The long night filled with lethal terror, phantom screams, and wrenching grief along the slopes of Mount Aruna slowly eroded away against the passage of time. Along the eastern horizon, a thin thread of golden dawn light finally carved through the pitch-black sky, bringing a glimmer of hope to the razor-thin edge of Rian and Maya's consciousness.

After hours of crawling, dragging battered bodies, and fighting horrifying hallucinations along a seemingly endless forest trail, Rian and Maya finally caught sight of a view that instantly unlocked tears of pure relief.

In the distance, piercing through the wisps of early morning fog, glowed the warm yellow neon of a small, tin-roofed building.

"Maya... look... that's the registration post..." Rian whispered brokenly, his voice raspy and nearly gone. He stared at the building with tear-filled eyes, gently shaking Maya’s shoulder as she slumped weakly beside him. "We... we made it out, May..."

Maya slowly lifted her head. Her lips were stained a severe blue, her eyes glazed as they rested on the neon light. There was no smile on her face; all that remained was a vacant stare born of profound, deep-seated trauma. "Rian... are we actually safe...?"

"Yeah, May... come on, we're almost there," Rian urged with desperate willpower, forcing his numb, deadened legs to stagger upright. He wrapped a supportive arm around Maya, propping his friend up to drag themselves forward with their absolute final reserves of strength.

With stumbling, agonizing steps, they pushed through the wooden gate of the trailhead registration post—the exact same spot where they had set off with laughter and youthful excitement just days ago.

The moment they crossed the concrete clearing of the post, Rian and Maya’s final defenses completely collapsed. Their legs turned to jelly.

Thud!

Rian and Maya hit the ground together, slamming hard against the wooden guard desk and sending a stack of registration forms fluttering across the floor. They wept hysterically, venting every ounce of terror, guilt, and anguish compressing their chests, before their bodies finally surrendered to unconsciousness on the hard concrete floor, shattered by extreme exhaustion and severe hypothermia.

Minutes later, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed from inside the back room of the post.

Pak Karto, the middle-aged post warden whose face was lined with weary wrinkles, bolted out carrying two heavy woolen blankets and a mug of warm water. His eyes blew wide in shock at the sight of two young bodies lying helplessly in front of the desk in a harrowing state—clothes shredded, skin tinted blue, and covered from head to toe in angry scratches and cuts.

"Dear God! Kids!" Pak Karto panicked, dropping the blankets and rushing over to Rian. He checked the boy’s wrist pulse, finding it dangerously faint. "Wake up, kids! Hold on!"

Pak Karto shouted for his partner inside to grab the first-aid kit and prep warm water, then reached out to reposition Rian into a more comfortable posture.

Yet the instant Pak Karto’s hands brushed against Rian’s back to slide off the small hiking pack still strapped tightly to his frame, the warden's movements abruptly froze.

Pak Karto’s panicked expression twisted into absolute rigidity. He stared hard at the rucksack on Rian’s back—the pack whose outer pocket zipper was slowly, methodically sliding open on its own without a single human hand touching it.

Zip... zip...

The zipper pulled all the way open.

From inside the empty pouch of Rian’s pack, Dika’s thick mountaineering jacket slowly tumbled out onto the floor—a heavy coat that was now soaking wet, ripped open at the chest, and caked in dark graveyard soil reeking of decay.

Worse still, tumbling out alongside the jacket came a handful of freshly picked jasmine petals, releasing an intensely heavy, suffocating scent of burning incense into the crisp morning air of the basecamp, as though someone had just scattered them from inside the bag.

Pak Karto stood petrified, staring down at the pack and the grim relics spilling across the floor. He slowly raised his gaze toward the fog-choked pine forest in the distance where Rian and Maya had just emerged, and whispered in a trembling, hollow voice:

"You never hiked back down alone... they came home with you."