No matter how much I ran… I never felt that I had gotten farther away.
I never felt the distance growing between me and that eye that had seen everything and anything.
Its presence clung to me like a shadow that would not separate, as if his eyes were planted in my back, watching every step, every stumble, every hidden tremor in my soul.
Three days and their nights… three days during which I did not stop running. No sleep, no food, no water.
Only lungs burning, and a heart pounding against my chest as if it wanted to escape before I did.
This body this body that was branded by the sword, the body that crossed the limits of humans, that I was told had entered stages beyond their capabilities had indeed proven its worth.
It did not collapse or tear apart, and it did not fall even though pain was ripping it apart from within.
But… what is the use of strength if it is not enough to escape?
What is the use of surpassing humans if you cannot surpass a single gaze?
There was nothing that would stop me.
Not this forest whose trees looked like mummified human bodies, their arms twisted toward the sky as if they had been pleading for centuries.
Nor those poisonous gelatinous creatures crawling across the ground like living entrails pulsing with the color of blood and pus.
Nor those many-legged giants whose steps shook the earth, their scattered little eyes gleaming with hunger.
Every creature here tried to kill me, but I had no time to fight them. My survival depended on running… on continuing… on not looking back.
I ran and ran until my feet blistered, the skin separating from them as if they no longer belonged to me.
I ran until the pain turned into something beyond pain… into a black numbness that devoured sensation itself.
Then… my legs stopped working.
They did not collapse suddenly. They abandoned me quietly, the way soldiers abandon a defeated commander.
So I fell… then crawled.
I crawled like worms crawl, like one who no longer possesses pride or dignity only a primitive desire to survive.
I crawled until my fingers peeled apart, until mud and blood became one thing.
Then… my body stopped entirely.
My lungs screamed.
My throat was dry like a dead desert.
My stomach bit itself in hunger.
"Energy…" I whispered to myself in a hoarse voice.
"I need food… water… anything…"
The forest was whispering.
It was not the sound of wind.
It was not the creaking of branches.
They were whispers… real whispers.
Unintelligible words slipping into my ears, talking about me, mocking me, promising things I could not understand.
The creatures of this place were not ordinary.
They were not beasts as I had known them in my world.
They were more savage… and more aware.
Dogs with six eyes emerged from between the trees.
Their fur was gray like the ash of graves, and their teeth were longer than butcher knives.
Thick saliva dripped from their mouths, carrying the smell of rotten flesh.
They approached slowly.
They saw my body lying there.
They thought I was a corpse.
One of them bent toward me, its nose touching my face.
I opened my eyes.
I sank my teeth into its throat before it could touch me.
It screamed.
The scream of an animal shocked that its prey had bitten it.
I ate it before it could eat me.
I tore its flesh with my teeth.
I feasted on it before it could dine on me.
The hot blood brought something back to me.
A bit of awareness.
A bit of strength.
But it was not alone.
The whole pack lunged at me in a single moment.
I did not run.
I could not.
I gathered what little strength remained, grabbed one of the torn legs, broke it, and pulled the bone out of it.
A white bone, thin… but hard.
I laughed.
"Come then…"
They pounced on me.
I cut off the leg of one of them.
I drove the bone into its skull until I heard the wet sound of cracking.
Another bit my shoulder, so I turned and drove my fingers into its sixth eye until it burst between my hands.
They fell over me.
They bit my back.
They scratched my face.
But… this was just a joke to me now.
I have not been human for a long time.
I cut them apart.
I tore them to pieces.
I ate from their flesh as if I were a beast among them.
The survivors retreated.
Some of them bled to death.
Only one escaped.
I watched it disappear between the trees.
"Go…" I muttered, blood dripping from my mouth.
"Go and tell them… that I am not prey."
I lay down for a moment, staring at the dark sky barely visible between the branches.
Why had I run without stopping all this time?
Was it only because he told me, "Get out of my sight"?
Did I submit to his overwhelming presence without thinking?
Was I a coward?
His presence was suffocating… as if the entire world bowed before him.
But now I think I have gone far away as he wanted.
I think.
I slowly sat up.
The pain returned, but it had become familiar.
I am lost.
I do not know where I am.
But I know one thing: this place is more savage than anything I have ever known.
The night here is not just darkness.
It is an entity.
Creatures like ghosts wander within it. You see them from afar and think they are rational… but the moment they come closer, you feel their desire to occupy your body, to live inside you, to make you a vessel for them.
Giants who want to crush you simply to hear the sound of your bones breaking.
Pulsing gelatin made of flesh and blood that tries to swallow you slowly, as if savoring your terror.
"My next goal…" I said in a rough voice as I staggered to my feet.
"…is to find civilization. Any sign… any trace."
Civilization is the only solution.
The last refuge.
Even if I were forced to live alone in an environment like this…
I am certain that I could survive.
But first…
I stepped toward the dogs' corpses.
I took two of them.
I slowly skinned the flesh of one of them, with a cold movement devoid of hesitation.
I left a solid bone, cleaned it of the meat, and made it into a primitive spear.
I dragged the corpses behind me.
Every step was heavy, but I did not stop.
"Forward…" I whispered to myself, my eyes as dark as the forest night.
"No turns. No hesitation. Either survival… or death."
…..
Days were no longer counted.
He no longer knew whether a week had passed… or a month… or whether time itself had abandoned him just as everything else had.
His journey continue long, branching, with no clear end.
And within that endless stretch, he learned to make a shield out of death.
He skinned the hides of the six eyes dogs and stitched them together with their tightened tendons until he made for himself a rough, dark garment that reeked of ancient blood. The hide was hard, coarse to the touch, but warm… warm in a disgusting way, as if the animal's heat were still trapped inside it.
As for the bones, they were unnaturally solid.
As if they had not been created merely to carry weight… but to kill.
He fashioned from them serrated knives, short spears, and even blades tied to his arm like an extension of his hand.
And he wore the skull of one of them over his head, its eyes hollow, its teeth exposed in an eternal grin.
"Let them fear…" he muttered as he fastened it firmly.
"Let them think I am one of them."
But what frightened him the most… was not the monsters.
It was the fog.
He encountered it only once, but it was enough to plant something deep inside him that could never be erased.
That night, the fog crept slowly, thick like spoiled milk.
It was not white… but gray tinged with green, faintly pulsing as if it were breathing.
And with its appearance… the forest went mad.
Every creature that had been hiding, lurking, or watching came out all at once.
Screams, howls, the crashing of bones, the tearing of flesh.
He saw monsters pounce on each other for no reason.
He saw creatures tearing apart their own offspring.
And he saw… what should not be seen.
Some creatures were born from the corpses of their mothers.
The dead body would swell, tear open from the inside, and something would emerge from it… something crawling, covered in blood and pus, rising immediately and beginning to kill.
"What kind of hell is this…" Elia whispered as he hid between the roots of a petrified tree, watching with widened eyes.
But what gave him a strange glimmer of hope… was something else.
A group of corpses that looked human… but were not.
They were not whole.
They were not understandable.
Chunks of flesh rose from the soil.
Arms without bodies.
Legs crawling on their own.
Pieces of chests beating without a visible heart.
They moved toward one another… stuck together… fused… until they formed a massive ball of intertwined flesh, screaming with multiple voices.
Then it rushed toward the monsters.
It fought.
It tore them apart.
It ripped the skins off other creatures one after another.
It covered itself with them, layer upon layer.
And in the end… it turned into a massive gelatinous entity, multi-faced, with no fixed features.
Only then… did he understand.
"This… is its origin."
That gelatinous thing that had tried to swallow him before… was not something that had fallen from the sky.
It was a result.
The result of a forced fusion… a twisted evolution.
"I only need to keep moving without stopping…" he told himself, as if reminding his own soul not to collapse.
Elia continued forward.
And between his heavy steps, he began to think.
His power.
Where had it truly come from?
He remembered the Executioner Crow.
He remembered that moment when he abandoned everything and fought until the very end.
After that… he changed.
But… was this his limit?
If his guess was correct, then what he could reach was far greater.
So far that it might place him on the same level as those who created them in the first place.
But if the path had been easy… he would not have suffered there.
The first rank he reached… had been a life-and-death battle with no guarantees, no certain survival.
"It is truly dangerous…" he muttered, his voice heavier than he intended.
A cold breeze suddenly passed.
Cold in an unnatural way.
A chill that pierced the bones, creeping into the marrow.
Sand scattered around him, so he covered his face with his arm and took a step forward.
Then another step.
Then…
The breeze turned into a storm.
Sand became gravel.
Gravel became stones.
Sharp stones like blades struck his body mercilessly.
He stopped, grabbed a twisted-trunk tree, and dug his fingers into its bark until they bled.
The stones struck his back, his shoulders, his legs.
The pain was violent… but he did not scream.
He clenched his teeth.
He endured.
"I will not… retreat…"
The storm continued as if it were testing him.
Then… suddenly, it stopped.
He fell to his knees, breathing slowly.
"Damn it… that was not a natural storm at all."
Dark marks appeared on his skin, as if the rocks had left their curse in him.
Black patches stretched beneath his flesh like a network of rotten veins.
But he stood up.
He hunted some meat for the road.
Stored it.
Tied it with a belt made from tendons.
The trees began whispering louder than before.
As if the wind came from inside their trunks, not from the sky.
The numbers dwindled.
The forest gradually thinned.
Until the land opened before him.
Mountains.
Towering.
Barren.
And yet… filled with something unseen.
Rivers flowed at their foothills, but the water was dark, as if mixed with blood.
Around them lay the corpses of animals… or things resembling animals.
Twisted bodies, extra limbs, mouths in places where mouths should not exist.
He raised his head.
Beyond the mountains…
The black sun was setting.
A dark disk surrounded by a golden halo, as if mocking light itself.
And opposite it, the moon rose.
A moon… smiling.
A thin glowing curve, like a mocking grin cast upon the world.
Its light fell upon Elia.
Upon the clothes made of hide.
Upon the skull he wore.
Upon the cracked, dried blood covering his body.
He looked like a butcher who had just come out of a massacre.
Then… he saw it.
A wall.
Massive.
Enormous.
Stretching almost without end.
"At last…" the word slipped from between his lips like a confession.
The first sign of civilization.
After days of running without stopping.
Without rest.
Without certainty.
He moved closer.
The forgotten city.
Its walls were surrounded by skulls.
Thousands of corpses knelt before it, piled together, decaying, as if a colossal war had destroyed all sides and left the place emptied of life.
The air here was heavier.
Older.
"Here… was someone's end."
Then he raised his gaze toward the closed gate.
He took a step forward.
Then another.
And the city… was his next destination.