Lena's body was cold. Colder than it should have been, too cold for someone sleeping soundly.
"Hey, Lena..." he murmured, his voice shaky. "Lena, wake up."
He shook her gently, his panic rising when there was no response. Her skin was like ice, her lips a pale shade of white that sent a chill down his spine.
His heart thudded loudly in his chest. He touched her again, this time more forcefully. "Lena?" he whispered, his voice trembling.
But she didn't stir.
A cold sweat broke out across his forehead. This couldn't be happening. His mind raced, scrambling for an explanation. Maybe she was just cold, maybe she had fallen into a deeper sleep. But no matter how many times he shook her, there was no warmth, no sign of life.
She was still.
"God… no," he muttered under his breath.
Panic gripped him now, tightening around his chest. His mind raced to the soup, to the taste—something had been wrong with it. His heart skipped. The rat. It all clicked into place too late.
He backed away from her, his breath shallow and erratic. His mind was a blur, but one thing was clear—his wife was gone.
His gaze flickered to her still body, the deep, hollow fear taking root in his gut. The poison had worked too quickly, and now—now it was spreading. It would take them all. It would take the children next.
The man's thoughts raced as he stared at his wife's lifeless body, her skin cold to the touch. The unexplainable paralysis spread through his body, his legs refusing to obey him, despite his best efforts to move.
His muscles had locked up.
Panic surged in his chest as he struggled to take a breath, but it was futile. His limbs, heavy and uncooperative, betrayed him. The room seemed to close in on him, every moment stretching into eternity.
'But who would poison us?' he thought desperately. 'We don't have enemies... We're no threat. And we don't have the money for poison…'
The thought was quickly drowned out by the growing terror that twisted in his gut. He needed to get to his children. He had to warn them, protect them.
But when he tried to push himself upright, the sensation of paralysis only deepened.
The room was eerily still—until a small, white rat scuttled out from the shadows. The sight of it made the man's blood run cold. No rodent could survive here. The city was tightly controlled, a chemical barrier that exterminated anything small enough to survive.
He knew, in that instant, that someone had targeted him. Someone had brought this rat here, and with it, a horrific purpose.
'I need to scream,' he thought desperately, his mind scrambling for anything that could save him. 'One scream. The awakened guards will hear me.'
But the scream would never come.
His lungs screamed for air, but none came. His heart pounded, but the force of the rat's bite made it impossible to focus. 'I won't die like this, he thought weakly. I'm awakened. I should be stronger than this…
The rat burrowed deeper, making its way to his heart, and he shuddered involuntarily as the life drained from him. Tears welled in his eyes, slipping down his pale cheeks, his mind flickering to memories of happier days—the warmth of family, the hope for the future, the dreams he had nurtured for his children. 'We were supposed to have a future…'
His thought was a bitter one. 'This isn't fair.'
His vision blurred, and his thoughts turned inward, spiraling into regret. 'I should have protected them better. I should've seen the danger, prepared for this. I thought I had time.'
His regret felt heavier than the weight of his body, suffocating him as surely as the poison that coursed through his veins. 'I failed them. I couldn't keep them safe. I should've done more. I should've—'
But there was no more time for should-have-beens. As his heartbeat faltered, the man's last thought was a mournful one: I wanted to see them grow up.
The rat moved with terrifying purpose, crawling up his neck and sinking its tiny teeth into the soft skin, piercing the blood vessel with surgical precision. Pain exploded in his throat as blood splattered across the floor. His airway was gone, suffocating him with each passing second.
Another rat crawled onto his wife, and before he could do anything, the creature tore into her throat, burrowing into her lifeless form. The terror in his chest tightened as his own body began to succumb to the same fate.
And then, his heart stopped.
His body fell still.
White mist leaked from the wounds in his body, flowing freely into the air. His wife's body expelled a faint trace of it, but it was thinner, less substantial. The difference between an awakened and a mundane.
As the mist dissipated, Kael's presence grew stronger. His form became clearer, a vague shape gradually taking on more substance. He could feel his soul solidifying, his form taking shape, even though his figure remained invisible to human eyes.
Kael surveyed the room, the death of the two humans before him stirring no emotion within him. Only a faint downward curve of his lips betrayed his thoughts.
"Once I complete my soul…" he muttered to himself, his voice hollow, "I can possess a body… A younger one would be best."
He looked at the lifeless bodies, the white mist fading, and a glimmer of something dangerous flickered in his soul.
It was time to find a body to inhabit.
The screams rang through the city, a chilling chorus that echoed off the stone walls and sent a ripple of panic through the streets. The once serene and controlled atmosphere shattered as the citizens scrambled, confused and terrified. The city, normally fortified against the dangers of the outside world, now faced a threat that seemed too cunning, too calculated to be the work of a typical rift-born.
Guards rushed to the locations of the screams, weapons drawn, eyes scanning every corner. Yet, no rift-born appeared. Instead, all they found were the mangled bodies of the victims—gruesome, disfigured, as if something had consumed them from the inside out, leaving only hollow shells behind. The flesh had been stripped clean, with no trace of struggle except for the bloodstained floors and walls. Something had moved swiftly, silently, and with deadly intent.
The initial assumption was that the rift-born had evolved, that this new breed was somehow more elusive and intelligent than before, but the guards, trained to deal with such horrors, were suspicious. This wasn't the chaotic, mindless violence of a typical rift-born attack. No, this was something more strategic, more deliberate.
"They're not supposed to be like this," one of the senior guards muttered, looking at the bodies in disbelief. "Rift-born are feral, reckless... this feels like... something else."
The city's officials gathered quickly, a council formed on the fly to discuss this emerging threat. The situation was dire. If the rift-born had indeed become this advanced, it meant that their whole defense strategy would need to be reevaluated. But if this wasn't a rift-born attack... then what was it? And how had it managed to slip through the city's defenses undetected?