Yuzuru reached the edge of the crater when the third explosion happened, stronger than the previous ones combined. It knocked him ten paces back before flaying him with debris.

But that was not the worst part. When Yuzuru got back up, the sky was completely blocked out by a herculean nightmare of jet-black flesh.

Yuzuru stared up at the monster, tears flowing from his smoke-stung eyes.

“What the hell?”

Inside his chest, he felt Pekorin shiver. She was telling him to flee, but he couldn't move.

The creature was a mixture of squid and slug and slime. Thick goo tumbled like landslides off the monster’s erect form, throwing up mountains of black smoke. Thunder roared, shaking the ground to dust. The creature raised one of its tentacles, red lightning crackling around its twisted form, and slammed it down.

The earth quaked.

The creature roared, breaking open the sky. Blood rained, causing the burning land to hiss.

“Is this… the Calamity Dragon?” Yuzuru whispered.

No, Pekorin answered him. It is, in a way, worse.

Yuzuru kept to the ground, holding his sleeve to his nose. He inched forward, but the idea of getting closer to the satanic monster was laughable. Was this what had been drawing him?

The monster pointed towards the mountain. Starlight erupted from its tentacle, igniting the mountainside. It raised its limbs upward, and the skies faded within a supernova.

Scalding winds tore at Yuzuru, ripping away his screams of, “Gweyn!”

Everywhere, people were flung aside by balls of lightning or suffocated from the gasses falling from the monster’s body. The sky continued to rain blood. The ground flooded with red.

“I can’t defeat a kaiju,” Yuzuru said, laughing bitterly. “This is way too steep a skill curve!” An empty crate flew past, taking to the air on a mighty gust of wind.

I can make you a shield, Pekorin offered.

More debris came tumbling. Yuzuru pushed out his hands, and a glowing buckler materialized on his left arm. He planted it in front of his head and hit behind it. He felt the shock of objects glancing across its surface.

The reprieve gave Yuzuru a second to think. He shouldn’t be here. And Gweyn, he needed to know if the blast hit her. He never even asked where she would be waiting for him. He got up, keeping his body at an angle to the wind. Sand slashed at him as rain burned. Yuzuru took a few steps before suddenly feeling his body getting lighter. His feet started to leave the ground. He dived, hands out to grab onto something. His fingers caught something leathery. A shoe. He let go of his shield and grabbed the shoe with both hands. The tornado kept building, tearing him away.

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The shoe led to a leg, then a torso, then the face of a boy. Yuzuru held on, but then the boy coughed and he almost lost grip.

The boy opened his eyes. His lips moved. No sound came out.

Yuzuru pulled the boy towards a nearby stack of crates. These were lashed down so the sandstorm hadn’t carried them off yet.

The boy’s face was badly beaten. He was breathing, but blood was coming out from his nose in an unending stream. He kept trying to speak but the cacophony of the storm drowned him out.

Yuzuru leaned in.

“My father,” the boy wheezed. “The King of Cold Castle. You must warn him.” He pawed at Yuzuru with the desperate strength of someone about to die. “Please. Warn him.”

“Tell him yourself,” Yuzuru said. “I’m getting you out of here.”

“Tell the King,” said the boy, “his sons have tried.”

The monster roared once more, an explosion of noise that split through Yuzuru’s ears. It was a complex cry, one of madness and grief, broken only by the howl of the sandstorm and the jets of lava spewing from the monster’s back.

It was as if the planet was being made anew, and this creature was its harbinger.

Yuzuru slung an arm under the boy and lifted him up. The moment they left cover, he knew a grave error in judgment had been made. The sandstorm had accelerated into a typhoon. Mere dust turned into razor blades. Blood hailed like brimstone.

Buffeted and blind, Yuzuru crumbled. He couldn’t breathe. It was too much. And when the monster above him moved, his bones shook to the point of breaking.

He felt the boy pushing away. “I’m dead," he wheezed. "She won’t let me go. Save yourself, while you can.”

An entire carriage tumbled out of the sandy veil, blowing to pieces the crates that were their refuge a second ago.

“Save your strength,” Yuzuru told the boy. He pushed with his shaking legs and took a step, then another, each one taking them further away from hell. He couldn’t know how far into the storm he had foolishly charged in the first place, but he knew he had only one direction to go if he wanted to get out of this place alive, and that was back the way he came.

Bony growths burst across the ground. Torn out by the storm, they shot toward Yuzuru like spears.

“Shield, Pekorin!”

A second before the first bone hit him, Pekorin emerged from his chest in a flash of golden light. She raised a glowing sword above her head, and with surgeon precision, sliced apart the debris as they came.

“Holy shit!” Yuzuru would’ve leaped for joy if he wasn’t carrying a body on his back. “The real MVP!”

Pekorin turned. Her figure rippled and dimmed like a fading mirage. “Sorry,” she said, “but that’s all I can…” The rest of her words faded along with her into the wind.

Yuzuru cursed. He continued to move. The boy was dead weight and sand was building up around Yuzuru’s feet. Every step was a fight, and he was losing.

He was on his knees then. He couldn’t open his eyes. Blood gelled over his face, closing his nostrils and mouth. He struggled to breathe.

Then he heard a sound, one different from the horrors around him. It was the clip-clopping of horse hooves, coming from somewhere to the right, or the left, Yuzuru couldn’t tell. He twisted around, trying to find it.

“Hey!” he cried to the hurricane. “Hey!”

The boy started to slide off Yuzuru’s back. “No!” He swung an arm back, snagging one of the boy’s arm. The momentum brought the both of them down into the sand.

Yuzuru clawed for the air. “Hey!” He flailed, feeling his strength fading away.

The horse emerged from the storm like a curtain of black, streaming on eyes flashing with fire. There was someone on the saddle. Yuzuru reached out for them, one last desperate attempt for salvation.

As the rider approached, she leaned over and caught his hand.

Gweyn’s fingers were hard, and warm.