Secrets in the Darkness

“The hardest part isn’t the lies. It’s deciding which truths to leave unsaid.”

As I took my seat on a log opposite the campfire, the flames casting a warm, flickering light across the campsite, I let my body sink into the worn bark beneath me. The log was rough and uneven, but after a day like today, it might as well have been a velvet chaise. The fire crackled steadily, its glow reaching outward in gentle pulses, as though trying to push back the gathering twilight with defiant optimism.

Luke moved to join me, settling in with a tired sigh, the bottle of whiskey still in his grip. He didn’t say much—he didn’t have to. The way he sat, shoulders slightly hunched, fingers idly turning the bottle, spoke volumes. The silence between us felt neither awkward nor strained; it was the kind of quiet that only came after surviving something incomprehensible together.

"You alright?" I inquired, my voice low, softened by fatigue but threaded with genuine concern. I glanced over at him, studying the angles of his face in the shifting firelight.

"Yeah," Luke replied after a pause, his voice rasping slightly as he lifted the bottle and took a long sip. The amber liquid caught the light before vanishing into him, and I watched the flames mirrored in his eyes—restless, searching. There was more behind that ‘yeah’, I could feel it. But I didn’t press him.

The hush of the evening pressed around us, broken only by the crackle of burning wood and the occasional hiss as sap met flame. It was strangely comforting. A fragile slice of normality carved out of a reality that had spun wildly off course.

My thoughts, unbidden, drifted to my father. Did he know about this? This lagoon, this place, the strange dance between life and death that Joel now embodied—was it part of some larger knowledge he had never shared? I stared into the fire, letting the warmth wash over my face as that thought burrowed deeper. If he did know... then perhaps, somewhere out there, he was still alive. Somewhere.

The word hung in my mind like smoke—impossible to hold, but always present. It felt like a lifeline and a taunt all at once.

But then, as if drawn from the very ashes at my feet, came the ghosts of other names. But Pierre? The thought pierced through the moment like a shard of glass. And the Fox… questions trailing after him like shadows I could never quite grasp. What happened to them? Had they crossed some similar boundary? Had they vanished in the same way Joel had returned?

Does any of that matter now? I bit my lip, the inner voice sharp, trying to cut through the noise. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. But how could I just... forget?

I shifted slightly on the log, the bark biting into the backs of my legs. My fingers curled around my knees as I stared into the heart of the fire. It popped and flared, a mesmerising dance of reds and golds, and for a fleeting moment, it almost looked like it breathed.

Sitting there, beside Luke, with the night drawing in and the fire crackling before us, I felt like I was teetering between two worlds—the one we had left behind, and the one that refused to make sense. Between the ache of what had been lost and the uncertain shimmer of what might still be found. The weight of personal quests tangled with the raw immediacy of staying alive, and I found myself caught in the middle—searching, waiting, hoping.

And yet, despite everything, the fire’s warmth grounded me. It anchored me to the now. We were here. Breathing. Awake. A little bruised, a lot confused—but still here.

And as long as we were still here, I reminded myself, there was still hope.

As night fully claimed the sky, turning it into a vast expanse of inky blackness. It was the kind of night that could have swallowed us whole in its silence and scale, but instead, we found comfort in the simple rituals of humanity—eating, trading stories, passing the nearly-empty whiskey bottle back and forth like a shared secret.

The sharp crack of wood shifting in the fire punctuated our laughter, and Paul’s loud, unmistakable cackle rose above it all. The sound echoed off the hills behind us, tumbling into the dark like a challenge hurled into the unknown. It was reckless. Joyful. Defiant. A proclamation of life, of presence, in the face of everything we couldn’t understand.

"Shh," I said, struggling to contain a grin as I pressed my fingers to my lips with mock seriousness. My tone was more teasing than stern, but the absurdity of my own words cracked my composure. "The zombie is sleeping," I added, the joke hanging in the air like a match struck in the dark. And just like that, I dissolved into a helpless fit of giggles, burying my face in my hands.

The laughter rolled out of me, sudden and cathartic, a release valve from the stress and dread that had gripped me all day. There was something beautifully ridiculous in calling Joel a zombie, but it was also the only label that came close to capturing the sheer strangeness of what we were witnessing.

Kain joined me, his laughter open and honest. "Well, I didn’t know how else to describe him," he said, his voice catching between chuckles. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, and for a moment, I could see the younger man he might have been before all this. Unburdened. Unbroken.

"Are we sure it's safe in there? We don’t really know what’s going on," Paul said suddenly, his voice dipping just enough to carry a thread of genuine concern beneath the joke. He leaned in slightly, his brows drawing together as he glanced toward the tent. The firelight threw shadows across his features, making his unease more visible than perhaps he intended.

The tension crept back in, coiling like smoke around our circle.

"Oh," Luke exhaled loudly, rolling his eyes as he reached for the whiskey bottle again. "Don’t be so stupid, Paul."

His voice was flat, the words cutting, and I caught the subtle shift in posture around the fire—Paul sitting a little straighter, Kain averting his eyes. Luke’s dismissal wasn’t just about safety; it was about the need to believe we were safe. That Joel, whatever he was now, wasn’t dangerous. Because if he was…

"Ah," Paul gasped theatrically, placing a hand over his heart like a wounded stage actor. His sarcasm tried to cover the discomfort that had slipped in beneath our laughter. "Cruel words, Luke."

Without a word, Luke rose unsteadily, placing a firm hand on my shoulder for balance. His touch was warm and familiar, but his steps were not. He moved with the erratic grace of someone trying too hard to appear unfazed. "Of course it’s safe," he muttered, though the words seemed more for himself than any of us. He wandered off towards Joel’s tent, the shadows swallowing him up as he disappeared past the fringe of the firelight.

"Is he alright?" Kain asked, his voice lowered to a whisper, as though speaking any louder might disturb the fragile calm.

"Oh, he’s fine," Paul replied with a flick of his wrist, but there was no weight behind his confidence. His eyes lingered a moment too long on the path Luke had taken before turning back to the fire.

And then silence.

Not the heavy, foreboding kind that marked the onset of dread, but a softer quiet—muted and reflective. The sort of hush that allowed the fire’s voice to take centre stage: wood popping, flames crackling, the occasional breeze sighing across the sand.

We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. Each of us stared into the flames, letting them blur our vision and dull the questions we weren’t ready to face. The glow painted our faces with warmth, but deep inside, we all knew the darkness was still circling.

And yet, somehow, for a little while, we were content.

"Well, dinner was tasty. Thank you both," I said appreciatively, leaning back slightly and stretching my legs towards the fire, feeling the heat lap at my shins. For a moment, the sense of normality was almost convincing—a fleeting illusion that we were just a group of travellers, sharing food and conversation beneath a starlit sky. With a flick of my wrist, I tossed my used paper plate into the fire, watching it curl and blacken in the flames. "I wonder whether now might..." I began, the idea half-formed on my tongue.

But before I could finish, Paul’s sharp "Shh" cut through the air like a blade, his voice taut with sudden alertness. I froze, my breath catching in my throat.

From the tent came voices—raised, urgent, strained. The words were indistinct, muffled by canvas, but the emotion carried through loud and clear. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. A tension I hadn't realised was there tightened in my chest, as if my body had already braced itself for something to go wrong.

Paul was already moving, pushing himself quietly up from the log. His eyes were fixed on the tent, posture alert, muscles coiled. The shift from relaxed campmate to cautious observer was so immediate, I wondered just how much he was still keeping in reserve.

Then, in a sudden blur of motion, the tent flap flung open and a shadowed figure burst into the open air.

"Luke!" Paul called out, his voice laced with alarm and something else—concern, yes, but also disbelief. Luke didn’t respond. His silhouette darted into the night, the firelight catching briefly on the whites of his eyes and the sheen of sweat at his temple. Then he was gone, swallowed whole by the darkness as though the world itself had claimed him.

Paul took a single step after him, instinct tugging him forward, but I raised my hand sharply in a wordless signal. "Let him go," it said. Not now. Not like this.

The others might not have seen it—how Luke had been fraying at the edges. I had. The signs were there. Tension in his shoulders. The way he avoided certain glances. The twitch of someone holding too many thoughts, too tightly. Perhaps it hasn’t been right for a long time, I thought, my gaze lingering on the path he'd vanished down. And none of us had asked.

For a moment, silence returned, thick and taut like a held breath.

Then the sky lit up.

A wash of impossible colour shimmered over the horizon—violets and greens, a smear of opalescent gold. The Portal lights. They were faint, far away, and gone in seconds, but their presence etched itself into the night. A brief reminder that this world did not obey our rules. It had its own agenda, its own secrets. And we were little more than interlopers.

The ghost of those colours lingered behind my eyes. I scanned the distance, noting how no other lights sparked in reply. No torches. No shouts. No flickers of civilisation. Just us.

Utterly alone.

And yet, even in the solitude, a solution stirred at the edges of my thoughts. I really need Paul's turrets, I realised. That passing notion from earlier now felt vital. Not just for defence. For signalling. For sight. For peace of mind.

"Yep. Looks like it’s definitely you and me tonight, Paul," Kain said, stepping closer to the fire and rubbing at the back of his neck. His voice was calm, but I caught the trace of weariness that threaded through it.

"I guess so," Paul replied, settling back onto the log beside me, the tension in his shoulders slowly ebbing. There was a strange, quiet acceptance in his tone, maybe even relief. "I might get used to this dust yet," he added with a soft chuckle, tapping his boot against the ground in an absent rhythm that merged with the fire’s steady crackle.

The sight of him there—dust-caked, weary, and yet somehow still light-hearted—struck a chord in me. Beneath the fatigue and the endless questions, there was resilience, and in Paul’s quiet humour, a strange sort of comfort.

"Oh no," I interjected quickly, the thought of anyone voluntarily choosing the hard, uneven ground over a more forgiving alternative pushing me to speak. "There’s a sleeping bag for you in the other tent." My words felt like a small kindness, one of the few gestures I could offer in a world that gave us so little.

"Really?" Paul’s face lit up, the genuine surprise in his voice momentarily washing away the weariness that had etched itself into his features. "That should make a nice change. But the tent’s all yours," he said, tipping his head towards Kain with the casual ease of someone who’d already made up his mind. "I’ll sleep out here again tonight. I don’t want to let the fire completely burn out."

Kain’s brow lifted, his interest piqued by the decision. "Don’t like the dark?" he asked, his voice tinged with amusement, though I could tell it was a feeler for something deeper. A probe, masked in jest.

"Hmph," Paul responded with a low grunt, shifting his weight slightly, the flicker of the fire catching on the side of his face. He turned his glance towards me, as though silently passing the baton, but I held it gently and let it rest between us. I wasn’t going to force him to explain. Not here. Not now. "Something like that," he said at last.

I let the conversation settle, choosing not to push Paul further. Everyone carried their fears in different ways, and some were best left to rest undisturbed—at least for now.

"Is there something out there?" Kain asked quietly, his voice losing its teasing edge. There was a real question beneath it now, a subtle tightening in his expression as he glanced into the shadows beyond the firelight. "Other people maybe?"

"Not that we know of," Paul answered almost instantly, a brisk dismissal that came a little too fast. The speed of it hinted at discomfort, as though he were swatting away a thought he’d already considered far too many times.

But I wasn’t so sure.

I shifted slightly on the log, the wood uneven beneath me, digging into the back of my thigh. The sensation grounded me, but did nothing to quiet the unease growing in my chest. The night around us was vast and silent, and the darkness felt thick with secrets. Paul's words might have been meant to soothe, but they only amplified the dissonance I was feeling.

We can't be the only ones here.

The conviction struck me hard, threading itself through my thoughts like a drumbeat. There was too much that we didn’t understand—Joel’s impossible return, the healing waters. And now, a silence that was somehow too perfect. Too empty.

My father’s old notes flickered through my memory like embers in the dark. His drawings, his ramblings—things I had once brushed aside as obsession or madness. But they weren’t abstract any longer. The strange properties of this place echoed his words.

Could he have come through too?

Could he be... here?

The question sat heavily in my chest. I hadn’t let myself believe it—not really. But now, seated beside this fire in a world that defied every scientific law I knew, the impossible didn’t seem so far-fetched.

I looked again into the dark, heart pounding with the knowledge that it wasn’t just the shadows we had to worry about—it was what might be watching from them. Or waiting.

"Do you know something that you're not telling us?"

Paul’s question hit with the force of a slap, sharp and unexpected. It yanked me clean out of my spiral of thoughts. I looked up at him, startled, his eyes fixed on mine with a quiet intensity that refused to blink or break away. His voice hadn’t risen, but its edge was undeniable—a scalpel cutting through the delicate quiet that had settled between us.

I hesitated. For a moment, all I could hear was the fire crackling, its rhythm suddenly too loud in my ears. His question sat heavy between us, impossibly weighted, and I could feel Kain watching me too, his silence another pressure point.

"I'm just as confused as the two of you are," I said at last, my voice low, taut with restraint. It was the truth—but it was not the whole truth.

Because even if I didn’t know anything, not concretely, I suspected. I suspected too much. And my father’s stories—tales I had once chalked up to grief or obsession—were now clawing their way back into the forefront of my mind. They no longer sounded fantastical. They sounded plausible. Disturbingly so.

"I don't think we're safe here," Kain interjected abruptly.

His bluntness startled me. There was no softening in his delivery, no room for interpretation. It was a flat statement of belief, and its directness made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

Paul exhaled, the breath drawn long and let out slowly through his nose. A subtle shake of his head accompanied it, as though the burden of the conversation was beginning to settle on his shoulders. "Right now, we don't really have any other option. I'm sure Luke would have warned us if it wasn't safe."

He tried to sound confident, but there was a hollowness to the words. I could hear it clearly—hope trying to impersonate certainty.

"Luke doesn't know everything," Kain shot back, louder now. The bite in his voice surprised me. It was laced with something more than just frustration—there was doubt there, and possibly resentment.

My eyebrow lifted slightly before I could stop it. The undercurrent was clear. So, it seems Paul and I aren’t the only ones keeping things close to our chests. Kain had his own thoughts, his own suspicions, and perhaps a few secrets of his own. The layers between us were growing thicker by the hour.

"We'll just have to watch out for each other. We're all we've got right now," Paul said, his tone quieter this time, but resolute.

His gaze flicked to me again—longer this time, weighted. I felt the unsaid things behind his eyes: Don’t drift away from us. Don’t hide too much.

I shifted where I sat, the weight of his words coiling tight in my chest. Part of me bristled at the insinuation—as if I were deliberately holding back something dangerous. But another part of me, the quieter and more rational voice, recognised that their concern was valid. This world had turned logic on its head, and none of us were entirely ourselves anymore—not really.

Still, the scrutiny prickled against my skin. I could feel it settling in the creases of my clothes, behind my ears, in the knot at the base of my neck.

"I think it's time for bed," I said abruptly, my voice a shade too loud. It was less an announcement, more an escape route.

Slapping my palms against my thighs, I pushed myself up from the log with a firm exhale. The warmth of the fire gave way to the cooler night air, and I welcomed it like a reprieve. The shifting embers cast strange, flickering shadows across the campsite, and I stepped beyond their reach, leaving behind the firelight, the conversation, and the questions that wouldn’t stop circling in the dark.