UNLEASHED: THE HIDDEN CURSE

Chapter 11: No Going Back

Branches whipped past my cheeks and hands as I plunged deeper into the heart of the forest. The blue box bounced and thudded against my ribs with every desperate stride, a constant, heavy reminder of everything I carried.

My lungs burned raw, my knees shook, and my mind screamed with exhaustion, but I didn’t slow down. I couldn’t.

Behind me, the world erupted into chaos.

Shouts. Heavy footsteps. The sound of a violent struggle—grunts, the crash of bodies against wood, the snap of breaking branches.

And then…

A sound that turned my blood to ice.

A single, sharp cry.

“Elias!”

It was him. Cut short. Silenced instantly.

Then nothing.

Absolute, suffocating silence. Worse than the gunfire. Worse than the shouting.

I didn’t stop running.

Couldn’t stop.

Every instinct inside me screamed that stopping meant death. Elias had bought me this time. Elias had thrown himself between me and them.

If I stopped now, everything he had done, everything he had sacrificed, would be meaningless.

But the forest was changing around me.

The trees grew thicker, older, huddling together like a solid wall of black silhouettes stretching endlessly in every direction.

The ground dipped and rose unpredictably beneath my feet, sending me stumbling and tripping more than once.

I could barely see the path ahead only streaks of cold moonlight piercing through the dense canopy above like broken shards of silver glass.

My arms ached from clutching the box. My legs trembled with fatigue. My breath tore from my chest in ragged, painful bursts.

And still… I ran.

Elias’s cry echoed in my mind, over and over. Short. Sudden. Wrong.

I wanted to go back. I wanted to find him. I wanted to drag him out of whatever hell had swallowed him up.

But I couldn’t.

He had told me to run. He had made it the only thing that mattered. Even when I didn’t realize it, he had made me promise to survive.

Branches clawed at my clothes. Thorns scratched lines of fire across my skin. The wind howled through the treetops, drowning out all distant sounds, leaving only the roar of blood in my ears.

Until I heard it.

Snap.

A single twig breaking behind me.

Close.

Too close.

I didn’t look back. Looking back slowed you down. Looking back got you killed.

Instead, I poured every last ounce of strength into my legs, forcing them to move faster even as they threatened to collapse beneath me. My breath tore from my chest in ragged gasps.

Crunch.

Another footstep. Heavy. Deliberate. Gaining.

They had tracked me again. They had gotten past Elias. And now they were coming for me.

The forest floor tilted suddenly as the ground dropped away into a narrow, steep‑sided gully. I slid uncontrollably down the slope, dirt and gravel spraying under my feet, my shoes skidding on loose rock.

“Shit...”

My foot caught hard on an exposed root. My body pitched forward, weightless and falling.

I hit the ground hard, shoulder first, the impact knocking the wind clean out of me.

Pain exploded across my side and arm, sharp and blinding.

The blue box smashed into the dirt beside me, bouncing once before coming to rest in a patch of dead leaves and dust.

For a long, dizzy moment, the world spun—a chaotic swirl of black branches and pale moonlight.

I groaned, gasping for air, and pushed myself up on trembling hands, wincing as pain shot through my ribs and shoulder.

Then I froze.

I heard it.

Breathing.

Not mine. Not the wind. Not an animal.

Human breathing. Slow. Even. Deliberate.

Above me.

I didn’t move. I barely breathed.

Someone stood at the edge of the gully, outlined sharp and dark against the night sky—tall, broad‑shouldered, perfectly motionless. He didn’t need a flashlight. He didn’t call out. He just stood there, watching me struggle, waiting.

Waiting for me to move.

Waiting for the perfect shot.

My heart thrashed wildly against my ribs, hammering like a trapped bird.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I reached out my hand toward the blue box lying in the dirt a few feet away. It was the only thing that mattered. The only thing standing between me and… whatever this was.

The man shifted his weight above me. He had seen the movement.

“Don’t,” he said softly.

One word. Calm. Even. Cold.

But death lived inside that voice.

I didn’t listen.

Couldn’t listen.

My fingers brushed the cold metal of the box. I curled them tight around it, pulling it toward me, preparing to move, to fight, to do whatever it took.

I wasn’t done yet.