"I couldn't just leave you out there to die," Leon said, his voice low but firm. "At night, all sorts of monsters roam that forest. You wouldn't have made it till morning." His calm demeanor shifted, his expression growing grim, his brows furrowed as if recalling something unsettling. "So, I brought you back here. I thought… maybe there was a chance to save you somehow."
He paused, letting out a heavy sigh, and glanced at me, his eyes betraying a mix of curiosity and unease. "But then… something strange happened. Your body began healing on its own. Within a few days, every broken bone, every fracture—it all healed completely. It doesn't make any sense."
The room was heavy with an unspoken tension, a subtle unease lingering beneath the surface of the conversation. The man, who had introduced himself as Leon, stepped forward cautiously. His protective stance shielded the little girl, her blonde curls peeking out from behind his leg.
"Who are you?" he asked, his tone measured yet firm.
I stayed silent, weighing my words carefully. What was I supposed to say? "Oh, I'm Lance, just your average Runner, hurdling through hellish Layers and fighting off Revenants. Thanks for patching me up, by the way."
Instead, I settled for, "I'm nobody."
The woman standing beside Leon scoffed, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. "Nobody? You nearly punched our daughter's head off, nobody."
Her words stung, though I didn't show it. My instincts had nearly gotten the better of me, and I wasn't proud of it. "It wasn't intentional," I muttered.
The girl, however, didn't seem convinced. Her small hands clung to her father's pants as she whispered, "Papa, is he going to hurt us?"
Leon shot her a reassuring smile, then looked back at me, his eyes searching for... something. Trust, maybe. "We don't want trouble," he said. "I just couldn't leave you out there to die."
"That makes one of us," I replied dryly.
The woman bristled, her glare sharp enough to cut steel. "Leon, you should've left him where he was. We don't know anything about him!"
"Enough, Mira," Leon said, his tone calm but firm. "He's here now. We'll figure this out."
My head pounded as their voices bled together, and then, like clockwork, the system interrupted.
[Warning: Unknown anomaly detected.]
"Anomaly? That's a first..." I muttered under my breath, earning confused looks from the family.
"You okay?" Leon asked, his brows furrowing.
"Fine," I said curtly. "Just... processing."
The system wasn't done.
[Warning: Recognise Caution.]
[Entities have been flagged. Discrepancies detected.]
[Initiating scan...]
My heart sank. "What kind of discrepancies?"
Truth be told, I didn't need the system to tell me something was off. There was a strange, gnawing sensation that had been clawing at the edge of my mind ever since I started talking to this family. It wasn't just suspicion—it was instinct, primal and unrelenting.
Even now, as I stood there, my entire body felt tense. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, rigid like blades of grass bristling in the wind. Something about this situation wasn't right.
Leon cleared his throat, drawing my attention. "You're not from around here, are you?"
"Not exactly," I replied. "I'm... far from home."
"How far?" Mira asked, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.
"Far enough that you wouldn't believe me if I told you," I said with a wry smile.
She didn't return the smile.
The girl, Lily, peeked out from behind Leon again, her curiosity seemingly outweighing her fear.
"What's your name, mister?" she asked softly.
"Lance," I said after a pause.
She blinked, testing the name in her mind. "Lance," she repeated, her tone thoughtful.
I managed a faint smile. "Nice to meet you, Lily."
Her lips twitched into the smallest of smiles, but it vanished just as quickly.
The father, Leon, approached me, his smile wide but wrong, like it had been plastered on his face by someone who didn't quite understand human expressions. He placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, his grip firm but uncomfortably possessive.
"Feel free to stay in the room as long as you like," he said, his voice low and smooth, but there was something in his tone—something crawling under the surface. "We'll take care of you."
Care for me? The words echoed in my head, bouncing around with an unsettling weight. As if I'd believe that bullcrap.
That smile, that voice... It wasn't right.
Creepy.
I shrugged his hand off my shoulder, my muscles tense as a wire. "I'd rather leave right now," I said flatly. I wasn't sticking around for whatever weird charade this was. My instincts were screaming louder than ever, and I wasn't about to ignore them.
Leon's smile faltered, his face twitching as if his mask had slipped for just a moment. Then his demeanor shifted entirely. His once overbearing friendliness morphed into something desperate, something hollow.
His eyes, wide and almost pleading, locked onto mine. "Leave?" he said, his voice tinged with sorrow that felt... off. Like it had been rehearsed. "But you've yet to have anything to eat. Surely you're hungry?"
I brushed past him, taking a deliberate step back to put some space between us. "Listen," I said coldly, "thank you for saving me, but I need to go."
"Where's my spear?"
The room grew heavy. The air felt thick, like the world had forgotten how to breathe. Leon didn't answer. He just stood there, his eyes fixed on me, his gaze growing darker with every agonizing second. His wife and daughter's eyes now bore into me like daggers.
Unnerved, I pressed further, my voice sharp and impatient. "Did you not hear me? I said—"
Before I could finish, the system's interface blinked into my vision, cutting through the tension like a knife.
[Scanning completed!]
[Warning: These are not humans...]
The words sent a jolt through me. My stomach twisted into a knot, and a cold sweat broke out across my skin. What the hell did the system mean? Not humans? They looked human.
Didn't they?
I glanced back at Leon, expecting to see the same face as before. But instead, my heart stopped.
His face was... wrong.
It started subtly at first—a twitch of his lips, a flicker in his eyes. Then, like a dam breaking, his entire face began to change. The flesh peeled away, curling back like burnt paper, revealing raw, pulsating muscle underneath. His jaw unhinged with an audible crack, his mouth stretching impossibly wide to reveal jagged, yellowed teeth that dripped with some black, viscous fluid.
It wasn't just him.
His wife and daughter followed suit. Their bodies convulsed violently, bones snapping and rearranging beneath their skin. The mother's neck twisted at an unnatural angle, her head lolling grotesquely to one side as her arms elongated, her fingers turning into claws. The little girl—no older than six—let out a guttural snarl as her tiny frame contorted, her spine jutting out like a row of jagged spikes.
The smell hit me next. The stench of rotting flesh and decay filled the room, so thick it clawed at the back of my throat.
I had seen mutations like this before, I knew it too well. Revenants.