The tension in the air was unbearable, thick enough to choke me with each step we took. It wasn't just the fear that had taken hold of everyone; it was the unspoken frustration, the mounting pressure that was threatening to crack the group wide open. Each encounter with the mammoths had been a harsh reminder of the brutal world we were now forced to navigate. The first group of mammoths had been bad enough, but as we moved deeper into the museum, I couldn't shake the feeling that they wouldn't be the last.
With every turn we made, the reality of our situation set in even more. We weren't just fighting for survival anymore; we were fighting against the very idea of survival itself. The whispers of doubt among the students had only gotten louder as we progressed, the divide between them growing more pronounced with every step. Some wanted to press forward, to fight. Others—more and more by the minute—wanted to hide, to cower in the shadows and pray that whatever horrors lay ahead would just pass them by.
Alex, always the one to lead, had begun to show signs of strain. It wasn't just the physical exhaustion anymore. His glares had become sharper, more frequent, as if each moment of indecision in the group was a personal affront. The anger simmering beneath the surface was starting to leak out, visible in the way he clenched his jaw, in the way his shoulders tensed every time he glanced back at the others.
We stopped for a brief rest, huddling beneath a strange, cave-like structure that had once been an exhibit for cavemen. The stone ceiling above us, cracked and chipped by time, seemed to mirror the state of our situation. Everything was falling apart. The entire world, really.
I couldn't help it. The stress had been building up for too long. I walked over to Alex, finding him leaning against the cold stone, his eyes fixed ahead but clearly lost in thought. I hesitated, but then the words just came out. "How do you do it?" I asked quietly, my voice barely above a whisper. "How do you bear with all of this? The students… their constant complaining. How do you keep going?"
Alex didn't look at me at first, but I could feel his gaze shift, heavy and tired. After a moment, he finally spoke. "It's all part of it, Eli. People don't know how to appreciate something until they don't have it anymore." He paused, his eyes far away. "The thing is, they're all so used to their comforts. They think they can just snap their fingers and make things right. They think everything will be okay because it always was. But now they're scared. And scared people… they change. They become selfish. They forget how to work together."
His words hit harder than I expected. The truth in them resonated deep within me. People do take things for granted. They forget how easily everything can slip through their fingers. I had seen it in the way the students had fractured into factions, in the way their fear had turned into blame and resentment. Alex was right. The world had shifted beneath their feet, and they weren't ready to accept it.
But as the conversation drifted into silence, I was left alone with my thoughts. Is this what it's always going to be like? I wondered. The group had been a source of strength, but as time went on, I couldn't shake the feeling that this unity was as fragile as a thread about to snap. I wondered if it would be easier to go at it alone. I wasn't sure if I could trust the group anymore, or if I even wanted to.
As my thoughts spiralled, I couldn't help but replay the events that had already passed. We had encountered two groups of creatures before, each encounter stranger than the last. There had been raptors, their thin, sharp bodies cutting through the museum halls like living blades, facing off against a group of massive, snarling big cats. The two groups had locked eyes, their hostile postures evident even from a distance. What shocked me the most, though, wasn't the standoff. It was the way they behaved. There was something natural about it. They didn't just fight like they were controlled. They fought like they had to defend themselves like they were fighting because that is what their instinct for survival deemed them to be. They fought like real animals.
That thought gnawed at me. Was someone behind all this? Who—or what—was orchestrating these attacks? Or was this a natural phenomenon, not the plans of an evil mastermind hiding in the dark, but something more... divine? Every theory that passed through my mind seemed as plausible as the last, but none of them brought me any closer to an answer.
I was snapped out of my reverie by a tap on my shoulder. I turned, startled, to find Maya standing there, her big, dark eyes looking at me with a mixture of curiosity and concern. We hadn't really spoken much since the battle, but now, with the light from above spilling into the hallway, I could make out the details of her features more clearly. She was petite, her blonde hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, and she wore the standard student uniform of the Royal Institute. Her knee-high socks, the ones that had always seemed out of place in this new world, now seemed like an odd echo of normalcy.
"You alright?" she asked softly, her voice gentle but direct.
I wasn't sure how to answer. The weight of everything seemed too much to put into words. So instead, I just nodded. "Yeah. Just... thinking."
She sat down next to me, crossing her legs beneath her, and looked out at the open space before us. "It's crazy, isn't it?" she said after a while. "The outside world... Is it really like this everywhere?"
I wanted to say yes, to tell her that everything had changed, and nothing would ever be the same. But the truth was, I didn't know. I didn't know what was out there, or if anything was left at all. So I didn't answer. I just looked at her, not sure how to explain the knot in my stomach, the gnawing feeling that something even worse was coming.
Suddenly, the peaceful silence was shattered by a loud shout from across the group. Students were arguing—loudly—about whether or not to stay behind. It was a discussion that had been building for some time, and now it was boiling over. "We need to stay here!" one of the students yelled. "It's safer!"
"No, we can't stay here!" someone else retorted. "We need to keep moving. We need to survive!"
The noise was chaotic, but beneath it all, I felt the tug of my internal dilemma. Should I leave them behind? Would it be easier to cut my losses and focus on my own survival? They were a liability, after all, weren't they? Or… should I stay and try to hold the group together? We had a better chance if we stuck together, but the way they were falling apart, the way they turned on each other at the first sign of trouble… It made me doubt everything.
I didn't have time to dwell on it for long. A distant rumble interrupted my thoughts. It wasn't just the echo of the argument—it was something bigger. The ground beneath our feet trembled slightly, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Something was coming.
The tremors grew stronger, and the faces of the students turned pale, their earlier arguments forgotten as the fear crept back into their eyes. Whatever it was, it was heading our way—and it wasn't going to be pretty.
We all got to our feet, weapons in hand, eyes scanning the shadows. The quiet, tense moments before the storm seemed to stretch on forever. And then, we heard it—a growl, low and menacing, followed by the thundering of footsteps.
Whatever it was, we were about to face it.