CHAPTER FIVE

The silence after the crash did not feel like absence. It felt like pressure.Like the world itself had leaned in, waiting to see whether she would break.

Lina stood motionless for a moment, her chest rising in uneven pulls, each breath sharp and unsteady as though her lungs had forgotten their rhythm. Her ears rang faintly, a high, distant sound that made everything feel slightly unreal.

The smell hit her next.

Burnt metal. Smoke. Something oily and bitter that clung to the back of her throat and refused to leave.

Her body ached in places she could not immediately name. Her head throbbed in slow, heavy pulses. Her arms felt detached from her, like they no longer belonged to her. Even her legs trembled as though they were arguing with the idea of holding her upright.

If she stayed here one more second… would she collapse?

She looked at the car.

Or what was left of it.

The black Range Rover Sentinel had become something unrecognizable. The front was crushed inward like paper crumpled in anger. Glass was gone, scattered in glittering fragments across the ground. Metal groaned softly as it cooled, as if the vehicle itself was still in pain.

Inside, the men did not move.That detail landed in her chest with a quiet, sinking weight.

Gone?

Or waiting?

She did not stay long enough to find out.Her body turned before her thoughts fully formed.

“Run.”

Not a decision. Not even a thought she chose.

“Just instinct.”

Her first step wobbled. The second nearly sent her down. Her body resisted her escape as though it wanted to remain behind, frozen in the aftermath.

But fear has its own kind of strength.And it pushed her forward.

“She ran.”

The forest swallowed her almost immediately.

Trees rose around her like silent witnesses, their branches tangled high above, filtering the light into broken pieces that fell unevenly across the ground. Everything felt unfamiliar. Unforgiving. As if the earth itself did not care whether she survived or not.

Roots caught her feet. Stones shifted beneath her weight. Branches scraped her arms and neck, leaving thin lines of sting that she did not stop to feel properly.

Where was she going?

She did not know.

She only knew that stopping would mean something worse than exhaustion, so she kept moving.

Hours passed, time stopped behaving like something real.

The sun rose and shifted without her permission, and still she moved beneath it, driven by something raw and shaking inside her. Her breathing grew heavier. Her chest burned with every inhale.At some point, her body refused to obey.

She stumbled and caught herself against a tree, fingers digging into rough bark as her knees nearly gave out. Her throat felt like sandpaper. Her lips were cracked, dry, unfamiliar.

“Water.”

The thought came sharp and desperate.But there was none.Instead, there was fruit, small, strange, hanging low enough to reach.

She hesitated.

Because how does one trust anything in a place like this? But hunger does not negotiate.

She ate slowly. Carefully. As if the fruit might change its mind and punish her for touching it. It did not help much. 

But it kept her “alive.”

The second day did not feel like a continuation of the first.It felt like punishment.

Her body weakened in ways she could not explain. Each step became heavier, as if the ground itself was pulling her down. She stumbled more often now. Sometimes she caught herself. Sometimes she did not.

When she fell, the world spun slightly before she forced herself back up.

Why am I still going?

The question flickered through her mind more than once, but she never answered it.

Because there was no other choice she could accept.The forest never changed. That was the cruelest part.Every direction looked the same.

Every path felt like a circle pretending to be an escape. Still, she moved.

By the third day, Lina was no longer running.She was surviving on motion alone.

Her body felt hollow, drained of something essential. Even her thoughts came slowly, slipping in and out like they did not fully belong to her anymore.

Her vision blurred at the edges. She stopped more often just to make the world stop spinning. She found more fruit. Ate it without thinking too deeply.It was not enough, nothing was enough.

Her throat burned worse now. Her head felt light, almost detached, she needed water. Not wanted but needed. Then she heard it, a sound so faint she almost dismissed it as imagination.

“Water.”

She froze.

Listened again.

There, it was real. Her body moved before doubt could catch up. Each step toward it felt like walking through resistance itself, but something inside her refused to let go of the sound.

And then she saw it.

“A stream.”

Small, hidden between roots and stone, as if the forest had tried to keep it secret. Relief hit her so quickly it almost hurt.She dropped to her knees.Her hands shook as they reached the water.

Cold—Real, she drank.

Once.

Then again.

And again.

Her breathing slowed slightly as something inside her loosened, just enough to stop the world from spinning quite so violently.

For a moment… It was quiet, not safe. Then it changed, a sound, not water.

Something else. Her body went still. Slowly, she lifted her head. Her eyes searched the trees ahead. And then she saw it.

A wolf.

Large, still, watching.It did not move nor did it blink. It simply existed there, as though it had been waiting for her to notice it.

Lina’s breath caught so hard it hurt.

Her body reacted before her mind could form a thought. Fear rushed through her like something alive. Her hands pressed into the ground, grounding herself against panic she could not control, her heart beat too fast. Too loud.

The wolf stepped forward.

One step.

That was all it needed.

“No…” she whispered, though the sound barely left her lips, her body tried to stand. Failed, her strength was gone.

The wolf stopped again.

And then—Something impossible happened.Its for.

At first, she thought she was losing consciousness. That her mind was breaking under exhaustion. But the shape changed too clearly for it to be imagined.

The body blurred. Folded. Reformed.Fur disappeared.Bone structure changed.

The animal was collapsing into something else entirely.Lina could not breathe.Her mind refused to accept what her eyes were showing her.

And then it stopped.

A girl stood where the wolf had been. Silence swallowed everything inside Lina at once.

The girl was real, too real.

Tall. Steady. Confident in a way that made the air around her feel different. Her dark hair fell loosely, catching faint gold in the light. Her skin looked untouched by the forest, as though it belonged somewhere safer than this place.

But it was her eyes that froze Lina completely.

Blue.

Bright.

The same eyes—The same gaze.

Recognition without explanation.Lina’s body began to shake, because this was not possible, not here, not anywhere.

The girl took a step closer, calm and controlled.

But Lina could not separate calm from danger anymore.Her strength failed her completely. The world tilted, her knees weakened.

As she began to fall, her hand lifted slightly, as if reaching for something she did not even believe would save her.

Her voice broke through the last of her strength.

Barely a whisper.

“Please… save me.”