It was as if the entire forest had gone silent, the birdsong gone from the trees and even the gentle breeze having gone still. The atmosphere felt eerie and uncomfortable. Jesse and Petra were both standing frozen, Petra's head turned in the direction the stranger had disappeared, while Jesse's eyes were focused on the road ahead of her. Millions of unspoken questions filled the air between them.

"Jess?" Petra finally asked softly, turning back towards her friend. "What do you think we do now?"

"You're asking me?" Jesse asked, swinging around with wide eyes.

"If it was up to me only, I'd be halfway to town by now." Petra responded, folding her arms. "I want to know what the hell is going on. But I've learned your instincts tend to be better, and it's kind of an unspoken rule that we all follow your lead."

"What!?" Jesse exclaimed, throwing her arms out sideways.

"Except when you're panicking, then you're practically useless."

Jesse nervously combed her fingers through her long dark hair, nervously looking down the path again. She half felt inclined to agree with Petra, head to town despite the stranger's warnings. If she had to wait any longer, her chest was going to explode with the rapid beating of her heart. Although... wouldn't it be smarter to turn around?

"Look, I know heading to town is the risky thing to do." Petra said. "But we'll only be wasting more time by heading back now."

"Again with the mind reading!" Jesse exclaimed in exasperation.

"Like I said, open book."

Jesse bit her lip, looking at Petra anxiously. Her friend's usually playful blue eyes were serious, her expression alone proving she was ready to take on a fight. It reminded Jesse of the look she carried when they first met.

"Okay." Jesse said, taking a deep breath. "Let's continue on, but... but be careful, alright? We don't even have our weapons on us."

"I've got these." Petra responded matter-of-factly, pounding her fist into her palm.

Jesse managed a half-hearted, nervous smile at her friend's comment. There was a reason she always felt comfortable heading into battle with Petra on her side. Although at that moment she was praying that they weren't in fact walking into a battle.

The first half of their walk had been filled with lighthearted chatter and jokes, but from that point on it was almost exclusively silent between the two girls, except for when one of them voiced a possible scenario they could be facing.

"For all we know, there's nothing wrong in town." Petra tried sounding optimistic. "That guy might just have been running from his own personal problems and enemies."

"While I wish that was the case, I have a nasty feeling it isn't." Jesse pointed out.

"I know, I'm making myself cringe." Petra admitted with a sigh.

Suddenly the last stretch of their journey felt longer than the first half did. As minutes drifted by, it felt like hours were dragging on. Jesse felt the need several times to ask if they were still on the right track, but a quick glance at Petra's watch confirmed that it's only been a short while since that thought last crossed her mind. In her head she began making up several awful scenarios of what could be awaiting them. She hated being pessimistic, but after carrying that feeling of dread all morning already, Jesse couldn't help but assume the worst.

"We're not far now." Petra said at one point. "Stay alert."

The trees were beginning to thin out, the grass beneath their feet changing from long and luscious to well worn from being constantly walked on. Jesse could see bits of buildings in the distance. She began mentally preparing herself, ready to see something horrid. Ruins sticking out from an ash covered ground, or the remains of the town half buried beneath a cloud of black smoke.

So Jesse found herself stopping dead in her tracks, when the town in front of her looked completely... normal.

"Maybe my hunch about the guy's personal problems wasn't that far off?" Petra suggested in disbelief, looking around with a confused gaze in her blue eyes.

"It's too quiet though." Jesse said softly. "I don't see a person in sight."

"Right, let's take a closer look. Stay close, K?"

Jesse didn't need telling twice, there was no way she was putting more than a ruler's length between her and Petra as they walked into the seemingly empty town. There wasn't a person in sight, the streets empty and the buildings dark. Yet the town looked fine, not like it had any reason to evacuate.

The famous beacons it was named after shown brightly into the blue sky, the monument polished and shiny as the day it was built. Jesse found herself stopping at the base of the beacons, looking around dumbfounded. Petra gave her an uncertain shrug, equally unsure.

At first glance everything looked perfect and in place. But as the two girls began to look closer, they began noticing some odd details. Bits of rotten flesh, bones and even gunpowder, like the town had dealt with some mobs. Spider webs coating some of the walls, not from neglect, but from spider attacks. And eventually, blood.

"I don't get it though." Petra said, kneeling down and examining the smear of blood on the pavement. "The evidence suggests a small scuffle with some mobs, not a war. Why would a handful of mobs drive an entire town of people away?"

"I don't know." Jesse admitted, shuddering to herself. "This is ridiculously creepy."

Turning around, her eyes slowly swept the empty streets. Surely they were missing something, that couldn't be all? By the looks of things, the town had been absolutely thriving not too long ago.

"Hey, Jess! You might want to take a look at this!"

Jesse swung back around, surprised to see Petra was no longer standing right behind her. She immediately broke into a jog, following the redhead's voice. The moment Jesse rounded the corner of a building, she stopped. A few metres in front of her stood Petra, glancing over her shoulder at Jesse with wide eyes. Jesse felt her stomach drop as she took in the sight in front of them.

It was the dead body of an animal, what looked like it had been a cow. It looked like it had been dead for days, and Jesse stepped back immediately, expecting to be met with the smell of decay. But the revolting odour never came. Instead all she could smell was a faint hint of iron in the air.

"Look at this." Petra breathed, stepping closer to the dead animal.

"No, I don't want to look!" Jesse shuddered, taking a step back. Just the thought of inspecting a rotting, dead cow up close made her squeamish.

"Seriously, Jess, look at this."

The seriousness in Petra's voice made Jesse creep slightly closer, holding her breath in case any nasty scents was going to suddenly hit her in the face. She cautiously peered over the redhead's shoulder, trying to prepare herself for the sight. Only it wasn't half as disgusting as Jesse imagined, and she could immediately tell why Petra had called her over.

The dead animal had clearly been laying there a few days already, but instead of rotting, it's skin was covered in a metallic sheen. It almost looked like it was a life-sized metal sculpture of a dead cow, instead of a real body.

Petra slowly reached out one hand, her fingers brushing over what looked like a wound on the cow's shoulder. It looked like teeth marks, as if something had attempted to take a chunk out of the animal's flesh. Only instead of an open, gaping wound, it was like the entire injury had turned into metal. Instead of the metallic sheen the rest of the animal's body held, it was solid and smooth.

"I'm... uncomfortable." Jesse admitted after a long period of silence, stepping back and shuddering. "What in the world is this?"

"For once, I have no idea what to make of this." Petra admitted. "This isn't a fatal wound either, it's not even that deep."

"It looks like a zombie's bite." Jesse pointed out. "An infection maybe?"

"That would be my first guess, but what kind of infection does this?" Petra asked, gesturing to the wound. "Infected wounds don't usually turn to solid metal, usually they are-"

"I know what an infected wound looks like, please don't describe it." Jesse quickly halted her friend. "I'm grasping at straws here, okay? I don't know what else to say."

Petra slowly got to her feet again, looking around. Other than the dead cow, nothing else in their immediate area looked suspicious. Jesse bit her lip, looking around. She had suddenly thought of a new possibility, one that almost made her feel more uncomfortable than any of her previous theories.

"What... what if the reason there's so little evidence of a fight left, is because the town's people didn't stick around to fight?" She asked softly.

"You mean fled as soon as the first blood was shed? That's possible." Petra said thoughtfully. "And definitely makes the most sense out of all of our ideas so far. Not that we have much to go on."

"Then it couldn't just have been regular mobs." Jesse said, thoughtfully beginning to pace up and down the street as she spoke. "What if we're dealing with a new type of threat here? Something more dangerous than the average creatures that come out at night?"

"Like a creature that does this to it's victims." Petra said softly, looking down at the dead animal.

"You think it's possible?" Jesse asked, looking up.

"If you asked me a few years ago, I would have laughed it off." Petra admitted. "But after the Witherstorm... I feel like anything is possible. You saw what it did to it's victims." Her right hand subconsciously moved to her left arm, where a few faded scars were still visible across her skin.

"I don't like this, I don't like this one bit." Jesse said softly, wrapping her arms around herself. "What if there's another crazy threat out there, something as dangerous as the Witherstorm?"

It was silent between them. Jesse had started to anxiously pace in a small circle, chewing her nails. Petra had her gaze focussed on the ground, brow furrowed and eyes filled with a mixture of concern in uncertainty.

"This isn't our battle, not yet anyway." Jesse finally said, looking up towards Petra. "But the thought of going home and going on with my life as if this didn't happen... it doesn't sit right with me."

"Me either." Petra said. "I'd like to, at the very least, get to the bottom of the mystery."

"We can't stay though." Jesse said, sighing as she looked around. "The others would worry if we're not back by dark. We should tell them what we found. Maybe they even have some suggestions?"

"As much as I want to hunker down in one of these buildings till night to see what comes out, I know that's the logical thing to do." Petra agreed with a heavy sigh of her own. "The best thing we can do right now is head back to the tree-house."

* * *

The journey back home was silent. Both girls lost in their own thoughts, wordlessly trudging along side by side. Despondent with their lack of answers to the many questions weighing them down.

The others were all blissfully unaware of the turn their friends' trip had taken, casually going about their day as they normally would. When Jesse and Petra finally arrived back home, tired and hot from the journey, their tale cast a heavy, uncomfortable silence throughout the entire tree-house.

The responses ranged from confused, to concerned, to puzzled. Nobody really knew what to make of the news.

"And all evidence you found were the remains of regular mobs?" Lukas asked, his eyebrows knotted together in confusion.

"Yeah, the usual." Petra responded from where she was slouched on a couch, her legs draped over the armrest. "Rotten flesh, bones, gunpowder, that sort of stuff."

"But we don't know if they're from regular mobs, or whatever this new threat is." Jesse finished off. "Whatever it is, it evacuated the entire town with little bloodshed."

"Do we need to get involved in this?" Olivia asked nervously as she fiddled with a loose thread on her jeans.

"But if we ignore it, what's stopping this new threat from coming here?" Axel pointed out.

"Exactly." Jesse shuddered slightly. "After the Witherstorm, this is the last thing I want to get involved in. But I think we should get to the bottom of this. After all..." She took a deep breath. "We are the Order of the Stone now. It'd be irresponsible of us to cower and hide while knowing that others are suffering."

"The problem is, where we go from here." Petra said, sinking further into the couch. "We have exactly zero leads. Nada, none."

"This all sounds so familiar, but I can't put my finger on it." Olivia said thoughtfully, biting her lip. "Something about this... I swear there are dots connecting, I'm just not sure what they are."

"Maybe we just need some time to process this." Lukas tried suggesting. "I'm sure Jesse and Petra are tired anyway."

"We won't do anything today, but we should at least decide what action we are going to take." Jesse insisted. "This isn't something we should push to the side like it means nothing."

Everybody in the group exchanged glances, except for Olivia who was still nervously picking at the loose thread on her jeans. Petra had propped herself up on one elbow to face the others, while Axel had temporarily stopped working his way through his sandwich.

"Since there's a good chance we'll only run into this thing at night, we could head out tomorrow night." Lukas suggested. "I'm not saying we go far, hang close to the tree-house. See what spawns, and if nothing is out of the ordinary here, we can investigate closer to town the next day. That way we're not rushing into things, and we're crossing out other possibilities right from the start."

"Good idea." Jesse said, nodding her head.

"Or we could try and track down somebody from town." Petra said, sitting upright on the couch. "The guy we ran into suggests that they scattered and haven't fled that far. If we find somebody from town, they'd be able to tell us exactly what happened."

"But we don't have any leads on that." Olivia pointed out softly. "It sounds like it'd be a wild goose chase."

"But it's practical!" Petra insisted in frustration.

It was rare that the timid engineer and reckless warrior ever saw eye to eye.

Jesse leaned back on the couch, biting her lip. Lukas's idea was smart and not as risky, but it would potentially take them longer to actually locate the threat. Petra's idea would get them answers quicker, but only if they actually succeeded in tracking somebody down. Should they...

Head out at night to observe the spawning mobs

or

Try and track down one of the Beacontowners?

Voting Closed

___

It's pretty late and I want to get to bed, but I just had to post this chapter I just finished, first! Once again, sorry if there's any mistakes, I legitimately just finished writing it and threw it straight onto Wattpad after a single test read.

I've been having so much fun with this project, I love seeing the different choices people make! In the prologue just about everybody voted the same, while chapter 1's votes were pretty close to 50/50. I love sitting back and watching votes come in!

Things are starting to pick up now, even while we're still early in the story. What do you make of the situation? Are you as clueless as the Order, or do you have any theories on what threat they're facing? I'd love to hear your thoughts so far!

Quick note, I'm going on holiday in a few days since my birthday is coming up, so updates on this book might slow down a tad, since I post the chapters as I write them. But don't worry, Endless will remain on schedule as its chapters are prewritten and edited!

Enough rambling on my end, and I'll see you all in Chapter 3!