Chapter 4
The parking lot outside shook violently. Elias slammed against the driver's door, the seatbelt digging into his shoulder as the car lurched like a toy.
"What the f*ck is going on?!" Panic etched in his voice was raw. He white-knuckled the steering wheel under his sweating palms.
Outside, beyond the dusty windshield, the world was tearing apart. On the road bordering the lot, the asphalt heaved upward with a deep, grinding groan.
Jagged cracks snaked across the pavement like black lightning, spitting plumes of grit into the air.
Terror surged into Elias's mind. Elias jammed the key into the ignition, and his hand was trembling. The old engine coughed, sputtered, and died with a sickening wheeze.
"Come on, Come on! Start! Don't fail me now!" he yelled, slamming his fist on the dashboard. It needed time, precious seconds that he didn't have.
The thing growing beneath the ground surged upward was fast, a dark shadow swelling beneath the cracking ground.
He abandoned the car in the parking lot, shoving the stiff door open. The unstable ground vibrated under his worn sneakers as he sprinted towards the distant mall entrance, his legs already burning.
He wasn't fit; each gasping breath scraped his throat raw. He'd parked deep in the deserted employee section, the entrance was a terrifyingly long stretch of open ground away.
Behind him, the earth roared. A sound like mountains tearing apart filled the air.
Risking a glance back, Elias saw nightmare made real: immense, obsidian-black spikes erupting violently from the shattered ground.
They shredded parked cars like tin cans, the shriek of rending metal mingling with the acrid stench of spilled gasoline and hot oil.
The structure surged upward, a jagged mountain swallowing the parking lot whole, growing with terrifying speed, casting a long, cold shadow over him.
Gasping, his lungs were on fire, Elias stumbled through the mall's glass doors into the relative stillness of the entrance.
He doubled over, sweat stinging his eyes, his breath coming in ragged, hot gasps that tasted the dust and exhaustion. He wiped his mouth, and his hands were trembling uncontrollably. Turning his head, he stared in numb horror.
The spiky structure dominated the broken skyline, easily as long as ten football stadiums, towering a thousand meters into the air.
It was a colossal, chaotic bundle of glistening, rocky spears, sharp as broken glass.
Some leaned precariously, creating shadowed, cathedral-like gaps near its base that offered a terrifying glimpse of the ruined ground beneath, like crude exits from hell.
Then, the sunlight suddenly died. He looked up, a cold dread washing over him. The sky was swiftly smothered by thick, unnatural clouds boiling across the sun like spilled ink, plunging the shattered world into a deep, silent darkness.
The air turned abruptly colder, carrying the electric smell of an impending storm.