Towards Safety. Towards Hope.

Louis’s voice cuts through the smoke, ragged and urgent. Benjamin turns hard and runs toward it, pushing through ferns and blackened needles as the forest floor gives way under his feet.

He bursts into a small clearing and spots Louis pinned under a fallen pine branch, the limb crushing him low to the ground. Blood darkens Louis’s plumage, and the muffled groans of the undead drift closer between the trees.

The military supply crate sits open nearby, its beacon blinking red through the smoke like a signal flare. Benjamin sees the path ahead, free Louis first, then use the beacon to pull rescue toward them.

Benjamin plants himself beside the branch and reaches in to lift, while the forest answers with louder moans from somewhere just beyond the clearing.

Benjamin digs in and lifts. The pine branch shifts with a gritty snap, then rolls up and away from Louis in one brutal heave.

Louis sucks in a shaking breath and scrambles his legs free, flattening one hand to the ground as he gets his weight off the crushed spot.

The branch slams aside into the needles, exposing a strip of torn bark and bent undergrowth where it had pinned him down.

The blinking red beacon washes over both of them, steady and bright through the smoke, while the moaning in the trees drifts just a little farther off.

Benjamin follows Louis's gaze toward a cluster of jagged rocks near the tree line. A figure sits slumped against the stone, clutching a makeshift bandage to his shoulder, his eyes scanning the smoke for any sign of his companions.

Benjamin scans the wreckage and the surrounding woods for any sign of Jenny, but the silence is absolute. He finds only her discarded jacket near the impact site, torn and empty, confirming the grim reality that she did not survive the crash.

Benjamin draws in a ragged breath and calls out into the trees, his voice raw in the smoke. The woods answer with a long, empty hush.

Then, faint and wavering from the ridge, a voice cracks back. "Ben?"

A beat later, another shape shifts near the wreckage, and Jenny staggers into view through the haze, one hand braced against a trunk, alive and shaking.

Benjamin’s grip tightens on her jacket as Jenny closes the distance, eyes fixed on the fabric in his hands. The beacon keeps pulsing red between them, steady as a heartbeat.

Benjamin crosses the gap in three quick steps and pulls Jenny into him. The smoke clings to both of them, but the shake in her shoulders eases the moment his arms lock around her.

She clutches back hard, one hand fisting in his shirt, the other pressing at his shoulder like she needs proof he will stay solid. The beacon flashes red across their faces.

Louis leans on the sapling nearby, winded and bruised, but the tightness in his face breaks into a tired grin. Elias watches from the ridge, relieved enough to straighten despite the pain.

Jenny eases back just enough to look at Benjamin, eyes bright with tears and soot. Her hands stay on his arms, unwilling to let go too fast.

Benjamin pulls away from the embrace to scan the wreckage one last time, his eyes searching the twisted metal for any sign of the flight crew. He finds only the charred, empty seats and the silence of the woods, confirming that the pilots did not make it out.

Benjamin lowers his voice and studies the dark line of the hills beyond the smoke. The mountain base is not close, but the broken ground and old service road give them a workable approach. He marks the steep side on the map, careful and exact.

Jenny slips closer to the wreckage and snatches her jacket from the mud-black grass, shaking ash from the sleeves. The red beacon keeps pulsing in the crate, steady as a heartbeat.

Louis points uphill through the thinning smoke, where a narrow track cuts between the trees and disappears into stone. The group stands together, bruised but moving with purpose, while the woods answer with distant, hungry silence.

Benjamin pats the ash-streaked ground beside the wreckage, then checks the weeds under the broken cockpit frame. Nothing. Only wet grass, soot, and twisted metal answer back.

Louis glances down the slope and shakes his head once. Jenny keeps her jacket hugged to her chest, scanning the smoke with a hard, helpless look.

Benjamin crouches lower and parts the blackened grass near the crate. The beacon flashes red across empty ground, no bat shape anywhere in the immediate churn of mud and pine needles.

A distant scrape moves through the treeline, faint but real. The smoke shifts, hiding the slope and making the missing bat feel farther away than a few feet.