Summer checked the strap of her bag as Mensha tied her to the shade. She could have held their hand, but he’d insisted, she suspected he was afraid they’d try to backstab them. Nonetheless, she left him his comfort and caution – at least one of them had it.

He finished and proceeded to tie his hand to hers with a different length of rope. They entered the dark as a rough convoy, the dancer leading and Mensha closely trailing Summer.

As the minutes passed, they drifted further from the rough line they’d walked prior and she found herself lost despite trying to use the shining pillars as landmarks. Unseen buildings blocked their light as they strolled through the umbral streets.

The streets and alleys they walked through felt like the veins and arteries of some great beast. The crowd thinning into clumps of darkness that skirted the walls of thin streets to avoid them certainly didn’t ease the impression.

And the crowd did thin and not only on their account. From an ocean occasional pockets of empty darkness appeared, and the crowd further thinned and broke up until the street level become visible through clumps of darkness.

Buildings towered around them, some lit most not and they were empty. A hundred desolate towers recede into the artificial sky. Casting the world into deep gloom that was rendered absolute by-passing crowds of shades. Her glow felt like an intrusion whenever the dancer led them from the scant glowing skyscrapers. There was nothing but silence here, in a place that should never have known anything less than the faint hum of innumerable lives but even the screams were absent.

She didn’t recognize any of these buildings and it fell off. Like someone had smushed together building from random cities and then smoothed the streets together. She thought back to the hole in the ceiling being sealed over with construction, there might be some truth to that feeling

A tug from the dancer pulled her wandering mind and she continued.

The shades thinned as they walked their absence filled by a strange tension, visceral yet somehow removed from her. The dancer looked nervous and slowed.

“Do you feel that?” her whisper rang in the silence.

“Yes.” He replied after a moment.

“Do you know what it is?” She asked her guide.

They nodded the action clearly in the gloom, their absolute black rendered the gloom grey by comparison. They pointed down the street they’d been walking down the last minute.

“Is that where we’re headed?” she said hoping she was wrong.

The shades nodded disavowing that notion.

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“Shit,” she hissed the word.

“Is there anything you can tell us about what causing it,” Mensha asked over her frustration.

The shade curled its fingers by its head and aggressively hunched at them.

“It’s a monster?”

They nodded at Summers’s question.

So, there was some unfathomable monstrosity by the survivors, she’d have much rathered a sanctuary to a rescue but she’d take anything for proof they weren’t the only ones left.

“Is it immediately fatal?”

They shrugged. Summer wasn’t very inspired.

“Is there anything else you have to say?”

The dancer slowly tiptoed around them. Summer smiled though it lacked her usual cheer.

“We’ll be careful.” She nodded at the shade.

They stared at her and then walked away, they spun around and darted to Summer and pulled her into a hug she welcomed. She promised herself it wouldn’t be her last. They shied away from her and turned to Mensha he stared at them then sighed and opened his arms reluctance clear on his face. They jumped into a brief hug and then skipped into the darkness. Glancing back repeatedly before turning a corner and disappearing.

“Once more into the unknown huh.” She said and continued to their destination.

“We’ll get used to it.” Her partner muttered.

They marched on.

A dull red light poured around the corner, brightening the gloom but painting the world in bloody hues.

The tension thickened with every step it was palpable when she stopped at the corner, like the breath before a scream.

Mensah’s hand found hers, for whose comfort she wasn’t sure. She could turn back, he’d be with her regardless, and she wouldn’t have to find the source of this dread. But what if there where others, and she left them to die? That she couldn’t run from.

They stepped together.

Red washed the world. It poured from the sky, bleed from the walls, and bubbled from the ground. It paralyzed her, she flared her heat with her panic but could do nothing but watch as it crawled and burnt its way up her skin. As it wormed into her lungs and drowned her ragged breaths. It dug into her eyes.

She could shout she couldn’t see she couldn’t breathe!

It cut and burned and pierced and she knew it was in her chest, rampaging inside her. her blood melted into the invading colour and she couldn’t tell where each ended. Her racing heart filled her ears and every gurgling attempt at a breath lightened her head.

Something rocked into her, and she fell into the red floor. The fingers squeezed painfully yet she almost lost the feeling under the red’s torments.

She clung back and pulled all her strength to burn the thick red from her lungs. She pulled on her panic on her determination on the promise of her ring.

Her lungs burned she heaved.

Thin scorching steam streamed from her mouth as she choked out. She had collapsed she realized between gulps of air and Mensah wasn’t breathing. He was limp on the ground staring at something.

“Look at me!” she shook him her fingers digging into his shoulders.

His eyes focused on her and then widened. He gasped in several greedy breaths before quickly settling. “Fuck,” he rasped.

She stood and looked around, the city was gloomy and grey, with no red glow or malicious colour.

Was that just an illusion, no it had to be something else she could still feel the tendrils swimming in her chest, her torn skin.

She looked at her bruised but untorn skin. Then where the light source had been.

A great crimson beast lay pierced and pulped atop and surrounded by apartment buildings, themselves in various states of collapse. Vibrant blood flowed from its ruined form, flowing through the rubble melting into the as a red glow grew, and colors started to bleed from the –

She snapped her head away, her hand pressed against the burning phantom wounds aching in her chest. Gasps filled her suddenly empty lungs.

“Don’t look,” she whispered to Mensha who pushed himself to stand. “Please, don’t look,”