Lexa didn't waste a heartbeat. She broke into a full sprint, her boots drumming a frantic rhythm against the pavement of Central Shinsei. She wove through the crowds like a blur, dodging shoppers and commuters who barely had time to register her. Some folks stopped and stared in utter confusion, while others simply stepped aside, wanting no part of whatever storm she was chasing.
"Lyss, what's on your mind?" She hissed under her breath.
Realizing she'd never spot a streak of light from the ground level, Lexa veered toward a nearby storefront. She didn't look for a ladder; she just locked her eyes on the roofline. Pushing off the pavement with explosive force, she slammed her boot against the brickwork, using the momentum to spring upward.
She moved with practiced, fluid grace, kicking off a window ledge and then ricocheting back toward a sturdy signpost. With one more powerful vault against the side of the building, she cleared the gutter and landed on the flat roof in a smooth, rolling transition.
Since the buildings in this part of Shinsei weren't particularly tall, she didn't feel disconnected from the street, but the height gave her exactly the vantage point she needed. Gasping for air, she ran to the edge of the roof, her hair whipping across her face. From here, she could see the whole block, and she started scanning frantically for that telltale flicker of blue energy cutting through the gray horizon.
Lexa paced toward the building's edge, her eyes narrowed as she scanned the shifting crowd below. Suddenly, a sharp flick of blue light sparked near a street corner and vanished just as fast. Lexa didn't know much about Lyss. Lexa was an upper-level Vanguard who rarely showed her face in class—but that signature energy was unmistakable.
"Found you," Lexa whispered, her relief short-lived.
As she watched Lyss from above, she realized the other girl wasn't moving forward. Lyss was frozen, her silhouette stiff with a tension that radiated even from a distance. Lexa felt a bead of cold sweat roll down her own neck as she followed Lyss's gaze toward the center of the plaza.
The crowd had begun to rupture. People weren't just running; they were screaming in a way that made Lexa's blood run cold. In the middle of the chaos stood a figure that used to be a man. Now, he was a jagged, twitching mass of cooling steel and wet, silver sludge. He didn't have a face, just a shimmering, hollow surface that lurched forward with the mindless hunger of a predator.
"H-Help me! Please!" a woman shrieked. She was pinned in the creature's metallic grip, her hands clawing uselessly at arms that felt like frozen lead.
Before Lexa could even draw breath to scream a warning, the molten liquid surged from the man's chest like a bursting dam. It poured over the woman in a heavy, suffocating wave. Her plea turned into a distorted, gurgling wail of pure agony as the silver burrowed into her skin, forcing her body to stretch and snap into a new, horrific shape.
The crowd erupted. "Run! Get out of here!" someone yelled, and the lively street turned into a stampede of pure terror. People tripped over themselves, desperate to get away from the silver tide as more "molten" figures began to rise from the pavement, their metallic joints creaking as they turned toward the living.
Lyss scrambled back into the shadow of a chimney stack, her fingers trembling as she jammed them against her earpiece. "Are these the things you were talking about?" she hissed, her voice tight with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief. "The Molten? They're... they're infecting people right in front of me!"
The operator's voice came back instantly, stripped of its earlier professional chill. She sounded just as shaken. "It looks like it. The data didn't mention this level of aggression. The Mold isn't just a shell—it's a hive-mind parasite. It hijacks the nervous system and rewrites the biology into a vessel. Its only instinct now is to replicate. It's using those people as fuel to spread itself."
Lyss watched a silver-skinned man lurch toward a storefront, his movements jerky and unnatural. "So what are we talking about here?" she asked, her breath hitching in her chest. "Are they just... zombies? Is that what this is? Some kind of metallic plague?"
"In a sense, yes," the woman replied, the sound of papers rustling frantically in the background. "But listen to me, Lyss—it's not a permanent biological change. It's a parasitic bond. If that Mold comes into contact with a high-volume liquid or a conflicting chemical base, it reacts like it's being poisoned. It'll abandon the host and crawl out to find a more stable environment. The people are still in there, Lyss. They're just... being worn like suits."
Lyss swallowed hard, watching a Molten figure tilt its head toward her position. "Great. So I just have to find a way to peel the metal off them without killing them? This just keeps getting better and better."
The monster didn't give Lyss time to process the science. With a sudden, wet *shink*, the Molten lunged, its metallic limbs stretching like gum. Lyss barely had time to gasp before the cold, heavy weight of the sludge slammed into her. It wasn't just a grip; it was alive. The silver mass latched onto her arms and legs, pinning her against the brickwork with the strength of a vice.
"G-get off of me!" she shrieked, her boots skidding uselessly against the gravel as the mold began to climb. It was a terrifying, invasive sensation—freezing cold and suffocatingly heavy. It slithered over her knees, thick and oily, dragging itself up her stomach toward her chest. Her muscles locked up, turning numb as the unnatural cold seeped into her bones.
Lyss's lips parted on a desperate cry for help, but the Mold answered with a low, predatory hunger that felt almost forceful. A thick, glistening tendril of the silver sludge rose like a living thing, sliding between her teeth with slick insistence before plunging deep into her throat—hot, pulsing, and utterly filling. Her eyes flew wide, shock and something dangerously close to unwilling heat flooding through her all at once. The world went quiet; she couldn't breathe, couldn't scream, couldn't do anything but feel the parasite's slow, claiming rhythm as it spread inside her, taking her over in a way that left her trembling and strangely, shamefully alive.
On the other end of the line, the operator was screaming her name into a void of static and wet, gurgling sounds.
But just as the sludge began to overturn her consciousness, a flash of movement cut through the air. Lexa plummeted from the rooftop like a falling star, her blade already unsheathed.
"Get away from her!" Lexa roared.
With a fierce flick of her wrist, Lexa tapped into her blood control, channeling the crimson currents through the very edge of her steel. The blade didn't just hit the mold; it sang through it. The pressurized blood at the tip acted like a high-pressure jet, slicing through the viscous silver mass with surgical precision. The Molten's hold snapped, the severed sludge recoiling as if burned by the contact.
The moment the connection was severed, Lyss's body convulsed. Her eyes snapped open, and she doubled over, a violent, wet retch tearing through her chest. The Mold inside her reacted to the presence of Lexa's blood like it was pure acid; the silver tendril surged back up her throat and splattered onto the ground in a thick, shimmering heap. It hissed and writhed against the gravel, shrinking and vaporizing into a foul-smelling mist as the liquid blood broke its bond.
Lyss's legs gave out instantly. She collapsed onto her knees, her hands trembling so hard they could barely support her weight. She stayed there for a moment, head hanging low, strings of saliva dripping from her lips as she gagged on the lingering, metallic taste of the parasite. Her vision was a distorted smear of gray and blue, pulsing in time with the frantic thud of her heart.
"Hey! Lyss! Look at me!" Lexa was there in a heartbeat, her hands gripping Lyss's shoulders to keep her from slumping over.
Lexa's voice was tight, bordering on a frantic edge. She peered into Lyss's eyes, searching for that familiar spark of consciousness behind the haze. "Can you hear me? Lyss, talk to me! Are you back? Are you in control?"
Even though she'd made the cut, Lexa's pulse was racing. The sight of that silver sludge forcing its way into Lyss's mouth was burned into her mind, and she was terrified that even a second of delay had been a second too long.
Lyss let out a jagged, violent cough, her hand flying to her throat as if she could still feel the cold weight of the metal inside her. When she finally looked up, her eyes were bloodshot and glistening with a raw, shaking terror she couldn't hide.
"It... it felt like it was taking over every single part of me," she whispered, her voice a dry, burning rasp. She clutched at Lexa's sleeves, her knuckles white. "I could feel it spreading through my veins... just erasing who I was. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't even think. I just felt myself... disappearing. Like I was being buried alive inside my own skin."
A violent shudder racked her frame, and she looked away, her face twisting with a mix of leftover horror and a deep, stinging shame. She was supposed to be the upper-level Vanguard, the one who had it all under control, but she had never felt more helpless in her entire life.
"I thought I was gone," she breathed, her voice cracking. "I really thought that was it."
Lexa felt a heavy lump form in her throat. Seeing anyone go through that would have been bad enough, but seeing Lyss—just another student, someone who was supposed to be in a classroom, not fighting for her soul in the middle of a street—made it feel ten times more sickening. The "professional" labels didn't matter. They were both just kids caught in a nightmare.
Lyss remained on her knees, her palms pressed flat against the cracked pavement as she stared at the spot where the silver mass had splattered. There was nothing left but a faint, shimmering stain that was rapidly fading into the humid air.
"It... it killed it," Lyss whispered, her voice still a ragged rasp. She reached out a trembling hand, hovering over the empty asphalt. "It's gone. It's like... like it doesn't even exist anymore."
Lexa leaned forward, her brow furrowed as she followed Lyss's stare. She looked at the blood still coating the tip of her blade, then back at the empty ground. Neither of them had been briefed on a weakness this absolute. As students, they were light-years out of their depth, yet they had just stumbled upon something vital.
"It evaporated," Lexa concluded, her voice barely audible over the distant screams of the crowd.
They both sat there in a heavy, stunned silence, staring at the patch of road. It was terrifying and awe-inspiring all at once. In their world, monsters usually left a body, but this Mold was different—a fragile, parasitic glitch that could be blinked out of existence with a single drop of the right liquid.
A sudden, metallic scrape echoed from a nearby alleyway, snapping them back to the reality of the chaos surrounding them.
"Lyss... It's not over."
To be continued...