Something felt broken.

Yuzuru opened his eyes to glaring sunlight. He groaned and tried to raise his arm to block it, but his arm wouldn’t move. Something was holding it down.

He cranked his head sideways.

In the dusk, he saw a girl dressed in filthy clothes. She had his arm pinned with a black tail that slid out from behind her, and was pulling on his watch.

“Woah!”

The girl flinched but didn’t let go. She had a pair of black cat ears on her head, which twitched as she studied him.

“You’re not dead,” she observed.

“And you’re a thief,” Yuzuru said, yanking his arm free. He struggled to sit. He was in what appeared to be a pile of trash, and the smell alone was almost enough to knock him out again. Memory flooded back. He had been in his room. There was an envelope, and inside it were two cubes…

“I found that watch first,” the girl said. “So it belongs to me after you’re dead.”

“What a weird way to threaten someone.” Yuzuru massaged his temples to try and work through the splitting headache. “Where am I?”

The girl stood up, hands at her hips. She had rough olive skin and hair so light it looked silver.

“I would tell you, except I promised myself not to get tangled up in another traveler’s problems again.”

“Another?” Yuzuru looked around. He was indeed in a trash heap, that much was obvious, but it wasn’t a landfill and more like someone’s backyard. There were shacks all around, their rusty roofs catching the blazing sunlight as figures moved behind empty window frames. All through the dirt street, children were running, laughing. And as Yuzuru watched, a few of them dove into nearby garbage piles to pull out various knickknacks, some even finding food.

But the most incredible thing was that each person had a different set of animal ears and tails, some having even more animalistic traits to their physiques.

“Oooh, shit.” Yuzuru let out a choked whisper. “I’ve been sucked into a fantasy world.”

He heard the sound of cans jingling and turned to see Cat-girl sliding down the side of his pile towards the ground. She landed gracefully, then looked back up at him with her hands shielding her yellow eyes.

“Don’t go too far, alright? I want that watch.”

She walked away, shouldering a brown bag that was patched so heavily it was impossible to tell what color it originally was.

Yuzuru got up to follow. “Aren’t you supposed to give me a tutorial mission?” He clambered down the trash hill, almost losing his slippers in the mess. "Wait a second. Hey!"

As he tailed Cat-girl through the hard dirt streets, Yuzuru took a closer look at the world around him.

It was a slum. There was no sugarcoating that. People squatted outside their tightly packed houses, which were little more than sheets of metal clobbered together at odd angles.

Eyes followed him as he passed. Some people stopped what they were doing to stare but most kept to their business, which was mostly squabbling over cards, drinking from tin cans, and picking at the trash piled on every corner of every shack.

Yuzuru passed by a gangly-limbed man with his head stuck deep in a heap of rubbish. A pair of bat wings dangled from his back, the left one burned through like a cotton shirt that had been eaten by moths.

The man looked up suddenly. “Blight Moon tonight!” he called to Yuzuru in a snot-filled voice. “Lock your doors!”

Yuzuru hurried to catch up to Cat-girl, who had stopped by some trash around a bend. She plucked out a served fish head. Sniffing it, she bit into one empty eye socket.

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“Hey!” Yuzuru grabbed for her wrist. “You’re going to get sick!”

“Get your own food,” the girl hissed. She stuffed the fish into her knapsack. “And stop following me.”

“Alright, I will,” Yuzuru said with his hands up. “But you can’t expect me to just run off dressed like this.” He gestured to his thin t-shirt and shorts. He thanked his lucky stars he was in his slippers when the cube… did what, exactly?

“Find someone else to ask,” said Cat-girl, scouring the sides of the street. She stopped again to pick up an apple core, then a glass bottle that was crawling with flies.

“But everyone else looks so unfriendly,” said Yuzuru, trying not to gag at the smell trailing after Cat-girl.

“And I’m any better?”

“More than doom-sayer batman?” Yuzuru hooked a thumb behind him. “Yea.”

They walked into an open area, where kids were running after tin cans and metal hoops. All of them had animalistic traits to their features, some with pointy ears, others with scaly skins.

Cat-girl marched through. A few kids crowded around her.

“Blight Moon tonight!” they chirped.

“Lock your doors,” Cat-girl replied, ruffling a few furry heads.

Yuzuru kept his silence until they were past the clearing. “You know I have to ask.”

Cat-girl spun around and stuck him with a finger. She had five of them like a normal person, but her nails were wicked sharp. “I don’t care what you think you should know. You travelers all think you’re here to save us, that you’re the goddess’s gifts to liberate us from the Calamity Dragon. But you all end up dead one way or another.” She poked him again and again. “Every. Single. Time.”

“Okay,” Yuzuru said. “Okay. I get it.”

“Good.”

“Could I at least know your name?”

The girl narrowed her eyes. They were the color of raw amber, glowing in the sun.

“Taiga.”

Yuzuru nodded. Now he was getting somewhere. He could work with this. Taiga sounded fantastical, but not traditionally elvish or from any game he played. He needed to know more, but something told him getting information out of the girl was going to be tough.

Taiga was walking away again. Yuzuru started to follow but something made him want to turn around. Call it intuition. He glanced back and saw the bat-winged doomsayer emerging into the clearing.

He was following them.

Yuzuru chased after Taiga.

“Something spooked you?” Taiga chuckled when she saw the expression on his face.

Keeping an eye behind him, Yuzuru followed Taiga into a series of alleyways. Noise from the clearing dimmed, replaced by the low hum of wind gliding across rusty roof sheeting.

The man drew closer, his long limbs dragging behind him.

“I think we’re being tailed...” Yuzuru said, but Taiga did not reply. When he turned back around in her direction, she wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Oh, crap.”

Yuzuru heard his own voice bouncing back to him, the fear in his words obvious. He was in the middle of nowhere, lost on his own. In each direction he turned, there were smashed bottles, leftover trash, and broken machine parts.

But no signs of Taiga.

“Hullo.”

Yuzuru turned around, coming face to gray face with the lanky man. Huge hands wrapped around his shoulders, claws digging into skin. The doomsayer loomed close, blocking out the sunlight with his lengthy body.

“Blight Moon tonight, you know.”

The man’s face was gaunt, cheeks shallow, the eyes a milky color. When he opened his mouth, his breath smelled of death.

“Lock your doors. Take out your sacrifices!”

“Wait a minute,” said Yuzuru. “That last part wasn’t mentioned before.”

The doomsayer laughed. “Blight Moon tonight!” he repeated. “Lock your doors! Take out your sacrifices!” He raised his head upwards, face lit up by the sun, and repeated himself once more in a shrill, high-pitched keening.

“Blight Moon TONIGHT! LOCK-”

A blur shot over Yuzuru’s head, too fast to see. He felt the force of the hit through the doomsayer’s hands, traveling up his shoulders. The man’s head snapped back, his claws tearing from Yuzuru as he staggered through the shack behind him.

Taiga landed on all fours with her back arched and tail raised high.

Limbs untangled themselves as the doomsayer climbed out from within the demolished shack. His head was crooked the wrong way but it didn’t seem to bother him much.

“The Blight Moon is tonight,” he moaned. “Lock your doors.” He raised his claws, blood dripping from them. “Take out your travelers.”

“Enough!” Taiga bared her teeth. The fur on top her ears bristled. "We talked about this, Samuels."

The doomsayer roared, his voice shaking through the slums.

Yuzuru staggered towards the closest shack and leaned on it, trying his best not to pass out. His shoulders were on fire, and blood soaked through his flimsy shirt, spreading down his body. The world started to fade. Taiga said something but he couldn’t hear what it was. The girl was standing a few feet away, under a steel roof that was moving.

Yuzuru squinted, trying to decide if his eyes were playing tricks or if the metal sheets really were sliding towards Taiga.

Time started to slow. The sheets slid some more, inching over Taiga’s head. They looked sharp.

The doomsayer roared again. Taiga cringed away, covering her ears.

She wasn’t looking up. She couldn’t see her impending doom. But Yuzuru could.

Strength returned for a split second. Yuzuru pushed himself up and charged, knocking Taiga aside just as the roof collapsed. Something punched into his back, and he saw the ground race towards him.

Blood filled Yuzuru's ears. He could see nothing but gravel, and he could not seem to draw in any air.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, he thought as darkness encompassed him. I can’t die here. I haven’t even been given a tutorial yet.