Run.
That was the only word in Yuvraj's head.
His legs moved before his brain agreed.
Pain detonated through his ribs, white-hot, sharp enough to blur the edges of the world.
Something was cracked.
Definitely more than one thing.
The alley stretched unnaturally long as he sprinted.
Every step felt delayed, like gravity was negotiating with him.
Behind him,
Reality tore.
Not footsteps.
Not breath.
Errors.
The walls shivered, peeling like wet paint.
Shadows detached themselves, thickening, gaining depth.
They weren't chasing him.
They were correcting him.
Yuvraj stumbled, slammed a hand against the wall to stay upright.
His palm sank half an inch into concrete that briefly behaved like liquid.
"No," he gasped.
"Not now."
His lungs burned.
Adrenaline drowned the pain just enough to keep him moving.
The city should have been loud.
Traffic.
People.
Life.
Instead, silence, punctured only by a low-frequency hum vibrating through his bones.
Pretas didn't run.
They desynced.
One moment they were twenty meters back.
The next, they were closer without crossing the space in between.
Like bad math.
Yuvraj burst out of the alley onto the main road.
Streetlights flickered.
Cars stood abandoned at odd angles, doors open, engines dead.
Phones lay scattered on the asphalt, screens cracked mid-call.
Evacuation hadn't been orderly.
It had been instant.
A shadow lunged.
Not forward.
Sideways.
The air beside Yuvraj folded inward.
He felt fingers, no, approximations of fingers, brush his shoulder.
Cold.
Empty.
A chunk of his jacket vanished, edges burned smooth like matter erased from an equation.
Yuvraj screamed, swerving.
His foot slipped on rain-slick tar.
He hit the ground hard.
Pain finally caught up.
His vision exploded into static.
The blue screen snapped open violently, force-fed into his mind.
CRITICAL CONDITION DETECTED
MULTIPLE LOW-ORDER ENTITIES APPROACHING
SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 11.3%
Yuvraj laughed, coughing blood.
"Optimistic."
A shadow loomed over him, taller now, thicker.
Its outline jittered, unable to decide where its edges belonged.
The thing leaned down.
Its face didn't exist until it needed to.
When it did, it was wrong, features overlapping, mouth opening twice.
Yuvraj raised his hands instinctively.
"No mantra," he whispered.
"No time."
The System chimed.
Not urgent.
Almost curious.
NOTICE:
USER RESPONSE PATTERN ANALYSIS COMPLETE
COGNITIVE PROFILE: HIGH LOGIC / LOW FAITH
Another Preta emerged from the road itself, bubbling up like a corrupted texture loading late.
Yuvraj's heart hammered.
"I get it," he snarled.
"Less analysis. More help."
INITIATING EMERGENCY PROTOCOL
STARTER SKILL SELECTION AVAILABLE
The world slowed.
Not time.
Priority.
The Pretas froze mid-glitch, their forms stuttering like paused video frames.
The blue interface expanded.
Cold.
Clean.
BASED ON YOUR ENTROPY AFFINITY,
RECOMMENDED STARTER SKILL: VIBRATIONAL PARSE
Text scrolled.
VIBRATIONAL PARSE PASSIVE
DESCRIPTION:
Converts ambient sound, impact, and biological vibration into actionable data.
Allows prediction of anomaly movement and structural weakness.
COST: Continuous low Spirit Energy drain.
RISK: Prolonged use may cause sensory overload.
Yuvraj didn't hesitate.
"Accept."
The System didn't confirm.
It executed.
Sound slammed into him.
Not louder.
Denser.
He heard his own heartbeat as layered pulses.
Felt the road humming beneath him, microfractures singing under stress.
The Pretas screamed.
And he understood them.
Not language.
Pattern.
They weren't targeting him.
They were converging on the highest entropy spike.
Him.
Yuvraj rolled sideways as space snapped shut where his head had been.
The Preta's limb phased through the asphalt, stuck for half a second, long enough.
Yuvraj grabbed a loose metal rod from the roadside barrier and drove it into the distortion point.
He didn't stab.
He timed it.
The rod vibrated violently, resonating with the Preta's unstable frequency.
The entity convulsed.
Its form shredded outward, unraveling into black particulate that evaporated with a sound like static being muted.
ENTITY DISRUPTED
NO KARMA AWARDED
EFFICIENCY: INSUFFICIENT
"Of course," Yuvraj muttered.
More came.
Three.
No, four.
Their presence bent the roadlights into halos.
Air pressure dropped, ears popping.
Yuvraj pushed himself up, nearly blacking out.
Broken ribs protested.
Blood soaked his shirt.
He ran again.
Not blindly.
Now, the city whispered to him.
Cracks in walls glowed faintly.
Load-bearing columns thrummed with tension.
He zigzagged, forcing the Pretas into narrow corridors of space where their glitches overlapped.
Two collided.
Reality screamed.
The intersection collapsed inward, swallowing both in a shriek of torn geometry.
Yuvraj didn't stop to watch.
Spirit Energy bled away, a steady ache behind his eyes.
SPIRIT ENERGY: 5/100
Too low.
He ducked into a narrow service lane, kicked open a rusted door, and tumbled inside.
Darkness swallowed him.
He slammed the door shut and wedged a steel pipe through the handles.
The building groaned.
Abandoned.
Concrete.
Deep.
Good enough.
He collapsed against the wall, gasping.
Every breath was a knife.
Outside, the Pretas gathered.
Not scratching.
Not pounding.
The walls rippled as their presence tested probability.
Yuvraj pressed his forehead to the cold floor.
The System hovered quietly now.
Waiting.
STATUS UPDATE:
USER HAS ENTERED TEMPORARY LOW-ENTROPY ZONE
Low-entropy.
Safe.
For now.
Yuvraj laughed weakly.
"My life just turned into a variable," he whispered.
Memories replayed uninvited.
His apartment.
His job.
His certainty that the universe was dumb but predictable.
That man didn't exist anymore.
The walls pulsed once.
Twice.
Then stillness.
Yuvraj lay there, listening to the building breathe.
To the city's broken rhythm.
To the new algorithm running beneath everything.
The blue screen faded to a single line of text.
NOTICE:
SURVIVAL MODE ACTIVE
THE WORLD YOU KNEW IS NO LONGER STABLE
Yuvraj closed his eyes.
Not in denial.
In calculation.
Because if this was the new reality,
He would learn its rules.
Or die proving they could be broken.