In Nightholme, survival is not always earned through confrontation. Sometimes it’s earned through restraint: knowing when to disappear, when to wait, and when to move without being seen.
The world offers more than open combat. Deep shadows swallow movement, foliage breaks the sight, and spaces are designed for disappearance as much as for confrontation. Stepping out of danger is not avoidance, it’s a skill that is rewarded, where patience and timing matter as much as aggression.
Between pursuit and escape lies a delicate balance. Some thrive in the cracks of the battlefield, reading opponents, and applying the best strategy with the knowledge gained.
This approach is not a weakness, it’s a mastery. Yet even in control, there is tension, a touch of fear as the mind anticipates threats and misreads shadows…
The city feels alive, despite being surrounded by the dead.
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Learning Curve
Five minutes in, one of the others is slaughtered. I’ve often imagined what I’d do in this moment. Prove myself unflinching. Valiant. Prepared.
Instead, I run.
Long after the screams fade, I’m still scrambling, sloppy and directionless. The city takes note. It reacts to my presence in a way it wouldn’t if I slipped by unseen. Routes curl inward around me, ribcages of brick and iron. Streetlights gutter as I pass, selling my position to anything with eyes.
I force myself to slow. Count my paces like prayer beads. Steady on. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m headed somewhere I shouldn’t.
That’s when the hairs on my neck start to rise. I listen, honing in.
Click.
Click-click.
I stop in my tracks. Half a second later, the footsteps stop too.
My throat tightens. I don’t turn, frozen like a child hiding beneath their covers. If I turn, it’ll know I know.
I take a step. Click. Closer now. Am I imagining its breath? Thick and wet, pushed through too many teeth.
Another step. The footsteps follow, unbothered. Then a muffled dragging as it shifts position, moving to cover I can’t see unless I turn.
I can’t make myself turn.
There’s a soft, hungry smacking sound. The rustle as it crouches, preparing.
I break into a sprint.
Behind me, the thing unleashes a horrible scream. Long and loud, shrill enough to rattle my teeth. Glancing back, I see it loom from the shadows, pale as rendered tallow. It slowly opens its arms to welcome me.
Then its scream is answered, and I realize it was a call.
They peel through doorways, around corners. Scrabbling, rabid things with too many limbs. Smaller than the pale one, but countless. They already have my scent.
I keep running. Hurtle over the edge of my endurance, then press on. Behind me, the pack gibbers mindlessly and nips at my heels. Vaguely, I wonder if death would be quieter than this.
Suddenly, a voice cuts through the racket. Human. I snap toward it, glimpsing a high window. A Grimrunner leans out, arm extended.
I leap for it. He catches my wrist, and relief hits hard enough to stagger me. Hauling, he inches me up the wall until the tips of my fingers meet the windowsill.
From below, teeth sink into my boot.
He grunts at the added weight, jaw tightening, and I struggle to find purchase on the ledge. But they’re piling on now, twisting and yowling, dragging me down.
I hear the pale one arrive. Click. Click-click. The smack of its lips.
I am not valiant. I am not prepared.
I survive.
I twist, digging my nails into the Grimrunner’s wrist. His eyes flick toward me, wide and white. I want to tell him I’m sorry. I don’t have the breath.
I pull hard. He falls, disappearing beneath a frenzy of teeth.
I collapse through the window into an empty room, the door shut tight on the opposite wall. Curling in on myself, I clamp my hands over my ears and wait out the screams.
Silence comes eventually. Peering back out the window, I find an empty street. The first blush of dawn creeps into the sky. A greasy red smear stains the sidewalk.
I shudder. Let my bones relax.
Click.
Click-click.
Across the room, the doorknob rattles and begins to turn.
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Stay vigilant, Grimrunners,
— Studio Ellipsis Team