Kieran's legs burned as he sprinted through the ruined city. His breath came in ragged gasps, his heart hammering like a caged animal. He didn't look back. He couldn't.
Because it was still behind him.
The smiling angel didn't run like something alive. It skittered—jerking forward in sudden bursts, limbs bending the wrong way, hands scraping against the pavement as if it needed to feel the world it was hunting in.
And it was so fast.
Kieran veered down an alley, nearly tripping over the scattered remains of a corpse—no, not a corpse, not human, not anymore. Whatever it had been, its face was gone. Only smooth, pale flesh stretched over a skull that shouldn't have been there.
His stomach lurched, but he didn't stop.
"Kieran."
The voice was right behind him.
"You don't have to run."
He burst into an abandoned building, what had once been a church. The stained glass windows were shattered, leaving only jagged teeth of colored glass in their frames. Pews were overturned, and the air smelled of something old and rotting.
But Kieran had no time to process any of it.
Because the thing followed him inside.
It crawled through the broken doorway like an insect, its elongated fingers digging into the wooden floor. Its body convulsed in short, snapping motions, like it was adjusting to wearing a body.
Then, it stood.
The grin never faded.
It was taller than before, its neck stretched too far, bones shifting beneath skin like something trying to remember what a human was supposed to look like.
"You're almost ready," it whispered.
Kieran's back hit the altar.
There was nowhere left to run.
The thing stepped closer. Too close. The grin was inches from his face now, its breath cold and wrong. It smelled like emptiness.
"Let me show you," it cooed.
Its hand reached forward.
Kieran felt it before it touched him.
A sucking sensation, a pulling deep inside his chest—like something was unraveling him from the inside out. The world around him flickered, his vision distorting, shifting.
And for a moment—just a moment—he wasn't in the church anymore.
He was somewhere else.
Somewhere dark.
Whispers slithered around him, voices overlapping, murmuring things he couldn't understand. Shadows pulsed like living things, writhing in a space that had no walls, no ceiling—only endless black.
And then—he saw them.
Dozens. Hundreds.
Figures stood in the dark, their backs turned, their bodies wrong. Some were missing their hands, their arms stretching into long, grasping shadows. Others had no heads, only smooth, featureless skin where faces should have been.
But the worst part?
They were all smiling.
Grins carved into their flesh, too wide, too deep, stretching until they split their skin.
And they were waiting.
For him.
Kieran's scream tore through the void.
And suddenly—he was back.
The church. The ruined altar. The thing in front of him.
But something had changed.
The smiling angel's expression faltered. For the first time, it blinked—like it hadn't expected him to see what was waiting.
And then—black wings.
A shadow crashed through the ceiling, knocking the creature away in a blur of motion.
Kieran gasped, barely processing what had happened.
The black-winged angel stood between him and the grinning thing, its presence cold and ancient.
"You're not ready yet," it said, voice like rust scraping over bone.
And then, in a single motion, it drove its hand into the smiling angel's chest.
The thing didn't scream.
It only laughed.
And the world shook.