Although the island's beauty shimmered like a mirage drawn by the hands of gods, I knew better than to be seduced by illusions.
Its air carried an ancient stillness—one that did not belong to the living nor to the dead.
Each stone, each whispering breeze, felt borrowed from a time before language.
"Beauty is not always a gift. Sometimes, it is bait."
"The ground beneath me wasn't just earth—it was a burial ground of forgotten souls. A place suspended beyond decay, where nothing changed, yet everything watched."
To linger would be to forget reason.
To marvel too long would be to fall into the kind of sleep one never wakes from.
As the sun retreated, bleeding its final gold into a sky that held no mercy, the island shed its mask of wonder.
Its silence grew heavier.
It's lighter and thinner.
A predator no longer pretending to be paradise.
"Even paradise, when observed too long, begins to rot."
I turned back.
Returning to the base felt like stepping from myth into ruin.
Yet even the ruin was disturbed.
There, in the cold heart of our shelter, they had gathered.
All of them.
"They stood upright, but their eyes had seen too much—and understood too little."
A room full of minds sharpening themselves against fear.
And in that moment, I understood—
Something had shifted.
Something invisible had bled into our reality.
And none of us would leave untouched.
In the main hall, an unusual gathering had formed. People who rarely met eyes now huddled together, as if shared dread had finally forced them into camaraderie.
I stepped forward with a quip, my tone light yet surgical:
"It's not every day I see dead men standing."
No one laughed.
Katrina, the head of safety—stern as always, with eyes sharpened by years of survival—broke the silence.
"We've encountered a problem."
My lips curled. "A problem? In a place where reality itself bends? Do continue, Miss Katrina."
She didn't flinch. "We found this... near Mira's corpse."
She held up a photo of a stone—its surface dark and bloodstained.
But it was not the blood that disturbed me. It was the writing.
'It didn't come on its own.'
A quiet shiver trailed down my spine.
Katrina elaborated. "The blood changed the stone's surface. It's not a regular reaction. Something... ancient, maybe chemical. We don't fully understand it yet."
"You think a spy did this ?" I asked.
She nodded slowly. "It's not impossible. The satellite interference. The sabotaged water system. The beast's odd behavior. It's all too... orchestrated. We suspect infiltration. Espionage. A traitor among us."
"Ebnovel Island," I muttered, "where law is merely a suggestion and death a casual acquaintance."
As a child, I feared monsters hiding under the bed.
As an adult, I discovered a bitter truth:
Humans make better monsters.
Sharper teeth, quieter footsteps, and a reason to kill.
"We'll guard the base in shifts tonight," Katrina said. "Externally, the structure is solid. But inside..."
She paused.
"Inside, we've always been exposed."
Then, a strange hum—not from machinery, not from voices. A frequency that should not exist. A vibration in the bones, not the ears.
Imara—cool, clinical, always watching—lifted her head slowly. "That sound… it's like the building itself is remembering something it shouldn't."
Her voice was quiet, but the silence that followed felt loud.
Dr. Zakir, usually calm and unreadable, stared at one of the monitors. The feed glitched—just a flicker—but it showed static for a frame longer than it should have. No one commented.
Zakir finally said, "Systems say all is well. But machines lie more politely than people."
Chilling.
I was stationed at the energy hub with Dr. Khanna—a relic of an older time, when science still held dreams rather than desperation. His silence carried more weight than most speeches.
His presence wasn't loud, but it lingered. Like old radiation: quiet, invisible, lethal to the naïve.
He adjusted the control panel, fingers steady but slow.
He fought sleep like a warrior already wounded.
I watched him, eyes half-closed behind foggy lenses.
"Old man," I began. "You've lived through more failed revolutions than I've seen sunrises. What's your take?"
He let out a breath like he was exhaling the dust of forgotten worlds.
"We broke atoms," he said, "and rewrote genes. We made diseases kneel and summoned stars from glass tubes. But every miracle costs something—time, souls, memory. And in the end, people steal what they can't create. Or bury it."
"In science, theft is not a crime. It's a tradition." I nodded.
"Genius is hunted. Discoveries vanish. No culprits. No nations to blame. Just silence."
Khanna grimaced. "You speak of ghosts. I speak of politics. The ones behind this... they don't use bullets. They erase futures."
He paused. "Mira was one such future. If what I heard is true, she was close—dangerously close—to something big. Her death isn't a coincidence."
I leaned back.
"She and I weren't close, but our intellects clashed once. Science Olympiad, years ago. She was older. I was sharper. I beat her.
She looked at me, not with hatred—but with a smirk. One that said, 'I'll catch up. Just wait.'"
He raised an eyebrow.
"She hated me for beating her. But... hatred is just another shade of respect."
"Genius doesn't admire genius—it competes with it."
I looked away for a moment, unsure why her name lingered in my mouth like a taste I couldn't swallow.
I hadn't liked her.
I hadn't grieved her.
And yet, her death felt… unfinished.
"Some deaths feel like echoes—not endings."
Khanna narrowed his eyes.
"Do you think it was murder?"
I think..." I paused.
"The beast didn't eat her. It mauled her—violently—but didn't devour her. It's... strange. An animal kills to survive. This one acted like it was staged."
"And a human?" he asked.
"Unlikely. Outside, one needs a suit. You lose three-fourths of your movement. No way someone in that shell could subdue her. Unless…"
"Unless?" he prompted.
I smiled faintly.
"Unless it wasn't a human in a suit. Or... not a human at all."
We both fell silent. The sky above shimmered with stars, unmarred by the smog of cities or the warmth of comfort.
The universe never offers comfort.
It only offers distraction—beautiful, merciless distraction.
"Only a merciless sky lets the stars burn honestly." I remarked, the vastness above reflecting the complexities within.
It's strange — the more dangerous the place, the more beautiful the silence becomes.
Maybe the universe is kindest where it is cruelest. As if it's trying to say, I'm sorry… but this is how progress looks.
Then Khanna spoke again, voice low:
"I was twenty-two when the Syndicate offered me a chance. Illegal research. No safety. No promises. Just potential. I hesitated for a week. My mentor begged me not to go. But I went."
He stared at the monitors, but he wasn't seeing them.
"Years later, the lab was gone. Buried. But I lived. I lived and carried the knowledge. The chance. The change."
He looked at me.
"When life knocks, it's rarely dressed in opportunity. It comes cloaked in terror, in madness, in loss. But you answer anyway.
Because life seldom knocks with opportunity instead of terror."
He held my gaze, unblinking.
"Never wait for perfect conditions. Perfection is the mask of stagnation."
Outside, the hum returned for a second—a shiver in the electric lines, a twitch in the lights.
Zakir turned toward it, murmured:
"Lights don't flicker for no reason. Somewhere, something remembers being alive."
And I—
I looked back at the stars, just as the lights in the hub flickered for real this time.
A silent breath passed through the room. Machines stuttered. Shadows danced.
This is how progress looks.
Beautiful. Quiet. And utterly mad.