No… no… no.

The words echoed in my head, but they felt distant, like they were coming from somewhere far away. My own voice, but hollow. My knees buckled beneath me as I stumbled toward the wreckage. This couldn’t be real. Not my home. Not my family.

I knelt in the ashes, my hands shaking, fingers grasping at charred remains of wood and stone that had once been… what? A wall? The roof? It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Everything was gone. My breath came in ragged gasps, each one harder than the last, like the air itself was pressing down on me, choking me.

“Father?” My voice cracked. “Mother?”

There was no answer. Only silence, except for the dull crackling of the still-burning embers. I scrambled through the rubble, my hands blistering on the hot stones, not caring, not thinking. I had to find them. They had to be here, somewhere, hiding. They couldn’t be… gone.

I tore through what was left of the house, calling their names over and over, my voice raw, my throat burning. But no one answered. The familiar warmth, the laughter, the smell of my mother’s cooking—all of it—reduced to this heap of blackened ruin.

No…

The word was a plea now, a prayer to anyone, to anything, that might be listening. Please, let this be a mistake. Let me find them alive. Let this nightmare end.

I clawed at the earth, dragging my body forward as though I could somehow dig deep enough to escape from the reality around me. I wasn’t crying. I couldn’t. The tears wouldn’t come. There was only this unbearable weight pressing down on me, suffocating me.

The air began to change. It was subtle at first—a foul odor, like something rotting—but then it grew stronger, thicker, until it felt like the entire world was decaying around me. My skin prickled, and my breath grew shallow, each inhale tasting of ash and death. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

A branch snapped behind me.

I froze. My hands, still buried in the ash, trembled. The sound came again—a slow, deliberate thud, like something heavy pressing down on the earth. It was followed by another step, and another. The ground shook, ever so slightly, beneath their weight. The crunch of rubble shifted under monstrous feet.

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I turned my head, heart hammering in my chest, the hairs on my neck standing on end. From the shadows of the trees, they emerged.

I had heard stories of monsters—wild beasts that roamed the outskirts of the villages, things that came out at night to steal livestock or frighten travelers. But these… these were nothing like the stories. These were twisted, broken things.

Their skin was like rotting leather, slick with grime, stretched tight over their bones. Scales and boils marred their flesh, oozing pus that dripped onto the ground. Their eyes, hollow and dead, glowed with a sickly yellow light, like the last flicker of a dying flame. Each step they took left the earth blighted, blackened, as though their very presence corrupted everything around them.

The air grew colder. I could feel it in my bones, a biting chill that seeped into my skin, making it hard to breathe. The closer they got, the heavier the air became, pressing down on me like an invisible force. I could smell them now—the stench of rot and decay, so thick it turned my stomach.

I couldn’t move. I wanted to run, to scream, to do anything, but my body refused to obey. My legs were leaden, my chest tight, as if the monsters were sucking the very life out of the air around me. My heart pounded in my ears, but it felt distant, like it wasn’t mine anymore.

This is it. This is how I die.

The thought came unbidden, cold and final. I wasn’t a fighter. I wasn’t strong. I was just a boy. What could I do against… this?

One of the creatures locked its hollow gaze on me, its mouth opening in a slow, deliberate snarl. Rows of jagged, yellow teeth glistened in the faint light of the fires. It moved closer, its twisted body scraping against the ground with an eerie, wet squelch.

And then, in a blur of motion, something moved between us.

“Stay back.” The voice was low, calm, but commanding.

A figure—a shadow, faster than I could comprehend—appeared before me. The monster’s snarl turned into a shriek, cut short by the swift, precise slash of a blade. Dark, thick blood sprayed across the ground, and the creature crumpled, lifeless.

The others hesitated, their glowing eyes flickering as though sensing the presence of something far more dangerous than they were. Another one lunged, but the figure moved again, faster than my eyes could follow. One strike, two. The creatures fell one by one, their bodies twitching before collapsing into blackened heaps.

I didn’t understand what was happening. All I knew was that I was still alive, somehow, while the monsters lay dead at my feet.

Before I could fully grasp what I was seeing, the figure turned toward me. In the dim light of the dying fires, I could make out sharp eyes, a face hidden beneath a hood, and the glint of a sword slick with dark blood.

My mind couldn’t process it. My body was frozen, unable to respond. But then, everything went black. The last thing I felt was the weight of the world collapsing around me, pulling me down into the void.