“What do all stories have in common, dear friend?

They end.”

- Last recorded words of a Disfavored and his Echo.

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I looked at the warning message. My eyes could not be deceiving me, I was past the childish delusions of one that expects trouble to come my way for the sake of the thrill. I was past imagining possible dreams of what I would do if a zombie apocalypse actually happened. I breathed deeply and closed my eyes for a few seconds, surely I was just having a moment of dissociation. Maybe I hit my head earlier or maybe my condition was finally getting to the delusional state, even though two years remained until the day was to come.

I opened my eyes and saw it, still there, the timer going down at an alarmingly slow space, like a snail trying its best to work its way through a wide street.

“...Fuck…” Was the only word to escape my mouth as I realized the situation I was in.

Sendai was like ten minutes away…On car. I had no vehicle, I never needed one. Not even a bicycle. My eyes went wide as I started to lose my breath and almost fell to my knees from the shock. After a few moments however, I pulled myself together. My chest hurt, but I had to deal with that later. Right now, what mattered was to pack everything I could into a decent backpack and get going.

I was already fucked to begin with, there was no way I would be able to get into Sendai within five minutes, that now turned into four and a half. All I could do was pack clothes and food into my backpack and try to hide in the forest, hide until a Disfavored showed up and destroyed the breach’s core.

My body moved faster than my mind. I packed canned soups and whatever food I could grab with my hands in that rush of desperation into my old highschool backpack. Clothes went right after, cushioning the food in case I got thrown to the ground, as to not waste my chances at survival.

Never was I more grateful for the peace of mind teachings than now, with a cold train of thought and desperation moving my body, I rushed into the dojo and grabbed the heirloom. I could’ve grabbed a spear, but they weren’t sharpened for my own safety. Any of the other swords were also quite dull, and mostly meant for posture training.

Only the heirloom remained usable, as sharp as it was the day mother ran away.

With the only weapon I knew how to use to defend myself, I rushed to the front door and jammed my feet into the tight sandals that I had prepared in case I wanted to take a walk outside. Still clad in the attire I used to train, I just sprinted out of the house and into the nearest treeline, trying to go as deep and as close to Sendai as possible.

All I needed was to hold onto dear life until a Disfavored showed up. That’s all. I didn’t need to be a hero, I just needed to survive.

I had three more years. I had three entire years to live through.

As I strained my body to keep going as the timer reached the two-minutes mark, I could feel my lungs burning hot and my legs slowly losing strength. I wasn’t anywhere near the point I wanted, but I needed to slow down or I would collapse. I eventually came to a halt, leaning against one of the beautiful pine trees that were planted here thirty years ago, and promptly vomited a concerning amount of food, liquid and blood.

My insides hurt like hell, but I needed to keep moving, even if I could only walk.

I kept going, walking through the forest I knew almost like the palm of my hand, going past the multiple marked trees and avoided those I hadn’t marked but still had scars of claws in them. The bark was recently peeled off, I could tell from the discoloration in the tree and the lack of any sign of self-repair.

A bear was nearby. Just what I needed.

Now paying extra close attention to my surroundings, the internal clock that remained in my subconscious slowly went past the half minute mark. The sky started to cloud and darken as the very fabric of reality was slowly torn apart. First it was a gush of wind, then two meaty hands pushed past a rift of sorts, grasping onto the edges of the breach and pulling it open for the Nox spawn to seep into our world.

The sight was gruesome, and I was grateful I didn’t have anything else in my stomach to expel or I would be on the ground vomiting blood again. The breach itself was far away at least, that gave me a few days’ worth of advantage on the scouting forces. But not too long until the really dangerous ones started to push against the edges of the barrier at Sendai.

“...I should find somewhere to hide…”

I kept moving, eventually coming close to a large hill that had a clear opening into a dark cave. With the signs of bears nearby, I knew better than to go there, and so I just kept walking. The afternoon turned into evening as the sky remained a sickly shade of purple, telling day from night would only be possible when the entire world around me goes black, the shadows were greatly enhanced when a breach happened, the night was the time the Nox were at their most dangerous after all.

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At least informing myself about them paid off. All those days with nothing to do but read reports on the inter-dimensional threat that almost annihilated us actually did help me know what I was facing right now, even if it was limited to knowing exactly which of their machines would be the cruelest possible end for me.

In the end I found refuge within another hill, on top of an old birchwood tree that I had seen standing proudly on its place ever since I was a child. The mighty plant covered itself nicely, with low branches that would obscure the poor vision of the scouting flesh-machines and keep me somewhat safe, at least during these first few hours of the breach.

I set myself on its canopy, sitting in between the knot that made up the base from which all the branches of the tree seemed to sprout from. Lightning had struck the tree, it seemed, and created a natural bifurcation of its branches once the old wood on the top died over time. It was a nice place, high up in the air and secure from most dangers, as long as I kept my mouth shut and didn’t make any noise.

“...Phew…”

I finally took the time to calm down and steady my breath. My lungs were still burning, and I still had that awful sensation of my insides twisting and turning upon each other like they had been splashed with acid. The familiar taste of blood remained at the back of my throat, but no coughing escaped my mouth. As I took in the realization that I was now trapped within a very real life-or-death situation, I closed my eyes and allowed my already weakened body to collapse upon the tree, hidden from most common dangers that I would be facing for the time being.

“....Ugh….My head…”

I woke up as dawn broke on the horizon. How could I tell? Well the purple sky seemed slightly more luminous than before, so I figured the sun had to be rising from somewhere to give off that feeling. My head and neck hurt a lot, probably due to the uncomfortable position in which I had fallen asleep, but I remained intact since no scout or bear had found me in the dead of night.

At least that much was going alright.

I turned on myself and took the backpack from behind my neck, opening it and checking what lay within. One can of beans, one can of corn, two packs of chips and a singular bottle of water, halfway filled. I closed the backpack and put it back on, looking down from my perch upon the birchwood tree and plotting just how I was gonna get down there.

With much effort and a deep pain on my side, I clung to the tree bark as I made my cautious way down to the ground. The fact I could even do this much in sandals meant that my body was not completely as useless as it seemed due to my disease. Constant exercise and conditioning helped, and from today onwards there would be no leg day I would miss, ever.

“...Firewood.” I muttered, telling myself what I should look for.

The bear den was close by, a few hundred meters away. At this range, the bear would notice my tracks even if I tried to remain hidden, so I kept the sword by my side, grasping the scabbard with a tight grasp that told of my wariness. Scout Nox would’ve already reached my position by now, so I had to expect facing one or two on my search if I was unlucky, more if I remained by the soon-to-be-set campfire for too long.

So I embarked upon this search with my eyes peeled as open as they could, searching for dried or dead tree branches. I had no lighter, so I would require something else to spark the fire ablaze. Rope, if available, would be useful to create a bow to twist and turn a twig against an open dead tree, but I had neither rope nor the knowledge of how it worked.

But I had to try anyway.

Keeping my walking pace fast enough to trek through the hard terrain at a good rhythm, but slow enough not to push my delicate innards past their breaking point again, I walked through the hill and the forest in the direction that I had set before rushing the treeline. A nearby river, though artificial in its make, should prove useful in this situation. To locate myself if nothing else.

On my way there I picked up some dead branches and dried grass. Autumn was well on its way, so fallen leaves also proved useful to me.

When I reached the river I noticed another creature remaining by the opposite side. It was a small deer, adult, but clearly barely so. He looked at me as I approached the river with eyes full of curiosity, bolting away the moment I drew closer to the water than he was comfortable with. Or so I had believed.

Looking down at the running, clear water, I noticed a shadow that wasn’t mine. Too large to be a bird, too silent to be a bear. Out of puer instinct I dropped what I had in hand and rolled to my side. The backpack was torn open by the claws of a scout Nox. His figure was quite similar to that of a hound, but bigger and lacking eyes or skin. Visible organic muscle tissue coated its metallic frame, and the gutural, gut-clenching sounds that it made now that it was spotted reverberated through my very being.

“...Shit…” I whispered, as I saw the hound turning in my direction.

I shut my mouth, they used echo-location to track their victims. Their hideous appearance and the unnatural silence they kept as they moved around were used as tools to scare their targets into making noise or moving, causing their figures to become much clearer in the machine’s mind.

At least that’s what the Disfavored over the net have explained multiple times.

Yelling and screaming was the best way to get mauled to death by one of these, and if you were in a group? Good luck getting them off you anytime soon. Even if you didn’t make any sound, the machine could still use touch and smell to discern organic beings from simple objects, they were made to explore the breach’s area of effect after all.

I still had the sword on my hip, as I had secured it to the attire when I had to pick up the firewood and the leaves from before. Most of which now rested on the river’s current, of course.

I grasped my right hand over the handle and unsheathed the weapon. There was no way I could get away from the scout, and I only had this much time to move and think since the running river caused the machine to recalibrate its parameters. As disgustingly organic as they looked, they were just a bunch of ones and zeroes at the end of the day, and every machine had its weakness.

With the sword drawn and my heartbeat quickly rushing past its normal, I took a deep breath and prepared myself as the scout finally seemed to snap back to reality just in time for me to attack. The hound lunged at me with its meaty claws stretched, muscle and cable covering most of its un-armored body, he was a soft target. Something I could use the sword on without meeting resistance that should be out of what I could handle.

In one motion the encounter was over. With the advantage of being actually trained in the use of the sword and my time basically studying martial arts under my father, I could see its movements and adapt accordingly. Fighting a big flesh-machine demon was different from fighting another person, but from my experience the difference in my opponents didn’t always prove to be an advantage, rather, it was a window for new opportunities.

Since the hound was already lunging at me, all I had to do was step aside so that the claws didn’t tear my neck open, and raise my sword with a solid angle. The rest of the job was up to gravity and the hound’s momentum, carrying its body onto and through the blade as I pushed past his flesh, finding the core of the creature and chopping halfway into it.

The sword was almost ripped from my hands the moment the beast died and fell limp to the ground, half its chest split apart as the blade had been caught on the scout’s core. Luckily I had plenty of warm up with all the hiking across the forest, so my legs proved strong enough to resist the force of the fall. With a yanking motion, I retrieved the sword and cleaned it on the river’s current, picking up my backpack and putting all that had fallen off back into it.

There was a clear tear through the front, but I stretched one of the shirts I had thrown in there to cover the tear and keep everything inside covered. It wasn’t a good patch, but it would last long enough.

If it was dawn, as I thought, then a Disfavored should’ve already been dispatched. Which meant they were either still not here, or a complete rookie that was having trouble clearing the thing on their own. Sendai didn’t have many of them on patrol after all, so only the “new” ones were kept around the city for protection.

“...Well, let’s hope it won’t take long…”

And that’s when I made my first mistake.

I hoped.