The footprints must have been somewhere around ten meter in length from heel to toe tip. More than a meter in front of the indents left by the toes were deep grooves that spoke of claws of terrifying proportions.

Judging by the size of the camp itself, there must have been hundreds of people living here. If not for the fact that it had clearly been attacked, it would have made Eik's hopes rise higher than they had ever been.

Up until now, he had been carefully avoiding the very logical assumption that, based purely on probability, his parents were no longer of this world. So many people had died brutal deaths in the early days of the apocalypse, and plenty in the years since as well. That conclusion brought tears to his eyes but there was no way around the facts.

The charred logs in the makeshift fire pits lined with circular stone formations had long since burned out. Flattened tents lay muddy and tattered in the soil. Overall it looked like it had been abandoned at the same time as the monster had come through.

Scorched trees and craters of various breadths and stood as a testament to a violent battle that had left more of the place a wreck than not. How anyone could have survived that was unclear. Clearly abilities had been used here with large chunks of the surrounding nature burned to a crisp. A fire user who could rival Olivia, perhaps?

Decaying corpses lay scattered around the camp, eyes long since picked out by birds and whatnot, removing a layer of identity from their faces. With an anxious heart, Eik looked over as many as he could find, breathing a sigh of relief when none of them resembled his parents or anyone else he had any memory of.

As they trudged through the ruins, looking for clues to indicate that survivors might have been here after the monster's passage something caught their attention.

At first they didn't pay attention to the titanic grooves overmuch but when Eik spotted sets of much smaller indents inside it, he knew they had found something. "These are shoeprints… From humans! Oli, come over here, now!" he called, the woman moving from the opposite side of the camp to his location in less than two seconds.

"What?"

"Someone's stepped in this footprint left by the monster!" he whooped, unable to hold back a hopeful grin. "Someone came back here after the monster passed through. That means there were survivors!"

"Well, I'll be…" she drawled, kneeling down to take a closer look. "I'm seeing at least two different people here," she said and followed them like a blood hound. "The soil that has been trampled by the monster was left with a soft top layer so we can actually see the shoeprints. Here, where they step back out, it becomes a lot more difficult to distinguish them from other random debris. But I do think they met up with two others here."

Eik nodded in agreement. "That puts at least four living humans right here at some point after they all had to flee. Those people are somewhere else now. Possibly close by. How long do you think its been since this camp was abandoned?" he asked her.

"Well," she said, pursing her lips in thought. "Before the shift into the most recent phase of our integration into the Unified Mass, monsters of this size didn't really exist. But now you've already fought and killed that Lake Serpent in the Black Lake near Forest. The mutated octopus on the coast of Copenhagen a couple of weeks ago was also bigger than most monsters I encountered in the past years."

"So you would guess this happened sometime within the last half year or so?"

She nodded. "Yeah, probably. Most telling is the fact that, even though everywhere else is so dense wooded, this camp is still remarkably clear of vegetation. And unless they've gone all out, then this probably wasn't from one of the Gohkamorian waves. It's more likely an Awakened animal from Earth, and that only began to happen in earnest recently."

Eik stared at the footprints again. "I mean, I agree, but what the hell did it evolve from?" he wondered out loud. "Look at the shape of the toes, not to mention the indication of enormous claws here," he said, pointing to the various parts of the mark. "It looks reptilian. Problem is, Sweden isn't exactly known for its large population of komodo dragon, alligators, or iguanas."

Olivia shrugged, not appearing to be particularly concerned with the matter. "People have pets don't they?"

"It's been ten years… But I suppose we can't discount it. We can't really discount anything. We live in an insane world."

"I can't argue with you there," she said, a weary sigh escaping her.

A realization struck Eik and he looked around with concern. "By the way, it's obvious that the monster left that way, but… where did it come from then? There are no tracks leading to the camp. It couldn't just appear out of nowhere, could it?"

"Now that you mention it…" They locked eyes, dread setting in. It could, in fact, have appeared out of nowhere if it had come through a fracture. A gigantic fracture. If the Gohkamorians were now releasing stuff of this size, then they were more dedicated than Eik and Olivia had initially anticipated.

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"I can't really tell where the shoeprints are after this, but these ones here, next to the monster track, look like they were going to the camp, not away, so they probably came back from the same direction that the monster left." she muttered.

Eik ran ahead, following the gigantic indents. If the clawed footsteps hadn't been good enough of an indication of the direction the Awakened beast had taken, then the collapsed trees, squashed underbrush, and upturned soil left in its wake would have been more than sufficient. "There are more shoeprints in the one over here. They're definitely going the same way. Judging by the depth and length of the strides, these aren't the steps of a person running. It's a walking pace."

"And look here," Olivia said, pointing to a detail they had missed in their initial once-over of the decaying human corpses. "These two bodies have the beginning of graves next to them. There's even a mound of soil next to each of the holes."

"Yeah, that definitely looks like something dug deliberately. But the project appears to have been abandoned mid way."

"Maybe something scared them off."

For three and a half hours they followed the giant's passage through the forest, frequently checking the traces of the humans as they went. At the speed their were traveling, they traveled many kilometers which would have equated to many, many hours of travel for the people they were tracking.

Suddenly Olivia came to a stop, her boots sliding to a stop in the dirt. "Hey, Eik, stop for a second," she called after him as he flew by. When he came back, she continued. "The shoeprints take a turn away from the monster highway here. I think we might be close."

Ascending again to the branches for a better view of the forest below, they leapt from branch to branch in the direction which the prints left by the people had initially moved. Now that they were moving back into dense forest, neither Eik nor Olivia were skilled enough to keep tracking them anyway.

They continued at the same tempo for a little under ten minutes more before the trees very suddenly disappeared from under them, leaving them to sail through the air on residual momentum.

Beneath them were tents pitched along the new tree line. Several campfires sat cold and smokeless around the area, separating the space further into smaller sections, each holding a cluster of both tents and wooden shelters.

The clearing was more or less a copy of the camp they had found trampled and destroyed three hours back. The only real difference was the size. Where the first one had been big enough to comfortably hold at least five hundred residents, this one was barely sufficient for three hundred.

To tell the truth, after seeing just how wrecked the previous camp had been, Eik was positively surprised at how many people must have survived to warrant a base of this size. But whether his parents, and indeed whether they had even been there in the first place, was still a mystery.

He could only hope that the size of the group meant that his parents had found it and joined up for safety — and that they hadn't been killed since.

As they glided through the air, Eik spotted faces peeking out from holes in the ground covered with fronds and large leaves. The next branch he passed, he grabbed and swung himself down to ground level, Olivia followed closely behind.

Stepping past the tree line, Eik kept several layers of solid shells up, Olivia huddled safely behind him as they approached the clearing with slow, careful steps, just in case one or more of the residents of the camp decided to go for a violent greeting before introducing themselves.

After bumping into Harald and Kasper and their group, Eik almost expected it. So when nobody turned up to shout at them to stay back, exaggerate their fighting force, and threaten their lives if they took even a step closer, he was honestly surprised.

"I'm sure I saw people under those leaves over there."

"The camp is clearly not being used to the extent it was built for. I mean, the fires are cold and the tents are uninhabited. Something must be going on," Olivia noted. "Try calling out."

"Hey! Is anybody there?" Eik yelled, switching to Danish since most Danes and Swedes understood each other's native languages with little issue. "Hey, we come in peace. We mean you no harm. We just want to talk." His opening strategy was more or less the same as what he had tried with Harald's niece when he had spotted her staring at them from a bush.

Although he could hear some rustling and whispering from the leaf covered burrows nobody came out. He tried again.

"My name is Eik Magnasen. This is my sister Olivia. I'm looking for someone and I think they might be a part of your group. They're my parents. We lost contact ten years ago. Their names are Rasmus Magnasen and Caroline Magnasen. Do you know them? Please!" he called. Even he could hear the tremble in his voice as he pleaded. He was frightened of what he would learn here today. Ten years of worries and anxiety had led to this moment — the moment where his fears would either be quenched or confirmed.

The leaves of the dirt bunker furthest to their right began to shake and lift as a woman climbed out. With frantic hisses her friends tried to persuade her to stay hidden but she got to her feet and started toward them with nervous, shuffling steps.

"Wh-What did you s-say you name was?"

"Eik," he repeated. "My name is Eik Magnasen."

"Little Eik?" she asked, eyes wide and disbelieving. "Eik, is it really you? How did you find us here? How… How did you make it this far?"

Eik narrowed his eyes, brain working hard to identify the person before him. It certainly wasn't his mom, but she did seem familiar. Dirt blond curls fell to her shoulders. The past ten years had taken its toll on her features and he almost didn't recognize her. "Laura. Laura from two doors down?" he asked, the strongest sense of hope yet welling up inside him. "Are you here with my mom and dad? Are they here?" He had to consciously resist the urge to run from burrow to burrow to check each one himself.

Her lower lip trembled as tears welled up in her eyes. Her face was smudged with dirt. "Caroline died a couple of years ago. I'm s-so sorry, Eik. She never stopped talking about you and Torbjørn. She never gave up hope that you would—," she tried, swallowing hard. "She never gave up hope that she would see her two boys again."

Eik didn't stand a chance against the tears. It was too much to bear. Mournful, quaking sobs completely overwhelmed him and it took several tries before he was able to speak again. "And my—… Where's my d-dad?"

"Your dad is… He's out with the others. They've gone out to kill the monster."

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