The silence that followed Mark's departure was not empty; it was heavy, pressurized, and vibrating with the kinetic intent of two apex predators staring down a challenger who had just butchered their queen. The Araneta Coliseum, stripped of its cheering crowds and basketball buzzers, felt like a hollowed-out ribcage, the damp air smelling of old sweat, copper blood, and the acrid, chemical stench of the arachnids' excitement. I stood alone on the polished hardwood, or what was left of it, my chest heaving not from exhaustion, but from the violent internal war being waged between my own consciousness and the three distinct, alien instincts I had force-fed into my soul. The Beetle demanded I hunker down and endure; the Dog screamed at me to run, to flank, to tear at the throat; and the new voice—the Spider—whispered cold, geometric calculations about angles, vibration, and the flow of air.
The two remaining giant spiders did not rush me immediately, their hesitation born from the lingering shock of seeing their matriarch decimated by a creature that looked like a soft, shell-less biped. They chittered at each other, a rapid-fire clicking of mandibles that the new perception in my mind translated not into words, but into raw emotional impulses: Caution. Flank. Trap. The Spider Vestige I had absorbed acted like a sonar overlay on my vision, painting the world in wireframes of tension and movement. I could feel the minute tremors in the floorboards as the spider on the left shifted its weight to its rear legs, preparing a pounce, and I could sense the buildup of pressurized fluid in the abdomen of the one on the right, signaling a web attack.
"Come on then," I murmured, my voice sounding distorted and gravelly in my own ears, vibrating against the roof of my mouth. "I don't have all night."
As if responding to a starting gun, the spider on the right reared back and spat. It wasn't a solid net like before, but a concentrated stream of viscous, white liquid that hissed through the air like a high-pressure hose. My body moved before I consciously commanded it, the Dog's agility merging with the Spider's precognition. I dropped low, sliding across the slick floor in a baseball slide, the stream of webbing passing inches above my nose. The liquid struck a row of court-side seats behind me, and the plastic hissed and smoked, melting into a bubbling sludge. Acidic webbing. Great.
While I was sliding, the second spider—the jumper—launched itself into the air. It was a massive, hairy projectile, aiming to land exactly where my slide would terminate. It was a coordinated hunting tactic, smart and practiced. In a normal timeline, Kil Salvatierra, the college student who worried about tuition fees and deadlines, would be paste on the floor. But the Kil who was currently hosting a menagerie of monster souls saw the trajectory in slow motion. I didn't try to stop my slide; instead, I dug my heels into the wood to break the momentum abruptly, channeling the Beetle's density to anchor myself instantly to the spot.
The jumping spider overshot its mark, crashing onto the floor three feet in front of me with a thud that shook the entire arena. Before it could recover, I engaged the Beetle's strength, my muscles swelling and hardening under my skin with a sensation like hot iron wires tightening. I grabbed two of the creature's thick, bristly front legs. The hairs on its carapace were sharp as needles, piercing my palms, but I ignored the pain, letting the adrenaline fuel the rage simmering in my gut. With a roar that tore at my throat, I spun, using the creature's own mass and the centrifugal force to lift it off the ground.
"Get off my court!" I yelled, releasing the beast.
The spider sailed through the air, flailing its legs helplessly, before crashing violently into its partner, who was preparing another spit of acid. The two monsters tangled in a heap of screeching limbs and shattered chitin, rolling into the base of the concreting risers. I didn't wait for them to untangle. The predator inside me knew that mercy was just a delay of execution. I scanned the floor for a weapon, my eyes locking onto a twisted metal support beam from the collapsed scorer's table. It was heavy, jagged, and about six feet long—perfect.
I scooped up the beam, the metal groaning as I tested its weight. It felt light. Too light. My perception of mass had been fundamentally altered. I sprinted toward the tangled spiders, the wind rushing past my ears. The acid-spitter managed to extricate itself, scrambling backward and hissing, its multiple eyes widening as I closed the distance. It tried to raise a leg to block, but I swung the metal beam like a sledgehammer.
CRACK.
The impact sound was wet and sickening. The beam sheared through the spider's leg and smashed into the side of its head, caving in the cluster of eyes on its left side. Green ichor sprayed across my shirt, burning slightly against my skin, but the pain felt distant, irrelevant. The creature collapsed, twitching, its legs curling inward in the universal sign of death. A faint, glowing orb—smaller than the matriarch's, pale yellow—began to rise from its corpse.
Eat. Take. Grow. The voices in my head reached a fever pitch, a cacophony of hunger that made my vision blur red. My hand reached out instinctively, fingers twitching to grasp the essence.
"No," I gritted out, physically wrestling my own arm back to my side. "Not yet. One left."
The jumper spider had recovered and was now clinging to the wall of the lower box section, about fifteen feet up. It was chittering frantically, backing away. It was afraid. The realization gave me a surge of dark, cold satisfaction that scared me more than the monsters did. I was enjoying this. I was enjoying the fear in its eyes. I shook my head violently, trying to dislodge the feeling. Focus on the job. Don't become the monster.
"You don't get to run," I said, eyeing the creature. "Not after what you did to those people."
The spider turned and scrambled toward the upper tier, heading for the ventilation shafts. I dropped the metal beam and looked at the vertical distance. Fifteen feet. Doable. I crouched, channeling the explosive power of the Dog Vestige into my thighs until the muscles felt like coiled springs ready to snap. I unleashed the energy in a single burst, launching myself upward. I didn't just jump; I flew. My hands caught the railing of the box section, the metal bending under my grip. I vaulted over the rail, landing on the concrete steps, and sprinted up the aisle, taking the stairs four at a time.
The spider was fast, but on the uneven terrain of the stadium seating, I was faster. I cut off its angle to the vent, forcing it to turn and fight. It lunged at me, a desperate, cornered strike with its fangs bared. I didn't dodge this time. I stepped into the guard, raising my left forearm to take the bite. The fangs sank into my arm, but they didn't penetrate deep; the Beetle's unseen armor stopped them from shattering the bone. Pain flared, sharp and hot, but it served as a focal point.
"Gotcha," I whispered.
With my right hand free, I drove a punch straight into the creature's underbelly, focusing all the kinetic energy I could muster into my knuckles. The blow lifted the spider off its feet. I didn't stop. I punched again, and again, a piston of violence, until something vital inside the creature burst. It went limp, sliding off my arm and tumbling down the stairs, coming to rest against a row of folded seats.
I stood there on the steps, breathing hard, the adrenaline crash hitting me like a physical blow. The world spun. My arm throbbed where the fangs had grazed me, and my shirt was soaked in sweat and monster blood. Below me, the yellow orb from the first spider was fading, and a new one was rising from the carcass on the stairs. I stared at them, the hunger returning with a vengeance, a gnawing emptiness in my stomach that felt like starvation.
You need it. You are empty. Fill the void.
"I'm not empty," I whispered, sliding down to sit on a plastic chair, wiping the grime from my face. "I'm just tired."
I watched the orbs float there, pulsing, tempting. I knew I should take them. In this new world, power was the only currency that mattered, and walking away from it was stupid. But I also knew that if I took another one right now, with the three already fighting for dominance in my psyche, I might not come back. I might just start hunting the humans outside. It was a terrifying calculus: power versus sanity.
"Later," I decided, standing up on shaky legs. "If they're still there when I come back, fine. If not, then it wasn't meant to be."
I turned my back on the loot—a decision that physically hurt—and began the long walk down to the arena floor. The silence had returned, but now it felt different. It wasn't the silence of a predator waiting; it was the silence of a graveyard. I walked past the massive corpse of the Matriarch, the shattered remnants of the drones, and the empty cocoons where the people had been. I picked up my original weapon—the bent, jagged signpost I had thrown to save the group—and felt a strange comfort in its familiar weight. It was a piece of the old world, a piece of the street I walked every day, twisted but still functional. Just like me.
I made my way to the service exit where I had sent Mark and the others. The heavy metal doors were pushed open, leading into the loading dock area of the Coliseum. As I stepped out into the humid night air, the contrast was jarring. The interior had been cool and damp; the outside was hot, suffocating, and loud. The roar of the city burning was inescapable here. Sirens wailed in a constant, discordant harmony, helicopters chopped the air above, and the distant boom of explosions marked the rhythm of the apocalypse.
The loading dock opened up to the back of the Gateway Mall complex. The area had been turned into a triage center. Portable floodlights bathed the asphalt in harsh, white light, illuminating a chaotic scene of paramedics, police officers, and heavily armed soldiers in camouflage gear—the Special Action Force. They had set up a perimeter with humvees and sandbags, their rifles pointed outward into the darkness.
"Halt! Hands where I can see them!"
The shout came from a soldier perched atop a humvee, his rifle trained squarely on my chest. I froze, blinking in the blinding glare of the spotlight. I must have looked like a nightmare—blood-soaked, holding a jagged metal spear, coming out of a monster nest.
"I'm human!" I shouted back, my voice cracking slightly. I slowly raised my free hand, keeping the signpost lowered but not dropping it. "I'm a student! I just came out of the Dome!"
"Drop the weapon! Drop it now!" the soldier barked, his finger tightening on the trigger.
"Wait! Don't shoot him!"
A familiar voice cut through the tension. Mark came limping out from behind an ambulance, a blanket draped over his shoulders and a bandage wrapped around his head. He looked terrible—pale, shaking, his glasses taped together—but he was alive. He moved past the police line, waving his hands frantically.
"That's Kil! He's the one who saved us! He cleared the nest!"
The soldiers didn't lower their weapons, but they didn't fire. An officer, a man with a buzz cut and the insignia of a Lieutenant on his vest, stepped forward. He looked at Mark, then at me, his eyes narrowing as he assessed the threat. He walked past the barricade, approaching me with a cautious, fluid grace that told me he was a veteran.
"You cleared the nest?" the Lieutenant asked, stopping ten feet away. His eyes flicked to the signpost, then to the ichor staining my clothes. "By yourself?"
"I had some luck," I lied, lowering the signpost slowly to the ground. "And they were fighting each other."
The Lieutenant snorted, clearly not buying it, but he signaled for his men to lower their rifles slightly. "Name's Lieutenant Gamboa. Your friend here has been babbling about you fighting giant spiders with a street sign. I thought he was in shock."
"It's a sturdy sign," I said, offering a weak smile. "Is he okay?"
"He's dehydrated and has a concussion, but he'll live. Unlike a lot of people inside that place." Gamboa stepped closer, his voice dropping to a low rumble so his men wouldn't hear. "Listen, kid. I don't know what you are, or what you did in there. But my thermal scopes showed heat signatures in that building fading out one by one before you walked out. Big heat signatures."
I met his gaze, holding it steady. I let a fraction of the Vestige's presence leak into my eyes—just enough to let him know I wasn't someone to be bullied. "We do what we have to do to survive, Lieutenant. I'm just trying to get my friend home."
Gamboa stared at me for a long moment, the air between us crackling with unspoken understanding. He saw it. He saw the change. He nodded once, sharp and professional. "Home isn't safe right now. We're establishing a secure zone in Camp Aguinaldo. We're moving civilians there. You should get on a truck."
"I'll think about it," I said. "But first, I need a minute with him."
Gamboa nodded and stepped back, gesturing for me to pass. I walked toward the ambulance where Mark was leaning against the wheel well. He looked at me as I approached, his expression a mix of relief and a strange, new hesitation. He had seen me kill. He had seen the glow. Things were never going to be the same between us, and the weight of that realization sat heavy in my chest.
"You look like leftovers," Mark said, trying for a joke but his voice trembled.
"You should see the other guys," I replied, leaning against the ambulance beside him. My legs finally gave out, and I slid down to sit on the asphalt. "They're... everywhere."
"Yeah," Mark whispered, looking up at the sky.
I followed his gaze. The rift above Cubao was still there, swirling and pulsing, but now I could see more. With the Spider Vestige's perception, I could see thin, ghostly threads trailing from the rift, connecting to thousands of points across the city. They were mana lines, feeding the monsters, changing the environment. And far in the distance, toward the mountains of Rizal, I saw something else—a massive, golden pillar of light piercing the clouds, distinct from the purple bruise of the rifts.
"It's not just an invasion, Mark," I said softly, the knowledge settling into my mind from the Vestiges' collective instinct. "It's a terraforming event. They aren't just visiting. They're moving in."
Mark shuddered, pulling the blanket tighter around himself. "So what do we do? The Lieutenant said the military is overwhelmed. The government is retreating to secure zones. It's chaos."
"We survive," I said, closing my eyes for a second to listen to the hum of the mana in the air. "We adapt. And we get stronger."
"Stronger?" Mark looked at me, his eyes wide behind the taped lenses. "Kil, back there... your eyes. They were glowing. And you moved... that wasn't human."
I opened my eyes and looked at my hands. They were caked in dried green blood and grime, but beneath the skin, I could feel the hum of the three orbs. The Beetle. The Dog. The Spider. They were quiet now, sated for the moment, but they were there, waiting. I flexed my fingers, and the air around them distorted slightly, a heat haze generated by my own body.
"I know," I said. "I don't think I'm just human anymore, Mark. I think I'm becoming part of the ecosystem."
"Is that a good thing?"
"I don't know," I admitted, looking back toward the dark maw of the Coliseum. "But if it keeps us from being spider food, I'll take it."
A commotion at the barricade drew our attention. A group of civilians was running toward the soldiers, pointing back toward Aurora Boulevard.
"They're coming! The winged ones! A whole flock!"
The soldiers shouted orders, racking the slides of their rifles. The floodlights swiveled toward the street, illuminating the smoke-filled sky. Screeches echoed from above—harsh, piercing cries that sounded like metal tearing. Shadows swooped down from the rift, diving toward the triage center.
Gamboa was shouting into his radio. "Contact! Air contact! All units, free fire!"
I grabbed my signpost and stood up, the exhaustion vanishing as the Beetle's endurance kicked in. My heart rate slowed, my vision sharpened, and the fear evaporated, replaced by the cold calculation of the hunt.
"Stay under the ambulance, Mark," I ordered, my voice leaving no room for argument.
"Kil, don't," Mark pleaded, grabbing my ankle. "You're exhausted. You can't fight an army."
I looked down at him, then up at the descending swarm. I wasn't a hero. I wasn't a soldier. I was just a college student who wanted to read his notebook and ride the train. But the world had changed, and it had dragged me down with it.
"I'm not fighting an army," I said, pulling my leg free and stepping toward the light. "I'm just clearing the path."
As the first winged horror shrieked and dived toward the line of soldiers, I tightened my grip on the steel and felt the three Vestiges roar in unison. The night was far from over.