Night didn't fall.
It sank.
Like it had weight.
The sky was still red, but deeper now — crimson soaked in blood. The wind stopped. The trees stopped swaying. The fire Lira lit flickered as if it wanted to die but wasn't allowed.
And then…
The whispers began.
They weren't loud.
That was the worst part.
They were like thoughts. Your thoughts. Except they weren't yours.
I looked around, expecting something — demons, monsters, ghosts.
Nothing.
Just sound.
Soft. Cold. Deep.
Lira froze.
Her eyes glazed over, her mouth barely moving.
I stepped toward her.
"Lira?"
She didn't answer.
Her lips were trembling.
I knelt.
"Hey. Snap out of it."
She grabbed my arm — not like she was attacking me, more like she was drowning and I was the only thing floating.
She whispered something.
At first, I didn't catch it.
Then I did.
"I said I was sorry."
I pulled back.
"What?"
"I didn't mean to kill them."
She was crying now. Quietly. Silently. One tear.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
No answer.
Only whispers.
Suddenly she gasped, snapped out of it, eyes wide like she'd just surfaced from deep water.
Her body shook.
Then she looked at me like I wasn't supposed to be real.
"You're not hearing it?" she asked.
I shook my head.
"No."
"…nothing?"
"No voices. No whispers. Just watching you melt."
Her face changed.
"…You really are the Zeist."
I stood up, pacing.
"Okay. That's enough mystery for me. Tell me what's going on. Now."
Lira wiped her face. Her hands were shaking.
"You wanna know?"
"Yes."
She nodded slowly.
Then said something I didn't expect.
"Because I was supposed to be you."
I blinked.
"What?"
Lira sat down, back against the twisted tree.
"There was a cycle. Before this one. They marked me."
She touched her collarbone.
"It burned. Just like yours. I had the dreams, the visions, the blade. Everything."
"What happened?"
"I failed."
"…Failed how?"
She looked away.
"I tried to rewrite the rules. Made deals. Thought I could cheat the system.
I made it to the ninth territory. And then…
I caused something terrible."
The wind returned for a second. Just enough to make the fire sputter.
"They call it the Fall of Ivory Hill.
Thousands died. An entire region burned.
All because of me."
She was quiet for a moment. Then looked up.
"They erased me. Pulled the mark. Sent me back to the start."
"…And you remember?"
"Every second."
I sat down beside her. Let it hang in the air.
"You could've let me walk into a trap. Let me die. Taken your place back."
"I thought about it," she admitted.
"But then?"
She looked at me with something almost like hope.
"Then you didn't hear the whispers."
I wanted to say something clever. Some sarcastic one-liner.
Nothing came.
The silence between us wasn't awkward. It was... honest.
That made it worse.
And then the scream hit.
Sharp. Raw. Human. But broken.
We both jumped up.
From across the ridge, a figure stumbled out of the trees.
A boy — probably no older than me — shirtless, eyes wide and glowing white. His body was covered in cuts. Symbols carved into his skin, like he'd tried to claw the whispers out of his head.
He wasn't walking.
He was twitching forward, like something was pulling him.
He looked at us — but didn't see us.
And then he started chanting.
In a language I didn't understand.
Over and over and over again.
And then he charged.
"MOVE!" Lira shouted.
He was fast. Too fast.
I ducked left, Lira rolled right. The boy slammed into the tree and bounced back like a puppet with no strings.
He turned on me.
Eyes glowing.
Mouth bleeding.
He swung a blade made of bone — sharp, jagged, probably carved from his own ribs.
I blocked it with my arm.
Pain exploded. I hit the ground.
But then the mark on my chest flared — and the pain stopped.
The glow from his eyes dimmed.
He paused.
Looked confused.
"Wait…" he whispered. "It's… you."
Then he dropped the blade.
Collapsed.
Dead.
No last breath.
No final word.
Just dead.
Like something had turned off his soul.
Lira walked over slowly. Checked the body. Said nothing.
"What was that?" I asked.
She didn't answer at first.
Then: "That's what happens when someone listens to the wrong voice."
I looked up at the sky.
The whispers were fading now. The wind was back. The red was softening.
But I knew one thing for sure.
Skull Island didn't just test your body.
It tried to break your mind.
And some people didn't survive either.
The body didn't vanish.
It should've. Every other dead participant we'd seen had either turned to ash, or been reclaimed by the Island — sucked into the roots, or taken by the mist.
But this one just… stayed.
Lira crouched beside him, studying the carvings across his chest and arms.
"They're deliberate," she muttered. "Not just madness."
I kept a little distance. The air around the corpse felt off — like gravity had shifted, like my body didn't weigh the same anymore.
"What do they mean?" I asked.
She ran her fingers across one of the symbols. It was a triangle, split down the middle, with a dot on the left side.
"I've seen this before," she said. "Back when I had the mark."
"Where?"
"There's a Vault. Beneath a place called the Bleeding Tree."
I raised an eyebrow.
"You're just gonna casually say 'Vault' like we're in a video game?"
Lira ignored me, stood, wiped her hand off with a leaf, and looked me straight in the eye.
"If you want answers about your mark, the whispers, the Zeist… it's in that Vault."
I folded my arms. "And why haven't you opened it yourself?"
Her eyes dropped for half a second.
"It only responds to the Zeist mark."
We set out just after sunrise.
The red sky had cooled to a dusty pink, and the jungle seemed quieter than before — like it, too, was recovering from the Night of Whispers.
As we walked, Lira pointed out a narrow trail hidden behind vines. It sloped downward, toward a ravine filled with skeletal trees.
One of the trees stood out immediately.
Massive. Crooked. Bleeding.
Its bark oozed a thick red sap, slow and steady like a wound that never healed.
"That's the one," she said.
At the base of the tree was a stone slab — round, cracked, and etched with more symbols. I knelt and looked closer.
They were the same as the ones carved into the boy.
Same triangle.
Same dots.
Same mark as mine.
The moment I touched it, the ground rumbled.
The slab slid open — not with magic or dramatic fire — just a low grinding sound, like a vault door opening after centuries.
A staircase revealed itself.
Dark. Spiral. Endless.
Of course.
We went down.
The light dimmed with every step. The air grew thicker. The only sound was our footsteps and the low drip of red sap from the tree roots above.
Finally, we reached the bottom.
A wide chamber. Cold stone. Seven pillars. And in the center: a pedestal.
Lira lit a small torch.
"That's it," she whispered.
I walked toward the pedestal. The mark on my chest started to pulse. With every step closer, it got hotter. Not painful — just present.
When I placed my hand on the stone, something clicked.
A symbol lit up beneath my hand — the Zeist mark.
The pedestal split open.
Inside?
Not treasure.
Not weapons.
Just a book.
Old. Bound in black leather. With a symbol on the front: my mark, again, but this time the seven arrows were glowing blue.
I opened it.
Pages fluttered.
Words formed.
But they weren't in ink.
They were in flame.
Burning script, forming and fading.
Each word felt alive — like it carried weight.
I flipped to a random page.
There was a name.
A list.
Then a sentence that burned itself into my mind:
"The Zeist walks not to win — but to undo the game."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
Lira's voice was low.
"That the game has a flaw. A crack in the system. And only the Zeist can find it."
I looked back at the book.
Then something shifted.
A voice.
Not a whisper.
Not like the ones from the night before.
Louder. Clearer. Calm.
It spoke from inside me.
"There is a door. The others will see a wall. You will walk through it."
I jerked back.
"What the hell was that?"
Lira looked pale.
"You heard it?"
I nodded.
She swallowed.
"…Then the Vault is awake."
Suddenly the chamber rumbled again — not from the pedestal, but from the walls.
On the far side of the chamber, a section of stone peeled away, revealing another staircase.
This one was made of bone.
And it led down even deeper.
I looked at Lira.
She hesitated. "We don't have to go yet."
But I was already walking.
Because for the first time since arriving here…
I didn't feel lost.
I felt called.