The plane went down at night.

One moment, we were gliding through the sky, wrapped in the soft hum of engines. The next, there was screaming, fire, and the violent embrace of trees. I don’t remember the impact—just the sickening weightlessness before everything shattered.

I woke to silence.

For a long time, I lay there, my body pressed against damp earth, listening to the trees groan in the wind. The air smelled of smoke, burnt metal, and something deeper—something wrong.

I was alone.

The others… I didn’t want to look. But I had to.

Bodies twisted in ways they shouldn’t. Faces frozen mid-scream. The ones who hadn’t died from the crash had been… taken. Drag marks in the mud. Blood smeared on the leaves. Something had pulled them away.

Something was out there.

I moved in a daze, scavenging through the wreckage. A lighter. A torn jacket. A half-crushed water bottle. My head pounded, but I kept going. I had to.

The forest was endless. The trees loomed like silent watchers, their gnarled roots tangling around the dead. As night fell, the air grew thick with whispers. Not the rustling of leaves, not the wind. Voices.

Soft. Calling.

I told myself it was my mind playing tricks. That exhaustion was dragging me into madness. But then I saw them.

Figures, just beyond the trees.

At first, I thought they were survivors. But their movements were wrong—jerky, stretched, like marionettes with tangled strings. Their eyes, when they turned, were hollow. Deep, endless pits of black.

I ran.

Branches tore at my skin, roots caught my ankles, but I didn’t stop. The whispers grew, shifting from a murmur to a wail. They wanted me to listen. To join them.

I found a cave. The air inside was stale, thick with decay, but I crawled in, pressing my body against the cold stone. I covered my ears, bit my lip until I tasted blood, but the voices slipped through the cracks of my mind.

"Stay."
"Rest."
"You are already ours."

I don’t know how long I stayed in that cave. Hours. Days. My body grew weaker, but my will clung to life like a parasite.

Then, a voice broke through the whispers. Not theirs. Not the dark ones.

My mother’s.

I hadn’t heard it in years, not since she died. But there it was, clear as daylight.

"You are stronger than this, Eve."

And I believed her.

I crawled out of that cave and forced myself to move. To fight. The voices clawed at me, the figures lurked in the shadows, but I kept walking. One step. Then another.

Until I saw it.

Light.

Real light. Morning sun breaking through the trees.

Rescue teams found me on the forest’s edge, delirious, starving, but alive. They said I was the only survivor. That the others had all perished in the crash.

I didn’t correct them.

Because if I did, I would have to explain the whispers that still echo in my ears. The shadows that still watch me when the lights go out.

The ones that let me leave.

But not alone.