Encircled by countless creatures emerging from the fog, Altair kept his gaze ahead.
Staring into the hollow face of the shade, flickering in and out of existence, as it slowly raised a finger to point at him.
His ears buzzed louder.
His instincts screamed at him to move.
Yet his body remained frozen.
Altair had no intention of moving.
The situation was dire, yet the convicts fought back against the creatures with tooth and nail. Even if they were sent down here to die, they still had a chance to buy back their freedom.
But he didn't fight for it.
To him, time felt as if it slowed down.
For a fleeting second, he found himself hoping that in his final moments, he would see his life flashing before his eyes.
Yet he saw nothing.
Nothing but the caved-in head of the shade, preparing itself to kill him.
"Get down!"
A loud shout resounded from the left side of Altair, its source colliding with the latter, pushing him to the ground.
The shade's arm was unflinching, still pointing in the same direction, but Altair was no longer in its crosshairs.
A convict, trying to push away a creature lunging at him from the fog, let out a groan.
Before he could have even cried for help, his head twisted violently, and the only sound heard was the one his bones snapping had made.
"What the hell were you thinking, just standing still? We need to leave the beach, now!" Barked the convict while pulling Altair from the ground amid the chaos.
"Hunter?"
The convict called Hunter simply grabbed Altair by his hands and started running.
"Nice seeing you again, too, buddy, but we can talk later—right now, we need to move and regroup with Butcher."
Hunter shouted back, his voice barely audible amidst the cacophony of despairing shouts.
The boundless fog felt even thicker as they ran away from the beach, barely able to see ahead.
Back on the beach, the noise slowly died down as the shade made its first step on the blackened sands, met with countless empty eyes hidden behind masks made of bone.
The screams grew sparse; only the creatures in bone masks remained standing, standing in the way of the shade.
There were no words exchanged, not even a sound mound. The shade simply raised its hand.
Those that survived the initial wave of fog creatures ran deeper into the lawless abyss region, fleeing the beach of the Dead Waters.
After close to five minutes of running, Altair and Hunter slowed down to catch their breath.
"We made initial plans with Butcher on whether we wanted to survive. There is a large, destroyed building that's almost twenty stories tall." Explained Hunter, whose expression crumbled the moment he looked around.
"I can't see shit in this fog…"
"It periodically clears up."
Said Altair with a flat tone, glancing around at what seemed like the remnants of city streets now consumed by fog.
Hunter only nodded; they had to remain vigilant to evade the pursuing creatures of the fog.
The roads were cobblestone, but large sections were missing or fractured, and the buildings stood in ruins, overgrown with various weeds—some even native to the fog itself.
The two hid in one of the crumbled buildings with the least amount of vegetation and waited silently until the fog cleared up.
While the two waited silently, Altair took his time to observe Hunter from the corner of his eye.
His orange jumpsuit was torn and stained with blood, his neck length, brown hair were disheveled and dirty, while his blue eyes had exhaustion written all over them.
From his memory, Altair remembered a tall figure with a large frame, but the Hunter in front of him had lost a considerable amount of muscle mass after his capture.
Letting out an exhausted heave, Hunter turned towards Altair with a somewhat puzzled expression.
"How the hell did they catch you?"
Altair only showed him a disinterested look; he had no intention of revealing that to the bloodthirsty criminal sitting in front of him. Instead, he changed the subject to something that has been bothering him ever since the attack on the beach.
"The fog creatures…" he remembered their absurd number. "They don't hunt in groups, except—"
"A shepherd class?" Hunter interrupted Altair, but he paid no mind to it, only silently nodding in acknowledgment.
Hunter fell silent, the air around him turned gloomy. Just the appearance of a shepherd class made him loose confidence in their survival.
In a couple of minutes, the fog cleared up slightly, enough to see the silhouette of the large building that was supposed to serve as their rendezvous point.
Tacitly, the two got up from the ground and began to make their way towards the large building through the rubble, neither of them daring to openly step onto the streets.
Traversing the rubble was difficult and time-consuming, but it was the safest overall option.
"…!"
Hunter abruptly stopped in his tracks, holding a fist up. Someone else was also there.
Initially, even with the fog mostly cleared up, they only saw a vague silhouette making its way through the rubble, heading to the same destination as the two.
'Could it be, Butcher?" Hopeful, Hunter was about to call out, but stopped himself.
It was clearly the outline of a human.
It also wore the same orange jumpsuit as the rest of them.
Except for one glaring difference.
The convict had antlers.
The convict's face was replaced with a skeletal mask, showing the skull of a stag.
While the mask itself was ivory white, its large antlers were ebony black. It walked through the rubble without noticing the two.
Behind it, more followed. Initially, they were walking towards the large building before their ears perked up.
Hunter felt his blood freeze over when he felt the gazes of the Shepherd's puppets turn their attention to the building they hid in.
Hiding behind one of the toppled drawers, Hunter simply watched Altair hiding behind the wall. He was too far from a suitable hiding spot.
Through the broken window, the skeletal face of a stag leaned inside, its huge ebony antler inches away from Altair's eyes.
Hunter watched in terror as Altair simply stood still, holding his breath to stop the stag-like puppets from noticing him.
The closer it loomed to Altair, the tenser Hunter became.
Should we fight them off if push comes to shove? Could we even take down this many puppets of a shepherd? Full of doubt, Hunter felt his heart accelerate, so much so that he was terrified the puppets would hear it.
From the corner of his eye, all Altair saw was the sharp end of the ebony antler, inches away from his right eye.
One wrong movement, and he was about to end up blind.
Letting out a blossoming vapor in the cold, the breath of the stag smelled like the stench of a rotting corpse.
But even so, Altair didn't make a sound.
The ears of the stags perked up once more, but this time, it was from a sound that even Hunter and Altair could hear.
They were the sounds of an explosion.
Pulling its head out of the window, the stag turned its attention to the large building far away, a black smoke high in the air.
Without further inspecting the crumbled building, they all rushed toward the source of the smoke, leaving Hunter gasping for air and Altair calmly brushing dust off the shoulder of his orange jumpsuit.
"Oh, thank god they left, my heart was about to give out." Hunter heaved a sigh of relief while getting up from the ground, turning to Altair.
But the latter's focus was on the source of the smoke, which he could see even through the thick fog.
"Let's follow them."
"Are you fucking crazy?"
Altair simply looked back at Hunter with a blank expression, "What if Butcher is there?"
"Then he's dead, too bad, so sad, I will miss him terribly." Hunter simply raised both of his hands with a shrug.
"I need to talk with Butcher."
With that, Altair left the collapsed building and began to make his way towards the source of the fire. Behind him, Hunter stared at him with a dumbfounded expression.
"…"
Holding back a curse, Hunter followed behind, the two of them disappearing in the fog before arriving in front of the original rendezvous point.
There was no one in the close vicinity of the building, but the source of the fire wasn't far away.
Whatever caused the fire was found by the puppets of the Shepherd.
As he drew closer, Altair came face-to-face with the source of the bright red flames—one of the bone-masked convicts, engulfed in fire, the flames crackling over its lifeless carcass.
Looking around, Altair failed to see more of the puppets, even though they all rushed here even before them. By the time the realization hit him, it was too late.
The two convicts spotted Altair and Hunter, too, but before either of the sides could call out to one another, something around them started to move.
Even with the visibility improving as the fog partially cleared up, the large building that was supposed to be their original rendezvous point was still obscured by the veil of fog.
The silhouette of this towering building slowly shifted into something that no longer resembled its original shape; its shape morphed into something conical.
Smaller shapes breaking out of the top of it, branching out in every direction.
Altair simply wordlessly watched as the area around them sifted from the ruins of the city into the domain of a shepherd—even the smallest weed growing out from the broken pavement grew into lush bushes while the roads were overtaken by a field of grass.
Yet, even as the world around them shifted, they only had their eyes on one thing.
At the bottom of the colossal tree, the vague silhouette of a stag became visible through the fog.
Staring back at them.