"Run! They are everywhere!" A shout woke up Harid and he instinctively got up and looked out of the window while crouching.

  There was a man that was moving away from the station, his dirty clothes were torn and had stains of blood on it. It had to be someone who had been freshly teleported with the morning batch, if the teleports worked as Harid presumed. The man got ten meters away from the broken windows of the subway station, when suddenly his leg disappeared into thin air.

"What?!" Harid whispered in shock while watching the horror show, the man cried out with pain and shortly even his hand disappeared, leaving behind only a bloody stump. The poor person fell to the ground and then even his head vanished and he went still. It happened so quickly that Harid could not believe his eyes, he watched the dead body with missing limbs and head and after a while, another portion of it ceased to exist.

"It is like he is being eaten by something invisible!" He uttered in horror and fearfully looked around as if to ensure that there was no danger in his immediate vicinity. He almost got a heart attack when he found himself standing face to face with his unwanted companion, she had to be alerted by the shouts as well.

"Don't poop yourself, scum." She snorted and watched the scene over his shoulder, but it was clear that she had said it just to annoy him and felt quite uneasy herself.

  A sudden metallic sound forced them to pay closer attention to the invisible monster again. When Harid's eyes focused on the scene, he found out that one of the golden knights had just his arm bitten off by the invisible monster and a fountain of golden blood erupted from under his armor.

"Huh, serves you right." Harid smiled briefly, having no love for the golden knights. However, all his expectations had been overturned in the next moment, The knight wielded his massive sword by his single hand and made its blade spin a full circle several times in quick succession. He acted with no delay, as if he had been used to deal with the invisible monsters and following his moves a fountain of blue liquid erupted in midair, its spraying droplets painting back into reality a figure of the invisible monster that immediately lost its advantage of not being seen.

  Harid imprinted the visage of a tall figure that reminded him of a humanoid tiger into his mind, parts of its body that had not been stained by blood needed to be substituted by his imagination, but it was enough to make his heart beat faster when he pictured himself being followed by the invisible predator. He was not sure if he would be able to sleep again with that kind of a threat moving freely about.

  Using the brief moment during which the monster had been fully occupied by its own pain, the knight cut it in half with a swift horizontal strike, bisecting it by using the full power of his both hands.

"What?! How?" Harid's eyes widened when he saw that the knight was unharmed.

"That is not even regeneration, that's cheating!" A softer voice next to him whispered in disbelief.

  He had no idea why even the armor had regenerated. All kinds of imagery started appearing in his mind, one of his guesses being that the golden armor was actually a part of the knight's body like a chitin of a bug and that was why it could regenerate.

Why nothing about the beauty obsessed knights made no sense?

  Nonetheless, they probably had just uncovered a part of the secret why the golden knights were the only visible predators strolling around the crumbled city like they owned the place. Killing them was clearly very hard due to their thick armor, insane regeneration and high attack power. The invisible monster they had seen had to rely on its stealth to survive, the more daring specimens ending up similar to the one they were looking at, as a poodle of blood on the street.

"I am surprised that you have not murdered me in my sleep, but I should not stretch my luck. Saionara, scum." His female roommate added after they had overcome the shock caused by the brutality of the event on the street and she began limping away in the direction of the messy room's exit. When she turned, Harid could see through the numerous tears in her clothing and a few peculiar details instantly piqued his curiosity.

The intricate lines tattooed onto her skin, a work of art that sharply contrasted with the dusty room they were in.

"Wait! Do you know anything about the tattoos? What powers do yours wield?" Harid asked before she left his sight and she froze, turning her head in his direction.

"What powers?" She asked and Haird could see a sparkle in her eyes.

"Haven't you tried it out? The powers the tattoos possess?" He asked and lifted the bottom of his shirt, revealing the two words written in a strange language on his skin.

"What dirty trick are you trying to pull now? Show me first." She followed his every move as if he was about to pull out a gun.

"It is not a good idea to use it here." When he saw her expression, he outstretched his hand with his palm facing forward, trying to calm her down to prevent her from coming up with something violent.

"Bah liar, as I thought." She was about to leave, but he stepped forth to stop her and she changed her posture instantly, warily watching his every move.

"It is our only advantage over the monsters." His hand stretched further as if he wanted to hold her shoulder, but he decided not to complete the motion when he saw her gaze and his limb just fell back alongside his body. "The garbage bins tattoo a word that contains power in it, try it out yourself if you don't believe me."

  Harid gave her no time to respond and moved forth to leave himself. There was no way he could trust her and if she decided to manifest her tattoo's power right there, he would be in a big trouble.

"Charyia." He heard her saying and halted his steps, turning his head right before he lost sight of her.

She had clearly not been asleep and had managed to catch his late night question.

"Yesterday, you wanted to know my name. Now, piss off s . . ."

"Harid, nice to meet you." He interrupted her and turned around, walking away.

"When you use it, it alerts them." He decided to warn her with his last words and ascended up the stairs.

  After they parted ways, Harid's chest deflated and his pulse quickened. He could not stop thinking about the invisible monster. It was unbearable to rely on luck for his survival, he had to think of a way to detect the new invisible enemy. After a while, he reached the top of the stairs and carefully opened a door that led to the rooftop of the building.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

It was the first time he was able to see the city from a higher perspective and it was the scene out of an apocalypse

  He was in the middle of the city in a residential area that seemed to had been densely populated, but most of the skyscrapers had their tops missing or broken, lying to the side like trunks of broken trees in a dead forest. The buildings like the one on top of which he stood were one of the most preserved structures. One of the notable landmarks around him was a thick cable that reminded him of cable cars and when he searched for its passenger carrying cars, he was able to find some still hanging limply from the thick cable and even one that lied on the road, damaged beyond recognition.

  As he kept searching for more cable cars downed by an unknown disaster, he noticed that some sort of hover cars and hover bikes were from time to time embedded in the sides of structures, crushed in accidents that no one had cared to take care of.

"Whatever happened here, it had to be sudden, quickly overwhelming the people who used to live here." Harid thought, still not sure what world he had been transported into. What was his purpose here? Or was everything just an accident and he was only an unintended visitor of this destroyed world? Where were all the people or even their bodies?

He had many questions, but the ruined city was silent, not answering a single one.

"There is much dried up blood and no corpses." He noticed an oddity and unintentionally stopped breathing. Based on what he knew, he guessed that the golden knights were the vehicle through which death had been delivered to many and then the invisible scavengers cleaned the place, forming a gruesome symbiosis that flushed the streets clean of any human presence.

  His eyes wandered to another landmark of the place, a pair of two tall towers one black and one azure blue that aimed to pierce the clouds, armed with the ambition of their builders. They were very similar as if twins, but stood at the opposite ends of the ruined city. Whatever secret the place held, he was sure that he would be able to find clues inside of those two towers.

"Which one?" He asked himself, his attention shifting between the tall edifices that were located in different directions. His eyes descended from their tops to evaluate what was at their base and his answer was immediate.

"It has to be the black one." His face grim, however he tried he was unable to project a reasonable route leading to the Azure Tower. The main reason was simple, it was too far.

  There was only a few of the knights under the black tower, but the destruction around it was much more severe as if the disaster that had happened here originated near it.

"Let's go." Harid did not consider himself a brave person, but he knew that he was not going to survive in this place for long anyway. His only chance to survive was to untangle the mystery of this place and return home, or at least find a place where the apocalypse had not reached with its grim claw of destruction.

  It was important to think about the big picture, giving his actions proper direction. However, he was reminded shortly that his immediate situation was just as important when the concrete portion of the stairs he had been walking on gave way under his weight and his quick, light steps turned into a desperate flailing when he fell into a room that had the crumbled portion of the stairs as its ceiling.

  Harid fell down several meters and slammed painfully against the ground, the only positive of the situation being that he fell leg first and had not injured his head. He groaned in pain for a while, dazed by the sudden hit, but forced himself to recover quickly. He checked whether he had suffered a serious injury and was glad that he could still walk.

  He stood up with difficulty and found out that he was in some kind of a storage room with a single window and a closed door. Immediately, he grabbed the door's handle and attempted to open to door, but it was locked. Looking outside through the window, he recognized the bars that he had seen when he had climbed the ladder. He carefully stepped closer to the rusted bars and tested their durability, but they held like new.

"Great, everything falls apart, but not when I need it to." He pulled on the bars again, but it was of no use. With a sigh, he walked under the hole he had fallen through and looked up.

"Maybe with the help of the furniture here . . " He pilled up a few pieces of wooden furniture and tried to use it as a support to reach the hole in the stairs above him, but the whole structure partly collapsed and partly fallen apart with his first attempt due to old age and he ended up rolling on the dusty ground. He was furious, cursing his luck. The furniture was too flimsy and old to support him, but the bars and lock had not yet fallen apart, his timing was the worst.

  At first, he thought that he would not die because of being trapped in some old storage room after he had survived many close calls with death, but as the time passed he was becoming desperate. All the furniture had turned into useless splinters after just a few attempts to climb up and the door and bars resisted all his attempts to force through them.

"I am so stupid not to bring water with me." Harid frowned when thirst joined its brother hunger again and he had no supplies of drinkable water. Everything had been too hectic the other day and he was unable to fill a bottle to take with him. He had not even took a bag when he had been in the subway!

"Damn, what was I thinking?!" He murmured and grabbed his hair.

  He knew that he would not be able to climb out thought the hole in the stairs, nor he would be able to force his way out. His only option was to rely on outside help. He could wait for help or try to attract attention, both options were deadly.

He lightly pulled on his hair, but there was nothing much he could do.

"No, I cannot wait, there is only one person that can possibly hear me and help. Hope she is still around." If he decided to wait, she would certainly not be around for long.

"Help! Hey! I am stuck!" He shouted, gradually shouting louder and louder when there was no reaction. He had seen the morning batch of Earthlings slaughtered and hoped that the only one who might possibly hear him would come to rescue him.

"Someone caught himself into a trap, poor creature." Shortly, a pretty face really appeared in the hole above his head.

"You are still here! That's great!" A smile appeared on Harid's face.

"Hurry, something else might have heard me." He was nervous, his eyes darted left and right on the asphalt road outside. One of the knights could come closer anytime and the invisible monsters could have already been there without him able to notice.

"A fitting distraction for my escape. Farewell, little rabbit." She jumped over the hole in the stairs with light steps and disappeared, not wanting to be around someone noisy for long.

"N-No, no, no. Wait! Don't leave me here!" Harid's eyes widened. He had thought that the girl might help, he had forgiven her twice and pulled her up the ladder!

"Hey, stop! I have saved you!" He shouted, not caring about the volume of his voice anymore.

"You owe me, you hear?! You owe me!!" His voice broke into an inhuman screech with his last words.

He noticed a sound that was being remixed by a DJ from hell, the steps of steel boots added into it as drums.

"No, they are coming." The same tempo was adopted by Harid's heart, when he understood that the inevitable was about to happen. The next second, half of the window's view had been obstructed by a golden plate armor.

There was a loud thud, when the handle of a long weapon hit the asphalt road.

It was a halberd.

"Knight-commander." Harid whispered in terror and the armored figure's hand moved, it was a move akin to pushing curtains to the side when people wake up in the morning, light and easy. With it, all the bars in the window broke off and a plated boot stepped inside through the window.

  In the last move of desperation, Harid remembered his powers and focused his mind to use one of his tattoos. Not the one that was able to summon a bottle of green lemonade, the other one he had not yet tested. The tattoo on his body shone brightly, but he did not see its glow, as he followed the halberd's blade with his eyes, the blade that was nearing the skin of his neck with frightening speed.

"NOOOOO!" He shouted and awaited his end with his eyes closed.

"Shut up, idiot." Harid heard a familiar voice and felt a soft sensation enveloping his body.

"How?!" He slowly opened his eyes and saw the ceiling of his room.

He realized that he was lying in his bed and the ceiling was the familiar grey ceiling of his room.

"Ha, ha ha, ha ha ha!" He began laughing like mad.

"You will not laugh for long, you have some explaining to do. Not that I care!" The voice of his sister scolded him again through the paper-thin wall, but nothing could spoil his mood.

"It was just a dream! A bad dream!" He continued to laugh like a maniac.

It was only logical! It was just a nightmare caused by his bad grades, he should really heed the advice of his nagging mother and study more instead of watching movies late into the night. He would have never expected to have such a terrible nightmare because of it!

However, he froze suddenly when he looked at his body and realized that he wore extremely dirty clothes and through the tears in his shirt, he could see a fading glow of a strange word, a tattoo.

"Oh crap."