The rain fell red like blood.
Elias opened his eyes, his whole body heavy as if buried alive. The cold seeped through his skin from the muddy ground beneath him. Around him stretched a dead forest — trees dried and twisted, leaves turned to ash, and a sky black without moon or stars.
He couldn't remember how he got here.
The last thing he recalled… was the blinding light of a truck, the screech of brakes — then darkness.
A gust of wind swept by, carrying the stench of rot. Elias pushed himself up, his limbs trembling.
Bodies. Dozens of them, scattered across the mud. Most were already decomposing.
But some… were still moving.
From the pile nearest to him, a head snapped up. The face was mangled, one eye missing, its mouth torn open to the cheekbone. It made a low, wet growl and began crawling toward him.
Elias stumbled back, hands flailing until they gripped a rusted iron bar half-buried in the sludge.
No one told him how to fight.
No system. No skills. No glowing numbers.
Only the raw terror of a man who did not want to die.
He swung. The first strike missed. The second cracked against the creature's skull.
It didn't fall. It lunged.
Claws scraped his shoulder, tearing flesh, and pain exploded across his body.
Elias screamed, drove the bar forward again — this time, through the thing's head.
It shuddered, twitched, then went still.
For a long moment, Elias just breathed.
Hard. Ragged. His stomach twisted, bile rising in his throat.
He almost vomited, but he didn't.
Something deep inside him whispered — Don't stop. Kill it. Make sure.
So he drove the bar down again. And again. Until the twitching stopped for good.
Then silence. Only the rain, falling thick and red.
He fell back onto the cold mud, staring up at the black sky.
No angel came to save him.
No voice said, "Congratulations, you survived."
Only emptiness — and far away, the echo of more growls, growing closer.
In the next flash of lightning, Elias saw them — shadows moving among the trees.
Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
His hands were shaking, but he tightened his grip on the iron bar.
"No one's coming," he muttered.
"Then I'll save myself."
And he ran — through the rain of blood, toward the only direction where the growls sounded farther away.
Too silent.
Elias kept walking through the mud, his breath sharp and uneven. Every sound — every rustle of branches — made his nerves tighten.
The air itself felt wrong, heavy, like it didn't belong to a world where humans could breathe.
The iron bar in his hand had begun to rust further under the red rain. He wiped it with his sleeve, even though he knew it was useless. He needed to keep moving — if he stopped, he'd start thinking. And if he started thinking, he'd remember the faces of the corpses lying behind him.
Then, a sound — wet and fast.
Splat. Splat.
Elias froze. Slowly, he turned his head.
Something was there.
It crawled from behind the twisted trees, tall and sinewy, its body stretched like it had been pulled apart too many times. Its bones jutted under thin gray skin, and its mouth was too wide — filled with teeth that didn't fit.
Elias' heartbeat roared in his ears.
He gripped the bar tighter, ready to swing if it came closer.
But the thing didn't wait.
It leapt.
The impact threw Elias into the mud. His weapon flew out of reach. Before he could scream, claws pierced his shoulder and tore through flesh.
He pushed, kicked, fought — but it was too strong. The creature's mouth opened wide above him, drool dripping onto his face.
"Get—off—me!"
He slammed his fist into its jaw. It barely flinched. The teeth came down — and bit deep into his side.
Elias screamed.
He felt something snap inside, hot pain flooding every nerve. The world turned white from agony.
He clawed at the ground, dragging himself away, leaving a trail of blood.
But the pain didn't stop. It grew.
Something inside him was… moving.
His veins burned as if liquid fire ran through them. He could feel his own bones shifting, cracking, like they were being pulled apart from the inside.
Elias collapsed, gasping, eyes wide with terror.
His skin rippled — and then split.
Black, jagged spikes burst from his back, shredding through muscle and skin. He screamed again, choking on blood. The spikes twisted like living things, tearing him open from the inside out.
"Stop—! Make it stop—!"
His voice broke into sobs, but no one answered. The creature watched him writhe for a moment — then turned and vanished into the trees.
Elias lay there, his body breaking apart. He could feel his heartbeat slowing… his vision fading.
And then — silence.
A breath.
A drop of rain.
A smell of rust and blood.
Elias' eyes opened.
He was lying on the same patch of mud, beneath the same black sky.
His body — whole again.
His clothes — dry, unstained.
The iron bar lay beside him, just where it had been before.
He didn't move. Couldn't.
His mind was blank — his thoughts shattered.
"No," he whispered. "No… this isn't real."
But it was.
He could already hear it — the faint, wet crawl of the creature in the distance. The same as before.
Everything had reset.
He gripped his head, shaking violently. "Why me?! What is this place?!"
No answer came. Only the endless, red rain.
He fell to his knees, trembling.
His voice cracked between sobs and laughter.
> "I died… and I came back.
I die again… and it resets.
What kind of hell— is this?"
The wind blew cold through the dead forest.
Elias clenched his jaw, picked up the iron bar once more, and stared into the dark.