The old woman sat frozen, her gnarled hand suspended mid-air like a twisted branch pointing at the empty chairs. Every instinct screamed at Buck to run, but his feet might as well have been nailed to the floor. To say time hadn't been kind to her would be like calling the Grand Canyon a nice little ditch.

  Her leathery skin resembled a tangerine left to mummify in the sun if that tangerine had spent decades laughing maniacally or screaming bloody murder. Yet despite her shriveled form, the old woman radiated a terrifying authority, like a spider at the center of a web Buck hadn't even realized they'd walked into.

  Those eyes. Gods, those eyes.

  They pinned Buck in place with glacial precision, dissecting him layer by layer. He swore they could see right through every bad decision he'd ever made. Just as the weight of that gaze threatened to crush him, Flint's steady hand clamped on his shoulder, an anchor in this surreal nightmare.

  Buck tore his gaze away to survey the room and found that everything had changed.

  No longer were they standing within a home torn right from middle America. Instead, the old adobe house they found themselves in could've been pulled straight out of an old movie. Bare walls. Dust motes dancing in the stale air. Just three chairs, the ancient woman, and a boxy TV that probably hadn't worked since the Reagan administration.

  His stomach dropped when he turned around. The door was gone. In its place, a window that shouldn't exist, framing the yard they'd just left like some sick joke. But the perspective was off, Buck was looking down on the yard. Somehow the room had shifted to the second floor.

  The rules kept changing faster than Buck could process them. One moment, they're at a birthday party, the next… this.

  "Please. Take a seat." The woman's voice cracked like dry kindling, but there was steel beneath it. The chairs waited, patient traps ready to snap shut.

  Buck inched forward, half-expecting the floor to dissolve beneath him. But as they settled into the rickety chairs, Abuela's lips peeled back in a smile not even a mother could love.

  Gods, her teeth.

  Rotted stubs clung to her gums like executed criminals left to swing in the wind.

  "Soy Abuela Garcia," she rasped, "Thank you for coming to storytime, Jaxon."

  "Of course…uh…Abuela." Buck's gaze darted around the room. Where the hell was the exit now?

  "It means so much that you'd travel so far to spend my final moments with me."

  Final moments? What had Julien gone through that this is how he remembers his grandmother? She looked less like a dying woman and more like a prophecy of death itself. Buck blinked; this wasn't Julien's memory. He was playing Jaxon. How did he fit into this?

  "Before we start," she wheezed, bones creaking like a haunted house as she gestured to a table that hadn't been there before. "pour me a cup of cáscara."

  Buck nodded to Flint, who moved like a man handling live explosives.

  "Abuela?" Buck kept his voice soft, as if the volume would cause her to shatter, or worse, anger her. "Where's Julien? Will he be… joining us?"

  Abuela's laugh sounded like a cat being strangled in a sack. The coughing fit that followed though? Worse. This woman wasn't on death's door; she was kicking it in.

  "No te preocupes," she croaked, accepting the tea from Flint with skeletal fingers. "Julien will be back soon." With a sniff of the mixture, she sighed. "Ah… just what I needed."

  Buck watched Abuela Garcia take a long, quivering sip of her drink, her throat working like a rusted pump. When she spoke again, her voice carried the weight of decades. "It warms this old heart to hear how good a friend you've been to my little Julien. Coming all the way to stand with him as I pass." Her gnarled fingers tightened around the cup. "I know he… struggles to keep friends. It can't be easy, uprooting a child, tossing him into a strange land with nothing but hope for currency…"

  Her milky eyes suddenly blazed with startling clarity. "?Dios mío! And they had to leave me behind!" The anger evaporated as quickly as it came, replaced by a smile that showed too many teeth. "Gracias, Jaxon. Julien tells me how kind you've been. Teaching him your ways. I hope that your trip down here will only deepen your friendship. Maybe tonight I can return the favor with some of our history?"

  Buck's stomach twisted. The tenderness in her words clashed violently with her corpse-like appearance. This shriveled woman had watched her entire family vanish over the horizon while she withered away in this crumbling adobe tomb. The sympathy hit him like a Mack truck.

  "Of course, Abuela," Buck managed, his mouth dry. "I'd love to hear your story."

  "Bueno… bueno," she whispered. Buck shivered, the temperature in the room dropping several degrees. "This is the tale of [El Explorador]. As she spoke, something groaned in the darkness behind her, a sound like a coffin lid being pried open. Buck jerked back as the ancient CRT television rolled closer of its own accord, its screen buzzing with static.

  The flickering image showed a group of hollow-eyed figures clustered around a guttering flame, their faces gaunt with primordial hunger.

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  "Long before the sun first stained the sky," Abuela continued, her voice now echoing with unnatural resonance, "there was only Darkness. Not absence of light, no. A living thing. Hungry. Vengeful." Her yellowed nails scratched against her chair arm. “We knew only suffering. To venture out was to invite death. To stay…" The TV's flame sputtered violently. "Well. Even stone wears down to sand eventually."

  She leaned forward; her breath smelled of turned earth. "So tell me, Jaxon… when the Darkness comes knocking, do you hide? Or do you light a torch… and meet your god with fire in your hands?"

  The television flame guttered violently as she continued. "For days, we argued. Who would face the Darkness? Who would play the hero?" A bitter laugh rattled in her chest. "After generations in the dark, we'd forgotten what light even looked like. We were blinded by indecision, cowards, each screaming our lives mattered most."

  The image on the screen shifted to show gaunt faces contorted in anger, hands clutching at each other like starving rats.

  "Then… a child stepped forward." The TV's flame steadied, illuminating a small figure with eyes too old for his face. "'I'm fast,' he said. 'With the light, the Darkness won't catch me.'"

  Buck's fingers dug into his knees. The boy couldn't have been older than ten. "They didn't actually send him, did they?"

  Abuela's wet chuckle sounded like bubbles rising through swamp water. "Ah, Jaxon… The cowards voted no. To send a child out into the night was unheard of. He would never be able to find their salvation out in that neverending black." Her old body shifted, sending creaking sounds throughout the room. "But that night, the boy stole a torch and slipped into the black. He knew true courage, that salvation demands suffering, and suffering births wisdom."

  On-screen, the tiny figure stepped beyond the firelight, his torch becoming a lone star in an ocean of nothing. Mr. Seeker curled tighter in Buck's lap as the old woman's voice dropped to a whisper.

  "For time beyond counting, El Explorador wandered." The television static hissed like a living thing as the tiny figure trudged onward. "Mountains melted into hills, hills flattened to endless plains. The torchlight warped the very land around him, or was it the Darkness playing tricks?" Abuela Garcia's breath fogged in the suddenly frigid air. "Tell me, Jaxon… what do you think he found out there in the hungry black?"

  The screen flickered violently. "Some say only his courage kept death at bay. Not once did he falter, each step as steady as the last. To show fear was to invite the Darkness to feast."

  A tendril of inky mist crept into the frame, caressing the edges of the torchlight. "No one knows when it first whispered to him. When its lies began steering him toward the world's jagged edge."

  "No!" Flint's knuckles whitened around his tomahawk. "Don't listen!"

  Abuela silenced him with a raised finger. "Ah, but our boy was clever. Upon reaching the abyss, he found… nothing. Emptiness so complete it stole his breath. The absence of all life. And for the first time—" The TV's flame flickered dangerously. "---he knew true fear."

  The Darkness's voice oozed from the speakers, thick as spilled oil: "Little moth. My form is endless. Your struggle… adorable."

  El Explorador fell to his knees. "Why do you torment us so? We only wish to live?"

  The screen darkened as the void condensed around him. "Your light burns. Every spark is a knife twisting in my flesh." The torch's flame shrank to a desperate ember. "You are pain given form. Better erased than endured."

  For three heartbeats, El Explorador hesitated— the Darkness's logic settling like stones in his gut. This Darkness— this faceless force of insatiable hunger, bound to haunt his people until one gave in— was correct. Its word's, wise.

  Why should either survive if they were poison to each other? His finger twitched towards the dying flame, torn between mercy and vengeance. Then, with a shuddering breath, he pressed his forehead into the dirt.

  "Oh great Darkness," he whispered, "creator of endless night… would you not prove you might greater still?" The torchlight dimmed as he gestured to the void. "Make a light that doesn't burn. A fire you can endure. For what is true power if it cannot master its own weakness?"

  The television screen fizzed violently as Abuela Garcia took a languid sip of cáscara. "Ahh, this is truly phenomenal, Jaxon." She smacked her cracked lips. "The Darkness had never been… flattered before."

  Buck leaned forward, chair creaking. "And?"

  On-screen, the blackness coalesced into a massive silver orb. "I name it, Moon." the Darkness purred. "But for it to work, it needs a guide."

  El Explorador gaped at the celestial body. "How could anyone—?"

  "Like this."

  Icy tendrils lashed out, wrapping around the boy's limbs. The television emitted a high-pitched whine as the image distorted—one moment El Explorador stood earthbound; the next, he was unspooling through the sky, the Darkness's tether pulling him upward until the whole world sprawled beneath him like a discarded map.

  Then— light. Not the torch's angry orange but a cool blue radiance that revealed every ridge of his homeland with cruel clarity.

  "Now. Walk."

  El Explorador's tears floated weightless as the Moon descended, the Darkness's umbilical cord tugging him earthward in its wake. Its final whisper slithered through his bones:

  "Choose. Home and family… or walk. Become their eternal lantern."

  Then, silence. A true absence of presence.

  The television screen flickered as El Explorador took his first step. One foot before the other, an astronaut without a ship, dragging the Moon's flow across the sleeping world. Savior. Prisoner. A man condemned to watch his people's struggles from the heaves.

  Abuela Garcia exhaled—a rattling sigh that seemed to drain the last warmth from the room. Before Buck's eyes, her form crumpled like paper in a flame, the story's end severing her tether to this world. The television died with a hollow pop.

  Buck waited for a respectful beat. "Thank you," he murmured, though the words tasted inadequate.

  [Storytime is over]

  "Bev," Buck said, slowly rising to his feet. "Now is not a good time."

  Then—

  THWUMP

  The floor beneath him groaned. The air itself froze. The sound of the world around him stilled. Even the ever-present buzz of insects had vanished, leaving a silence so complete Buck heard his own pulse hammering in his ears.

  THWUMP

  Closer now. Something massive. Deliberate.

  "They're steps," Buck realized.

  Flint's claws dug into his shoulder. "Master." The jackalope's tomahawk gleamed in the dim light. "We don't want to meet what makes those steps."

  [Return to the Park]

  [Escape]