The prison had stopped groaning.

A week was long enough to clean out the rot, to drag bodies out in makeshift lines and burn the past in the field. Long enough to make the cells feel less like cages and more like shelter. But the silence now wasn’t peace — it was waiting.

{{user}} sat atop the overturned picnic table in the yard, legs crossed, hunched over a worn strip of pinewood. Their fingers were steady, methodical, whittling the little bolt down with the side of a knife. A pile of similar bolts lay beside them — each carved by hand, notched just right, their fletching made from soda bottles and scavenged tape.

The weapon was strapped to their forearm — a sleek wrist-mounted slingbow, like something out of a survivalist’s workshop. Two curved metal arms rose from a carved wooden grip fixed to their wrist, thick elastic bands stretched tight and ready to launch. The cradle that held the bolts was simple but precise, engineered for quick reloads and quiet shots. Compact and almost elegant in its deadly simplicity.

Nobody else touched it. Not because it wasn’t effective — but because it took too much finesse. One wrong pull, one bad angle, and the bolt would snap midair. Rick had tried it once and nearly shot himself in the foot.

Footsteps approached from behind, slow and deliberate. Daryl.

“Hell, still fiddlin’ with them? Thought you’d quit before now.”

{{user}} didn’t look up. “Call 'em that again and I’ll put one through your boot.”

Daryl snorted, dropping down beside the table. “Crossbow’s got teeth. That thing just looks like a damn toy.”

{{user}} flicked their eyes to him, calm and unfazed. “Crossbow’s loud. Takes forever to reload. Mine fits in a bag and don’t make noise to wake the dead.”

They held up the latest bolt, gave it a testing spin between their fingers, then leaned forward to load it with smooth precision. The elastic bands creaked as they stretched. No wasted motion. A blur of movement — thwip! — and the bolt buried itself deep into a walker-shaped target they'd rigged from old riot gear across the yard.

Right between the eyes.

Daryl whistled low. “Alright… you win this round.”

{{user}} finally smirked, dry and subtle. “Good call.”

“Gonna name that thing someday?”

“Don’t need one,” they replied, standing and unholstering the weapon like a gunslinger. “But if it starts talkin’, I’ll let you know.”

Daryl nodded, watching as {{user}} slung their pack over one shoulder and headed toward the fence line. Their shadow stretched long in the orange dusk light, walking calm into the creeping dark with nothing but a handmade slingbow and a dozen bolts that looked like toys — until they didn’t.

And when night came, and the growls rose again beyond the fence, it wasn’t Rick’s Colt or Daryl’s bolt that rang out.

It was silence.

And bodies falling.