The horizon bled with the sounds of war—groans of the wounded, the roar of explosions.
Kuran ran, his feet slipping in blood and shattered glass, unsure whether he was fleeing death or the monster he'd become.
The last thing he'd seen before escaping was Timo crawling through charred corpses, screaming his name as a storm of shrapnel swallowed him. Then the world exploded, and everything turned to burnt flesh and twisted metal.
His sprint was a freefall into an open hell.
The air reeked of scorched human meat, clinging to his throat like a knife. Heat blistered his eyelids; blood from his wounds slicked his escape route.
The street ahead was a slaughterhouse: scattered limbs, bodies dangling from mangled cars, a headless child still clutching a festival candy. People ran like wounded animals, some collapsing mid-stride as bullets burned through their backs or mines reduced them to pulp.
His feet sank into warm blood, each step a razor's edge. His legs trembled like gutted wires, but he couldn't stop. *Wouldn't* stop.
He slumped against a half-collapsed wall, beneath the headless corpse of a woman whose eyes still stared. He tried to breathe, but his lungs filled with death-dust. Black smoke coiled around the city; flames licked the sky like a starving tongue.
He raised his head with effort, eyes burning from tears and poison gas.
**"Timo..."**
He whispered the name like a wound, but the wind stole it, drowned by fresh explosions.
Then—a memory surfaced:
*His mother, holding his hand that morning, laughing as she handed him...*
*A small pastry.*
Now her corpse rotted under rubble, intestines spilling from a hole in her stomach.
A scream detonated in his skull. No one heard it.
Everything bled. Everything broke.
He crawled forward—or maybe fell. No difference.
His palms split on glass shards embedded in the ground, but the pain never reached his brain.
The city that had danced hours ago was now a slaughterhouse.
Buildings collapsed like sandcastles, streets drowned in lakes of congealed blood, people ran armless, faceless, voiceless.
Then he saw *her*.
**The girl.**
Sitting alone in a ruined alley, surrounded by gutted dolls.
She clutched a eyeless stuffed animal, her own belly split open, a meter of dried intestines coiled beside her. Her eyes were wide, glassy, gleaming like a starved rat's.
**She was eating.**
Her tiny fingers tore at a chunk of unidentifiable meat, blood dripping from her chin as she stared into nothing.
No tears. No movement. Just *chewing*, slow and mechanical, like a feral thing that knew no one was coming.
Kuran froze.
The explosions muted in his ears. All he heard now was the *sound of mastication*.
He stepped toward her, not knowing why. Maybe because she was the only one not screaming.
As he neared, the details sharpened:
Her left fingers were **missing**, the stumps still oozing.
Her blue dress clung to her body, stiff with blood.
She hugged the doll as if convincing herself she was still a child.
He raised a trembling hand, whispering like a dying man:
**"Are... you alone here?"**
The girl lifted her head slowly.
Her eyes held no fear, no grief... just **emptiness**.
Then she opened her mouth—packed with half-chewed meat—and made a **sound**.
Not a cry.
***Laughter.***
A broken, grating laugh, like a rusted hinge.
Behind her, flames began stitching the alley shut like a final curtain. *(Is this...? Is this a child?)*
He stepped closer, his body screaming *run*, but his feet rooted to the ground. Something deeper than horror held him there.
No tears... no fear... even the children now? *(No. No, this can't—)*
He knelt before her, close enough to smell the rot clinging to her skin.
He tried to sound calm, to ignore the nightmare. But inside, he boiled.
*God... what's happening? Why won't she run? Why eat like this?*
He whispered, as if speaking to a nightmare: **"Where's your mom? Your dad? Are they hurt?"**
She pointed a blood-crusted hand toward a nearby corpse—a woman with a burst stomach, shattered skull, features erased under rubble.
Kuran couldn't look. He bit his lip until it bled.
But the girl was serene, as if grief were a language she'd never learned.
Inside him, the concept of *childhood* shattered.
**Childhood—what did it even mean here?** No safety. No innocence. Just another slab of meat in the grinder.
Then, suddenly, the girl *smiled*.
A twisted, eerily innocent smile.
Her voice cracked, as if unused for years:
**"Don't worry... everyone will eat soon!"**
Kuran's blood turned to ice.
*She's insane—no. Not insane. Just this world's reflection. A child who eats, laughs, and points at corpses like they're candy.*
He staggered back, hand over his mouth, eyes locked on her face.
Inside, he drowned in a terror without a name: *(I can't... I can't save this. No one can.)*
As he turned to flee, the girl called out sweetly, licking blood from her fingers:
**"The monsters are coming... I saw them eat my daddy too."**
Then she resumed chewing, as if ending a trivial chat.
Kuran ran.
His feet pounded the blood-slick pavement, each step sending agony up his ruined legs. But he couldn't stop. *Wouldn't* stop.
**Smoke choked the sky.**
**Burnt flesh coated his tongue.**
**The girl stayed behind him.**
*Don't look back. Don't. She's not a child. Can't be.*
But he *heard* her.
Light, rapid footsteps—like nails tapping stone.
*(Is she following me? Why? What does she want?)*
A sharp turn. A corpse trapped under rubble, its outstretched hand nearly brushing his ankle as he sprinted.
*(Mom. Timo. Everyone's dead. Why am I still alive?)*
His chest burned. Air wasn't enough. Each gasp a knife in his ribs.
**But he ran.**
Because stopping meant becoming *prey*.
A corpse.
*Food.*
*(Where's home? Where's left to hide?)*
The buildings around him were skeletons of broken concrete. Shattered windows watched like dead eyes.
Then—
**A scream.**
Not of fear.
***Hunger.***
The girl's voice pierced the dark—high, sharp, a slaughterhouse siren.
*She's hungry. She wants to eat. She wants to eat—*
***Me.***
His legs moved faster. No thought. No logic. Just flight.
Until he reached an open street, where broken lampposts hung like lynched men.
**On the horizon—*light*.**
Not fire.
*A lamp. A car. **Living people.***
Kuran wept suddenly; tears scorched his ashen face.
*(Maybe... maybe they'll help. Maybe they'll kill her.)*
But before he could shout, before he could raise his arms—
The car sped away without stopping.
His hope vanished with its taillights.
Kuran didn't remember losing the girl. Didn't know how his feet led him to this dark alley.
The world swayed and blurred. He could barely lift his head.
The sky above was a sickly red, bleeding with the earth.
His feet tripped over another corpse. He didn't look. Just crawled through debris like a wounded animal seeking shelter, mind chanting one thing:
*"Home... I have to get home."*
Glass shredded his palms. Blood streaked his face. He felt nothing.
In his skull, a single word pulsed like a funeral bell:
*"Mom... Mom... Mom..."*
Buildings collapsed in sudden explosions, showering him with debris.
Men and women stampeded like mad cattle, trampling each other, crushed beneath rogue vehicles.
But Kuran saw only one path: the road home.
Through a narrow street of overturned cars, he recognized the ruins of a shop where he'd bought coffee. Now it was ash, its walls groaning like dying men.
He leaned against a wall, dragged himself forward, stumbling, sometimes crawling.
Then—at the alley's end—a familiar landmark.
The street leading to his house.
There, steps away, lay the remains of the neighborhood he'd known since birth.
Everything was foreign now. Dark. Broken.
Yet inside him, a feeble ember of hope flickered—like a sick child's last breath.
*"Mom... Mom's still there."*
He clenched his jaw and hauled himself forward, toward home...
Toward the truth he dreaded but couldn't escape.
**The road home...**
That path he'd once known by heart...
Now it was a faceless beast, waiting to devour his stumbling steps.
Everything had lost its shape.
No shops. No signs. No familiar voices.
Just ash, smoke... and mutilated corpses arranged like grotesque decorations.
*"Funny... the neighborhood finally rid itself of its usual noise. What a joke."*
Even as he crawled through wreckage, his mind clung to that cold, alien voice—the one that spoke *for* him now, ruthless and clear:
*"The closer you get, the harder it is to breathe. Not from smoke. From knowing: maybe nothing's left. Maybe no one's waiting."*
His feet touched the ground like a ghost's.
The long street to his doorstep stretched eternally, looping like a nightmare.
*Home—how often had he dreamed of returning after some grand adventure?*
*How often had he pictured opening the door to his mother's smile, a cake on the table?*
*"Pathetic... I never knew I cared this much."*
He smiled bitterly, lips barely moving.
Leaned against a tilted lamppost, eyes fixed on the house.
It stood there...
But not as it was.
A burnt facade, shattered walls, windows raining glass and memories.
Black smoke coiled from within, breathing slow, lethal whispers.
*"Go inside... it's pointless. But go."*
He had no strength left.
His legs moved without him.
*(Mom... did you love this house? Would you have stayed, even like this?)*
The smoke thickened as he neared, but his eyes stayed locked on the charred door—
The door he'd opened a thousand times with familiar, thoughtless motions.
He stood on the threshold.
His hand hovered over the scorched knob, fingers trembling—not from fear, but the sudden cold seizing his limbs.
*"Opening it feels like a death sentence."*
He laughed inside, a soundless, bitter laugh.
*(If I were a hero in a book, I'd hesitate now. Then fling it open in some grand, tragic gesture... How absurd.)*
Yet he opened it.
And the world crumbled slower with each step.
The air inside was no different from the hell outside.
Maybe worse.
Here, the smoke was *intimate*, curling around his neck like a lover's chokehold, whispering:
*"You're too late... far too late."*
Every corner held a memory:
The shattered staircase?
The one he'd slid down as a boy, ignoring his mother's scolds.
The cracked wall?
Where his childish drawings once hung—now melted into soot, fossilized screams.
*"Maybe the house wanted this ending... who knows?"*
He muttered it aloud, laughing bitterly, stepping through debris like a man walking into his own coffin.
Explosions rumbled outside, but all he heard was his heartbeat—a hammer striking an empty skull.
As he neared the living room, the air grew thicker. No—not air. *Something else.*
*"This is it. The final scene. I know it. I taste it."*
He stopped behind a broken wall, unable to cross.
But he *saw*.
Amid the wreckage and smoke...
His mother.
Only her back at first, half-collapsed, body pinned to the wall by—
A man. No. A *thing* in human skin.
Clad in the Fifth Kingdom's armor, its face a black-sun metal mask.
Its hand crushed her throat.
Lifted her like a broken doll, her toes barely scraping the ground. Yet her eyes stayed open—defiant, hopeless, unyielding.
*Soldiers know no mercy.* But Kuran didn't see a soldier now...
He saw *damnation* made flesh.
*"How funny... I came to save her, but I can't even breathe."*
His whole body shook.
His legs begged to flee. His heart begged to scream. But everything in him *froze*—
Even time.
The scene played in slow motion, the world turned to thick, suffocating liquid:
*(Mom—)*
He didn't speak. Didn't whisper.
Yet her name tore out of him—a wretched, soundless scream echoing like a tomb's whisper.
Then, without meaning to, he uttered it aloud:
**"Mom...?"**
In that moment, everything froze.
Her head turned slowly. Her swollen eyes widened, recognizing him—broken, bleeding, but *alive*.
The soldier turned too, its hidden gaze spearing Kuran like arrows.
And in that room, every illusion shattered.
Kuran stood stripped—no mask, no strength, no delusion of safety.
It was over.