It strides silently down the hall, leaving faint smudges of dried blood on the cheap apartment carpet. The creature pauses at the door—golden eyes tracing the scratches around the lock, the chipped paint near the knob. Someone kicked this door in once.

A slow smile spreads.

It raises a fist and knocks—three fast raps, then two slower.

Silence.

Then—

"Who is it?" she calls, her voice steady but faintly strained.

The creature leans in, lips nearly brushing the peeling wood. "Come on, Mom," it says, and the voice is perfect—Obinai's lazy drawl, the way he'd whine at certain points in his speech. "Left 'em in my other jeans again."

A beat. A click as Maria's weight shifts behind the door.

"You are so much trouble, young man," she mutters, but there's relief there. "But before I rip you a new one—your father's got something to say to us."

The creature's fingers twitch. Father? Interesting.

The lock scratches open.

Inside, Maria's hand hesitates on the chain. Why do I feel so...never mind.

The creature's pulse jumps.

The chain drops.

The door creaks open slowly, the dim light from the apartment spilling into the corridor...

Back to…Somewhere...

The ruins of home stand in grim silence, the devastation overwhelming. Twisted steel beams protrude like skeletal fingers from crumbling walls, and jagged shards of glass glint dangerously amid the dust-covered floor. Smoke hangs heavy in the air, acrid and suffocating, its bitter tang stinging Obinai's throat as he stands in pain.

Before him, the thing looms.

It's tall—too tall, its ashen skin stretched over a frame that doesn't bend right. Eyes blink lazily across its skull, pupils darting like trapped flies. It doesn't look at him. Not really. Just past him, through him, like he's a smudge on a window.

Obinai's hands fist at his sides. "What do you want?" he snarls. "Why the fuck are you doing this?"

No answer.

The creature's head tilts, one eye rolling to fix on the ceiling, another tracking something along the far wall. Its fingers twitch—long, bone-white things that click together absently.

Behind Obinai, a whimper cuts through the silence.

Mya.

He doesn't turn. Doesn't dare. But he hears her—small, quick footsteps stumbling over shattered drywall, the hiccup of her breathing as she tries not to cry. She's moving. Good. Run, you little gremlin, run—

But the creature's head jerks—one eye snapping toward the sound.

Obinai's stomach drops.

His ankle screams with every step—twisted from his fall—but he lurches forward anyway, dragging his foot through the debris. Dust kicks up in a gritty cloud, sticking to the sweat on his face.

"LOOK AT ME!" His voice bounces off the broken walls. He snatches a jagged chunk of concrete, hefts it—god, it's heavy—and hurls it at the creature.

The rock thuds against the thing's arm. Useless. Like throwing a pebble at a tank.

For half a heartbeat, the creature stills. All those horrible eyes freeze mid-flicker. Its head cocks—just slightly—like a dog hearing a distant whistle.

Then it ignores him again.

Obinai's vision swims. His ribs burn. "Fuck you," he spits. "Fuck you, fuck this, fuck—"

A tiny sound behind him. A sniffle. A shuffle.

He can feel Mya hovering, small and stubborn and not running when she should.

"Go," he hisses over his shoulder, not daring to take his eyes off the creature. "Now, Mya. Move."

"But Obi—"

"NOW!"

The creature's head twitches at the sound of her voice.

His bad ankle gives—white-hot pain shoots up his leg—but he stays upright.

"Over here, asshole!" He grabs a broken pipe, swings it like a bat. It whistles through the air, missing the creature by inches. "What, too good to fight back? Scared I'll win?"

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The pipe trembles in his grip. His arms shake.

The creature's eyes finally—finally—slide toward him. All of them. At once.

Shit...

Mya's whimpers. "Obi…"

"Run," he whispers. "Please."

I just need to—

A flicker of movement—Obinai's gaze snaps to the spear in the creature's hand. The weapon pulses, its black shaft swallowing the light, those twisted runes writhing like worms under its surface.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck no—

He tears his eyes away, scanning the rubble—and there's Mya, small and stubborn, picking her way toward the corner of the buildings exit. She's almost there. Almost safe.

Then the creature moves.

The spear lifts. Runes ignite—a sickly, corpse-light glow—and the air thrums with gathering power.

"NO!" Obinai's scream scrapes his throat bloody. He lunges, his bad leg buckling instantly. Knees hit concrete. Pain rockets up his spine. He doesn't stop. Can't.

"LOOK AT ME!" He claws forward, fingers bleeding on broken glass. "I'm RIGHT HERE, you spineless fuck! Weak little human! Easy kill!" His voice cracks, wild and desperate. "What, scared you'll miss?"

The spear leaves the herald's hand with a sound like a scream being torn in half.

Obinai doesn't see it fly—just hears the wet thunk of impact.

His head whips around.

The world tilts...

Mya—his Mya, the little turd who stole his last Pop-Tart a few days ago, who laughed when he tripped over his own feet this morning—lies pinned to the broken concrete like a butterfly in a display case. The spear's shaft juts from her small chest, vibrating slightly.

For one terrible second, everything is silent.

Then—

"No." The word claws its way out. "No no no NO—"

His legs give out. He crawls, glass shredding his hands, his bad ankle screaming.

"Mya? Hey. Hey!" He reaches her, rolls her over—too rough, he's always too rough with her—and freezes.

Her eyes are open. Cloudy. Staring at nothing.

Blood soaks her shirt—the one she sewed on herself. It's everywhere, hot and sticky, coating his hands as he gathers her up.

"C'mon, you little shit," he whispers, shaking her. "This ain't funny. Wake up."

She doesn't move.

Her head lolls against his arm.

Somewhere behind him, the herald watches.

Obinai's vision blurs. Tears drip onto Mya's face, cutting tracks through the dust.

"Please," he chokes, pressing his forehead to hers. "Please, I—I'll give you all my Pop-Tarts. I'll let you draw on my shoes again. Just—"

His voice breaks.

The herald says nothing.

The spear's runes pulse.

Obinai screams.

Then—

He clenches his teeth. His body shakes as his open palm cracks against his own temple—once, twice—the sharp sting doing nothing to clear the nightmare. "Why?!" His scream shreds his throat. "Fucking ANSWER ME!"

The herald just watches, all those eyes blinking in eerie unison.

Mya's blood soaks through his jeans, still warm. He presses her closer, as if his body heat could undo what the spear did. "She was nine," he snarls, voice breaking. "She still slept with a nightlight. She—she fucking hated carrots—"

A sob claws its way out of him. He punches the ground—crunch—debris biting into his knuckles. Blood wells, drips, joins the mess already pooling beneath them.

"Kill me!" He throws his head back. "I'm right here! Do it! But her? She didn't—she couldn't—"

The creature takes a step.

The ground shudders. Dust jumps. Obinai's teeth rattle in his skull.

Another step.

Closer.

Obinai curls over Mya's body, shielding her even now. His tears plop onto her shirt, darkening the dinosaur patches. "Should've run faster," he whispers to her. "Should've tried to find a way to give you more ti—"

The herald looms overhead, its shadow swallowing them whole.

Obinai glares up through wet lashes. "What?" he spits. "Gonna gloat?"

Silence.

Just the slow drip of blood from his fists.

The herald cocks its head.

And shivers—

Slowly, its eyes begin to shift, their movements grotesque and unnatural. They twist and slide across its pale, ashen face, converging at the center of its head. The sound is sickening, a fleshy tearing and squelching that makes Obinai's stomach churn.

His sobs falter as he watches. The eyes coalesce into one enormous, unblinking orb, its golden iris glowing faintly. Then, with a wet, grinding sound, the eye shifts upward, just slightly, revealing a dark slit below it. Obinai freezes, his grief momentarily overtaken by a fresh wave of terror, as the slit widens into a jagged, grotesque smile.

The smile spreads impossibly wide, tearing across the creature's face. Its teeth—if they could be called that—are uneven shards of bone, gleaming wetly in the dim light. The sight is...horrifying.

An uneven rhythm of chills course down Obinai's spine.

The creature crouches slowly, until its face is mere inches from Obinai's. Its massive, singular eye locks onto him, the golden light within pulsing faintly. Obinai stares back, his entire body trembling.

The silence is broken by a sound—no, a feeling—that invades Obinai's mind directly, bypassing his ears entirely. The creature's voice resonates within him, a groaning, dissonant echo that seems to ripple through his very thoughts.

"Fear… of what could be… and fear of what has been," the voice intones, pressing into his mind.

Obinai shakes his head violently, his tears spilling anew. "Shut up!" he screams. He smacks himself in the temple again, the pain barely registering as he struggles to drown out the creature's voice. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

The creature tilts its head slightly, as if amused by his futile defiance. It straightens, its towering form rising to its full height once more. Obinai can do nothing but stare, his anger twisting into helplessness as he watches the creature lift one massive foot.

"No… no, no, no!" Obinai sobs. He cradles Mya closer, shielding her as though it might protect her from the inevitable. His fingers dig into the ground, his nails scraping against the dirt and debris as he tries to drag them away.

His injured leg gives out beneath him, and he stumbles backward, his grip faltering. Mya's body slips from his grasp, and he rolls onto his back with a sharp gasp. The world spins around him, his tears blurring the ruined landscape. Desperately, he scrambles to sit up, his breath hitching as his gaze lands on her still form.

The spear. He had forgotten.

Its shaft juts cruelly from her small chest.

The creature's foot still hangs above him for a moment, casting an even darker shadow over the broken boy. Then, with a terrifying finality, it crashes down.

Obinai feels the pressure first—a crushing, suffocating weight that presses him deeper into the ground. The world around him fades into darkness, the sounds of destruction and his own screams muffled and distant.

As the darkness closes in, there's a fleeting moment of clarity, a final, desperate thought: I failed her.

And then, there is nothing but the cold, overwhelming void.

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