Huh… it had begun.
And Eli… how would he end it now?
The rain didn't smell like rain anymore.
It was warm. Heavy. Sticky.
It slid down her arms, clinging to her clothes, seeping into her skin.
Blood.
The woman stood in the middle of the street, motionless. Her dress, once pale, was now drenched in deep crimson, each drop falling from the Eye above the Eye that had swallowed the entire sky.
It hung there without blinking, stretching across the horizon, its gaze so wide and unending that day no longer existed. Only its watching.
The news anchors had stopped sounding human hours ago. Their voices quivered, their words tripping over each other:
Stay indoors.
Do not go outside.
Seal your doors. Shut your eyes.
But the streets told another story.
The screams outside didn't fade they multiplied.
Some were sharp and desperate, like the cries of prey.
Others… gurgled.
Twisted.
Laughed.
Her hands trembled violently as she pressed them against her stomach, as if anchoring herself to the moment. But her gaze kept falling downward.
The flood was rising, dark red, rippling with each drop from the Eye. It shimmered unnaturally, reflecting the monstrous iris in broken, trembling circles. She couldn't tell if it was staring at her through the water… or from above.
Her breath hitched.
"Will he die?" she whispered.
She glanced at the horizon, though there was no horizon anymore only the Eye.
"Why now?" Her voice cracked. "Why… like this?"
Her knees buckled. She sank into the blood-washed street.
"I wish we'd met earlier," she sobbed, her words fragile and breaking under the weight of the screams.
The wind shifted.
Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Splashing through blood.
She froze.
The Eye blinked for the first time.
And the world tilted.
Eli felt the ground breathe beneath his boots.
It wasn't the rhythm of the earth.
It was slower, heavier like the pulse of something buried deep.
He had been running toward her, toward the woman in the blood-drenched street, but the blink stopped him cold. The Eye above had moved. And now… it was looking at him.
The rain thickened. Drops landed with dull splats on his jacket, smearing red trails down his sleeves. The air reeked of iron, but beneath it was something sweeter. Sickly. Inviting.
Shapes began forming in the corners of his vision people he knew, smiling, reaching for him. His mother. His friends. Faces from before the world turned wrong. They beckoned him into the rising flood.
He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. Copper filled his mouth. It grounded him… but not for long.
"Eli…"
The voice slid into his ears like warm water. It came from everywhere and nowhere.
It was the woman's voice and yet, not hers.
She was still kneeling, hands pressed to her stomach.
But her eyes.
Her eyes were gone.
In their place, two miniature versions of the Eye stared back, unblinking.
"I wish we'd met earlier," she said again, though her lips barely moved.
The words weren't in the air.
They were in his head.
The flood reached his boots. It was warm. Alive. Curling around his ankles like hands. He tried to step back but the blood followed, climbing higher.
Above, the Eye dilated.
The pulse in the ground matched the pounding in his skull.
And then
The screams stopped.
The silence was worse.
The ground inhaled, slow and patient, as if the world had lungs buried beneath the streets. Thin threads of red rose from the puddles, twisting upward like smoke in reverse. They hovered, trembling, then angled toward Eli's face their tips sharpening.
The first one touched his cheek. Warm. Gentle. Knowing.
Eli.
The sound was not sound. It was pressure. Memory.
The woman lurched forward, gripping his arm with cold, wet fingers. "Don't listen," she rasped. "Once they know your name, they"
She didn't finish.
The street split behind her with the sound of tearing flesh.
Something black and slick unfolded from the wound in the ground impossibly tall, with no face, only a long slit where a head should be, dripping red.
It leaned toward her.
The Eye blinked.
When it opened again, the woman was gone.
Only Eli remained.
And the threads were still whispering his name.
They plunged into his mouth, his ears, between his ribs.
He choked, clawing at them, but they moved like veins with purpose, burrowing deeper. Warmth became heat. Heat became pain. Pain became knowing.
Images slammed into him faces he'd never worn, places he'd never been, screams in his own voice that didn't belong to him.
The river rose. Waist. Chest. Throat.
Something beneath was breathing.
Something huge.
The ground dissolved, and the current dragged him under. The water was thick. Heavy. Filled with twitching pieces of things.
He opened his eyes.
The world beneath the river was not the world above.
It was inside the Eye.
And the Eye had bones.
Vast, pale arches stretched into a red sky, their surfaces carved with moving shapes that screamed without sound. Between them, cords pulsed like the sinew of a heart too large to exist.
In the distance, something walked.
Slowly.
Not with mercy but hunger.
Each pause let the silence press heavier against Eli's chest. The red light shifted, bending around its form before he could see it clearly. His eyes refused to focus.
A foot emerged.
Not human. Jointed wrong. Bone where flesh should be.
Another step. The ground trembled, sending ripples through the crimson water.
Eli couldn't breathe.
Not because of fear but because the thing didn't allow it.
It drew closer.
And closer.
Then… the face.
No, not a face.
A hollow pit rimmed with teeth that were still growing. The darkness inside shifted, as though something deeper than shadow was pushing to escape.
When it spoke, it used no words.
Only memory.
Eli saw his hands strangling someone he loved.
Felt blood on his lips that tasted like his mother's perfume.
Heard a laugh he knew but could not remember earning.
It leaned in.
Its teeth stopped growing.
And began to smile.
Eli was trapped. The thing leaned closer, its hollow face grinning with teeth that kept growing, stretching impossibly wide. The Eye hung above, unblinking, swallowing the sky, watching everything his every heartbeat, every thought. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And somewhere deep inside, he knew… he was already finished.