Mathis, Léna, and Anca flee through the mountains, but discover a professional photograph at the forest refuge showing they've been watched for a long time. Viktor knows intimate details about each of them—Mathis's scar, Léna's sweater, the secret of Radu's death. Anca reveals she's the third person to know the truth about her husband's death, meaning Viktor has access to information that should remain hidden. As they barricade themselves in the refuge, an unknown figure approaches the door, and a stranger's voice calls out to them. The game intensifies: they're not fleeing, they're being hunted by someone who knows every move in advance.
The clearing was bathed in that gray, diffuse afternoon light—the kind that erases shadows and flattens everything, stripping away depth. Mathis watched Anca with the particular intensity he usually reserved for wild animals—searching micro-expressions for what words refused to say. A thin pale scar marked his left temple, vestige of an earlier life he never discussed.
"The tracks you showed us..." He let the sentence hang, his eyes never leaving Anca's face. "They were fresh. Not from yesterday."
Anca held his gaze without blinking. Somewhere in the trees, a jay let out its harsh cry—an alarm call that dissolved into the heavy silence.
"You want answers?" Anca's voice remained measured, almost neutral. "Fine. I've been watching these mountains for eight years. Poachers, traffickers, stupid tourists who get lost and die."
Léna stepped forward, her legs trembling beneath her but her voice hardened by exhaustion and mistrust.
"Wait, hold on! You've been watching these mountains for years? For poachers? Seriously?" She moved closer to Anca, aggressive despite her weakness. "And your husband who died in these mountains—what exactly is that? A coincidence? You're guiding us by chance toward the place where your husband died and you want us to trust you?"
Anca shrugged with studied nonchalance, but Mathis noted a slight tightening at the corners of her eyes—the first sign that her armor had cracks.
"My husband died in these mountains five years ago. I owe this place a debt." She paused, then pointed east. "That's all you're getting for now. If you want to survive, you follow me. If you want complete answers, you'll die here."
Mathis and Léna exchanged a look. In his eyes, she read calculated mistrust. In hers, he saw the exhaustion that erodes certainty. They had no choice.
The march began under cathedral silence. At first, Léna tried to keep pace with Anca, but after an hour, her legs began to give out. Mathis observed. Some broken branches didn't follow the natural angle of the wind. Some stone cairns seemed intentionally placed, marking an invisible route for those who couldn't read the signs. But he noted something else too: Anca slowed slightly every two hundred meters, as if checking something. Her eyes swept the trees with fresh vigilance.
She's looking for something, he thought. Or checking that something is still in place.
After an hour and a half, Léna stumbled for the umpteenth time. Her knees gave out. She collapsed on all fours in the snow, trembling, unable to get up.
"Fuck... fuck... I can't..."
Anca finally stopped. She pulled a canteen from her pack and handed it to Léna without a word. The water was lukewarm, and Léna drank with almost animal greed. Anca also produced an energy bar.
"Eat. You need calories."
It was the first time she'd shown anything resembling concern. Léna ate, regaining some color and above all, some rage. Mathis helped her up, hesitated a moment—that gesture of help that always reveals more than you'd like—then slipped his arm under hers.
"We'll continue slowly."
Léna murmured against his shoulder, voice broken but less panicked:
"I hate this... I hate being dead weight. That's exactly what Viktor wanted, isn't it? For me to become someone else's burden..."
Mathis didn't answer. But he tightened his arm around her.
They set off again. Anca picked up the pace slightly, and Mathis saw her shoulders stiffen. She looked over her shoulder more often now, as if sensing an invisible presence. Something had changed. Something worried her.
They stopped near a frozen stream, where the ice cracked under the pressure of invisible water below. Léna looked at her phone, then at Mathis, then at Anca. The device had become a cursed object, but also a lifeline to answers.
"I have to check," she said simply. "If Viktor sent something..."
Mathis nodded. He understood: it was less curiosity than desperation—the need to know if the hunt continued or if Viktor had changed strategy.
She pulled the phone from her pocket, her fingers trembling slightly. A new voice message.
She pressed play.
Viktor's voice filled the space—calm, almost tender, but with that glacial precision that turned each word into a scalpel.
"You're still wearing that gray sweater I gave you. Mathis has a scar on his left temple—a childhood accident, I believe. Anca Popescu lost her husband Radu five years ago in an accident involving a bear. Except it wasn't an accident."
Léna turned off the phone, ashen. Mathis froze, his hand instinctively touching the scar that only Léna had noticed when first meeting him. Someone was watching. Had been for a long time. Since before he even met Léna.
Anca didn't move for several seconds. Then she turned slowly. Her face had gone ash gray.
"How does he know about Radu?" Her voice trembled slightly. "How does he know it wasn't an accident?"
Mathis noticed the crack in her armor—not a crack, a fracture. Anca Popescu, the unshakeable guardian of the mountains, had just lost control of something essential.
"He knows everything," Léna whispered. "We're not running. We're being herded. Like fucking cattle."
Anca stood abruptly.
"We move. Right now."
She began walking quickly, but Mathis caught up.
"Wait. You're going to explain."
Anca turned to him, and for the first time, Mathis saw raw fear in her eyes.
"Only three people knew Radu's death wasn't an accident. Two are dead. And I..." She stopped, as if the words burned her throat. "I'm the third. I've kept this secret for five years. And now your Viktor knows. Which means..."
She didn't finish her sentence. She set off at a feverish pace.
Mathis and Léna exchanged a look. Anca had just revealed more than she ever would have wanted. And that revelation itself was a confession: she was involved. Not as a victim. As a witness. Maybe worse.
They reached the forest shelter just before full darkness. It was a small wooden cabin, almost invisible under accumulated snow. Anca pulled out a key—a detail Mathis registered immediately, adding a piece to the incomplete puzzle he'd been assembling for hours.
"You knew about this place."
It wasn't a question.
"Radu and I..." Anca hesitated, then pushed the door open. "We used to come here. Before."
Inside, the shelter seemed intact but uninhabited for a long time. Mathis methodically inspected each room with the methodical patience that characterized his photographic work. In the back bedroom, he stopped dead.
A recent photograph, pinned to the wall.
The photo showed Mathis and Léna in the van, taken from outside, two days ago. The framing was professional—300mm telephoto lens minimum, controlled composition. On the back, a handwritten note in Cyrillic.
Anca entered behind him. She saw the photo and her face lost all color.
"That's impossible."
Mathis turned to her.
"Who took this photo?"
Anca translated the note, her voice trembling:
"The game begins when you understand you're not fleeing—you're invited."
Léna arrived in the bedroom and collapsed on the shelter's bed, defeated by the reality of their situation. They'd never had a chance. Not from the start.
In the shelter, the three fugitives had to choose. Anca wanted to leave immediately, at night. Mathis wanted to wait for daylight for tactical visibility. And Léna, psychologically broken, suggested the unthinkable:
"We call him. We call Viktor directly. We negotiate."
Mathis turned to her. He said nothing for a long moment. Then he went to the window and closed the shutters. The gesture was deliberate, but he took care to do it slowly, explaining:
"If we call him, we tell him exactly where we are."
Léna exploded.
"You've been treating me like a burden from the start! Every fucking decision you make is to compensate for my mistakes!"
"No," Mathis said simply. "I make decisions to keep you alive. But you're right. We should decide together."
It was a concession. An acknowledgment that his voluntary solitude had to yield to the reality of their mutual dependence.
Anca cut them off brutally.
"You two don't understand. He's been playing with you from the start. These mountains are his playground now. And the photo in the shelter..."
She stopped, studying the note.
"If someone has access to this shelter, someone who knows Radu and I used to come here, someone who can photograph us from a distance..."
She didn't finish her sentence. But the silence that followed was heavy with implications.
Then a sound outside froze them.
Not footsteps.
An engine. Distant, but approaching.
Anca turned off all the lights. In absolute darkness, they heard the engine stop. A car door closed. Then silence—the kind of silence that weighs heavier than any sound.
Mathis approached the window, slightly parted a shutter. Outside, a silhouette stood out in the snow. Too far to be identified. Too close to be ignored.
He looked at Anca. She stared at the door, lips pressed tight.
Slow, methodical footsteps approached the shelter door.
Mathis turned to Léna and Anca.
"Back window. Now."
Anca shook her head.
"There's a cliff. Fifty meters."
"Then we barricade," Mathis said.
He quickly searched for heavy objects—a chair, furniture. Léna helped him, understanding without discussion. Anca pulled a knife from her pocket—a survival tool, but also a weapon.
The footsteps stopped at the door.
The silence that followed was worse than any sound.
Then a voice, muffled by the wood:
"I know you're in there. Open up."
It wasn't Viktor's voice.
It was a voice none of them recognized.
