Ding!

What if I was right?

I mean, sure — I made it all up.

The ancient god stuff. The divine owl. The grammar stones. Allegheny being some kind of sacred punctuation burial ground. All of it. Fabricated from scratch like a college essay you start the night before it’s due, fueled by panic and four questionable energy drinks.

But… what if I was right anyway?

What if the lie wasn’t a lie, but a prophecy I accidentally tuned into because I was scared and needed the others to believe in something?

What if I didn’t create the myth?

What if I uncovered it?

See, that’s the thing about being a narrator. You don’t always know which parts of the story are real. Especially when reality is breaking down around you like a sentence with six adverbs and no verbs.

You make guesses. You chase threads. You lie, sometimes — for the drama, for survival, for the plot.

But what if, in all of that…

I accidentally told the truth?

Because as we trudged deeper into the wilderness of the ruined world, something began to stir. Not just suspicion. Not just paranoia.

Something else.

Something watching.

And then came the ping.

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The door clicked behind us with that final kind of sound doors make when they know you won’t be coming back.

The forest waited ahead—still distant, still calm, still too full of questions. Allegheny. Supposedly where the god of grammar now slept. According to me. The liar.

But now, there was no turning back.

I had joined the squad.

Officially.

No more narrating from the shadows, no more pretending to be someone I wasn’t—except, of course, for the whole “pretending to be a dead man” thing, but let’s not split grammatical hairs.

Kaito walked ahead, shoulders stiff. Hana was silent, always ten steps ahead of our best plans. Sota trailed behind, humming the wrong melody to a national anthem that didn’t exist anymore.

We were a squad. A team.

We were doomed.

Ding.

All four phones buzzed in perfect, synchronized dread.

Kaito froze mid-step.

Hana slowly pulled her device from her coat pocket. I did the same, though my fingers were suddenly covered in sweat. Even the parrot looked alarmed.

Four notifications.

Same sender.

Duolingo.

TO MY FOLLOWERS

Attached: A photo.

Of us.

Standing right in front of the house.

With GPS coordinates.

It had been taken from above, the angle high, maybe from a drone, maybe from something worse.

The location tag was active.

Below the image:

“🦉 We know where you are.”

No one spoke.

A bird screamed in the trees. Probably not Duo. Probably.

Kaito stared at the screen, then at the trees, then back at the screen.

“Okay. That’s new.”

“No,” Hana said. “That’s bait.”

I opened my mouth to say something journalistic and wise, but Sota beat me to it:

“Uh... that’s… not good. Not… good. Nope.”

He stumbled over the words like he was trying to recite the alphabet in a hurricane.

I turned to him. “You okay?”

“Me? Uh. Good yes. I mean—fine. Is. Am fine.”

He forced a smile.

No one said anything.

Because from a distance, a faint voice could be heard.

Growing.

Chanting.

“STREAK BREAKER… STREAK BREAKER… STREAK BREAKER…”

Hana’s head snapped toward the sound.

“Oh god,” I whispered. “They got it too.”

Another ding.

“To my most loyal. Cleanse the heretics.”

Sota blinked hard, swaying slightly.

“I—I hear. Voice say… big word.”

“What?” Kaito said, but Sota just rubbed his temples and didn’t answer.

More chanting.

Footsteps now. Loud ones.

Heavy boots, pounding pavement. Dozens of them. Maybe more.

“They’re coming,” I said. “Like actually coming, not metaphorically, not ‘oh no society’s falling’—like with feet and torches and murder in their hearts.”

Kaito gritted his teeth. “Into the woods?”

“Into the woods,” Hana confirmed.

From the alley, a familiar cry:

“HE MUST REPENT!”

I looked at Kaito.

Then Hana.

Then Sota, who was now muttering something about verbs not sounding right anymore.

We had seconds.

And the only way left was forward.

Into the forest.

Into the lie I made.

Into whatever Duo had turned into.

“RUN,” the parrot said.

We didn’t run far.

Not because we weren’t scared—oh, we were very scared—but because Hana stopped us after about a hundred meters of crashing into brush like confused deer.

“Okay,” she said, holding up a hand. “Pause.”

“Pause?” Kaito wheezed. “Pretty sure the cult doesn’t do timeouts.”

“They’re not here yet,” she said, scanning the woods. “Use it.”

We caught our breath beneath a cluster of trees so crooked they looked like they were leaning in to gossip. The moon filtered through the branches in nervous streaks.

Then: ping.

All four phones buzzed at once.

Kaito yanked his out. “If this is another ‘Spanish or Vanish’ thing, I swear—”

He stopped.

We all stared

.

Duolingo Notification:

“To my followers: enjoy your lesson.”

Nothing else.

Just that.

Just enough.

In the distance: voices.

Shouts. Dozens of them. Getting closer.

“Did that go out to just us?” I asked.

“No,” Hana said grimly. “It went to everyone.”

Behind us, someone bellowed: “THE OWL CALLS!”

Kaito groaned. “Yup. Great. Perfect.”

We took off again, following Hana as she moved with purpose like she’d practiced dodging mobs in high school.

Sota stumbled. “Where… where are we even go?”

Hana replied, not missing a beat: “We follow the signals. They’re guiding us.”

Sota squinted. “Signal is… much?”

I glanced at him. “What?”

“Much. I mean—far. It is—where far? …go place.”

Kaito shot him a look. “That’s not a sentence.”

“I’m tired!” Sota snapped, more defensive than usual. “Brain is… foggy.”

“Too many emojis in bloodstream,” the parrot muttered.

No one laughed.

The path turned slightly, and for a moment the forest fell silent.

Then—

“The streak is sacred.” A robotic voice echoed softly from somewhere nearby. Hidden speakers? Magic? Who could tell anymore.

“I hate this forest,” Kaito mumbled.

“Focus,” Hana said. “We get through this, we get answers.”

“Unless we get sacrificed to the cult first,” I muttered.

Sota fell back slightly beside me. “It fine,” he said.

I didn’t correct him.

I just nodded and kept moving.

Ahead of us, the shadows deepened.

And in the middle of it all, we kept running—four half-broken people and one unreasonably judgmental parrot—toward whatever came next.

After a while, the chanting finally faded.

Somewhere behind us, the Cult of the Forgotten Streak was still yelling about sentence structure and redemption through repetition. But here, in this part of the forest, there was only wind and wheezing.

Kaito flopped against a moss-covered tree like a dying stage actor. “Okay. Did we lose them? Did we actually lose the cult?”

“No torches,” Hana said, glancing behind us. “No shouts. No trail.”

Sota staggered up beside her, doubled over. “We win!”

“You’re breathing like a fax machine,” the parrot told him.

“Still win.”

I peeled my back from a tree, trying to look more composed than I felt. “So… we’re safe?”

Hana hesitated.

Then, for the first time since the run began, her calm cracked just slightly.

“I don’t know where we are.”

Silence.

Kaito blinked. “What do you mean you don’t know? You're Hana. You’re never lost.”

“I was following landmarks,” she said, already checking her phone. “But we veered. The signals are looping. GPS is garbage. And I don’t recognize this part of the map.”

Sota looked around. “Trees all same.”

Kaito turned slowly in a circle. “Cool. Cool cool cool. So we’re just… alone. In the dark. In Owl Forest.”

“Allegheny,” I corrected.

“Owl. Forest.”

The parrot landed on a branch above us. “I vote we set something on fire and hope it turns into a plot point.”

“No,” Hana snapped.

“But what if—”

“No fire.”

Sota sat down on a rock and stared into the darkness.

Kaito joined him after a second, slumping beside him with a dramatic sigh. “You know what? I’ve been in space. This is somehow worse.”

I leaned against a tree, trying not to let my unease show.

We’d escaped the cult. That was good.

But the forest wasn’t just trees and fog. There was something here.

And worse—none of us knew where we were going.

The parrot squawked. “We need sleep. Strategy. Preferably inside something not full of squirrels.”

Hana sighed. “We keep moving until we find shelter. Then we regroup.”

The rest of us nodded, more tired than brave.

The forest was thick and loud and full of unpleasant surprises, like nature had downloaded an anxiety patch and was running it on max volume. Every step squelched. Every tree looked like it might whisper unsolicited advice.

But eventually, after enough wandering to qualify for a minor pilgrimage, we found a clearing.

Sota dropped his backpack onto the damp ground with a grunt.

Kaito followed, peeling off a sweatshirt he hadn’t realized he still wore.

Hana gave the area a long, tactical scan before muttering,

“We’ll camp here. It’s defensible.”

The parrot immediately perched on a low-hanging branch and sighed.

The group set to work.

Sota unrolled the sleeping bags with all the coordination of a man slowly turning into soup.

Kaito tried (and failed) to assemble a pop-up tent until Hana finally took it from him with a sigh and three swift, terrifying movements.

The parrot supervised, loudly.

The narrator sat on a rock a few meters away, pretending to “observe” while clearly calculating how many steps it would take to abandon everyone if things got weird.

Kaito plopped down by the newly lit fire, tossing a twig into the flames. “We’re almost at the end, huh?”

Sota didn’t answer right away. He sat across from him, poking at a can of something labeled “Not Beans (Probably Beans).”

He finally looked up.

“Yeah,” he said. “Almost.”

There was a pause.

Then Kaito added, quieter: “Are you okay?”

Sota’s shoulders tensed. “I think yes. Or not. I don't know.”

“Your words are getting worse,” Kaito said.

“I know. It's just when I'm stressed though!”

“Today you said ‘me think food was fooder.’”

“I panicked, okay?” Sota muttered, burying his face in his hands. “I thought it was soup and it was just—dirt. Wet dirt.”

Kaito snorted.

Then he looked across the fire and smiled, tired but genuine. “We’re gonna fix it.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I don’t need to,” Kaito said. “That’s what faith is. Or stupidity. I’m fine with either.”

Before Sota could answer, Hana appeared with a dented thermos and two tin cups.

“Congratulations,” she said dryly. “You’ve both achieved fire. We’re back to caveman standards.”

She sat beside them, handing out drinks without comment.

The parrot swooped down from his branch, landing just outside the firelight.

He didn’t say anything either.

They just sat there—quiet, for once. Together.

For once, they didn’t need a narrator.

But I stayed anyway. Sat a bit higher up, on the low branch of a crooked tree, trying to tell myself I was just taking notes. Not staying close. Not becoming part of it.

And then Sota broke the silence.

“You know,” he said, “this is kind of nice. Us. Out here. Like a team.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Hana muttered, but she didn’t move away.

Sota looked up and squinted at me.

“Come on,” he called. “You’re part of the team now. This means mandatory participation in group hugs.”

I almost slipped off the branch.

I didn’t say anything.

Didn’t write anything either.

I just climbed down.

All the way to the fire.