The song played in an alien rhythm, the excitement raising its tempo—but it failed to move the beating of his heart.

He didn’t feel any fear or surprise, only an odd detachment, as if he was watching a spectacle play out before him. He wiped his mouth dry with the back of his hand and pushed himself off the sink.

The monster’s “gaze” snapped to him, but he didn’t pay it any mind as he scooped up the shard from the floor.

[Lupine Senses]

Type: Attribute Shard

The growl in the room grew deeper, threatening, the monster’s focus locking onto the shard he was holding. He tossed it in the air a few times, and the monster’s head bounced along with the small crystal.

He snorted.

Calculating—

He clenched the shard, making it vanish, and the monster unleashed a menacing snarl. As if it knew Russell had stolen its meal, as if it knew what exactly happened—even without any eyes, even through Russell’s closed fist.

“What are you growling at?“ he asked in a low voice, his hands dropping to his side. He took in the monster to his right, its figure crouching, its rear scales overlapping. His attention swung to his left, at the flashlight lying among the blood and gore by the far wall.

Could he make it?

He made a step toward the back of the restroom only to duck low as the monster flashed over him. As claws scraped across the tiles, he charged toward the now-open exit.

And skidded to a stop.

The song came from behind him and in front of him.

A second Scaletooth filled the doorway, undetected to his senses…because the first masked the second monster’s heartbeat.

The Scaletooth behind him let out a growl, and the one lurking in the doorway answered.

Russell let out an outrageous chuckle as he dragged a palm down his face in helpless irritation. He eyed the area he was standing in, the window behind him out of his reach, the row of stalls he could hide in, the wall of marble countertops he could probably use as weapons, and the monsters eyeing him with hungry snarls.

He had to deal with two of them, sandwiched right in the middle, trapped without any way out. Without any weapon. Without a chance.

The monster by the door took a step inside while claws clicked against the tiles behind him. The one to his right took another step past the doorway as another click came from his left. Another step and another click. The two bid their time, moving in sync with each other.

Freakin’ pack animals.

Russell took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Forced himself to calm down even as the monsters drew closer. He threw his worries away from his mind, silencing his thoughts, concentrating on his senses—and willed one of his shards to appear in his grasp.

The twin songs changed. The sounds of their approach stopped, replaced by ravenous snarls.

He couldn’t face one while worrying about the other. He couldn’t have them working together, stalking him at their own leisure, cautious. No, they needed to be blinded by hunger, to be more careless, to be more—

The two heartbeats spiked.

He sensed both of them come hurtling at him.

He threw himself into the stall, slamming through the wooden door as both monsters slammed into each other.

Their clash exploded inside the restroom. Russell found himself hugging the toilet, nearly dropping the shard into the bowl. He made it disappear back to his storage and snapped his gaze behind him.

One monster wagged its head, disoriented—but not down for the count.

Fuck.

The other one “stared” right at him.

FUCK.

Russell kicked the stall door shut.

A low growl seeped through the slats. His eyes darted to the stall walls. The space above the partitions. The gap below them. The toilet cover behind him. Back to the gap on the floor.

A swooshing sound filled the air.

He crouched, grasping the bottom edge of the lefthand wall, squeezing his prone body under the stall partition.

Wind gathered beyond the door like a brewing storm.

With a powerful yank, he shot through the gap just as the stall exploded.

The door disappeared. Wood cracked and splintered. Fragments pelted him as he slid through the tiles, clearing stall after stall, a gust of wind rushing with him across the floor—until he found himself looking up not at another stall, but at an open doorway.

The restroom exit.

But it was the stench of blood that stole Russell’s attention. Right beside his head, a mauled corpse lay torn to pieces. Mere lumps of flesh. Scattered viscera. And escaping from the gore was a A trickle of white light, swirling in the air.

Curling toward him.

You have absorbed a minuscule portion of soul essence.

Goosebumps rose all over his skin. Disgust clawed at his chest. He slammed his hands on the floor, launching himself straight to his feet. Toward freedom.

He ran through the hallway. He left behind the two corpses inside the restroom, the two songs beating in a confounded rhythm.

Only to be replaced by more.

The songs came from him in the hallway, from the closed rooms to his right, from the courtyard garden outside to his left, from the floor above—from everywhere.

And still, he ran.

He rushed past broken doors and charred walls. He vaulted over shattered glass and blood stains on the carpet. He sped away from lumbering forms roaming the courtyard, flooding the other clubhouse wing.

And the corpses. Human corpses. Bodies emitting faint tendrils of light.

Those he gave a wide berth.

He fled without a destination, not knowing what else to do, or where else to go. No different from a deer not knowing why it was being hunted. A cornered animal driven only by its desperation to live, to survive.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

And so he ran.

He kept running, kept moving, trusting his gut, listening to his instincts, following what he was familiar with, the one thing his subconscious knew—the way back to the lobby.

The same lobby that had been overran by monsters.

The same lobby blasting songs too many to count.

But the blare of the town siren coaxed some vain hope inside him, drawing him closer, calling him home.

Maybe his senses were wrong. The lobby could be clear by now with everyone else having fled elsewhere. He could go undetected. He could still escape from this unending nightmare.

He rounded the junction, ignoring the gunshots from the other wing, streaked past the locker rooms, past payphones, past the lounge bar, and barged inside the vast lobby.

Yet even the expansive hall had no room for his regrets.

Three…Ten…Dozens of monsters crowded the clubhouse lobby, lurking in the shadows, stalking the expansive hall. All of them looked deadly, sounded hungry, their songs a discordant mix of jarring beats. Until the moment he stepped inside.

Then all their attention locked on to fresh prey.

Him.

Yet their prey only had the glass entrance at the other end of the hall in his sight, recognizing it for what it was—the way out.

His way home.

A chorus of roars ripped the stale air, drowning the darkness in a deafening noise. But Russell was already making a beeline for the exit, already sprinting past the first line of monsters, his ears only hearing the call of the town siren.

He cut in between the hulking beasts, dodged those about to lunge at him, scurried past packs of Scaletooths focused on rival groups rather than the mouse sneaking under their noses.

But his luck could only bring him so far. He wasn’t even halfway across the lobby when the real attacks commenced.

Lunges flew by from every direction. Talon-like claws swiped for his neck. Sharp tails arced from his blindspots.

He skipped, juked, dove, rolled, trying to listen for the song, trying to lean into his senses…but it was a losing battle.

They were just too many.

And they had him surrounded.

There was nowhere he could go, no place to hide, not a single obstacle he could use. Every lobby furniture and decoration had been thrown into the makeshift wall used to barricade the windows. Other than the towering columns holding up the ceiling, it was all wide, open space.

And he had willingly thrown himself right into the heart of the monsters’ hunting ground.

A witless prey tricked by its own instinct to survive.

But Russell was fed up being prey.

With a shout, he drew his arm back and slung something toward the vaulted ceiling.

[Affinity Shard]

The very same shard that had been useless to him.

But perfectly useful now.

He didn’t wait for what happened next. He rushed past monsters motionless as statues, their heads tilted upward, their sightless gazes tracking the bait soaring high in the air.

What followed exceeded his expectations.

Roars tore through the lobby as beasts tore each other’s throats. They shoved one another, climbed over each other, all eager to be the first to catch the shard.

Even the monsters from the periphery charged toward the piling chaos. Russell struggled to keep out of their way as he bolted toward the exit.

But the path did clear before him. All that was left was reaching the entrance. The town siren beckoned him, growing louder, clearer, the barricaded glass doors drawing nearer with every step.

But the glass doors weren’t barricaded.

No couch or table or any other furniture covered the entryway. And yet the entrance remained dark, obscured as if it was shrouded under a shadow.

A chill crawled down Russell’s spine, finally recognizing what he was looking at.

[Scaletooth Brute - 10th Shard / Level 3] (1 Star)

“No…“ He stopped dead in his tracks. The monster lay curled to itself, its size beyond any monster he’d seen. It seemed to dominate the entire entrance of the clubhouse, blocking any hope of escape.

His desperate eyes shifted to the windows next, where parts of the barricade had been broken through, where he could easily slip out.

But then what? Would he be able to outrun the peculiar Scaletooth waiting outside? When he still wasn’t fast enough to outrun a regular one?

Beyond the glass doors, a massive head lifted from the ground. His indecision vanished.

His instincts had been screaming at him to flee, so he did. He ran back to where he came from. Where dozens of other monsters blocked the other way out.

They continued to fight over a single shard wreaking havoc in the middle of the lobby. He cursed and cut to his right, keeping as far away from the melee as he arced his way around the hall.

But entering hell was easier than leaving it.

A few monsters on the outskirts had given up on the contended prize. Their ears perked. They heard a prey scurrying in the darkness, a new target they could fight over.

And with all the furniture taken away, Russell had no place to hide.

So he dove behind the only cover he could find—a lone pillar at the far corner of the lobby.

He scooted his back to the center of the column, his feet tucked to his chest. He pressed his fist over his mouth, forced himself to breathe through his nose, as quietly as possible, even as his heartbeat thundered in his chest.

Panic whispered to him, cutting past the pulse thumping in his ears, coercing him to sneak a peak behind the pillar. Fear stayed his hand, cautioning him not to risk revealing his position. But it was anxiety that had the final say, unveiling what, deep down, he already knew.

That once the chaos died down, the monsters would detect him with their inhuman senses, whether through his smell, the whisper of his breath, or the power he wielded inside him.

It was only a matter of time.

All he could do now was listen to the song, to make sense of what was happening, to find out if he had a sliver of a chance at escape.

But the free-for-all hadn’t even ended yet when he sensed heartbeats different from the rest—calm, patient, but rising in tempo, growing excited.

Getting closer.

And this time, there was no Big Bertha to ride in. No car park full of vehicles to hide in. No flashlight or furniture to fight with. No hallway to run in. No rooms to hide in. No restroom windows to escape from. No safe destination to head to.

Because the cruel truth was, he did this to himself.

Because he kept wanting to go back home.

Kept trying to do the impossible.

When he was too weak.

Too stupid.

You’ve always been the fool, Caleb had told him.

And now the words rang true, reverberating deep in Russell’s hollow chest, sounding his death knell.

A snicker escaped from his lips. A chuckle bubbled up from his chest, and he found himself laughing uncontrollably. His cackles rocked his shoulders. Clenched fists ripped at his covered hair. Tears trickled down his cheeks as he wept for the second time in his life.

And he let the hysteria seize him before the monsters could.

He slammed his head against the concrete surface of the pillar, pounding his fist against his forehead, giggling, sniffling, his vision sliding out of focus as he stared at nothing but the wall windows standing before him.

Nothing but the songs remained, coming ever closer. No sofas, no tables, no background music playing through the speakers…And yet for some odd reason, the would-be grave he ended up in felt unexpectedly familiar.

It was his pillared corner in the lobby, the same lonesome corner where he had reunited with Serena, the same secluded spot where he had last spoken with Rosalyn, the same point where his night had begun.

And where his nightmare would end.

The irony wasn’t lost on him.

No one bothered to barricade the window facing him. It didn’t need one. The view overlooked the valley and not the parking lot out front.

Just like earlier that evening—before the reunion, before the monsters, before his life had completely and utterly unraveled—he gazed out the very same floor-to-ceiling window and watched the sky fall apart.

Instead of faint white lines ruining a beautiful sunset, only angry streaks of crimson light marred the moonless, cloudless night, bathing the world in red. The cracks had webbed throughout the sky, seeping with an eerie glow, oozing down as shimmering curtains drenched in blood. They poured from high above and fluttered all the way to the world below, getting brighter, clearer, so close now one could almost touch the edge.

[Warning]

Dimensional breach has exceeded the local threshold.

Even as words flashed in his vision, Russell found himself already back on his feet, his eyes staring past the unwelcomed obstruction.

The lights were close. Too close.

And they slithered even closer as the edge of the light curtain reached toward the ground.

Forgetting about the monsters behind him, forgetting about escape, forgetting about everything else, Russell stepped away from the pillar, toward open space, toward danger, toward the view outside—and witnessed the world come to its end.

As the curtain of light above grazed the treetops, it obscured the distant horizon, the rolling hills down below, and the entirety of Solace Springs, muting the wailing siren to nothing once the crimson veil finally reached the ground.

Essence surge imminent.

Blinding light engulfed the outside world.

A deafening roar erupted from the bottom of the cliff. Earthquake detonated from deep below. The brightness melted away, giving way to a wall of wind swelling from where the aurora met the ground, screeching across the sky, billowing toward the clubhouse. Toward him.

The windows burst in a shattering of glass. Wind swept Russell from his feet and sent him crashing back against the pillar, bombarding the lobby with glass shards and wooden splinters.

He sank to the ground once the storm raged past, and it felt like his soul had left him behind, gone with the wind. His strength, his hope, his sanity—everything abandoned him at that moment as his vacant eyes beheld the aftermath.

There was no horizon, no valley, no town, only a solid wall of light.

He was irrevocably cut off from the rest of the world.

If there was even a world out there left.

[Accretion Zone] established.