The blue-haired girl's scream was the fuse. A sharp, pure sound of terror that tore through the silence and echoed down the sick street. To the remaining humans, it was a wail of despair. To whatever lurked in the folds of that place, it was the dinner bell.
The response was immediate and overwhelming. The creatures didn't step out of the shadows; they spilled from them. From dark alleys, fluid, black shapes poured into the street—not like animals running, but like a thick, predatory liquid hardening into nightmares. From the building façades, geometry twisted and split open, and beings of glossy black chitin pulled themselves out of the walls as if being born from the architecture itself. They unfolded at angles physics did not allow, razor-thin limbs snapping into place, mandibles blooming open into petals of sharp teeth.
There were many. Dozens. And of every kind. Some were bestial, quadrupeds with broad shoulders and bulging musculature beneath skin that looked like stretched leather. Others were arachnid, moving at a nauseating speed on multiple jointed legs, clusters of eyes glowing with a malignant inner light. There were tall, slender figures that moved with terrible grace, like mantises the size of men.
Crouched in the building's entrance, Artur watched the horde emerge. He became a statue of flesh and bone, breath locked in his lungs, his body screaming for him not to make a single move. He was stone, and the torrent of monsters flowed around him. Crucially, they ignored him. He was silent. He was still. His fear was cold and controlled, not the hot, noisy panic the creatures seemed to scent.
Their focus was entirely on the two remaining survivors of the explorer group, at the epicenter of sound and terror.
The man in the denim jacket, seeing death closing in from every direction, did what men do when hope is gone: he fought. He yanked a crowbar from the open trunk of an abandoned car—the lone tool of a dead world. He planted himself in front of the girl who was still screaming, his face a mask of defiant terror.
"Stay back!" he roared, swinging the metal bar.
The nearest creature, one of the arachnid variants, didn't slow. It zigzagged forward with disorienting speed. The man struck, a desperate arc of steel.
The sound of the crowbar hitting the creature's carapace was a pathetic clank, like a stone striking an anvil. Sparks flew, but the monster didn't even flinch. It simply stopped, cocked its multifaceted head in a gesture of mechanical curiosity, and then struck. One of its front limbs—thin and sharp as an obsidian spear—shot forward, punching through the man's shoulder with sickening ease.
He screamed in pain and shock, the crowbar falling uselessly from his hand. Before he could even collapse, two other creatures—larger, more bestial—were on him, tearing and shredding. His fight lasted less than five seconds.
The blue-haired girl stopped screaming. The sound collapsed into a choked sob as she turned and ran. She didn't get far. One of the tall, slender creatures, moving with lightning speed, vaulted onto a car and landed directly in her path. She collided with it, and its scythe-like arms closed around her. Her end was swift, brutal, and muffled.
Artur watched it all, unmoving. There was no heroism to witness—only a brutal lesson in the food chain. Human strength, human tools, human courage—none of it mattered here. It was like trying to fight a tsunami with a hammer.
His gaze dropped to the crowbar lying on the ground near what remained of the leader. Solid steel. Useless. He tightened his grip on the wooden haft of his axe. What made it any different? It was just wood and steel too. Or maybe… maybe it was more than that. Maybe, in a place where reality was a suggestion, a tool's intent and history mattered. He didn't know. He only knew it was all he had left.
Inside the lobby, the elderly couple wept in silence. Carla, the delivery driver, was pressed against the wall, hands over her mouth, eyes wide with horror. She looked at Artur, a silent question in her gaze: Aren't you going to do something?
He met her eyes for a brief moment and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Do what? Die like them? The lesson was clear: movement was death. Sound was death. Panic was death.
The savagery in the street went on. Having eliminated the most obvious threats, the horde spread out, moving with methodical purpose. They began to test the buildings. One of the bestial creatures sprinted at full speed and slammed into the display window of a clothing store across the street. The shatterproof glass shuddered and spiderwebbed with cracks but didn't break. The creature backed up and struck again, and this time the glass exploded inward in a cascade of fragments. Several creatures poured into the darkened shop. Muffled screams echoed for a few seconds—and then, silence.
They were clearing the block.
Artur's heart beat a slow, heavy rhythm in his chest. The glass door of the lobby where he hid now seemed terrifyingly fragile. He and the small group of civilians weren't safe. They were just next on the list.
One of the arachnid creatures—perhaps the same one that had taken the crowbar strike—approached the building's entrance. It moved slowly, its legs advancing in a hypnotic, unsettling cadence. It didn't seem to have noticed the group inside. It was simply following its search pattern.
It stopped directly in front of the glass door.
Time froze.
The creature tilted its head. Its multiple red eyes, devoid of emotion or any recognizable intelligence, swept the dark entrance. The purple light outside traced its impossible silhouette. Artur could see the details of its carapace—the way the chitin plates overlapped, the tiny bristles shifting at its joints. It was less than a meter away, separated from them by nothing more than a thin sheet of glass.
Carla let out a small whimper, a sound barely more than an exhale.
The creature's eyes snapped instantly in her direction.