Then— thump.
It echoed behind him, sudden and wrong, cutting through the stillness like a fracture in glass.
It wasn't a footstep, nor a door, nor any sound that belonged to a living street.
It was hollow and damp and heavy.
Taejun stopped breathing.
The air inside him calcified, turned sharp, rigid, like a shard of ice lodged in his throat.
Everything in him shrieked to run, to move, to vanish.
But something older— something deeper and buried in the animal marrow of his bones— clamped down and held him fast.
He froze, heart thundering against his ribs in a rhythm too fast to count.
The night had changed. The quiet wasn't just empty now— it was watching.
And then, with unbearable slowness, he turned his head— just a sliver, just enough.
Behind him crouched a figure, but calling it that felt like a lie. It wore the outline of a man, but nothing about it held.
Its spine jutted up at an impossible angle, each vertebra pressing outward like snapped twigs poking through wet parchment.
The coat it wore, if you could call it a coat, hung in strips— sodden and fused to its skin by a tar-black slime that clung and hissed against the pavement, exhaling tendrils of steam into the cold night air.
That air smelled wrong now, like rust, and damp earth, and the aftermath of something terrible.
Beneath the creature, a puddle spread, but it wasn't water.
It pulsed— slow, bloated breaths— alive and thick with clotted blood and something that looked like melted ash.
The surface twitched, disturbed by unseen currents, and with each sick pulse came a sound— faint pop, slurp, a gurgle, as if the concrete had opened to drink.
Then the thing's head jerked, sharply, its neck cracking like frozen branches snapping beneath boots.
The movement was sharp, insectile.
It didn't turn with grace. It twitched.
It didn't see, not with eyes.
Its swollen, pale orbs spun loosely in their sockets, marbled with threads of black and red like spoiled milk left out too long.
One bulged outward, pulsing, as if something inside was still pushing against the membrane.
But Taejun knew— he knew— that this thing didn't need sight to find him.
It was felt through the earth, through the dust and rot and footprints left behind.
The concrete whispered to it. The air told it stories, and it listened.
Its fingers— if they were still fingers— dragged across the pavement with a dull, brittle scrape.
The nails were ruined, cracked into splinters, curling backward like burnt leaves.
Blood wept from beneath the skin where bone pierced through— white, jagged, stained red at the tips.
One hand spasmed and twitched, tendons rippling beneath the skin in jerks and pulses that had no rhythm, no human grace.
And then the forearm twisted all the way around, splitting something inside with a wet rip, revealing a gory rope of sinew and the clean white gleam of tendon.
Taejun wanted to scream, but he didn't dare open his mouth.
He could hear his heartbeat now.
He could feel it, like it had moved into his throat, pounding so loud it rattled in his ears, echoing inside his skull.
His legs no longer belonged to him.
They were statues, leaden and locked to the earth, too full of fear to even tremble.
And then— the smile.
It unfurled across the creature's face like something being peeled.
Not open, but peeled.
The lips tore at the corners, revealing blackened gums, shattered teeth— some too many, some misshapen, crooked like nails driven in without aim.
The blood that spilled from its mouth was thick and old, bubbling as if something inside still chewed, still fed.
The flesh on its cheeks quivered with each twitch, carved by grooves of rot, the skin sagging and twitching over something that writhed beneath it.
Then it lifted its hand.
Not fast. Not like an attack.
It was deliberate, awkward— like a puppet being pulled upward by knotted strings.
The wrist cracked mid-lift, folding in a direction no joint should bend before jerking upright again.
Clutched in its ruined grip was a blade— long, too long, like it had been carved from bone and rusted metal and left buried in a graveyard until it forgot what it once was.
The edges weren't sharp— they were broken, jagged, chunks missing, crusted with filth that pulsed faintly.
The handle was wrapped in sodden cloth, black with decay, leaking a fluid that smelled like rot and gasoline and something dead that had never been alive.
It wasn't raising the knife to strike.
It was presenting it.
Like a gift, or a promise, or maybe a warning.
Taejun followed the motion, his breath thin and glassy in his throat, and that's when he saw her— the woman.
She hadn't made a sound. Hadn't been there until that moment.
She lay crumpled beneath the thing, her limbs folded under her like broken furniture, her body twisted in a way no human body should turn.
Her face was buried in a pool of black-red blood, hair matted, hands limp, one shoe missing.
And then, without ceremony, the blade came down.
The first stab landed with a sound that made Taejun flinch— not just wet, not just crunch, like something ending.
The knife plunged into her shoulder, sinking deep, and the resistance it met wasn't enough to stop it.
The creature shuddered with the impact, its smile widening, eyes spinning.
Then it stabbed again. And again. And again.
Each thrust sounded like someone driving metal through soaked wood and meat.
Ribs cracked. Flesh tore.
Her abdomen split open beneath the repeated violence, her guts slapping the concrete in loops— purple, red, pink— organs unraveling like the insides of a puppet cut free of strings.
The creature quivered, soaked in her, covered from head to toe in her last moments, and it didn't seem to mind.
It enjoyed it and drank in the sensation through its skin.
Taejun's vision swam.
The stench clung to him now, syrupy and thick— iron, bile, the saccharine stink of blood turned warm under electric light.
His eyes burned.
His mouth tasted like pennies.
His throat convulsed, dry and raw.
His stomach twisted in on itself, his spine shuddering with something more than fear, something older, something like witnessing the undoing of life.
He took one step back. Just one.
And then— crunch.
His heel met a can. He crushed it.
The sound was impossibly loud, metallic and jarring, ringing down the street like a gunshot in a cathedral.
The creature stopped. The knife is still buried. Its head jerked. Its smile did not change.
And it breathed. Loud and slow.
Not with lungs, but with hunger.
Then, without so much as a blink, its head turned.
Not with the startled twitch of something caught off guard, not with the awkward confusion of an animal in the dark— no, it twisted with something far more intimate.
Recognition.
As if it had finally spotted something it had been waiting for all this time.
The movement was too smooth, too slow, the neck rotating past the limits of human anatomy, vertebrae grinding in slow succession with a thick, syrupy clicking, like someone twisting a wet rope of cartilage soaked in molasses.
The sound didn't echo— it settled into the night like it belonged there.
Its face aligned with Taejun's.
That grin didn't falter. It widened.
The skin stretched grotesquely, peeling back toward the ears in wet, jagged tugs, revealing raw, red muscle beneath that pulsed like something breathing.
It was not joy.
It was hunger dressed as a smile.
Then, with a sudden, sticky pop, its bottom jaw unhinged and fell slack.
Gums dangled with threads of saliva and dark blood, lips twitching around broken teeth that gleamed like fossilized bone.
It didn't speak. No words tried to escape that cavernous mouth.
What came instead was a low, rolling sound, deep and animal, like breath drawn through a throat filled with thickened fluid— wet lungs trying to sing.
It wasn't a speech. It was a presence given noise.
It was the ceremony. A hunger.
A sound that echoed with the gravity of something sacred and long dead.
Taejun didn't notice the way his breath had stopped until his chest shuddered, hollow and aching.
His vision blinked in and out, the world turning pale around the edges.
He stumbled back, limbs stiff and detached, and the air around him felt like it had changed— thickening, pulsing, damp with something ancient.
Not just old. Ancient, like the hush of forgotten temples, or the pause before something monumental breaks the surface of time.
It felt as if the night had noticed him, as if it now had eyes.
And worse, a mouth— and it was opening.
His wounded hand sagged, its grip loosening with a quiet pat.
That smile was gone now, melted into a slack, vacant expression as the creature's jaw snapped with a stuttering seizure, joints clicking in rhythm like cicadas stuck in a machine.
The neck jolted again, twisting inch by jagged inch— cartilage rasping like snapped wood crunched in a vice— until it faced the sound behind it, moving with the clumsy precision of a thing long dead but forced to live again.
Taejun dropped into the sliver of darkness between two houses, the alley barely wider than his fear.
Cold brick scraped along his back, the wall rough and biting as he slid down it.
His knees buckled without resistance.
Every muscle in his body rebelled, trembling with such intensity that the wall itself seemed to throb with his heartbeat.
He couldn't breathe. His chest locked, as if his ribs had become a cage.
He clenched his teeth so hard he could feel the enamel threaten to splinter.
A prayer formed on his lips but never reached language.
He wasn't praying to anyone. Just away from something, and that was enough.
Outside, the thing rose with a sick grace, like a puppet hauled up by strings tied to bones instead of joints.
Its coat hung from it like flayed skin reattached in the wrong places— bloated, wet, seamed with old wounds and fresh rips that split wider with each movement.
It didn't walk. It arrived, step by step, feeding sound into the silence with each motion.
Glass cracked beneath its feet like dry leaves, each pop sharp and deliberate.
Blood splattered in slow, heavy drips that felt almost affectionate.
The knife in its hand swayed idly, not raised in threat, but trailing behind like an afterthought, drawing thin, rhythmic arcs of gore on the pavement as though writing something the earth should remember.
It wasn't chasing him. It walked like it had already caught him.
Taejun's lungs convulsed with need, but no air came.
Through the thin slit between the buildings, he saw it— closer now.
Its profile shimmered, soaked in the viscera of someone else's life.
Blood clung to its face like fruit jam, thick and glistening, seeping from pores that no longer cared.
It looked like it had pressed its face into a wound and sighed.
Its jaw still hung open, peeled too far, lips torn back until the corners of the mouth split.
There was no throat behind its teeth.
Just absence. A darkness so dense it didn't just obscure— it devoured.
Not black, but something worse, something that felt like it led away from life entirely.
And still, it didn't glance at him. It didn't need to.
It moved like a memory already playing out. As though it had once dreamed of this moment, and now simply relished the shape of it.
Its steps dragged nearer.
Each movement carried the sound of blood-soaked cloth slithering against skin.
A slow hiss. A whisper between bodies.
Taejun's fingernails scraped the brick behind him, concrete dust gathering under his trembling nails.
His arms wouldn't move. His thoughts spiraled.
There was no plan.
And then it passed.
Not paused. Not hesitated.
It slipped by— just beyond the alley's mouth, a shadow trailing a scent so vile it clung to his teeth.
Blood, rot, bile, and something sourer.
Something wrong, something that should not be smelled by the living.
Taejun didn't think. He just moved.
His legs exploded into motion, flinging him from the alley in a half-fall, half-sprint.
He didn't run like a person.
He ran like a thing, trying not to die.
His body stuttered with static, gravity warping beneath each step, vision tunneling as lamplight overhead burst in epileptic flickers.
Shadows melted into one another, forming mouths, eyes, reaching hands. Houses blurred past.
Every shape looked hungry. Every fence, a cage.
He didn't dare look back.
The very thought of it threatened to drag his soul backward through his spine.
His door— his home— was ahead. It was close.
But the closer he got, the farther it felt like he was running underwater through time that didn't want him to leave.
When he finally reached the porch, his hands betrayed him.
The key slipped, clattered, and scratched wildly.
His fingers didn't work. He fumbled, nearly sobbing, until finally the bolt gave way.
He shoved through the door with a desperate cry, slammed it behind him with both hands, and twisted the lock so hard it ached in his bones.
And then there was nothing. No footsteps, no banging, just silence.
He slid down the wall inside the entryway, legs folding beneath him like waterlogged sticks.
His chest convulsed, drawing in shaky gasps that caught in his throat like barbed wire.
His heart didn't feel like his anymore.
Neither did his body.
Blood pounded in his ears, rising with sounds he didn't own.
The scream of steel.
The crackle of torn meat.
The soft gurgle of something dying.
That woman.
Her body twitched in the streetlight.
The way the blade slid in and didn't want to leave.
How the blood had crawled toward him— not splattered, not sprayed— but crawled, slow and sticky, reaching like fingers.
And the smell.
Oh God, the smell.
It had wrapped around him. In his clothes.
In his skin. In his mouth.
The iron sting of blood and the cloying sweetness of death, fermenting on his tongue like old fruit.
He gagged, tasting it still.
A film coating his throat, unclean and suffocating.
His eyes drifted to the frosted glass of the front door.
It glowed faintly under the porch light.
For a moment, it almost felt like a dream— like he might blink and find himself ten years younger, running barefoot through a summer yard, breathing in the scent of earth and leaves and not death.
But this was now. This was real.
He stared, expecting a shadow.
A smear of blood.
A face pressed against the other side, but nothing came.
The silence returned— deep and heavy. Not empty, but waiting.
And so he sat there. A ghost in his skin.
When he finally reached for the shoe rack to stand, his hand slipped on the sweat-slick surface.
He collapsed forward with a thump, limbs folding under him like a broken puppet.
He let out a breathless laugh, brittle and dry, as if his body didn't remember how to express anything else.
His cheek kissed the cold floor, and for a moment, it grounded him.
Then he turned his head.
Just past his feet, between the hallway and the front door, stood a leg.
A pale, bare leg, half-lost to shadow, unmoving, silent.
It didn't belong there.
His lungs locked again.
I locked the door,
He thought.
I heard the lock. I turned it.
He hadn't heard it open. Not a creak, not a whisper.
That leg didn't twitch. It didn't breathe.
He shifted carefully, inch by inch, dragging a foot beneath him as he rose, spine rigid, body shaking so violently he thought his bones would rattle loose.
And then— A hand.
Soft. Cold. Fingers barely pressing, just resting— too light to hurt, just enough to feel.
He spun, heart breaking through his ribs, and lifted his arms to shield his face.
And saw a man standing while smiling.
His skin was too pale, skin translucent, lips split wide in a grin too deep, exposing rows of sharp, uneven teeth and bleeding gums.
His eyes— wet pits of shadow, each pupil glowing like a coal fading in a dying fire— locked with Taejun's.
Then, softly, as if from memory, the thing spoke.
"Hey," it said. The voice was warm. Gentle and almost nostalgic. "You okay?"
The thing blinked, and it had changed.