The Dauntless Domain

Curled up in the passenger seat of Seneca's noisy, ancient Volkswagen, I cupped my hand around the locket, staring at the hated, beloved picture of her inside.

Seneca’s eyes, sharpened by years of mortician work and trained to read details from the stillness of corpses, missed little of what her living friend was feeling.

“Ava, quit torturing yourself,” Seneca said. “The whole point of this trip is to get your ex off your mind, not to give you a two-hour drive to obsess about her.”

I snapped the locket shut and glanced at the clock. Half past six. Her plane would have landed by now. She’d be getting her bags, meeting her new boss, starting her new life.

Without me.

She hadn’t even looked at me when she said, “You can still come with me.”

“I’m not going to move across the country for a job I don’t even know I’d be good at!” I had pleaded.

“You’re a coward, Ava,” she’d whispered. “You have to stop waiting to feel ready. You’re never going to feel ready.”

“Hey!” Seneca snapped her fingers. “Earth to Ava. Look—we’re almost there.”

The sun kissed the tops of the mountains, painting orange streaks across the valley. Ahead stood a massive oaken sign, its paint long faded: Dauntless Domain Campgrounds.

“What kind of name is that?”

“You haven’t heard of it?” Seneca slowed onto a rutted dirt trail. “Some influencer tripped balls out here and swore the trees were magic. Probably just dehydration.”

The trees thickened, pressing close on either side of the road. Beyond the entrance, the forest became a wall of dark trunks and black leaves.

The open windows let in bursts of icy wind. What had begun as a cool breeze had become an almost violent gale that rattled the van’s old frame.

“This seems… dangerous,” I said.

“It’s fine!” Seneca waved me off. “We’ll set up the tent, build a fire. You’ll be cozy in no time. Fresh air will do you good.”

I huffed. “You’re the mortician. You need fresh air more than I do.”

She grinned and stopped the van in a small clearing blanketed with wet, fallen leaves. Hopping out, she leaned back in with a smirk. “You coming?”

I chewed my lip. “If I see a bear, we’re leaving. Okay?”

Seneca giggled and shut the door. I didn’t see what was funny.

An hour later, I was ready to give up on camping altogether.

“I don’t understand how this goes together!” I threw down a handful of tent poles. “If you know how to do it, why don’t you just do it?”

Seneca’s patient smile infuriated me. “Because you need to learn. I won’t always be there to put things together for you.”

I bit back a retort. Seneca stood and brushed her hands off. “Let’s grab firewood. I’ll show you how to make a fire.”

The woods were so dark that every step threatened to take me down. The trees pressed so close they formed a cage. When I ran face-first into a trunk, I decided my contribution was done.

“I’m going back,” I announced.

“Finish the tent while I get the firewood!” she called.

“Yeah, right,” I muttered once she was out of earshot.

A ray of moonlight pierced the clouds, and something white flashed back at me. I froze.

Then I screamed.

The leaves swallowed the sound.

Seneca burst through the trees, a bundle of sticks in her arms. “Ava! Are you okay? I heard—”

Then she saw it too. “Is that…”

“A fucking skeleton?” I yelped.

She set the firewood down, eyes fixed on the bones reclining against a tree like they’d chosen that spot to rest. She stepped closer.

“What are you doing?” My voice cracked. “Don’t touch it!”

Seneca crouched, head tilted. “Ava, it’s dead. It can’t hurt you.”

“Is it real?” I whispered.

She studied it with her mortician’s calm. “Yes. Adult female, from the pelvis and skull. No trauma, no fractures. But look at this—these bones are too clean. No soil, no moss. White as porcelain.”

I swallowed hard. “Seneca, can we get out of here?”

“Wait.” She pulled her Swiss Army knife and hooked something around the skeleton’s neck.

My knees buckled.

It was a locket. The same as mine.

It swayed once—and the locket at my throat moved in sync, caught by the same invisible breath.

Seneca pried it open. Inside was the same photograph I carried, only faded, as if it had been there for years.

Some sick prank. It had to be. “We are getting the fuck out of here,” I croaked, pushing past her.

Seneca caught up near the van. “Ava, I have to call this in. It could be a missing person’s case.”

She didn’t say what we were both thinking: what kind of missing person wears my locket?

“I’ll make the fire,” I muttered. “Sit down.”

Ten minutes later, orange light licked at the logs, wrapping my legs in warmth. Seneca handed me a thermos of soup. I sipped it numbly.

She cursed softly in the dark. “No signal,” she said, waving her phone overhead. “Figures. I had bars all the way here.”

“Didn’t you use GPS to get us here?” My voice sounded hollow.

“Maybe we’re in a dead zone. I’ll try again in the morning.”

The wind hissed. Shadows bent the wrong way. Every so often, I heard a faint click, like teeth meeting teeth.

“Can’t we just go now?” I whispered. “Please?”

“The roads are shit, and the van’s old. We’d end up in a ditch.”

A log popped like a gunshot. We both flinched.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not sleeping.”

“You don’t have to.” Seneca squeezed my hand. “We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

Night stretched thin around us. The fire sank low, embers glowing like veins beneath the earth. I stared until the light formed faces, ribcages blooming like flowers.

When I blinked, they vanished.

Then, from somewhere deeper in the woods, a sound cut the quiet—not quite a scream, not quite animal.

I froze. “Did you hear that?”

Seneca was already on her feet. “Yeah. That came from the ridge.”

She grabbed her flashlight.

“Seneca, don’t—please. Wait till morning.”

“Someone could be hurt.”

“No! This is exactly how people die in movies. We wait. We stay near the fire.”

“You always wait, Ava.” Her voice was soft, but sharp. “You’ve spent your whole life waiting.”

She turned and disappeared into the dark. Her light flickered once, twice, then was gone.

Minutes—or hours—passed. The fire had dwindled to ash.

“Seneca?” I whispered.

No answer. Only the wind.

Then another scream—closer.

“Seneca!” I shouted, grabbing the flashlight and plunging into the trees.

The forest swallowed me whole. The beam trembled across trunks.

Footsteps. Heavy, measured. Then the smell—iron, rot, decay.

I turned toward it and saw another body.

Not a skeleton. Flesh clung in patches, red and slick. One arm reached toward the ground like it had died mid-crawl.

And around its neck hung a locket.

The same as mine.

I touched my chest. Still there. Still warm.

But the corpse’s locket was stained, dull, and—identical.

I backed away. The trees leaned closer.

“Seneca?” I called.

Movement in the dark. Fabric. Metal.

Seneca stumbled into view, pale and shaking. “Ava,” she gasped, “it’s—you. The body. It’s you.”

“What?”

“It’s you. Same clothes. Same locket. Even—” She lifted the corpse’s hand, revealing the faint scar on the wrist. “Even this.”

My heart hammered. “Seneca, stop.”

She didn’t. “We have to figure out what this means—”

Then the corpse’s fingers twitched.

Seneca screamed.

The flashlight fell, its beam swinging wildly. For an instant it caught the body—my body—eyes open, glassy, aware.

Something inside whispered, You did this.

The voice wasn’t mine. It was the sound of wind through bone.

Every time you didn’t act. Every time you waited. This is what you made.

A faint click. Teeth.

The corpse’s jaw shifted sideways, then forward, relearning how to hinge. A wet breath oozed from its mouth. One finger flexed. Then another.

The hand clenched leaves and pulled.

Ribs lifted. Sinew stretched. The head tilted—glass eyes locking on mine—and the body began to crawl. Elbow. Drag. Elbow. Drag.

Then knees.

The motions stuttered, wrong and jerky, but they worked. It rose, bone by bone. The locket at its throat glinted—the same dent as mine.

Seneca’s hand found mine. We ran.

Branches whipped our faces, roots clawed our ankles. Behind us, something followed—fast, relentless, matching our rhythm without breath.

Seneca tripped. A root caught her ankle and she went down hard.

“Go!” she rasped.

I froze.

She tried to stand, failed. Behind her, the corpse rose higher, spine cracking like ice.

“Run,” Seneca whispered.

And I almost did. I almost obeyed. The instinct screamed to wait, to hide, to survive.

Something broke inside me.

I turned back.

Seneca crawled toward her fallen flashlight, ankle twisted grotesquely. Behind her, the thing dragged closer.

I lunged for the light, grabbed it, and aimed. The beam caught the corpse in mid-crawl—white, slick, glistening. My own face stared back.

“Seneca,” I whispered, “we have to go.”

I pulled her up, my shoulders burning. The corpse accelerated—crawling turned to a loping scramble, wrong and fast. It lifted its head every few beats, listening for my heartbeat.

I didn’t look back. But I felt it looking at me.

The flashlight’s beam cut snapshots: tree—root—firelight—her—tree—root—firelight—her.

In one flicker, I saw it smile.

“Almost…” I gasped, dragging Seneca over a root. The corpse answered with a low moan that carried my voice twisted backward.

The fire’s glow opened ahead like a mouth.

The corpse lunged.

I swung the flashlight. Metal met bone with a dull crack. The thing’s head snapped sideways, jaw unhinging too far. For an instant, light shone straight into its eyes—flat and mirror-black.

“Move!” I hauled Seneca the last few yards. We fell into the circle of firelight.

The corpse stopped at the edge.

It crouched there, swaying, the locket swinging like a pendulum. One hand reached toward the fire, recoiled, then slowly lowered.

It studied me, and for a heartbeat, I saw myself reflected in its eyes.

Then it folded down, motion reversing—knees, ribs, jaw—and sank into stillness.

When I blinked, it was gone.

The woods were silent again.

Seneca looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. “You didn’t run. You didn’t leave me.”

I shook my head. “No. I didn’t.”

The fire crackled, bright and steady now. The air felt lighter, the cold receding.

I turned the flashlight toward the trees. There was nothing but the path we’d carved, already filling in.

When dawn bled into the forest, we sat in silence. Seneca’s ankle was swollen but not broken. The fire had burned to coals.

“You okay?” she asked.

I looked at my hands—scraped, blistered, alive. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I think I finally did something right.”

Seneca smiled faintly. “Yeah. You did.”

Somewhere in the distance, a bird sang the first note of morning.

I closed my eyes, breathing in cold air and smoke.

For the first time in a long while, it didn’t hurt to breathe.