When I tell you, run.”
“But you said we weren’t supposed to leave.”
“We’re not leaving the fortress.”
A crack ran down the hallway, reached the door, and spread beneath it.
On the other side, something let out a sound like laughter.
Tommy took a step back. The color had drained from his face.
“Now.”
Sofía opened the door at the back of the room.
Tommy came running into the room where everyone was gathered, slammed the door behind him, and braced his shoulder against it. A gray mass surged down the hallway and crashed into the wood.
Its body began to ooze through the crack beneath the door. Its arms were far too long and looked as if they were made of modeling clay. Little by little, the creature began to enter the room. A mouth full of teeth appeared through the gap.
“Run!” Sofía shouted.
The room descended into chaos.
People abandoned their hiding places. Some shoved the children toward the tunnels inside and covered them with heavy sheets of metal and rocks. Others raised knives, iron bars, and old weapons.
The creature straightened with impossible speed and swung an arm at Tommy.
He raised his weapon and fired.
The muzzle flash lit up the crack. The bullet tore through the beast’s arm, but it didn’t stop it. Tommy fell onto his back, and the creature lunged at him.
Sofía pulled me along.
“Abigail, run!”
I couldn’t.
Tommy was the man who had saved me. The first person who had spoken to me when I woke up in that world. The man who, just minutes earlier, had promised to protect all of us.
The creature raised a claw.
I grabbed a stone from the ground and threw it with all my strength.
The stone struck its head.
It didn’t hurt it.
But the beast turned toward me.
Its eyes weren’t red.
They were black. Completely black. Two holes opened in its face.
Tommy seized the moment. He threw himself at it and drove the rifle’s bayonet into its side. The creature shrieked and struck him with such force that his body went flying into a pillar.
“Sofía!” he shouted.
She shoved me toward the back door.
“Now run!”
I took off.
Behind me, I heard gunshots, screams, and the sound of claws striking the floor. The walls were covered in black marks, identical to those on the S-shaped tree. Some glowed faintly, like embers hidden beneath the stone.
I didn’t know where I was going.
I just followed Sofía’s hand.
Suddenly, the entire fortress shuddered. A reddish light pierced through the cracks in the ceiling. The air filled with the unbearable smell of wet earth and rusted metal.
The guardian had returned.
A roar tore through the stone.
The creature that had attacked us answered.
Then there was a crash.
Then another.
We entered a fairly large room. There were more marks on the walls, and all of them began to glow. Most of the people who had taken refuge in the underground room were there. There were many children. Others were still below, hidden and protected.
Sofía stopped and covered my mouth before I could ask about Tommy.
We waited.
A human cry came from the distance.
It wasn’t a cry of pain.
It was an order.
“Don’t look at it!”
Tommy’s voice.
Sofía closed her eyes.
The next sound was so brutal that the earth seemed to split open beneath our feet. Something tore through the wall of the room. Stones rolled through the tunnel. A huge shadow passed on the other side of the opening, accompanied by two red eyes that burned for barely a second.
I didn’t breathe.
The guardian stopped.
Through the opening, I could see part of its body: gray skin, enormous shoulders, and a black liquid sliding down its back. It didn’t look like a creature. It didn’t look like a man, either. It was something trapped between the two, something that had forgotten how to be human and yet still carried the sadness of someone who had once been one.
Then it turned its head.
Its eyes were directly in front of mine.
I couldn’t look away.
For an instant, I didn’t see a beast. I saw something that was only searching for peace. Something tired and weary of its miserable existence.
The guardian turned its head.
Sofía yanked me down and threw me to the floor.
“Don’t look at it!”
The roar that followed made the entire room tremble.
When I managed to lift my head, the shadow had already disappeared. So had the creature that attacked the room. All that remained was a thick silence and the sound of something dripping onto the stones.
Sofía was breathing hard.
“What did you see?” she asked.
I couldn’t answer.
At the far end of the tunnel, a small metal plate had fallen amid the dust. I picked it up with trembling hands.
It had a name engraved on it.
Arha val hur.
And beneath it, a message:
“Use it inside the antenna.”
Sofía studied the plate. Her expression changed slowly, as if she had just understood something she’d spent years refusing to accept.
“Is this a game?” she asked.
I looked toward the place where the guardian had disappeared.
“I don’t know.”
At that moment, Tommy shouted again from the main room:
“Sofía! Open the tunnel! We have to leave before it wakes up again!”
Sofía went pale.
“Again?” I whispered.
She snatched the plate from me and forced me to my feet.
“Run, Abigail.”
“Why?”
Sofía looked toward the darkness that had swallowed the guardian.
“Because if it wakes up again, this time it won’t come only for the beasts.”
We ran through the tunnel and emerged at the top of the fortress. It had been a lopsided battle; the beasts never stood a chance.
Rooms everywhere, guts and blood all over the floor. The guardian was sleeping now, and it had better stay that way.
In the distance, across the empty field of dry sand, I could see lights like red and blue fireflies, stark against the black sky.