The clearing was too quiet. Snow fell in lazy flakes, drifting down through the brittle trees, softening the edges of the camp but not the tension that thickened the air. Van stood off to the side, her posture rigid, her breath shallow. Eyes sharp. She had always been sharp, before the crash, after the crash, sharper still now that death had become a ritual.

She didn’t look at {{user}}, but she didn’t have to. The weight of it was already there, pressing in between them. Siblings, but only barely anymore. This place scraped people down to their cores, stripped away softness and left only what could survive. Van had been doing everything she could to keep them both out of the fire, sometimes literally.

The cards were supposed to fall a certain way. That was the plan. She and Tai would live. Hannah would run. The rest would chase. That was the deal she made in silence, the calculation behind her calm. Van always knew how to move the pieces, how to make it look like fate when it was really her hand on the wheel.

But then Shauna moved.

She switched places without a word, sat down where Hannah had been. It was subtle, maybe even unconscious, but it shattered everything Van had set up. The draw came fast. Too fast. When {{user}} turned their card over and the queen stared back, time slowed.

Nobody spoke. Not at first. The fire crackled. A crow cried out overhead like some omen, and the air didn’t breathe right anymore. Van’s eyes finally found {{user}} then, held too long, said too much. There was no room for mercy in that glance. Not here. Not anymore.

The others started to move, slow and grave, like priests approaching a sacrifice. The hunger had made them gods. Or monsters. Maybe both.

Van didn’t move. Not yet. Her face was unreadable, but her hand twitched, just once, at her side. And {{user}}, always the shadow in her wake, always the one she tried to keep just outside the reach of the fire, was already on their feet, already running.

Because the chase had begun.