He grunted, dragging along his stiff, bloodied appendage as the gravel cracked beneath him with each hobbled step.

"Fuck… how much longer until I'm out of this place? Feels like I've been walking for decades. Shit, at least I lost it back there. Otherwise, I'd've been done for," he thought to himself.

As lady luck would have it, a light emerged at the end of the dense, Alpine forest. The rock base of the mountain engulfed the grass, the trees becoming sparser with each step. Once he reached the exit, a gargantuan rock face towered over him approximately twenty feet to his right opposing a steep, jagged cliff twenty more feet to his left. Joining the two was another rock formation that hung awkwardly over the cliff, although this one housed a narrow passageway — large enough to fit a couple people through — marked by a metal lantern that was remarkably unfaltering despite the breeze. It was set atop of a rotting wooden sign nailed clumsily to a post.

Welcome to the Mountain Village. Enjoy your stay.

He gazed up at the night sky, the Northern lights gazing back down at him on the horizon of the mountain range. The stars were nowhere to be found.

"If this is some sort of cult or some shit I might as well just leap off the cliff. I've gotta at least try it out though; not like I've got any other options."

He limped through the tunnel, clenching his teeth on the ups and downs. The adrenaline from his earlier encounter had long since surrendered to the stinging. He found himself at the exit. It wasn't the craggy landscape he expected; foliage was seeping out from every which way. The cliffside was now out of view — all he knew was that a shabby hut lay ahead next to the now-mossy rockface.

"Quite the village they've got going on here."

Despite his remark, he was quite relieved that there was at least some sign of hope. Beams of moonlight scarcely pierced through to light the abode in front of him. It looked to be quite decrepit, but he approached nonetheless. As he grew nearer, creaking and soft footsteps were audible — he made an effort to silence himself, though it strained him to erase his rhythmic grunts of pain with each move, and peek in through the unpaned window.

Barely visible through cracks of darkness was a short old man, with not much else to tell but a lengthy grey beard. He quietly gauged his options — should he risk approaching him? Should he try his luck on finding the rest of the village? Should he do neither just to be sa–

As he braced his arm up against the wall of the shelter, the rotted wood cracked and crumbled, unable to hold his weight. He crashed through the wall, landing flat on his face and grunting in pain.

He quickly pushed himself up onto his good leg, standing atop the pile of crushed-up wood. The old man staggered back. The two stared at each other, tension evident in the air.

"Are you lost, young man? You gave me quite the scare! Ooo, and that leg looks some knarly; please, have yourself a seat, I mean no harm," the old man said in a raspy, slightly southern accent.

"So he's southern? Way out here? Huh… Well, you know what they say about southern hospitality," he thought.

Now that there was a new "window" installed on the cabin, the scene was clear. The house was almost completely unfurnished, only about thirty feet in width and length. A surprisingly pristine bed stood as the sole landmark of the room. He took the old man up on his request, one laboured hobble after another.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to spy on you. You just can't be too sure, you know?"

He sat down on the bed, the old man slowly meandering over to him, kneeling down to take a look at his injuries.

"Oh, don't sweat it too much, just scared me, s'all. I know how it is. Now, may I?"

The old man gestured at the man's pantleg, so the man hesitantly pulled it up. He revealed a bitemark that left cylindrical holes piercing deep into his calf meat, spanning from just above his ankle all the way to his knee. The wound was a crimson river, though the pain was more bearable with how woozy the bloodloss had made him.

"Oh my, you poor thing! I had better hurry up and fetch the hot iron before it's too late! Sit tight and stay awake for me — don't you dare fall asleep just yet."

He got up after briefly inspecting the wound, hurriedly, albeit stiffly, exited about as fast as an old-timer could. He wondered where the old man went, and when the ringing in his ears would go away, and when he would get to see his family again, and whether it was even safe here and–

It all faded to black…

When he awoke, he felt a lot more coherent. He sat up swiftly, his vision going black for a brief moment. The old man abandoned his post leaning against the wall beside the door and stood at the foot of the bed.

"I told you to stay awake, you know. I thought you were a goner for a moment there!"

"Yeah… Sorry about that, I tried my best."

He noticed that his leg was wrapped and bandaged, and that it wasn't bleeding anymore. The wound felt unnaturally stiff and he could smell burnt flesh, along with… something else? He paid no mind to it.

"I was only joking, of course, all the matters is that you'll be alright. I cauterized your wounds, so as long as you don't open them up they shouldn't get worse. I definitely wouldn't plan another hike anytime soon though," the old man chuckled.

"Well, I do have a friend who's waiting for me, so I just might have to."

He turned to let his feet hang off the side of the bed, supporting his gravity with his arms and slowly attempting to put weight on the leg. It buckled instantly, as would be expected of a mangled limb. He sat back down.

"I'm sure your friend wouldn't mind waiting just a bit longer if they knew what you were going through. Besides, you might just end up prey for another beast, and you'd be in no condition to object."

"Another beast," he thought to himself, "How did he even know about the first one?".

"Alright, you've got a point there. But this place of yours doesn't seem like much of a village; where are the other houses, the other people?" he asked.

"Ah, you must've seen the sign we put up! Yes, the village isn't far from here. I could take you, but are you sure you want to go anywhere with your leg in that state?" the old man responded.

He stood again, this time more aware of his balance. He was wobbly, but he seemed intent.

"I'm ready when you are. I've never heard of this place, so I better take some notes to update the database with once I've got connection."

"Database? My, the world has come a long way since I've been here. All right, I can see you don't plan on backing down. You must tell me this before we leave, though: What is your name?" the old man inquired.

"It's Noah. Noah Ribovics. And you?" said Noah.

"I'm Percival. I don't get asked that often, you know!" Percival replied.

Percival wasted no time, offering Noah his shoulder to lean on to support his injured side. They went out into the forest, the crickets and other myriad wildlife composing a symphony — it was almost hypnotic. Despite the time that had passed since his arrival, it was still the dead of night. Noah figured it'd be foolish to ask, seeing as there are so many levels with similar properties.

The two traveled for around ten minutes, and eventually the narrow footpath they were following expanded into a cobblestone road, old-fashioned street lamps lighting the way. There was one house, then another, then more. There was no one outside — they were probably just at rest, Noah assumed.

On the front of each cottage-esque house, between the front door and the window, was a framed picture, sometimes multiple, of what seemed to be other travelers that had passed through. Their clothes were worn and they all seemed to be injured in some way — bandages, missing appendages, sometimes scars — possibly from the same beast that he had encountered on his way in. They seemed… off.

"I'm guessing everyone's asleep, huh? What's with the pictures?" Noah remarked.

"Oh, why yes, and those are some folks just like you, except they didn't happen to make it… We like to keep them close, it helps ease the grief." Percival replied.

Noah nodded silently. They continued down the road until eventually stopping at a larger house made of wood. This one had at least a dozen pictures on it. Percival left Noah and the base of the stairs, going up and knocking on the door. Almost instantly, a tall, burly man with a thick brown beard answered.

"Good day to you, Grant. This young man behind me stumbled upon my house a short while ago. He's been treated, but he'll be needing a place to stay for some time until he heals up. Would you be so kind as to allow him to stay here with you?" Percival inquired.

Grant responded quickly, as if he didn't even need to think about it, "Yep, you know my door's always open. You can come right on in Patrick."

"Who the hell is Patrick?" Noah reflected.

Grant didn't have quite as thick of an accent as Percival, but it was still audible through the deepness of his voice. Percival vanished almost into thin air, and Noah grabbed onto the rails on the stairway to hoist himself to the door.

"I'm uh, Noah by the way. And you're Grant?"

Noah made his way through the doorway as Grant closed it behind him. The inside was decked out in all the bells and whistles you'd expect of a lodge in the woods — an authentic carpet made of some type of fur; various hunting trophies on the walls; a set of leather furniture next to a cozy fireplace; an old rifle encased above a shelf. There was a staircase on the right side of the room. That's where they went.

"Yep, that's the name. We get visitors here often, so please, make yourself at home. If you're hungry, just let me know. We've got some pretty decent jerky 'round these parts."

Grant helped Noah up the stairs, then to the left down the hallway which housed four rooms. They entered the furthest on the left.

"I'll be fine for now. I'm still kinda sick to my stomach knowing that my leg is hole-punched right now. Thank you for this, though." Noah said.

"Alrighty then, you have yourself a good rest and there'll be breakfast waiting for you in the morn'. Holler if you need anythin'."

Grant shut the door behind him and left Noah to the room. He looked around — there was a comfy-looking bed adjacent to the door and a desk opposite to it that was facing a window out the front of the house, curtains closed and blinds drawn. There was a lamp on the desk, alongside a bobblehead of some sort of camp counselor. Noah sat down on the edge of the bed.

There was a coat hanger in the opposite corner of the bed with a display cabinet next to it. Noah laid down.

"Fuck, today has been a crazy day. At least I'm safe here. I'll have to find a way to let Carmen know I'll be late…"

Slowly but surely, accompanied by his thoughts, Noah drifted to sleep.

Noah awoke to darkness.

He sat up, removing the crust from his eyes and squinting from a distance through the gap in the curtains. Still night. His internal clock told him he'd slept a full eight hours at minimum, maybe more. He chalked it up to the level like he had before and let it go, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and gingerly testing the bandaged one. The stiffness had settled into something duller. Progress.

What pulled his attention to the window wasn't a sound but an absence of one — the crickets had stopped.

He leaned over the desk and pulled the curtain aside. The cobblestone road was populated now; a dozen or so villagers moved about in the cerulean moonlight, silent and unhurried, carrying on with what appeared to be a normal day's business. Two women hung clothes between the lamp posts. An old man sharpened something on a whetstone outside his front door. A few people meandered between houses with no apparent destination, stopping, speaking in voices low enough to be inaudible, then continuing on.

At the end of the road, barely within the reach of the furthest light, four of them stood in a cluster facing the tree line. Just standing there, still as fence posts.

Noah watched for a moment.

"…Four people staring at the woods at three in the morning, in a place where nobody sleeps on any kind of schedule. Totally normal. Totally fine; I've seen stranger…"

He let the curtain fall shut and laid back down, staring at the ceiling until unconsciousness took him again.

He lost track of days easily. The dark helped with that.

Grant's jerky was, as advertised, exceptional — some kind of smoked meat with a spice Noah couldn't identify but kept coming back for. Grant himself was easy company; a man of few words, comfortable in silence, who laughed with his whole chest when something struck him as funny. He had a habit of starting sentences and trailing off in a way that suggested he'd forgotten the point partway through, though it never seemed to bother him. Noah found himself looking forward to his meals — looking forward to his company.

Percival came by on the second day, or what seemed like it. They sat on the porch and talked while Noah kept his leg elevated on the railing. Percival had a story for everything and told them all slowly, savoring each one. He asked questions about Noah's life outside the level with the attentive curiosity of someone who'd been away from the world for a long time. It seemed like he missed it.

"How long have you been here, exactly?" Noah asked.

Percival was quiet for a moment. Genuinely calculating, it seemed.

"Long enough that I stopped countin'," he said, "and long enough after that to regret stopping." He chuckled softly and steered the conversation elsewhere, and Noah let him, though it struck him oddly.

The leg healed faster than it had any reasonable right to. By the third or fourth day, Noah was walking with only a moderate limp, leaning on a walking stick that Grant had produced from somewhere without being asked. He started exploring the village on his own — the layout, the people, the rhythms.

It was wrong. Everything.

He couldn't have recalled exactly when he started catalouging it. Meals happened at odd hours and not the same odd hours each time. People who had been friendly and talkative in the morning would walk past him in the afternoon without acknowledgment — not coldly, just blankly, as if he were a tree, or something that wasn't there. Conversations had a tendency to end suddenly, mid-thought, the other person simply moving on with the casual finality of someone who'd forgotten they were speaking.

And the portraits — the more he looked, the more he noticed. Every house had them. He'd initially clocked maybe half a dozen on Grant's, but once he stood at the right angle in the right light he counted nineteen. Nineteen individual framed photographs of people who'd come through injured and hadn't made it, mounted between the door and the window of a hunting lodge like trophies.

He mentioned it to a woman named Delia who'd been friendly to him, a redhead who kept chickens and sometimes left boiled eggs outside his door in the mornings. He couldn't deny that they were good, but nonetheless.

"It's respectful," she said, smiling warmly, "To them." She moved on.

He mulled over it… Respectful. Right. He'd seen memorials before; he'd seen shrines; he'd seen vigils; he'd seen people do stranger things for grief. But nineteen of them? On one house? All of them travelers, none of them locals?

He began asking, carefully, about leaving. Not announcing that he was doing it — just asking, observationally. Whether the pass was easy to navigate heading out. Whether there were guides. Whether people left often.

The answers were all variations of the same thing, delivered cheerfully:

"Oh, most folks tend to stay a good while."

"Plenty of time for that once you're back on your feet."

"No real rush, is there?"

Once, he asked Grant directly.

Grant looked at him the way you'd look at someone who'd asked something about something obvious — not suspicious, not guarded, just faintly puzzled.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," he said, then he offered Noah more jerky.

On what he estimated to be the sixth day, Noah decided to go.

He told no one. He packed the few things he'd been given — some dried food, a wrapped parcel of jerky from a shelf in the kitchen that he figured Grant would forgive him for, his original gear cleaned and folded by someone at some point without his knowledge. He waited until the village was at its quietest, which was almost never fully quiet but had its lulls, and slipped out before the cluster of watchers assembled at the tree line.

He found the footpath without trouble. He followed it back to the cobblestones that thinned back to dirt, dirt back to gravel, the foliage thinning, the rock asserting itself as he retraced his steps. The tunnel entrance emerged from the dark exactly where he remembered it, the lantern still burning its strange, unfaltering burn, and Noah ducked through without hesitation.

He walked.

The Alpine forest was dense and dark and he kept the pace up despite his leg, which was holding better than expected. He picked landmarks as a habit of experience — a split boulder, a dead tree, a cluster of rocks shaped like a kneeling man. He kept moving. Twenty minutes. Thirty now.

The cobblestones appeared beneath his feet.

He stopped, looking down, then back up.

It was Grant's house. Nineteen portraits. The lamp outside Delia's emitting a warm radius onto the road.

No. He turned around and walked back the way he'd come, faster now. His landmarks returned in sequence: the pale tree, the boulders, the passage through the tunnel. He went through again, emerged again into the pine, walked harder this time, picked new landmarks, went further than before — long enough that his leg was beginning to complain seriously — turned over a hill and came down the other side and there were the cobblestones again.

He stood there, breathing. The village sat ahead of him, unchanged, patient.

"Okay," he said aloud, to no one. "Okay."

He went back a third time.

He didn't make a decision to go further or faster. Something else drove it, something rawer — a refusal to accept it. He pushed through the forest at something approaching a run, crashing through undergrowth, keeping no landmark except the vague direction of away. He didn't know how long he ran for. It was long enough that his lungs were burning and his bandage had gone dark at the edges and the trees had changed character around him, becoming stranger — older, their branches interlocking overhead into something nearly solid.

He stopped to breathe, hands on his knees.

"Fuck, fuck… What the fuck…" he panted.

The screech came from everywhere at once.

It wasn't animal. Or rather it was, but at the outer edge of what that word could mean — a sound made of frequencies that disagreed with each other, notes that pulled in opposite directions, like two different creatures crying out of the same throat. It split the silence so completely that the silence afterward felt damaged.

Noah tensed up slowly.

The thing that stepped between the trees ahead of him was tall and moved incorrectly — the joints bent in ways that didn't resemble any creature he'd encountered, even in the Backrooms, the head too large for the neck, the neck too long for the body. It had antlers, or something that had become antlers, branching and pale, and beneath them a face that wasn't quite a face, the features in approximately the right places but without the proportions that made faces readable. Its eyes, if they were eyes, had no reflection.

It screamed again, and this time Noah felt it in his soul.

He ran.

He didn't think about the direction. Instinct made the decision and instinct wanted away, and away took him back through the forest at a pace his leg loudly objected to with each stride, something hot and tearing registering in the calf that he processed as important but now deprioritized. The creature didn't pursue him — or it did, but not the way he expected — its sounds seemed to stay in pursuit no matter how fast he moved, a consistent pressure behind him, a herding. He realized this only after the fact.

He burst back into the village gasping, sliding on the smooth cobblestones and catching himself against a lamp post.

Percival was at the tree line.

He wasn't hurrying over — he was already there, bag in hand, kneeling down before Noah had even caught his breath.

"I wondered when you'd try," he said bluntly.

The tension — and silence — filled the air. Noah looked at the old man's face. It was tired; sorry in the same way that someone is sorry about the weather.

"You knew," Noah said.

"I knew."

"The iron," Percival said.

Percival went quiet. His hands began working, unwinding the bandage from Noah's calf where the fresh blood had soaked through. He pulled out a clean cloth from the bag. He worked with the skill of someone who had done this before, this specific thing, in this specific place, many a time.

"How many times have you done this?" Noah asked.

"Tended to a wound?"

"No, had this conversation," Noah inquired sternly.

Percival tied up the bandage. He sat back on his heels and looked up at Noah with an expression that was hard to put a label to.

"I fix what I can fix," he said. "I can't fix this part."

He wanted to be angry. He wanted to grab the old bastard by the collar and demand something more than that — a plan, an apology, a way out of this mess. But Percival just looked at him with that same tired face of his, and somehow the anger couldn't find its mark.

Noah laughed, but certainly not because it was funny. His laugh was more of an empty, short sound — more breath than voice. He leaned his head back against the lamp post and looked up at the sky. Northern lights on the horizon. As always, no star in sight.

"My friend is waiting for me."

"I know."

"Carmen's going to think I'm dead."

"She probably will."

Noah closed his eyes; sparse tears rolled down his face. Percival waited, as if he had all the time in the world, which Noah was beginning to understand was exactly the case.

"The thing in the forest," Noah said, sniffling, "what is it?"

"It's part of the level. It doesn't come in here."

"So what, it wants us in here?"

Percival didn't confirm nor deny it. He just rose slowly, his joints worn and stiff, and grabbed his bag.

"Come on," he said. "Grant'll have breakfast ready before long. You know how good the jerky is; come on."

Noah sat there for a moment longer.

The thing was, he could see that breakfast waiting for him from the moment Percival mentioned it. He felt the exact shape of the room upstairs — the desk, the lamp, the gap in the curtain that let in just enough cool air. He sensed Carmen's face, present but muted, like a word he knew the meaning of but couldn't grasp anymore.

He grabbed the lamp post and pulled himself up to his feet.

He stopped trying to leave on what he thought to be the eleventh day, not that he was keeping track anymore. It wasn't a decision so much as a quiet acceptance of a feeling he'd been living with for so long that he'd stopped noticing it. One morning he woke up and the urgency just wasn't there. He became aware of its absence like realizing a headache had gone away; relief came when the cause of it was already gone.

He thought about Carmen sometimes, with warmth and a strange, fuzzy distance. He thought about the objective they were supposed to carry out. He thought about these things and then he thought about whether Grant needed help chopping the firewood and whether Delia's eggs would be outside the door for him this morning.

They usually were.

He enjoyed Percival's company often now. The old man seemed lighter with him after the ordeal — they didn't talk about escaping the level or the iron or the creature in the forest. They talked about everything else, the happenings in the village. Percival was funny, genuinely funny, with the comedic timing of someone who'd had decades to dedicate to his craft. Noah found himself laughing, and it felt genuine — all of his feelings did.

He didn't know when, but he stopped counting the days. Later, he would wish he had noted it, except he wouldn't, because the version of himself who would have wished that would be gone.

Two weeks later, or perhaps three, or perhaps more:

He went into the forest on his own one evening. He couldn't explain why. The pull of it was quiet and patient, the same way everything here was now, and he followed it without suspicion nor fear — not thinking, just moving toward the feeling like gravity.

Nobody in the village uttered a peep about his absence.

Percival tended the lantern that night, and the night after.

Some time later:

The wanderer came through the pass limping, which was how most of them arrived.

She paused at the tree line, taking in the cobblestone road, the lamp posts, the eery warmth of the place. The Northern lights were on the horizon. No stars. She scanned around for threats, the way anyone sensible would, fingers tight around the strap of her pack.

Percival stepped out from the tree line to meet her.

As he led her down the road toward Grant's lodge, her eyes drifted across the faces mounted between the doors and windows. Worn clothes. Old injuries. That familiar, faraway look that long-haul wanderers had — the look of someone who had been moving for so long that stillness felt like a threat.

She stopped at Grant's steps.

Second row from the bottom. Third from the left.

A young man with dark hair and a tired face, bandages visible below his pulled-up pant leg. His eyes were directed somewhere past the camera, off toward the trees, as though something at the edge of the frame had made a sound, and he'd half-turned to listen.

She stared at it a moment longer than the others.

"Who was he?" she asked.

Percival glanced at the photograph. Something moved briefly behind his eyes, then it was gone.

"Just a young man who came through," he said. "Come on inside. Grant keeps a good fire."

She looked at the photograph once more, then followed.

The lantern at the pass burned on, still unfaltering, in the dark.