She still couldn't believe any of it was happening.
She closed her eyes and covered her ears. She wanted to disappear—to flee from that place, from that night, from the village that had always been her home, the only place she had ever known and considered safe.
She wanted to wake up from that terrible nightmare.
Around her, people continued to struggle and writhe—they too wanted to wake up. Their futile attempts to escape only reminded her that no matter how much she tried not to see or hear it, the outcome would be the same.
They were all going to die.
Most of them already had.
That was why the few who remained were still alive—waiting for their turn.
Dozens of small blows and shoves struck her from every side. The shell she had formed with her body began to crack. She returned to reality, opened her eyes, confirming that she was still trapped in that nightmare where hope had no place.
The survivors had given up the fight.
Those who had tried—bravely or foolishly—had been the first to die.
They were not warriors.
Nor soldiers.
Their lives revolved around the fields, around living in peace, around working the land day after day with sweat and effort. They were just a small village lost in the forest, like so many others that didn't even appear on most maps—because they didn't need to.
What they needed came from the earth: crops and livestock they tended with care and love.
But evil had found them.
And all because of a good deed.
If only they hadn't helped her.
The crops had dried and withered no matter how much they watered them. The animals had fallen ill and died no matter how carefully they were tended.
Everything they had built across generations—gone forever.
And then, as if that weren't enough, that night came.
They had emerged when the sun went down, summoned by the darkness. Drawn from the deepest parts of the forest by… something.
Something that was no longer there.
But had left its scent behind.
The screams of the first villagers to see them—to fall within reach of their fangs and claws—had been the only warning the rest received.
Their only chance.
Where had she been when the screams rang out and the air filled with the smell of blood?
Where had the others been, while their neighbors and lifelong friends tried to stop the monsters' advance?
Why hadn't they fled the village?
They couldn't leave.
The certainty echoed from deep within her, so strong it nearly made her vomit.
Her head throbbed. The thought of being far away felt like a claw piercing her brain and tearing it apart. Blinding flashes filled her vision when she closed her eyes—grotesque, visceral images she didn't understand, painting her beautiful memories red.
The blood had dried on her hands and arms days ago, turning into a second skin that itched and disgusted her.
The taste still made her gag.
The monsters kept drawing closer, until they had surrounded them in a deadly circle.
Their forms were varied.
Some walked on two legs.
Others used anywhere from four to eight.
Those with a more human shape even wore scraps of clothing—poorly fitted to their distorted bodies, torn and stained with blood. The original owners—humans who must have served as food—had left them behind.
One of them stepped forward.
It wore a jacket and a scarf.
It stood over eight feet tall.
Its mouth was misshapen, frozen forever in a chilling smile, its teeth far too long to ever be hidden behind its lips.
"You smell disgusting," it said, displaying a surprisingly refined grasp of the local dialect.
The other monsters growled in agreement.
One of them—resting its body on six massive, spider-like legs—vomited onto the ground a slimy mass made of human remains, crawling with thousands of worms.
"Your flesh is rotten."
She stared at the pile.
The worms avoided feeding on it.
Even touching it seemed like something they preferred not to do.
They only gathered around the undigested remains—what the villagers had consumed in the past few days.
Her stomach growled.
She wanted to vomit.
She was hungry.
When had she—or any of the others—last eaten? What had they been feeding on? She didn't recognize the taste that still lingered at the back of her throat, though it was sickening.
The monster's gaze shifted away from them, fixing on something lying several meters to the north—right in the center of the village.
Its eyes traveled slowly upward, climbing the grotesque, macabre mound of dead animals piled into a towering shape.
The bodies were… wrong.
Their eyelids had been sewn shut after their eyes were torn out. Limbs had been ripped away and attached to different bodies, turning each animal into an unnatural creation.
And their entrails…
Another wave of nausea rose up her throat, bringing with it whatever her stomach was still trying to digest.
She couldn't look away.
Neither could the other villagers who were still alive.
That monument had been erected atop a stain of blood that had soaked into the earth back when the animals—and the land—had still been alive and healthy. She couldn't explain how, but that blood—its smell, the sound it made when it hit the ground—had been haunting her every day, every hour, even in her dreams.
Painting them red.
The blood of a woman who had appeared out of nowhere.
Who did not belong to the village.
Everything had begun to go wrong the moment she left and marked the village with her blood.
The monster's eyes widened suddenly as it noticed something no one else seemed to have seen.
At the foot of that mountain of dead, desecrated animals, there was a person.
"Who are you?" it demanded, raising its voice just enough to carry. The other monsters slowly turned, one by one, toward the stranger.
The figure was cloaked in black, crouched low, searching for something on the ground.
"I asked you a question," the monster insisted. Its words hissed and scraped as they passed between its enormous teeth.
The stranger stood, holding something in her left hand. She turned to face the monsters. The night and the hood drawn over her head hid her face perfectly.
She began walking toward them—toward both villagers and monsters alike.
The creatures forming the outer ring of the circle they had used to trap the villagers extended their claws. The movement scattered the blood they had taken from their victims across the ground.
The one on the left swung its claws in a wide arc, aiming to tear the hooded figure apart as she passed.
Instead, its strike ripped open the monster standing opposite it.
The person it had tried to attack vanished—and reappeared beyond the circle of monsters.
Right in front of the group of humans.
All the monsters took a cautious step back, baring claws, fangs, and tails shaped like spears or pincers. They showed no sorrow—only a hunger to destroy the threat and paint the sky with her blood.
The stranger crouched again.
The darkness of the night still shielded her, but from that distance she could make out strands of black hair falling over the front of her face.
It was a woman.
She held up what she carried in her left hand.
A pendant shaped like a heart, woven from fine threads of white gold.
"Where is the woman who wore this pendant?" she asked, showing no concern for the massacre around her—or for the monsters surrounding her.
The pendant swayed gently.
Every villager's eyes locked onto it.
Her vision blurred.
Her heart pounded too hard, too fast.
She felt every fiber of her body vibrating, blood burning beneath her skin.
The monsters began to roar at the strange woman, displaying their ferocity and animal instinct. They captured her attention—but not that of the villagers.
The woman stood.
And fixed them with a gaze that held not the slightest trace of fear.
Only a warning.
"I don't have time for this."
The air around them all grew colder. The silence thickened.
A premonition settled in.
Something was about to happen.
Something bad.
"The longer I waste on you, the farther she gets."
Cracks split the sky above their heads.
There were dozens of them—each no longer than a finger. They didn't float or move.
They pulsed.
As if something on the other side was urgently trying to force them open.
Each crack poured down a thin beam of white light, falling individually upon every monster and every villager alike, marking them all without distinction.
The monsters stared at the cracks and the marks, bodies tense.
The villagers kept their eyes fixed on the pendant swinging from the woman's hand, oblivious to everything else.
The stranger parted her lips, moving them calmly.
She spoke—
a dull sound.
A word spoken with perfect clarity, yet heard as nothing but white noise.
A sharp pain struck her head: the mind, unable and unworthy to process the word that had been uttered, expelled it from memory and buried it completely—erasing every trace of it in a primal act of survival.
The cracks above the monsters tore open.
On the other side, enormous golden eyes gazed down upon them for a fraction of a second.
Then the cracks closed again.
And vanished.
The monsters vanished with them.
Gone entirely.
Without a single sound.
Their very existence erased.
The woman looked at the villagers—but they still only had eyes for the pendant.
She sighed and began to walk away, leaving them and the village behind.
The pendant went with her, swaying with every step.
A dozen pairs of eyes followed it.
She remained in the center.
Around her, she could feel the rest of her neighbors swaying in rhythm with the pendant's movement.
She rose to her feet so abruptly her legs cracked.
"This is all her fault!" she screamed—at the pendant, at the woman who had saved them, at the world.
Her voice echoed.
And every other voice joined it in perfect harmony.
They began to stand as well—even the injured.
One rose with such force that the sound of a hip dislocating could be heard, yet neither he nor the others stopped staring at the pendant.
"She's the one to blame! She took everything from us!"
Those who had been her neighbors, her companions, her lifelong friends began to move.
Their feet dragged across the ground.
She could feel them—drawn together by a painful attraction.
She could hear them:
bones breaking,
piercing organs and skin.
But there were no screams.
Soon, the blows reached her.
A dozen bodies throwing themselves onto her—crushing her, breaking her.
Merging with her.
Absorbing her.
The moon slipped through the clouds, bathing in pale light a mass of bodies and limbs—of eyes and mouths—of shattered bones and a single mind, still lying beneath a dozen cracks in the sky.
Its new voice was not her own.
It was the cacophony of a collective that no longer existed as individuals—words born in different parts of the body, colliding as they escaped through one of many mouths.
"It… was her fault… She took… everything from us…"
They dragged their new body toward the woman who had saved them—who was carrying the pendant away.
A tear formed and slid down one of their many eyes.
The woman stopped, gripping the pendant tightly in her hand.
"I know," she said softly, keeping the anger and hatred behind her words. "That's what she always does. She comes close… and takes away what matters most to you."
"That's why I have to find her."
They continued crawling toward her.
They were hungry.
So hungry.
They had fed on the land.
On the animals.
And they were still starving.
The pain they felt—now multiplied by every being that formed that body—was unbearable.
Arms began ripping out tufts of hair and chunks of flesh, shoving them into their own mouths.
But it was useless.
The flesh rotted the instant it touched their tongues.
The hair tangled and clogged their throats.
A dozen lives flooded the shared mind—testaments of the people they had been, and would never be again.
All for a good deed.
For helping that woman.
If they could ask the universe for one wish—
it would be to die.
The woman turned her head and looked at them for the first time.
At that shapeless mass crawling across the ground.
She parted her lips.
Her mouth moved quickly.
Above them, the cracks opened.