Of Fire and Fangs

The rain wasn't natural.

I mean, Skull Island barely looked like a place that had weather, let alone something as poetic as rain. But here it was—drizzling down in a gray haze, turning the soil into sludge and making the broken wood of ruined outposts swell like a bloated corpse.

I stood there, soaked, clutching a rusted machete we found in some collapsed shed. Theo was bleeding beside me. Ava was quiet.

And across the hill, something was breathing.

Not someone—something.

"You hear that?" Theo whispered, teeth chattering.

I did. The ragged inhales. Long, wet exhales. Like a furnace made of lungs.

"You think it's a person?" he added.

"No," I said. "People don't breathe like they're chewing air."

We backed into the ruin of what used to be a barn. Ava sealed the wooden door shut with a rope and a bent nail. Smart girl. We were safe. For now.

Well. "Safe" if you ignore the bloodthirsty howling at random intervals and the fact that we had enough food for two people and three people in our group. Not counting what we found yesterday: a corpse with a single bite to the neck, no blood left, and a pile of feathers surrounding it.

"Maybe it's a bird," Theo offered, sitting on a crate.

"Yeah," I replied. "A giant invisible vampire bird."

He didn't laugh. Neither did I.

Ava crouched beside the window, pushing aside the tattered cloth curtain. Her jaw was set. Her eyes scanned the horizon like she was born for this. That's the thing about her: she rarely talks when she's scared. Me? I turn into a stand-up comic. But her? She silences.

That silence had weight tonight.

Rain pelted the roof. The wind howled through the gaps in the wood. And then—

"It's gone," Ava whispered.

But I didn't believe her.

Later that night, after checking traps (nothing but a frog with two legs), we sat inside the barn trying to warm up around a candle that barely flickered.

Theo was toying with the orb again.

It had been acting weird since two days ago. Ever since we passed through the blackened forest and that twisted archway, the thing started glowing when Theo held it too long. Only him. Never me. Never Ava.

He'd try to hide it, but I saw it. It pulsed—faint blue—like it was syncing with his heartbeat.

"What is that thing really?" I asked.

"Lucky charm," he said, too quick.

Ava looked at him sideways. "A lucky charm that reacts to you?"

"I dunno." He tried to shove it back in his pocket. "Maybe it likes me."

Yeah. That's what I was afraid of.

We argued about food next. Classic survival tension.

I said we should ration.

Ava said we should scout tomorrow—move east.

Theo said maybe we should steal from another team if we saw one.

That's when Ava's eyes went dark.

"You want to rob someone?" she said, voice low.

"They'd do it to us," Theo shot back.

"Doesn't mean we have to be like them."

The two stared at each other like siblings in a shared trauma. I watched, arms crossed. The rain tapped louder. The silence stretched.

"Maybe the game wants that," I said. "Push people far enough, they turn on each other."

Ava looked at me, then at Theo.

Then she stood. "I'm sleeping. Wake me at dawn."

After she curled up in the dry corner, wrapped in our only decent blanket, I sat beside Theo.

"You okay?"

He didn't answer at first. His fingers were on the orb again.

"Do you think I'm weak?" he asked.

"What?"

"I see the way she looks at me. Like I'm just some… tag-along. A burden."

"You're not."

"I froze up yesterday. I couldn't move. You and Ava killed that thing. I stood there like an idiot."

I didn't say anything.

Because he wasn't wrong.

But sometimes silence is kinder than a lie.

I woke up to screaming.

Not Ava's. Not Theo's. Something else.

We rushed outside.

Across the field, two people were running for their lives. One had a spear. The other had no arm. Blood trailed behind them like a red ribbon.

And behind them…

A monster.

It was hunched, long-limbed, with a jaw that stretched wider than it should. Not a vampire bird. Not quite a beast either. It ran on all fours, but its eyes were human.

I grabbed the machete.

"Jack, are you crazy?!" Theo yelled.

I didn't answer. I was already moving.

I reached the armless man first. He collapsed in my arms, pale, whispering something I couldn't make out. The other guy—spear dude—was trying to hold the monster back, stabbing wildly. It leapt on him and bit through his neck like a grape.

I slashed at it. Missed.

Ava's arrow flew from the barn's roof, hitting the thing in the side.

It shrieked.

Then ran.

We dragged the wounded man inside. He was dying.

"Who did this to you?" I asked.

He grabbed my shirt with one good hand.

"Red flag…" he whispered. "Avoid the ones… with the red flags…"

"What?"

But his eyes were already glassy.

The rain didn't stop.

Ava bandaged Theo's scraped arm from the scuffle.

No one talked much after that. We'd fought a monster. Lost two people we didn't know. Gained zero supplies. And we had a cryptic warning about red flags, which was... less than comforting.

Later that night, while Ava was asleep, Theo looked at me.

The orb was glowing again.

He didn't say anything.

Neither did I.

But in that moment, I knew:

Whatever that thing is, it's not a lucky charm.

And it's not done with him.

To be continued…

When the Fog Speaks Back

The rain had stopped hours ago, but the scent of wet ash still clung to Skull Island like perfume on a corpse. The fire that nearly wiped our entire squad in the last ambush was still fresh in everyone's memory, and I could see it in the way people were sharpening blades they didn't plan to use, just to keep their hands busy.

But me? I was watching Theo.

He hadn't said a word since the incident with the orb. Not to me. Not to Ava. Not even to himself—he usually muttered weird shit under his breath like he was trying to keep the voices company. But now? He just stared. Like something inside him was chewing slowly through his brain, savoring it.

I couldn't help thinking about that orb he absorbed. It had exploded into him like it recognized him. And then he blacked out. Now he's up walking again like nothing happened, but something was different. His movements weren't his anymore. It was like his body was trying to remember how to be Theo, but kept screwing up the calibration by half a second.

"You sure he's okay?" I asked Ava, keeping my voice low.

She didn't look at me. She was watching Theo too, eyes narrowed.

"No," she said. "But we've all got things crawling around inside us now. At least his showed up early."

Charming as always.

The trees around us started thinning. The dense foliage of the eastern jungles had been choking us for days, but now we were entering territory claimed by the "Mercury Pact"—one of the Skull Island factions we'd been warned about. Ruthless. Precise. Chemical warfare experts, supposedly. They poisoned their own rivers just to remind everyone they could.

Good times ahead.

We found the border marker at dawn.

A spear jammed into the ground, wrapped in red cloth. Under it, a skull bleached unnaturally white. And beside it, a wooden sign carved with some of the neatest handwriting I've ever seen:

"Turn back. You will not die quickly."

"Nice hospitality," I muttered.

Ava rolled her eyes. "That's actually one of the friendlier greetings we've seen."

Theo stopped walking. He stared at the skull for a full minute. I mean really stared. Then, just when I was about to ask if he was going to start talking to it, he turned around and looked at me.

"They killed themselves," he said flatly. "The one who left this message. They weren't warning us. They were gloating."

I blinked. "What?"

"The message was left by a defector who thought they could escape Mercury's control. They wanted to scare anyone from following them. The Pact found them first." He tapped the skull lightly with his foot. "This is them."

We all stood still. The wind moved through the leaves like it had something to say about it too.

"You know all this from a skull?" Ava asked.

Theo didn't answer. Instead, he started walking again—past the sign, into Mercury Pact territory.

We followed. Because what else were we going to do?

Two hours later, we were crawling on our bellies through razor-grass. Not a metaphor. Actual grass with bladed edges. Every breath risked a shallow slice to the cheek, but none of us dared stand upright. Ava was in front, checking for tripwires with a half-broken spearhead. Theo was behind me, silent. I couldn't tell if I was more afraid of the traps in front of us or the person behind me.

"I swear I saw something," Ava whispered suddenly.

"Where?" I whispered back.

"There. Ten o'clock. In the trees."

We paused. Silence.

Then… a crack. The sound of a twig snapping directly to our left.

We all turned—but it was too late. The smoke had already started.

A grenade had landed barely ten feet from us, releasing a heavy, silvery fog that dropped faster than normal smoke. It hugged the ground like liquid air and it reeked—like burning rubber and spoiled milk.

Ava swore. "Neurotoxin gas. Back! Back!"

We scrambled, but not fast enough. My head started spinning within seconds. My hands felt like they belonged to someone else. Theo was still standing.

No, wait—he was walking toward the center of the cloud.

"Theo!" Ava called, panic cracking through her voice for the first time I'd ever heard.

He didn't turn.

Instead, he walked straight into the thickest part of the fog and vanished.

I coughed so hard I dropped to my knees. Ava grabbed me by the collar and tried to drag me back, but she was coughing too. My vision blurred.

And then—

Light.

A pulse from within the fog. Blue and harsh. Like the orb.

Then silence.

The fog cleared on its own within seconds, like it got afraid of what it touched.

And there was Theo.

Standing in the middle, untouched. The grass around him had been scorched clean in a perfect circle. His eyes weren't normal anymore.

They weren't blue either.

They were… voids. Like he was looking at the world from behind something ancient and cold. Then the color returned. His face settled back into his usual brooding emptiness.

He looked down at us.

"They're watching now," he said. "Mercury knows we're here."

We didn't ask questions until we were back at camp. And by camp I mean a cluster of rocks and a shredded tarp in a valley that smelled like moldy meat, but it was home for now.

"What the hell was that?" I asked him.

Theo didn't answer.

Ava was standing, arms crossed. "You didn't cough. You didn't collapse. That gas is designed to melt brain tissue in less than a minute. What the hell are you?"

He turned toward her, then me.

"I don't know."

That was the only thing he said for the rest of the night.

Later, when the moon hit just the right angle, I saw Ava quietly tear a piece of cloth from her coat. She walked to Theo while he was sitting on a rock, staring into the dark.

"You're bleeding," she said, kneeling beside him. "You didn't notice?"

He looked at his shoulder—there was a clean slice from the razor-grass he hadn't even felt.

She wrapped it.

No words were exchanged.

But I watched the way she did it. Not like a medic. Not like a soldier.

Like someone who couldn't figure out why she cared, but knew she had to.

And Theo?

He didn't stop her.

Not because he needed it.

But maybe because, for once, he didn't want to feel like a ghost.