The horrifying scream of Dika’s severed head resting upon the rocky earth still reverberated off the cliff walls, shredding whatever shards of courage Rian and Gani had left. Without sparing a second to process the consequences or glance backward, Gani violently yanked Rian by the wrist.

"Don't look! Run, Rian! Keep running!" Gani barked, half-shouting, his voice raw and wrapped in suffocating panic.

They bolted blindly back down the steep trail, slick with patches of wet mud and loose gravel. Their lungs burned fiercely, gasping for the thinning mountain air until every intake of breath triggered a stabbing pain in their chests.

"Gan... my legs... I can't feel my legs anymore!" Rian whimpered between ragged gasps, stumbling and nearly wiping out as his boot hydroplaned across a slick tree root.

"Hang in there, Yan! If we stop now, we die!" Gani yelled back without slowing his pace. His left hand gripped his pack strap tight, while his right hand pointed the sole remaining headlamp still functional on his forehead, projecting a beam of white light that had already begun to flicker and fade.

Behind their backs, the true auditory terror began.

The faint bartering murmurs of the mystic market abruptly mutated into shrill, mocking shrieks of laughter echoing across every corner of the valley. That sound fused with the stampede of thousands of footsteps tearing through the brush, hunting their shadows from the dark woods flanking the trail.

Krosak... krosak... krosak...

"They're right behind us, Gan! The sound is getting closer!" Rian shrieked hysterically, casting a terrified glance over his shoulder to find the wall of fog roiling wildly behind them, forming silhouetted arms with long, clawed fingers lunging out to snatch at their backs.

"Don't look back, Rian! Eyes front!" Gani snarled, cold sweat soaking his entire face despite the freezing sub-zero air.

The situation deteriorated further as nature itself conspired to trap them. A dense, pitch-black ash-gray fog rolled in aggressively, acting with deliberate malice to seal off the trail ahead. The vapor billowed thick, cutting visibility down to zero and forcing them to guess their footing in the absolute gloom of night.

"The trail's blocked by fog, Gan! Where are we supposed to run?!" Rian panicked, blindly feeling along the rock cliff wall on his right to avoid stepping off into the abyss.

"Straight ahead! Follow the wind!" Gani ordered firmly, though he had no earthly idea where the path actually led.

Amidst their frantic flight, the batteries in Gani’s headlamp began signaling their final moments. The steady, piercing white beam suddenly sputtered, flickering erratically—flaring bright for a second before sinking into a dying, yellowish glow on the verge of extinction.

"Damn it... the battery's dying!" Gani panicked, slapping the side of the housing unit on his head.

"Swap the spares, Gan! Hurry!" Rian screamed.

"No time! Keep running!"

The exact second Gani’s headlamp sputtered a final dying pulse before winking out entirely, Gani frantically threw that last sliver of illumination straight ahead to ensure no sheer drop waited for them in the dark.

Gani and Rian’s footsteps slammed to a simultaneous, dead halt. Their bodies went rigid.

Caught in the faint, dying flicker of the dying headlamp beam, dozens of pairs of eyes blazed with brilliant crimson light, lining up solidly to block the entire width of the descending trail ahead. Those eyes glared with pure, unadulterated hatred from behind the trunks of rigid pine trees, cutting off the very last exit route left to them.