Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Out of the Static…
Mono didn’t remember how he did it. One moment, he was in the Tower. The next, he was screaming inside his own head, forcing the power back into the void where it came from. The Signal Tower, alive and writhing like something with teeth, fought him every step of the way. But he was the signal, and somehow, he tore himself free.
The screen cracked.
The transmission cut.
The world split.
Everything collapsed into white noise and burning light. The only thing Mono could think about was getting as far away from the Tower, from the Pale City, as possible.
And then, Mono fell.
He fell through time, through space, through dimensions that did not make sense. Until the static faded, the color returned, and he woke up in a downpour.
Cold rain. Real rain.
No broken TV screens. No bending buildings. No monstrous viewers or contorted mannequins. Just…
Trees.
He was in a forest—wet, dense, and very much alive. Thunder boomed overhead, the kind that shook his teeth. Lightning arced across the sky like a bleeding vein. The storm screamed above him, but the forest whispered. The tall pines rustled with old wind, and the ground was thick with mud and roots.
Mono coughed, then sat up. His coat was soaked through from the rain, so he crawled under a ridge to wait it out.
He didn’t know where he was. But he knew he was far from that place.
After the storm passed, he moved carefully—no longer needing to hide under beds or in TV screens, but still cautious by nature. He found a ridgeline that overlooked a small mining town nestled against a river. It was bleak and brown, choked in coal smoke and grime. Lanterns hung on every porch. Small shacks covered every inch of the hill. Men in strange lantern-hats coughed like dying engines. Railcars screamed against their tracks. A water tower at the edge of town read “ANNESBURG: 1869”.
Mono watched it from the woods like a shadow. He didn’t approach. He didn’t trust it yet.
But something was… different here. He couldn’t feel the Signal anymore. It was as if it never existed.
He saw children laughing in the mud, chasing each other with sticks and toy guns. Adults walked past them, annoyed maybe, but not predatory. No one was dragging anyone into dark rooms. No one was transforming into monsters of hunger and hate. People got drunk. They yelled. They spat. But they were people. Normal adult people.
For the first time, Mono wasn’t afraid of adults. Only confused.
He stayed in the trees, sleeping in a hollowed trunk or beneath thick brush. He scavenged bits of food where he could, raspberries growing on bushes, mostly. The hunger wasn’t gnawing like before.
On the fourth day, he heard voices approaching his hiding place. Two boys, older than him by a few years, were laughing and shoving each other through the wet underbrush. One had a slingshot, the other a rusted lantern. They didn’t see him, but Mono knew they felt his presence.
He could vanish. He could stop hiding and introduce himself.
Or… not.
He stayed. Watched.
They were looking for something, an old ghost story about the “voices of Roanoke Ridge” they heard from a drunk down at the docks.
Mono smiled faintly behind the bush.
Maybe this world wasn’t so bad after all.