Smoke flowed slowly from the handgun Ezra held.
The weapon in his hand was the Glock 40.
The smell of gunpowder remained in the cold air, mixing with the smell of blood that had already begun spreading across the snow.
"Are you crazy?!"
Hugh shouted again.
His hand immediately went to his spear, and he pointed the weapon toward Ezra.
"Drop your gun now!"
His voice was filled with anger, but there was fear underneath it as well.
Because of the look on Ezra’s face, even though he had just done something absolutely confusing.
Ezra didn’t answer.
His dull black eyes remained fixed on the direction where he had fired.
Behind him, Samuel was still staring at Jeremy.
His mind seemed completely lost.
"Jeremy..."
The word left his mouth quietly.
Then a voice rose at his side.
"Senior Jeremy!"
Emily rushed toward the fallen upperclassman.
She dropped down beside him, her hands already reaching toward his body as she tried to check whether he was still alive.
She hadn’t even finished moving.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Ezra fired again.
The sound of the gunshots tore through the forest.
The bullets struck Jeremy’s falling body one after another.
His body jerked with every impact before finally collapsing into the snow.
Ezra didn’t react to the noise.
He didn’t look at Hugh.
He didn’t look at Emily.
He simply kept his Glock 40 pointed at Jeremy until he was certain the target had stopped moving.
The gunshots echoed between the Winter Spruce.
Then silence returned.
Smoke continued drifting from the muzzle.
Hugh’s face had gone pale.
Emily froze beside Jeremy.
Samuel’s hand remained suspended above Jeremy’s body.
Nobody understood why Ezra had done it.
"This fucker!"
Agnes finally regained control of herself.
Anger replaced the shock on her face.
She sharply turned and pulled her sword from its sheath.
Hugh moved at almost the same time.
He tightened his grip on his spear as Cognis began flowing through his body.
Both of them charged.
Snow kicked up beneath their feet as they rushed toward Ezra.
Their weapons were raised.
Their eyes were fixed on him.
They were no longer thinking about questioning him.
They were attacking.
Agnes reached him first.
Her sword moved across her body.
Slash!
A blade caught the light from the lantern that Emily and Samuel had dropped onto the ground.
For a brief moment, the reflected light flashed across the forest.
Then...
Splatter.
Blood hit the snow.
Agnes stopped.
Hugh stopped as well.
Neither of them had managed to reach Ezra.
Their bodies remained upright for a brief moment, as though their minds had not yet understood what had happened.
Then both heads slipped from their bodies.
They fell onto the snow and rolled a short distance away.
Their bodies collapsed after them.
Emily’s eyes widened.
Her face lost what little color it had left.
She stared at Diane.
Diane stood behind them.
Her thin sword was still in her hand.
Blood dripped from the edge of the blade.
She hadn’t even changed her expression.
Emily’s breathing became unsteady.
She looked from the bodies of Agnes and Hugh to Diane, unable to understand how the attack had happened so quickly.
"W..."
She tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
Her throat felt as though it had closed.
Diane’s half-open light-blue eyes remained plain as she looked at the two bodies lying before her silently.
Emily stood up and took a small step backward.
Bang!
Her head jerked violently to the side.
A bullet struck her head.
"Emily!!!"
Samuel shouted.
He had still been at Ezra’s back, but he had frozen more after witnessing Diane’s attack.
Now he stretched one hand toward Emily.
His face was filled with horror.
"You fucking piece of sh..."
Bang!
Another shot interrupted him.
The bullet struck Samuel in the forehead.
His head snapped backward from the impact, and his body was thrown off balance before dropping heavily onto the snow.
For a moment, Samuel’s hand remained raised.
Then it fell beside his body.
Ezra didn’t lower his weapon.
Bang!
Bang!
Two more shots struck Samuel’s chest.
The sound echoed through the forest before fading between the trees.
Ezra finally stopped firing.
He slowly turned toward Diane.
The Glock 40 rose.
Its muzzle pointed directly at her head.
Diane didn’t look at him.
Her light-blue eyes remained fixed on the bodies of Agnes and Hugh.
She stood there with the same plain expression she always wore, as if she were looking at something that didn’t make sense to her.
The thin sword remained in her hand.
Blood continued dripping from its edge.
Krrrraaaak...
A faint sound came from the bodies.
Diane’s eyes shifted slightly.
Krrrraaaak...
The sound came again.
Ezra’s eyes narrowed.
Krrrraaaak...
The bodies on the snow moved.
Not Agnes.
Not Hugh.
The things lying there were no longer human.
The bodies began changing before their eyes.
The shape of the corpses twisted.
Their human forms collapsed inward, revealing the true creatures hidden beneath the illusion.
The bodies were actually Young Ghost Crawlers.
Their limbs twitched against the snow.
Their dark bodies were covered in wounds.
The strange creatures struggled weakly, making dry cracking sounds as they tried to move.
Diane stared at them.
Her eyes moved from one creature to another.
Then she looked toward the other bodies scattered around them.
The corpses that had appeared to be members of the other groups were also changing.
They were Young Ghost Crawlers.
Not humans.
Not their upperclassmen.
The entire scene they had just witnessed had been built around an illusion.
Diane slowly moved her gaze back toward Ezra.
"Since when did this happen?"
Her voice was calm.
She stepped closer to one of the corpses and looked down at it.
The Young Ghost Crawler had taken the form of Agnes.
Another had taken Hugh’s appearance.
The one Ezra had shot had looked exactly like Jeremy.
Diane’s expression remained plain as she looked at the creatures.
Ezra slowly lowered the Glock 40.
"It should be around when we started running."
He crouched beside the corpse that had taken Emily’s appearance.
His eyes moved over its body.
The illusion had already disappeared.
The creature’s true form was now exposed beneath the wounds caused by the bullets.
Ezra carefully observed its body.
The strange legs.
The body structure.
The remains of the illusion.
Everything matched the information they had gathered during their research.
"This proves my worries."
He muttered.
His voice was quieter than before.
Diane bent down beside him.
She placed both hands against her legs while looking at the creature.
She still looked tired, as if the entire situation had only become another problem she needed to deal with before going back to sleep.
"You don’t look worried, though."
She said.
Ezra didn’t answer.
His attention remained on the Young Ghost Crawler.
He was processing everything they had just learned.
The dreams.
The vision.
The sudden attacks.
The disappearance of the others.
The illusion.
The fact that the Ghost Crawlers had been able to separate them without anyone noticing.
Then the answer finally became clear.
"We are dealing with an Elder Ghost Crawler."
Ezra said plainly.
Diane looked at him.
"It seems so."
She replied.
Ezra stood up.
His eyes moved across the dark forest.
The snow continued falling.
The bodies of the Young Ghost Crawlers remained scattered across the ground, their true forms exposed beneath the cold moonlight.
"And it must be in its birthing period."
Diane continued.
"That would explain why the already-born Young Ghost Crawlers are on the move."
Ezra remained silent.
He knew the information from their research.
During the mating season of Mature Ghost Crawlers, they normally gathered together from wherever they had been living and entered a battle of absolute dominance.
The males and females would fight one another.
The winner would eat the loser.
Then another battle would begin.
The process would continue again and again.
The stronger Ghost Crawler would consume the weaker one, gaining more strength from the body it had eaten.
Eventually, only two would remain.
A male.
And a female.
Only after that would mating begin.
The female Mature Ghost Crawler would then enter her egg-laying period.
During this time, the male would leave the nest to hunt for food.
He would bring the captured prey back for the female while she remained behind to produce her eggs.
The first eggs would eventually hatch into Wraith Larvae.
Those larvae would crawl onto the body of the male Mature Ghost Crawler.
They would then begin feeding on him.
His body would become their first source of food, allowing them to grow faster than the normal growth procedure.
The female would continue laying eggs throughout the process.
According to their research, this period could take an entire year.
It was necessary for the female to produce enough eggs to restore the population of their race to its usual number.
During that time, the grown Young Ghost Crawlers would become the hunters.
They would leave the nest.
They would capture prey.
Then they would bring the prey back for their mother.
The Young Ghost Crawlers would also create food storage for the newly hatched Wraith Larvae and for their mother in case they were unable to return for a period of time.
All of that information remained clear inside Ezra’s mind.
It felt almost like he was reading the research book again.
Now, however, the words were no longer just information on paper.
He was standing inside the territory of the creature they had researched.
And he was looking at the result of its breeding cycle with his own eyes.
Ezra’s senses spread outward.
The usual brilliance of his perception covered the surrounding forest.
His eyes remained fixed on the darkness.
"..."
He remained silent for several seconds.
Then he spoke.
"No Young Ghost Crawlers around."
His senses moved farther.
"But the ones who took the upperclassmen and Emily are on the move."
His expression remained plain.
"Although I can’t guess where they are."
Diane pointed downward.
"Maybe they are way underground."
Ezra looked toward the snow-covered ground.
That possibility made sense.
The Young Ghost Crawlers had no reason to remain on the surface if they were carrying captured prey.
The forest floor was covered in snow, but that didn’t mean the ground beneath it was empty.
There could be tunnels beneath them.
There could even be an entire underground network that they hadn’t noticed.
Diane continued speaking.
"Humans have a lot of nutritional meat which means the others would be kept for storage purposes, so we can be sure they won’t die..."
She paused.
Her light-blue eyes remained on the Young Ghost Crawler corpse.
"At least for now."
Ezra didn’t respond immediately.
He looked at the corpses one final time, then he looked into the darkness ahead.
"Then let’s begin moving."
Diane stood up.
She picked up Emily’s lantern from the snow.
Ezra walked over and picked up Samuel’s lantern.
He checked his watch.
The time was already far past midnight.
The forest had become even darker.
The snow continued falling, covering the blood and footprints around them.
Ezra turned.
"Let’s go."
He immediately flashed forward.
His body disappeared into the darkness between the Winter Spruce.
Diane followed at the same pace.
The two ran through the forest at an inhuman speed.
Their feet struck the snow only briefly before they pushed forward again.
They jumped over fallen Spruce trees.
They crossed narrow streams.
They moved around rocks and steep patches of frozen ground.
The lanterns in their hands swung with their movements, throwing brief flashes of light across the snow.
Neither of them slowed down.
The forest continued stretching ahead.
Snow kept falling around them.
The wind grew colder as they went deeper.
Behind them, the bodies of the Young Ghost Crawlers had already disappeared from sight.
The forest swallowed the place where the battle had happened.
No voices followed.
No footsteps.
Only the faint sound of the wind remained.
And beneath the ground...
Deep.
Deeper.
Deeper still.
Far ahead of where Ezra and Diane were moving, something shifted beneath the earth.
The sounds were faint.
Almost impossible to hear from the surface.
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
The sounds stopped.
Then came again.
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
Some things scraped against the underground stone.
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
Another sound answered from farther inside the darkness.
"Krrr... tkk-tkk-tkk..."
There was no light underground.
No snow.
No wind.
Only darkness.
And somewhere within that darkness, something was waiting.
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