The night didn’t end all at once.
It unraveled.
Slowly at first, in the small ways that didn’t feel important while they were happening. A conversation dropped off without being picked back up. Someone yawned and didn’t bother hiding it. The music stayed on, but nobody paid attention to it anymore. Even Ymir’s voice, which had carried the room for most of the night, started losing its edge, the volume dipping just enough that Noah didn’t have to argue quite as hard to keep up with him.
Madaline noticed it in pieces.
The way the space between people grew without anyone acknowledging it. The way bodies shifted farther apart on the couch. The way the kitchen light suddenly felt brighter than the living room, pulling attention away from the place they’d all been gathered.
It wasn’t uncomfortable.
Just… thinning.
“I’m getting another drink,” Ymir said, pushing himself up from where he’d been half-sitting, half-sprawled across the edge of the rug. “And if anyone tells me I’ve had enough, I’m not listening.”
“You’ve had enough,” Noah said without looking at him.
“I’m not listening,” Ymir repeated, already heading toward the kitchen.
“That was established.”
Madaline smiled faintly, but the moment passed quicker than it would have earlier. Ymir didn’t drag the whole room’s attention with him this time. He disappeared into the kitchen, and the space he left behind stayed quieter instead of collapsing in on itself.
Katarin shifted on the couch, recrossing her legs with a sharp movement that made the fabric of her jeans pull tight. She had been louder than everyone for a while, talking over anything that came close to resembling silence, but even that had started to fray. Now she mostly spoke in bursts—short, bright comments that didn’t always connect to whatever anyone else was saying.
One of her guys sat near her, half-listening, nodding at the right times. The other had never come back in.
Madaline didn’t realize she was thinking about that until Noah spoke.
“Has he been out there this whole time?” he asked, glancing briefly toward the door.
Katarin didn’t even turn. “Who?”
“Your friend.”
She shrugged, taking a sip of her drink. “Probably.”
“It’s been a while.”
“Then he can come back in when he’s done,” she said, tone flat, like the answer should’ve been obvious.
Noah held her gaze for a second longer, then looked away. “Right.”
The conversation didn’t pick up from there.
It just… dropped.
Madaline shifted slightly on the arm of the couch, her fingers curling loosely around her glass. Mira sat beside her, closer now than she had been earlier, shoulder brushing hers every time either of them moved. She’d gone quieter over the last half hour, not withdrawn, just softer. The edge of her energy had smoothed down into something almost sleepy, her responses slower, her laughter quieter.
“You okay?” Madaline asked under her breath.
Mira nodded, blinking like she was pulling herself back from somewhere else. “Yeah. Just tired.”
“Same.”
“It got late really fast.”
“We got here weird,” Madaline said lightly.
Mira’s mouth curved. “We did.”
Ethan stood a few feet away near the edge of the room, his posture unchanged but his attention sharper than it had been earlier. He wasn’t focused on anything in particular, just… aware. Of the space. Of the people in it. His gaze moved once toward Mira, then to Madaline, then drifted again as if he’d confirmed what he needed to without saying anything.
Kane had reappeared at some point without anyone announcing it.
Madaline hadn’t seen him come back from the kitchen, but he was there now, leaning loosely near the doorway again. His presence settled into the room the same way it always did—quiet, steady, unclaimed. He didn’t join any conversation. Didn’t interrupt anything. But his attention moved through the group in slow passes, catching on things that didn’t seem to matter and then letting them go.
When his eyes landed briefly on Mira, something in his posture shifted almost imperceptibly.
Then it was gone.
“I’m probably going to head up soon,” Noah said, pushing himself up from the couch. “At least check the rooms again. Make sure nothing’s—” He paused, then shook his head slightly. “Whatever. Just check things.”
“You’re doing a security sweep?” Ymir called from the kitchen.
“I’m making sure you didn’t break anything already.”
“Unfair accusation.”
“Accurate assumption.”
Noah headed toward the stairs, his footsteps steady and unhurried. The sound of them faded as he moved up, leaving another small gap behind him that the room didn’t quite fill.
“He’s so serious,” Katarin muttered.
“He’s normal,” Ymir said, reentering with a fresh drink. “You’re just chaotic.”
“I’m not chaotic.”
“You brought two extra people to a trip nobody invited them to.”
“They’re fun.”
“One of them’s been outside for an hour.”
“Maybe he likes outside.”
Ymir looked at her. “Nobody likes outside that much.”
“Speak for yourself.”
The exchange lingered a second longer than it needed to, then slipped away like everything else had been doing.
Madaline’s gaze drifted toward the door.
It stayed closed.
The glass in the frame reflected the room faintly, distorting the shapes of the people inside. She couldn’t see anything beyond it. Just darkness pressed up against the outside, thicker than it had been earlier, like the woods had crept closer without anyone noticing.
“You going up too?” Mira asked softly.
“In a minute.”
Mira nodded, her head tipping slightly against the back of the couch. For a second, her shoulder leaned a little more into Madaline’s, the contact warm and grounding in a way that made the rest of the room feel farther away than it actually was.
“Wake me if I fall asleep here,” she murmured.
“I will.”
“Promise.”
“Promise.”
Mira smiled faintly and closed her eyes for just a second, then opened them again like she didn’t trust herself to keep them shut.
Across the room, Katarin let out a sharp laugh at something that hadn’t quite earned it, leaning farther into the man beside her. Ymir took another drink. Kane remained where he was, quiet as ever.
And outside—
the man who had stepped out for a smoke still hadn’t come back in.
No one got up to check.
Not yet.
Inside, the house held its shape around the people still awake, all warmth and low voices and the soft clutter of a night refusing to end cleanly.
Outside, the dark felt different.
It had weight to it.
The man stood just beyond the reach of the porch light with one hand in his pocket and the other holding the cigarette between two fingers, the ember at its tip the brightest thing on him. Every time he brought it to his mouth, the red-orange flare lit the lower half of his face for a second before leaving him to the dark again. Smoke drifted upward in pale ribbons and disappeared almost immediately into the cold.
The air out here had sharpened since earlier.
It pressed through his jacket and settled at the back of his throat, clean and damp and carrying the faint smell of pine, wet earth, and old wood. Somewhere off to his right, farther out past the firepit, the trees stood in a dense black wall that swallowed detail whole. There was no city glow here. No distant traffic. No neighboring porch lights. Just the house behind him and the woods in front of him and the strange feeling that the world had narrowed down to those two things.
He exhaled smoke and glanced back over his shoulder at the house.
From out here, the windows reflected more than they showed. Warm squares of light interrupted by shadows moving now and then behind the glass. Someone crossed through the living room and vanished. Laughter reached him only faintly, softened by the door and distance until it sounded less like actual voices and more like proof that voices existed.
He looked back at his phone.
No service.
Again.
“Shocking,” he muttered to himself.
The cigarette burned lower between his fingers. He tapped ash into the gravel near the edge of the porch steps and shifted his weight, boots grinding lightly over the stones. The sound felt louder out here than it should have. Everything did. Even the smallest movement seemed to break too cleanly against the quiet.
For a second, he considered going back in.
Not because he was cold. Not because he was uncomfortable. More because the dark out here had stopped feeling neutral somewhere in the last few minutes and started feeling… attentive.
He almost laughed at himself for the thought.
The trees don’t give a shit about you, he thought, taking another drag.
Still, his eyes went to them again.
The yard behind the house opened only a little before the tree line took over. Sparse grass. A few patches of dirt. The firepit sat farther back like a dark ring in the ground, chairs thrown around it in careless uneven shapes. Beyond that, the woods thickened fast, trunks packed close enough together that the spaces between them looked like holes torn into the world.
He stared long enough that his eyes started trying to invent movement.
A branch. A shift of shadow. Nothing.
He took one last pull from the cigarette and flicked it down into the gravel, grinding it out with the toe of his boot. For a moment he stood there, hands in his pockets now, shoulders rising and falling once with a quiet breath.
Then he heard it.
Not a voice.
A sound.
Somewhere off to the side of the house, just beyond the wash of porch light. A light scrape of gravel, so brief it might have been a shoe shifting or a branch settling.
He turned toward it automatically. “Hello?”
No answer.
He waited.
The silence that followed stretched oddly, the kind that made the inside of his ears feel too open. He looked toward the back corner of the house where the shadows thickened near the siding.
Nothing there.
“If that’s you,” he said a little louder, already half amused, “you can stop creeping around. It’s not that kind of trip.”
Still nothing.
He let out a breath through his nose, annoyed now more than anything. One of them, probably. Ymir maybe. Or the other guy finally deciding to be funny for once. Even Katarin would’ve made sense, if she was bored enough.
He stepped off the porch.
The gravel shifted under his weight with a crunch that cracked the quiet apart. He moved a little farther into the yard, just enough to angle around the side of the house. The light behind him weakened immediately, stretching thinner the farther he went. Cold seeped more sharply through the air here, untouched by the warmth leaking out from inside.
“Seriously?” he called. “What are we doing?”
There.
A shape at the edge of the dark.
Not far. Just beyond the corner, where the house cast a longer shadow over the ground. Tall enough to be one of the men. Or Ymir. Maybe. Hard to tell with the light hitting wrong.
“You good?” he asked, squinting a little. “Thought you were inside.”
The figure didn’t answer.
Something about that snagged at him.
Not enough for fear to take shape yet.
Just enough to thin out the easy irritation he’d had a second ago and leave something less comfortable in its place.
He took another step.
Then another.
The side of the house rose dark and blank beside him, the boards holding the day’s chill now that the night had settled fully in. He could hear the faint electrical hum from somewhere near the back, maybe an exterior unit, maybe the house itself. His own breathing sounded louder than it should have. So did his boots.
The figure shifted.
Quick.
Not retreating.
Closing.
He registered that much and only that much before instinct finally caught up with him, a sharp involuntary tightening through his chest. “Hey—”
A hand caught him hard.
Not sloppy. Not wild.
Precise.
One arm drove into him, shoving him back before he could properly brace, his shoulder slamming against the cold siding of the house with enough force to knock the air halfway out of him. Pain sparked bright and immediate across his back. He opened his mouth, either to curse or yell, and never got the chance to decide which.
The second movement came faster than the first.
A hard pressure low and brutal against his middle, close enough that for one stupid split second his body didn’t understand it as pain yet. Just impact. Just force.
Then the knife went in deeper.
Everything inside him seized.
The sound that tore out of him was short and wrecked, more breath than voice. His hands flew instinctively, catching fabric—jacket, sleeve, something solid under his fists—but there was no room to hold on, no opening to get leverage. The person in front of him was steady in a way that made panic flash through him all at once.
This wasn’t a joke.
This wasn’t some drunken shove or stupid fight.
The blade pulled free.
The pain that followed was hot enough to go white at the edges.
He tried to suck in air and couldn’t get enough of it. Tried to push forward, to throw his weight, but his legs had already started losing the message. His heel slipped over loose gravel. His shoulder dragged against the siding. One hand reached blindly out into the dark and caught nothing.
“What the fuck—”
The words broke apart.
A hand hit his chest and shoved.
He stumbled sideways, away from the wall this time, boots sliding uselessly over the stones before he crashed down hard onto one knee. The ground slammed up into him. Gravel bit through denim. His palm scraped raw trying to catch himself. Heat spread under his hand—too much heat, wet and thick and terrifyingly fast.
He looked down.
Darkness at first.
Then the shine of it.
Blood.
A sick, disbelieving sound caught in his throat.
He lurched back up halfway on instinct alone, one arm clamped across his abdomen now, fingers slipping. The figure was still there, only a step away, more outline than person in the dark. No face. No clear features. Just stillness.
Watching.
“Help—” he tried, voice shredding.
Too far from the door. Too little air. Too much blood.
The figure moved again.
He tried to twist away, but his body had gone thick and slow, every movement arriving late to itself. The next strike came cleaner. Lower. Final in a way the first one hadn’t had to be. His breath vanished entirely this time, his knees giving under him before he felt the full shape of the pain.
The ground rose up rough and cold.
He hit it on his side first, then rolled badly onto his back, vision jolting. Above him, the night looked enormous. The stars were dim through the tree cover, scattered in broken fragments between branches. The house lights shone somewhere off to his left, too far away now, turning the edges of the yard into strange, uneven geometry.
He tried to breathe and got only a wet, shuddering pull for it.
He could hear the blood.
Or maybe not hear it exactly.
Feel it.
Spilling warmth out of him into the cold.
The figure stood over him for one final second, dark and unreadable against the faint spill of house light, then bent only long enough to catch at his jacket and drag.
The movement sent agony ripping through him so violently that the world narrowed at the edges. Gravel scraped his back. His heel caught uselessly against the ground. He tried to twist, to reach, to claw at something, but his arm wouldn’t obey with any real strength left in it.
The yard tilted.
The porch light slipped farther away.
Branches passed overhead in jagged black lines as he was pulled toward the darker part of the yard, toward the edge where the grass gave way to rough earth and the woods began swallowing detail whole.
The dragging stopped.
He lay crooked near the tree line, one shoulder half turned into the dirt, his hand twitching once uselessly near his side. The house was still visible through the gaps between the trunks. Warm windows. Lit glass. People inside moving through light, blurred and small and impossibly far away.
He tried to make a sound.
Nothing came out that resembled a word.
The dark around him thickened.
Not because it changed.
Because he was losing the edges of things.
The last thing he saw clearly was the house.
Bright and ordinary.
As if nothing had happened at all.
Inside, the house went on holding them.
The walls kept the heat in. The lamps stayed on. Someone laughed at something from the living room, the sound softened by distance and drywall until it lost whatever had been funny about it and became only proof that life was still moving from one room to the next.
Madaline didn’t know why the silence felt heavier when she looked up again.
Nothing in the room had really changed. Ymir was still talking, though now more slowly, his words beginning to drag together at the edges from tiredness and drink. Katarin sat curled into the couch, one knee drawn up under her, pretending she wasn’t bored even though boredom kept flashing across her face every time no one looked directly at her. Noah had not come back down yet. Ethan stood near the bookshelf with one hand in his pocket, eyes moving absently over the room in that careful, almost detached way of his. Kane was no longer in the kitchen doorway.
It took Madaline a second to notice that.
Not because it was strange.
Because he was the kind of person who could leave a space without seeming to disturb it much.
Mira shifted beside her, drawing one leg up a little more onto the couch. “I think I’m officially exhausted.”
Her voice came out softer now, roughened slightly by the late hour. Madaline turned toward her and found her already leaning more heavily into the back of the couch, blue eyes less bright than they’d been earlier, her hair falling in looser waves around her face. Whatever energy had held her upright through the evening had thinned into something quieter and more real.
“You were asleep ten minutes ago,” Madaline said.
“I was resting my eyes.”
“That is sleeping.”
“No.” Mira’s mouth curved faintly. “It’s strategic.”
Madaline smiled. “You’re impossible.”
“You adore me.”
“Debatable.”
Mira let out a quiet laugh and lowered her head briefly, rubbing at one eye with the heel of her hand. The movement tugged at something warm in Madaline’s chest before she could help it. The room had been off all night—too loud in some places, too thin in others—but Mira beside her still felt easy in a way everything else didn’t.
Ymir came back into the living room carrying another drink he definitely did not need.
“So,” he said, stopping near the coffee table and looking around as if he had just remembered the people in front of him were not furniture, “are we still pretending this is a normal amount of tired for, like, eleven-thirty?”
“It’s later than eleven-thirty,” Ethan said without checking a clock.
Ymir frowned. “That feels fake.”
“Time does continue passing when you’re not paying attention,” Madaline said.
“See, that feels accusatory.”
“Because it is.”
He gave her a look, then turned toward the hallway. “Where the hell is Noah?”
“Probably doing what he said he was going to do,” Ethan replied.
“Which was?”
“Functioning.”
That dragged a tired laugh out of Madaline and even the corner of Mira’s mouth lifted again. Ymir looked mildly betrayed.
“You’re all horrible.”
“And yet you stay,” came Noah’s voice from the stairs.
Everyone looked up.
He came down at an unhurried pace, one hand dragging lightly along the banister as he descended. He looked exactly the same as before he went upstairs, which in Noah’s case somehow made him seem even more serious than if he had returned visibly irritated. Dark hair slightly out of place now, expression flat in that way that meant he was either tired or thinking too much, drink still in hand.
“Well?” Ymir asked. “Did the house pass inspection?”
Noah stepped off the last stair. “Barely.”
“I knew it.”
“You know nothing.”
“I know the upstairs bathroom light flickers.”
“That is not useful information.”
“It could be.”
“Only if we’re planning to die in there.”
Katarin made a face. “Can we not say things like that?”
Noah looked at her. “You brought strangers to a house in the middle of nowhere.”
“They are not strangers.”
“They’re strangers to me.”
“That sounds personal.”
“It isn’t.”
The conversation snagged there, not quite turning hostile, but not smooth either. That had become the rhythm of the night—tiny catches in the fabric of it, small enough to ignore one at a time but impossible not to feel once they started layering over each other.
One of Katarin’s guys, the one still inside, pushed himself up from his chair and stretched. “I’m gonna crash soon.”
“Weak,” Ymir said.
“Sober,” Noah corrected.
“Cruel.”
Madaline let the voices blur around her for a moment and looked toward the door again.
Still shut.
Nothing beyond the glass but black reflection and the faint warm smears of the room behind her. No movement. No hand reaching for the knob. No outline coming back from the yard.
“Did he seriously just leave?” Ymir asked suddenly, glancing toward the same door.
Katarin shrugged without any concern at all. “Maybe.”
“Without saying anything?”
“Maybe he’s on a call.”
“With who? A woodland creature?”
“You are so dramatic.”
“No, I’m curious.”
“Curiosity has never looked like that.”
Ymir opened his mouth to answer, then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. He dropped back onto the edge of the couch instead, elbows on his knees now, the earlier energy in him finally starting to burn out in earnest. “Whatever. If he gets eaten by the woods, that’s on him.”
“That is not how responsibility works,” Noah said.
“I’m redefining it.”
“You can’t.”
“Watch me.”
Ethan moved then, stepping away from the shelf and toward the kitchen. He didn’t announce it, just crossed the room quietly enough that Madaline’s eyes followed him only because there wasn’t much else to watch anymore. He opened the fridge, took out a bottle of water, and twisted the cap loose with the kind of absent efficiency that made him seem like he belonged more in motions than in conversation.
When he came back, he paused briefly near Mira.
“You ready?” he asked softly.
Mira looked up at him. “For bed?”
“Eventually.”
She smiled faintly. “That sounds threatening.”
“It isn’t.”
“Debatable.”
He gave her a look that was almost dry amusement, then took a small step back, enough to give her space again without fully leaving it. Madaline noticed the exchange because she noticed most things tonight. But she also noticed how natural it was, how unforced. Ethan never hovered exactly. He just seemed to remain within reach of Mira in a way that made sense once you stopped looking for anything else.
A moment later, Kane returned.
He came in from the kitchen side this time, not from upstairs or outside, which made something unclench in Madaline even though she hadn’t realized anything had tightened. He carried nothing with him, and his expression had settled back into that same unreadable calm he wore like a second skin. If the room noticed him rejoin it, no one made a point of it.
That, somehow, felt important.
He was simply there again.
As if he had only stepped away for a minute.
His gaze passed briefly over the group, then landed on Mira for just a second—checking, Madaline thought again without knowing why that was the word that came to her—and then moved on. Kane took up a place near the wall opposite the couch, folded back into the room without ever seeming to need the room back.
“Okay,” Noah said after a while, glancing at the clock on the mantel. “I am going to bed before all of you become more annoying than you already are.”
“Too late,” Ymir said.
“For you, definitely.”
Noah set his empty glass down on the side table and straightened. That seemed to trigger something in the others, the spell of staying up just because nobody else had left finally wearing thin.
“Actually,” Madaline said, setting her own drink down, “same.”
“Cowards,” Ymir muttered.
“You literally said you were tired ten minutes ago,” she reminded him.
“That was emotional tiredness.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know, but it sounded real.”
Katarin stood with a sigh, stretching her arms over her head. “I’m not staying down here by myself, so I guess I’m done too.”
One of the guys stood immediately when she did. “I’ll come up.”
Ymir looked toward the door one last time. “Should somebody maybe—”
Katarin cut him off with a dismissive wave. “He’s fine.”
Noah’s brows pulled together slightly. “You sure?”
“He’s a grown man, Noah. If he wants to stay outside all night, that’s not my problem.”
The answer was careless enough that nobody could quite argue with it without making the situation seem bigger than it felt. Madaline could sense that much in the room—the reluctance to be the first person to say this was odd, because once someone said it, they would all have to start treating it like it mattered.
And no one wanted to do that.
Not tonight. Not yet.
Mira pushed herself up more slowly than the others, smoothing a hand over the front of her sweater as she stood. “If I sit back down, I’m not getting up again.”
“That’s fair,” Madaline said, rising too.
The room shifted into motion after that. Glasses being gathered. Half-hearted goodnights. Ymir insisting he would definitely still be awake in an hour even as Noah told him he wouldn’t. Ethan waiting just enough for Mira to move first before falling in beside her. Katarin already halfway toward the stairs again, the guy trailing after her.
Madaline hung back a second longer than the others, not because she meant to but because her eyes found the door again on instinct.
Still closed.
Still dark beyond it.
The room reflected faintly in the glass—her own outline, the lamp, the shape of the couch, a smear of movement as Ymir crossed behind her.
Nothing else.
“You coming?” Mira asked softly.
Madaline turned.
Mira had paused near the stairs, one hand resting lightly on the banister, blue eyes a little heavy with sleep but still warm in that unguarded way of hers. Ethan waited a step above her. Noah had already gone farther up. Ymir was still muttering about emotional fatigue. Kane stood near the hallway, not moving yet, but no more unreadable than usual.
Everything looked normal.
So normal that Madaline felt faintly stupid for still thinking about the dark outside.
“Yeah,” she said, finally moving. “Coming.”
She crossed the room and followed them toward the stairs, the old wood creaking under the first few footsteps as everyone began to separate properly at last.
Behind them, the living room emptied.
The lamps stayed on.
The glasses sat where they had been left.
And outside, beyond the warm square of the house and the windows that still glowed against the trees, the body near the edge of the woods lay unseen in the dark.