The road narrowed long before she realized she’d stopped seeing other cars.
At first it had just been fewer houses, longer stretches between mailboxes, the kind of quiet that comes when a place slowly empties out. But somewhere along the way, without her noticing the exact moment, it had turned into something else entirely. Trees pressed closer to the road, their branches stretching overhead until the sky was more suggestion than fact, thin strips of pale light slipping through in uneven pieces. Gravel crunched beneath her tires, louder than it should have been, like the sound had nowhere else to go but back at her.
Madaline slowed the car without meaning to, her fingers loosening slightly on the wheel as she leaned forward, peering through the windshield as if that would make the path clearer. The GPS had gone quiet ten minutes ago, the last instruction delivered in a flat voice before losing signal all together. After that, it had just been her, the road, and the sense that she’d already gone a little too far to turn back.
She exhaled slowly, the sound filling the car in a way that felt too loud.
It’s fine, she told herself. It’s just out of the way.
Still, her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.
Nothing behind her but the same long stretch of road, pale dust settling in the wake of her tires.
When the house finally appeared, it did so all at once.
Not gradually. Not like she’d been expecting it.
One second it was just trees, and the next—
There it was.
Set back just enough to feel separate from the road, but not far enough to feel hidden. Large, in that quiet, understated way that didn’t need to show off. The kind of place that looked like it had been there for a long time, even if it hadn’t. Dark windows reflecting the pale sky, the porch stretching across the front like it had been waiting.
Madaline slowed to a stop, the engine idling for a second longer than necessary before she finally turned the key and cut it off.
Silence settled immediately.
Not the soft kind. Not the comfortable kind.
The kind that pressed in.
She sat there for a moment, hands still on the wheel, eyes fixed on the house like she was waiting for something to change. Nothing did. No movement behind the windows. No shift in the shadows. Just stillness.
“Okay,” she murmured, mostly to herself, the word barely more than breath.
She reached for her phone out of habit. No signal. The screen reflected her face back at her for a second—slightly tired, a little unsure—before she locked it and set it down again.
It wasn’t creepy.
It was just quiet.
That was all.
Madaline pushed the door open, stepping out onto the gravel. The air felt cooler than she expected, brushing against her skin in a way that made her tug her sleeves down a little farther over her hands. The sound of the car door shutting echoed more than it should have, bouncing faintly off the trees before fading into nothing.
She turned slowly, taking everything in.
The porch. The windows. The way the house seemed to sit just slightly apart from everything else, like it didn’t quite belong to the woods around it, but wasn’t separate from them either.
There were no other cars yet.
She was early.
Of course she was.
Madaline let out a quiet breath, forcing a small smile to herself as she reached into the backseat for her bag. The familiar motion grounded her a little, something normal to hold onto. She slung it over her shoulder, adjusting the strap as she started toward the house.
Each step felt louder than it should have.
Gravel shifting beneath her shoes. The faint creak of the porch as she stepped up onto it. The air felt different here, closer somehow, like the space between things had narrowed without her noticing.
She reached for the handle.
And paused.
It wasn’t locked.
Not fully open—just slightly off, the door resting in the frame instead of sealed into it. Enough that when she touched it, it shifted inward with the smallest pressure.
Madaline frowned, her fingers tightening slightly on the handle.
“Hello?” she called, her voice carrying into the space beyond the door.
No answer.
Of course not. No one was supposed to be here yet.
Still, something about it—
She pushed the door open the rest of the way.
The inside of the house was dim, the light from outside spilling in just enough to outline the shape of things. A living room opened up in front of her, furniture placed neatly, like it had been prepared ahead of time. Not abandoned. Not messy. Just… still.
Her footsteps softened against the floor as she stepped inside.
“Hello?” she tried again, quieter this time.
Nothing.
She stood there for a second, letting her eyes adjust. The air smelled faintly like wood and something older, not unpleasant, just… settled. Like the house had been closed up for a while and was only just now being disturbed.
Madaline shifted her weight, glancing around.
Everything looked normal.
Couch. Table. A hallway leading farther back. Stairs off to the side.
Normal.
Her gaze moved toward the hallway.
For a second—just a second—she thought she saw something move.
Not a person. Not clearly.
Just… a shift.
Her breath caught before she could stop it, her body going still in that instinctive way that didn’t ask permission first.
“Okay,” she said again, a little more firmly this time, like saying it out loud would make it true. “Okay, it’s just—”
Nothing was there.
The hallway sat empty, exactly the same as it had a moment ago. Shadows stretching where they should, light falling where it made sense.
She let out a small breath, shaking her head slightly.
You’re just early. That’s all.
The thought settled enough to loosen something in her chest.
Madaline stepped farther inside, setting her bag down near the door before walking a few steps into the living room. The space felt bigger from the inside, the quiet stretching out around her in a way that made her hyper-aware of every movement she made.
She turned slowly, taking it in.
And then—
A sound.
Faint, distant.
A car.
Madaline stilled for half a second before turning toward the door, relief slipping in quicker than she expected. The sound grew louder, gravel crunching again, familiar this time. Grounding.
She moved back toward the entry, stepping out onto the porch just as headlights cut through the trees and into the clearing.
For a moment, everything felt normal again.
Like it was supposed to.
Like she’d imagined the rest.
Madaline leaned slightly against the porch railing, watching as the car came to a stop, the engine cutting off as the quiet returned—but softer now, easier to breathe through.
People.
Good.
She exhaled, a small smile pulling at her lips despite herself.
Behind her, the front door shifted faintly in its frame.
Just enough to make a sound.
Madaline didn’t notice.
The car door opened before the engine had fully settled.
Ymir stepped out first with the kind of easy, careless movement that always made him seem bigger than he already was. He stretched like the drive had offended him personally, one broad arm reaching over his head while the other braced against the roof of the car. His hoodie hung loose over his frame, dark and oversized, the sleeves shoved up enough to show flashes of silver at his fingers and the edge of ink winding over his forearm.
“I’m never driving that far again,” he said, already sounding like he didn’t mean it.
Then he saw her, and his whole face shifted.
“Madaline?” A grin broke across his face, bright and immediate. “You beat us?”
Something in her chest loosened.
“Barely,” she said, stepping down from the porch railing. “I thought I was gonna end up in another state.”
“Honestly, same,” Noah said as he came around the other side of the car.
He shut the door with a quieter sort of finality than Ymir had, his movements more controlled, more efficient. There was nothing flashy about him. Dark hair, brown eyes, simple clothes that fit him like someone who dressed for comfort and function instead of attention. Even standing in the middle of nowhere with trees pressing in around them, he looked grounded in a way that made everything around him feel a little less strange.
Ymir slung a bag over one shoulder and headed toward the porch, his curls wild from the drive, bright under the fading light. “Please tell me we’re the first ones.”
Madaline hesitated for the smallest second.
Her eyes flicked briefly toward the open door behind her before she looked back at him.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just me before you guys.”
Ymir nodded like that was exactly what he wanted to hear. “Good. Then I’m claiming the best room before anyone else gets here.”
“You say that every single time we go anywhere,” Noah said, though there was a faint pull of amusement at the corner of his mouth as he followed him up the porch steps.
“And every single time I’m right.”
Madaline smiled despite herself and followed them inside.
The house didn’t feel quite as wrong with voices in it.
Ymir pushed the door wider and stepped into the living room like he already belonged there, his presence filling the space almost immediately. “Okay,” he said, looking around. “This is actually nice.”
“It’s bigger than I expected,” Madaline said, her hand brushing the strap of her bag as she moved farther in.
Noah lingered near the entryway for a second, his gaze moving slowly over the room. It wasn’t suspicion exactly. He just noticed things. The kind of person who always did.
“Place looks clean,” he said. “Like it’s been used recently.”
The comment was casual, but it landed harder than it should have.
Madaline looked toward him. “Probably the rental company.”
“Probably,” Noah said.
Ymir had already moved on, peering down the hall like he might somehow spot the best bedroom from there alone.
Another car pulled up outside before Madaline could think too hard about anything Noah had said.
She turned instinctively toward the door, relief coming quicker this time.
The next arrival felt familiar before she even fully saw them.
Mira stepped inside first, one hand caught in the strap of her bag, the other pushing a piece of auburn hair back from her face. The light from outside caught in it for a second, pulling warmer tones through the copper-brown strands. She looked soft in the way she always did—swallowed a little by the oversized sweater she’d chosen, the sleeves hanging past her wrists, her frame slight under all that fabric even if it didn’t quite hide her shape entirely. Her blue eyes moved over the room before landing on Madaline, and her expression eased almost immediately.
“Hi,” Mira said, smiling in that small, sweet way that never felt forced on her. “You got here before everyone?”
“Only by a little.”
Mira moved farther inside, and the room softened with her somehow. Madaline had never really known how she did that. Maybe it was the way she looked at people like she was really seeing them, or the way her voice always stayed gentle even when everyone else got louder. Whatever it was, it made it easy to step closer without thinking.
Ethan came in behind her and closed the door.
He didn’t announce himself the way Ymir had. He just stepped into the room quietly, tall and lean, his shoulders narrower than Ymir’s but stronger-looking than they first seemed. His dark hair had a green tint to it that only really showed when the light hit right, subtle enough that someone might miss it at first glance. He was the kind of person people looked past unless they were paying attention.
Madaline realized, a second too late, that he was paying attention to everything.
His eyes moved across the room—not nervously, not even cautiously, just with a kind of natural calculation. Entryway. Hallway. Stairs. Windows.
Then he looked back at Mira.
It was small. Barely anything at all.
But it was enough to make it obvious he was there with her more than anyone else.
He knew them, sure. Well enough to be invited, well enough that no one questioned it. But not in the easy, thoughtless way Ymir and Noah fit into the room. Ethan always felt a little more adjacent than inside it, like he stood at the edge of things and chose when to step in.
“Drive wasn’t bad?” Noah asked.
Ethan shrugged once. “Could’ve been worse.”
Ymir reappeared from the hallway then, instantly breaking up whatever quieter thread had started to form. “Good, you’re here,” he said, pointing vaguely at Mira as he came back into the living room. “Back me up. I said I get first pick on rooms.”
Mira laughed softly. “You say that every trip.”
“Because every trip I deserve it.”
“For what?” Noah asked.
“For being me.”
“That doesn’t seem like enough.”
“It’s more than enough, actually.”
Madaline smiled and glanced toward Mira again. She had drifted a little closer to her now, shoulders easing as the room filled out, her expression open and light in a way that made her hard not to like. Ethan stayed nearby, not hovering exactly, but never far either.
Outside, another set of headlights slipped between the trees.
The light cut briefly across the front windows, dragging pale streaks over the floorboards before the car came to a stop.
Ymir looked toward the door. “There’s more.”
“Obviously,” Noah said.
“You don’t have to ruin my moment.”
Madaline turned toward the sound of the engine cutting off, the brief calm in the room shifting again as the next arrival settled outside.
Beside her, Mira’s smile stayed in place.
But for just a second, before anyone moved for the door, her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag.
The porch creaked once.
Then again.
The sound carried through the entryway just loudly enough to pull everyone’s attention toward the door. For a second, no one moved. The room had only just settled into itself, the awkwardness of staggered arrivals smoothing out into something easier, something closer to familiar. Ymir had already started talking again, Noah looked halfway to unimpressed at whatever he was saying, and Mira’s shoulders had relaxed enough that Madaline had almost stopped paying attention to the tightness she’d noticed in them at all.
Then the handle turned.
Kane stepped inside first.
He didn’t enter the way Ymir had, all warmth and noise, or the way Mira had, softening the room without trying. He just crossed the threshold like he belonged there and didn’t need anyone else to confirm it. His jacket hung open over a dark hoodie, the layers giving him a slightly rumpled look that somehow still felt deliberate. His hair was blonde, a little longer on top, not carefully styled but not careless either, and his eyes moved across the room with a quiet kind of sharpness that made Madaline straighten just a little without understanding why.
He didn’t smile immediately.
He looked.
At Ymir. Noah. Madaline.
Then Mira.
Something passed across his face at the sight of her. It was small. Too small, probably, for anyone who didn’t know them to think much of it. Not a smile, not quite relief, not anything obvious enough to name. Just a shift. A loosening that hadn’t been there a second before.
Mira’s fingers fell away from the strap of her bag.
“You made it,” Ymir said, like Kane had arrived three hours late instead of barely later than the others.
Kane looked toward him. “Looks like it.”
His voice was even, low without trying to be, and it fit him in a way that made him seem older than the rest of them, even if he wasn’t by much. Madaline had met him enough times before to know he wasn’t rude, exactly. Just harder to place. Like every conversation with him happened one step outside where everyone else was standing.
“We were starting room wars without you,” Ymir added.
“You were starting room wars,” Noah corrected.
“Semantics.”
A faint smirk touched Kane’s mouth then, quick enough that Madaline almost thought she imagined it.
He stepped aside, and the energy in the doorway changed completely.
Katarin came in talking.
“I’m just saying, if I had known the road was going to be that long, I would’ve brought snacks that were actually good.”
She moved like the room had been waiting for her specifically, already flipping dark short hair off one side of her face even though it barely reached her jaw. The color had been dyed recently—some darker shade trying to pass as black in low light, though Madaline could already see warmer undertones near the roots. Her hazel eyes skimmed the room quickly, not really settling on any one person for long before a smile spread across her face, bright and performative in a way that somehow always managed to look practiced.
“Oh my God,” she said, drawing the words out as if the sight of everyone standing there was the best surprise of her week. “You guys are all already here.”
Not all.
The thought came and went before Madaline had a chance to linger on it, because two men stepped in behind her, bringing with them cold air and the kind of energy that made a room feel smaller instead of fuller.
Madaline didn’t know them well. Not really. She’d seen one of them before, maybe twice, and the other not at all beyond photos or vague stories told half-seriously after too much drinking. They were the sort of people who arrived already looking too comfortable, as if being invited somewhere automatically meant they could take up as much space as they wanted.
One of them laughed at something Katarin said, shutting the door behind him with his shoulder while the other let his gaze move carelessly through the room.
And stop.
On Mira.
It happened so quickly Madaline almost missed it, if not for the way Mira stilled just slightly beside her.
The man’s mouth tilted in a way that made her skin pull tight.
“Damn,” he said, not loudly, but not quietly enough either. “Didn’t know you were bringing her.”
The words landed with an ugly sort of ease.
For half a second, no one said anything.
Then Katarin laughed.
Actually laughed.
Not because it was funny, Madaline thought. More because she wanted the moment to stay light, wanted the attention to keep moving, wanted everything to feel like a joke before anyone could make her choose a side.
Mira gave the smallest shrug beside her. “Hi to you too.”
Her tone was easy. Almost airy. If Madaline hadn’t been standing so close, she might’ve believed it didn’t bother her at all.
But she was close enough to notice the change in her posture. The slight tightening through her shoulders. The carefulness.
Ymir’s expression sharpened a little, though he recovered fast enough to keep it from turning into anything bigger.
Noah’s brow pulled together in a way that suggested he was already irritated and deciding whether it was worth saying something.
Ethan didn’t move.
At first, that was all Madaline noticed. Just stillness.
Then she realized stillness could be its own kind of reaction.
He was standing a little behind Mira, not close enough to look possessive, not far enough to look detached. His face hadn’t changed much, but his attention had narrowed in a way that made him seem suddenly harder than he had a moment before.
Not loud. Not angry.
Just alert.
And Kane—
Madaline’s eyes shifted toward him almost by instinct.
He hadn’t said a word.
He was leaning slightly near the doorway still, one hand dipping into the pocket of his jacket, expression unreadable in that quiet, distant way that had already started to feel like part of him. But there was something different in it now. Not dramatic enough for anyone to call it out. No obvious anger. No flash of temper.
If anything, he looked calmer.
Which, for some reason, felt worse.
“Can we maybe not do this in the first five seconds?” Noah said finally, his tone flat enough to scrape.
The guy lifted both hands slightly in fake surrender. “What? I was being nice.”
“No,” Noah said. “You weren’t.”
Katarin rolled her eyes, already moving farther into the room like she could drag the moment with her and make everyone follow. “Oh my God, relax. He didn’t mean anything.”
Madaline looked at her then, really looked, and felt the first clean edge of dislike settle into place.
It wasn’t just that she’d laughed.
It was the way she kept glancing at Mira after, like she was waiting to see how much the comment had landed. Like even this could somehow become about her too.
Mira offered a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “It’s fine.”
It was the sort of thing people said when they wanted everyone else to move on faster than they could.
Ymir snorted under his breath. “That usually means it’s not.”
A softer laugh almost escaped Madaline before she caught it. Mira’s mouth twitched at the edges too, a brief flicker of something real returning to her face.
But the air had changed.
Maybe only a little. Maybe not enough for anyone outside the room to notice. Yet Madaline felt it anyway—that tiny shift from awkward arrival to something sharper, something with the edges still hidden but already there.
Katarin, of course, seemed determined to bulldoze right over it.
“Okay,” she said brightly, clapping her hands once as she turned in a slow circle, taking the room in. “So who’s sleeping where, because I am not taking some weird tiny room just because you guys got here first.”
“That sounds exactly like what’s happening,” Ymir said.
“You’re literally huge,” Katarin shot back. “You can survive anywhere.”
“That’s not how sleeping works.”
“It actually kind of is,” Ethan said, and for the first time since they’d arrived, there was something dry in his voice that made Ymir point at him immediately.
“See? He gets it.”
“No,” Noah said. “He just likes being difficult.”
“That too.”
The brief, thin thread of humor tugged at the room enough to ease some of the tension, but not all of it. Madaline could still feel what had happened sitting underneath everything else, quiet and unwelcome.
People started moving then. Bags being shifted. Voices overlapping. Ymir making another case for why he deserved first pick. Katarin ignoring half the people in the room and talking over the other half. One of the guys already drifting toward the kitchen like he planned to help himself to whatever was there.
Madaline stayed where she was for a moment, letting the movement happen around her.
Mira had stepped a little farther into the living room now, closer to the couch, her expression settled again into something softer, easier. Ethan moved near her without making it obvious, while Kane remained just outside the center of things, not disengaged exactly, but never fully stepping into the same current as everyone else.
It struck Madaline suddenly that the room had invisible lines in it now.
Groups within the group.
People who belonged to each other in ways that had nothing to do with this trip.
She wasn’t sure why that thought stayed with her.
Maybe because the house felt different now that everyone was inside.
Fuller, yes.
But not warmer.
Just louder.
And sometimes loud things covered the wrong kind of silence instead of fixing it.
“Madaline?”
She looked up.
Mira was watching her, head tilted slightly, expression gentle. “You okay?”
The question caught her off guard enough that she smiled automatically. “Yeah. Just thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
This time the laugh did slip out, soft and brief, and Mira smiled back in a way that felt warm enough to believe.
Across the room, one of Katarin’s friends said something low that made Katarin laugh again.
Madaline’s eyes flicked that way, then to Kane.
He was already looking at them.
Not with interest.
Not even annoyance, exactly.
Just a stillness so complete it almost looked like absence.
And for the briefest second, Madaline felt that same strange chill she’d had standing alone in the house before anyone arrived.
Only this time, it had nothing to do with the house at all.