The smell of blood was suffocating.
Keon stepped onto the scorched ground, his boots pressing into the mixture of ash, mud, and something far worse. The forest, once alive with towering trees and thick undergrowth, was now a ruin of charred stumps and shattered wood. The eerie silence that followed sent a chill down his spine. No birds. No insects. Nothing.
Something had killed everything here.
Stella crouched beside a fallen creature—one of the Bloodfang Hyenas, its lifeless body twisted unnaturally. Its fur was matted with blood, and its ribs had been crushed inward, as if something had caved them in with immense force. She ran her fingers over the deep wounds, frowning.
"This wasn't just a fight," she murmured. "It was a slaughter."
Keon didn't respond immediately. His eyes traced the battlefield, noting the damage. Some of the trees hadn't just burned—they had been shredded. Large, jagged gashes tore through the earth, their edges disturbingly clean, as if something had cut through them at an impossible speed.
His gut tightened. Whatever did this wasn't normal.
He knelt down, brushing his fingers against the ground. Still warm. Recent.
Then, a sound.
A low, gurgling cough.
Keon's head snapped up just as a figure stumbled from behind a fallen tree. A man in a tattered lab coat.
Blood soaked his clothes, his steps uneven. He barely seemed aware of Keon and Stella—eyes unfocused, lips trembling as if trying to form words.
Keon moved first, catching him before he collapsed entirely. "Hey," he said sharply. "What happened here?"
The scientist's fingers dug into his arm weakly, his breath shaky. His lips parted—one word escaping in a hoarse whisper.
"Run."
Then his body went limp.
Keon's blood turned ice cold.
He and Stella exchanged a look. They had no idea what they were dealing with.
But whatever it was…
It was still out there.
The wind howled through the skeletal remains of the trees, carrying the sharp scent of burnt wood and something sickly sweet—like rotting flesh mixed with metal.
Keon and Stella stood at the edge of the valley, staring at what used to be the Science Center.
Once, it must have been an impressive structure. From their vantage point, Keon could make out the collapsed remains of metal buildings, their twisted frames barely visible through the thick red mist that clung to the land like a living thing. Blackened vines—thicker than a man's torso—coiled around the wreckage, their pulsating surfaces covered in jagged thorns. Some of them slithered across the ground, moving ever so slightly, as if reacting to the presence of intruders.
The trees surrounding the site were warped and unnatural. Their trunks had split open, revealing dark, hollow insides, their bark stripped away to expose something… almost fleshy beneath. Some trees had collapsed into grotesque heaps, their branches merging together like melted wax. The earth itself had been torn apart, deep trenches running through the valley, as if something massive had crawled beneath the surface.
Stella swallowed hard. "This place… It doesn't just look destroyed. It looks like it's still changing."
Keon didn't respond immediately. His grip on the telescope tightened as he scanned the area again, feeling a deep, unnatural wrongness in the air.
The blood-red mist was unsettling. It didn't move like normal fog—it twisted and shifted unnaturally, curling around the structures, pulsing in time with something unseen. It felt alive.
Something had happened here. Something beyond fire and destruction.
Keon took a slow, deliberate breath. "What the hell were they even researching?"
Stella shook her head, eyes never leaving the corrupted landscape. "Whatever it was, I don't think we were supposed to find out."
A loud crack echoed from below.
Both of them tensed, their eyes snapping to the far end of the ruins. A broken security drone, its metal frame covered in the same blackened vines, twitched violently. Sparks flickered from its damaged core, and its half-crushed camera jerked toward them before the entire thing convulsed—then went completely still.
Keon's heartbeat quickened. That thing was still trying to move despite being long dead.
He turned to Stella, but she was already shaking her head. "No. Absolutely not. We are not going down there."
Keon exhaled slowly, his pulse steadying. He understood her fear. This place wasn't just abandoned. It wasn't just destroyed.
It had been consumed by something.
But still—there were answers down there.
And he needed them.
With one last glance at the mist-covered ruins, Keon clenched his fists and stepped forward.
"We're going."
The wind carried a distant, hollow howl.
Low at first, like a dying breath. Then rising—long, drawn-out, and unnatural. It echoed through the ruined valley, vibrating through bone and marrow, sinking into the very air around them. The sound was layered, distorted, like something massive was calling from deep within the mist.
Keon and Stella froze.
The howl dragged on, twisting at the end into something that wasn't quite a scream, wasn't quite a growl. It was wrong.
A warning.
Keon felt it in his gut—the same instinct that had kept him alive through countless fights, through ambushes and impossible odds. That thing was not normal.
Stella's fingers twitched on her weapon. "That… wasn't a hyena."
"No." Keon exhaled, keeping his voice low. "It wasn't."
The mist thickened around the wreckage, curling unnaturally, like something alive reacting to the sound. The silence that followed was worse.
No insects. No distant movements. Even the shifting vines around the ruins seemed to still.
Another howl. Closer.
Keon and Stella exchanged a glance.
Then—crack.
Something snapped in the ruins ahead, sharp and sudden. Not metal, not wood. Bone.
A slow, deliberate sound followed. A click. Then another. Then another.
Keon's fingers curled into a fist. Something was out there.
Something hunting.
And now, it knew they were here.
The Beast no..a Monster emerges
The mist churned. Twisted. Writhing like something alive.
Then it split apart.
A figure loomed from the depths of the ruins, stepping into the open with slow, deliberate movements. The Bloodwick.
It was massive—as tall as a three-story building, but hunched, its grotesque frame layered with shifting, pulsating muscle that looked like it had been forcibly stitched together. Its dark, almost blackened flesh shimmered faintly, veins pulsing with a deep red glow beneath the surface, as if something inside was alive and moving.
Its head was elongated and unnatural, more skeletal than bestial, with a maw filled with jagged, uneven fangs that dripped with thick, black ichor. Hollow pits sat where its eyes should have been, yet Keon felt the weight of its gaze—like it could see more than just shapes, like it was looking through him.
The most disturbing part, however, was what grew from its back.
Two enormous arms.
Not normal arms—twisted, grotesque things, twice the size of its normal limbs, their flesh covered in jagged protrusions that pulsed as if alive. Each one ended in elongated, clawed fingers, unnaturally thin yet strong enough to crush steel. The flesh was raw and exposed, moving unnaturally beneath the surface, as if whatever formed them had been evolving, shifting, trying to become something even worse.
One of those giant arms twitched. Then curled. Then uncurled—testing itself, like a predator flexing before the kill.
The air grew thick, suffocating.
The Monster exhaled—a wet, gurgling sound that wasn't quite a growl, wasn't quite a breath. It lifted its head slightly, sniffing the air, before its hollow sockets locked onto Keon and Stella.
A long, unnatural clicking sound echoed from deep within its chest.
Then it moved.
Fast.
Too fast.
The ground ruptured beneath its weight as it lunged, its enormous back arms smashing into the ruined earth, sending debris flying. One clawed hand ripped through a nearby tree, reducing it to splinters in an instant.
Keon's instincts screamed—move.
Because in that split second, as the monster twisted its monstrous form toward them, he knew one thing for certain.
It wasn't just hunting them.
It was studying them.