The Fractured Veil

Chapter 17

Austin awoke to a strange stillness. For a moment, he thought he had gone deaf.

Then he heard it - a low, wet sound, like flesh being pried from bone, strands of muscle snapping with a sickening squelch. It was rhythmic and deliberate. It felt as though something unseen was working its way through layers of tissue with agonizing patience. The sound seeped into his ears and made his skin crawl.

He sat up abruptly, head throbbing. Leah was still asleep beside him, curled into herself, her breathing shallow but steady. His gaze flickered to the campfire outside, where several survivors stood frozen in place, their backs rigid. His gut twisted.

Something was wrong.

Pulling himself to his feet, he approached the crowd. Their silence was suffocating. Pushing through the bodies, he saw what had them paralyzed with fear.

A tent. It had been turned in a way that defied logic. The fabric was stretched and contorted, suggesting that something had exerted pressure on it, resulting in this unusual distortion. Blood pooled around its base, soaking into the dirt. Strips of human flesh were fused to the material, stretching and twisting like sinew woven into a nightmare.

Someone gagged behind him. Another whispered a prayer.

"Whose tent was this?" Austin asked, though part of him already knew the answer.

"Jonas," a voice murmured.

Austin's stomach turned to ice. Jonas - the same man who had argued the night before about getting rid of Noah. The same man who had feared the watchers the most.

But Jonas wasn't here.

As the day dragged on, the paranoia in the camp became unbearable. Survivors moved in tight clusters, whispering among themselves.

"If we leave now, we might make it to the river before nightfall," someone murmured, their voice tight with fear. "And if it follows us?" another hissed back. "We don't even know what it is."

A few glanced at the inverted tent, at the blood still darkening the ground. One survivor clutched a crude weapon - a rusted pipe, their knuckles white. "This place is cursed," a woman muttered under her breath. "We were never supposed to survive this long." Some wanted to leave, to put as much distance between themselves and whatever force was at work. Others were too afraid to move, fearing that even acknowledging the danger would draw it closer.

Austin's head pounded. He felt watched. The whispers in his mind hadn't stopped since the forest, but now, they felt closer. Less like echoes and more like voices just beyond the veil of his thoughts.

The firelight flickered strangely against the camp's walls. The shadows it cast were too long, stretching in unnatural ways. He rubbed his temples, trying to steady himself, but then -

His breath hitched.

Across the camp, in the shattered remains of a mirror shard, his reflection didn't match his movements.

He raised a hand. It raised a hand.

He blinked. It didn't.

His pulse raced in his ears, and he felt an intense, primal fear begin to take root in his chest. His breath came in ragged gasps as the reflection's lips curled into a knowing smile - too knowing, too deliberate, as if it was aware of something he wasn't.

A sickening realization gnawed at him: this wasn't just a trick of the light. This was something else. Something watching. A shiver ran down his spine, ice pooling in his veins. And then, it whispered something.

Austin couldn't hear it, but he could read its lips.

"You were never meant to escape."

Panic set in among the survivors when the second disappearance happened.

It was sudden. One moment, Claire - a woman who had been one of the quieter members of the camp - was speaking, trying to calm everyone down. The next, she let out a choked gasp and collapsed, convulsing violently. The same way Noah had.

Only this time, she didn't stop.

Her limbs bent at angles they shouldn't have. Her spine twisted with a sickening series of cracks. Her skin rippled, undulating as if unseen hands were squeezing it from within. The surface stretched and warped, veins bulging like writhing worms beneath the flesh.

Something clawed at the inside, distorting her anatomy. A wet, sucking sound filled the air as her body convulsed, her mouth opening in a silent scream. Then, for a brief, horrifying second, her skin seemed to split, revealing glimpses of something darker writhing just beneath.

Then - she simply folded.

Her body collapsed into itself, her flesh unraveling like a frayed thread. By the time it was over, there was nothing left but a puddle of dark, writhing tissue.

Someone screamed. Others backed away, hands clamped over their mouths.

Austin couldn't move. His heart pounded violently as he looked down at his own hands. His fingers trembled.

His nails were longer than before.

His skin felt too tight.

Then, in the edge of his vision, he saw it.

A shadow - tall and jagged, with too many limbs - watching him from the treeline.

And this time, he knew it wasn't just in his head.

The fire burned low that night. No one spoke. No one slept.

Austin sat with his back against the cold earth, staring down at the paper in his hands. The words had shifted again, reshaping themselves into something new.

"You are becoming one of us."

His breath came in shallow gasps. He clenched his fists, willing himself to stay calm. But then - a movement in the distance. A flicker of something familiar.

He lifted his head slowly.

And there, standing just at the edge of the dying firelight, was himself. It stood unnaturally still, shoulders slightly hunched, head tilted just a fraction too far. The firelight flickered across its face, casting deep shadows that seemed to stretch and crawl across its skin. Then, slowly, it took a step forward - its movement smooth, deliberate, and entirely wrong.

But it wasn't him.

It smiled. And in the dim glow, its teeth were all wrong.