The sky churned with wings, a black cyclone blotting out the moon. The screeches bled together, piercing, maddening, like metal being dragged across glass. Elias staggered back into the intersection, chest heaving, his shoes sliding on the slick pavement.
Then the screaming began. Human this time.
A car plowed straight into a lamppost with a shriek of twisting metal. Another swerved, crashing broadside. Glass burst across the street in glittering arcs. Horns blared. Engines roared. The sound of panic drowned everything, even the hurricane of wings overhead.
Feathers fell like ash. Black, oily things that clung to Elias's jacket, plastered to his face, stuck to his lips. He spat, gagging, but the stench of iron filled his nose anyway. The whole world smelled like blood before blood had even spilled.
A man burst out of a corner diner, his white apron streaked red. He shoved past Elias with wild eyes, muttering something half-coherent. "It's the end—it's the end—it's the end—" He didn't make it two steps before a crow slammed into his neck. The man gurgled once, hands clawing at his throat, before the flock descended in a black wave.
Elias turned and ran.
The city was unraveling around him. A woman dragged her child down the sidewalk, the boy's sneakers squealing against the wet pavement. A man smashed the display window of a pharmacy with his bare elbow and climbed inside, glass crunching underfoot. A bus tilted at the corner, toppled by the sheer press of panicked bodies trying to cram inside. Its windows spiderwebbed, then burst as arms and faces shoved against them, desperate to escape creatures that had already filled the air.
Sirens howled somewhere in the distance; police, fire, who knew anymore. But their wails were swallowed by the thunder of wings.
"Jesus Christ," Elias muttered, stumbling down the street, not even sure where he was running anymore. His breath sawed in and out of his chest. Keep moving, don't stop, don't think—
And then his phone buzzed in his pocket.
For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating. He froze, blinking, while the chaos tore past him. Slowly, mechanically, his hand went to his jeans. He pulled the phone out, the screen smeared with moisture, and saw the name.
Anna.
His throat closed. His sister's name glowed white against the darkness.
The buzzing rattled against his palm. His thumb hovered. He wanted to swipe. He wanted to hear her voice, just once, even if it was only to curse him for all the times he didn't pick up before.
But his gaze flicked up, and he saw the street.
Bodies. Blood already spilling across the sidewalk in streaks. A man crawling on his stomach, one leg gone below the knee, fingers clawing toward Elias. His lips trembled. "Help—"
Elias's thumb shook. The phone buzzed harder. His chest felt like it was caving in.
"Help me!" The man coughed, red foaming his lips. He reached again, nails scraping wet asphalt.
Elias took half a step toward him. His phone buzzed. Anna's name. The man's hand. His sister's voice. His own lungs screaming.
The crows dropped on the man like a storm. His scream lasted three seconds before it was drowned out by the wet tearing of flesh. Blood sprayed across Elias's shoes, warm and slick.
He bolted. Phone still buzzing in his hand. Anna's name blinking. He didn't answer. Couldn't.
Elias didn't know where his legs were taking him. He cut across the intersection, slipped on the glass of a shattered windshield, shoved himself up with a hand slick with blood that wasn't his. His chest burned. His phone kept buzzing. He jammed it into his pocket like the weight of it was burning through his palm.
The city was collapsing in every direction. No safe streets. No open sky. Just feathers. Screams. Impact after impact of crows hitting pavement, windshields, human flesh. The chaos pressed tighter with every step until he ducked instinctively down a side alley, away from the swarm, away from headlights and sirens.
The alley was a narrow chute between brick walls dripping with rain and shadow. A dumpster overflowed with garbage. The air stank of rot, oil, wet cardboard. It was darker here, the vortex of wings overhead only a dull roar. His shoes splashed in puddles blackened by the strange rain.
For half a heartbeat, Elias thought he'd found a pocket of silence.
Then he saw it.
A crow. One of the fallen ones. Its wing bent at an impossible angle, feathers slick with tar-like rain. It crouched over a corpse, tearing at the stomach with jerking, greedy motions. Wet sounds filled the alley, the rhythm of flesh being tugged loose from bone.
Elias's stomach lurched. He staggered back, a hand flying to his mouth.
But the longer he watched, the worse it got.
The crow wasn't just feeding. It was… merging.
The corpse twitched. Flesh rippled as though something beneath the skin writhed and pushed upward. The crow's body sank into the man's chest cavity like it was crawling into a nest. Bones cracked. Muscles tore. Then snapped back into place.
The man's arms twitched. His hand spasmed against the concrete. His neck jerked at a sickening angle. And then… slowly… the head lifted.
Elias's vision tunneled. His knees threatened to buckle.
The face that turned toward him wasn't a face anymore. Half of it still bore the features of the dead man; blue eyes wide, slack mouth trembling. But the jaw had split down the middle, pulling into a jagged beak rimmed with teeth. A ring of feathers erupted from the skin, slick with blood. The eyes burned now; not blue, not human; hot, coal-red orbs that locked onto Elias.
And then it spoke.
Or something like speech.
A gurgling, broken moan. The sound of human vocal cords tangled with a bird's rasp.
"…E—li—as…"
Elias's stomach heaved. He doubled over, bile stinging his throat. He had never heard his own name sound like that, like something dragged out of a nightmare and stuffed into a body that should've stayed dead.
The thing staggered upright. Its spine lengthened with audible cracks. Its shoulders bulged, splitting open to sprout wings stitched with strips of human skin and feathers. Talons erupted from its fingers.
Elias stumbled backward, shoulder slamming into the alley wall. His breath came in frantic gasps. His palms scraped brick.
The hybrid creature shambled forward. Every step was uneven, as if its body wasn't finished deciding what it wanted to be. Human? Bird? Monster? It didn't matter. It raised its head, opened its torn beak-mouth, and screamed.
The sound split the night. A human scream twisted with a crow's caw. Piercing. Wrong. The windows above the alley rattled.
"Shit—shit—shit—" Elias turned and ran, every nerve screaming. His shoes skidded on the wet concrete. Behind him, claws scraped the ground, uneven wings flapped against the walls.
He didn't look back again. He couldn't.
Not when he could still hear it calling his name.
Elias burst out of the alley, lungs on fire, legs threatening to buckle beneath him. His ears rang with the distorted echo of his name, still bleeding from the creature's ruined throat. He didn't know how far he'd run. He didn't know if it was still chasing him. He just knew he had to move.
His eyes snagged on the yellow glow of a convenience store sign, half the letters flickering dead. The glass door was half-open, a flicker of movement inside. Elias didn't think. He lunged across the street, nearly tripping over a toppled bicycle, and shoved his way in.
Hands grabbed him instantly, yanking him inside.
"Get down! Quiet!" a harsh whisper cut the air.
The door slammed shut behind him, followed by the heavy screech of metal shelves dragged across the entrance. A crunch of glass signaled someone had shoved broken bottles into the cracks at the bottom, a makeshift barricade. Elias crouched, chest heaving, and for the first time since the black rain began, he saw other faces.
Four of them.
A woman clutching a little girl, her arms locked so tight around the child that the girl's face was pressed into her chest, gasping for air. A boy—no, young man, maybe college age, clutching a baseball bat like he expected it to shatter in his hands. His eyes were wide, whites glowing in the dim light, jaw trembling as if he'd forgotten how to keep it closed.
And a man slumped against a rack of instant noodles. His shirt was soaked red at the side, one hand pressed weakly against the wound. The smell of blood already soured the air.
The one who'd pulled Elias in was an older man with deep creases on his forehead and a stare sharp enough to slice. He kept his hands braced against the barricade, as though his strength alone was the wall holding the outside world at bay.
Elias's voice came out hoarse. "What the hell—what are you doing—"
"Shut up." The older man's eyes never left the door. "Noise brings them."
Elias froze. His throat bobbed with words he couldn't push out.
The boy with the bat swallowed. "What's… what's out there? Are they still out there?"
Elias's didn't want to answer. He didn't want to say he'd seen a man's face tear into a beak. That the thing had moaned his name like a prayer. He shook his head instead, which was neither yes nor no, but enough to quiet the boy.
The silence weighed down on them. Only the sound of rain; thick, black drops hammering the roof, filled the room.
The woman whispered against her daughter's hair. "It's gonna be okay, baby. It's gonna be okay." The words were brittle, every syllable on the verge of breaking.
The injured man groaned, shifting, blood seeping through his fingers. "We need… we need a doctor. Anyone here…?"
No one moved. No one answered.
Elias realized his own hands were still shaking violently. He clenched them against his jeans, trying to still them, but the tremors only burrowed deeper. He wasn't a doctor. He wasn't anything. He was just a man who'd run.
A faint plip.
Elias flinched.
Another plip. Something wet on his hand.
He looked down. A smear of red. Blood.
His head tilted upward slowly.
On the ceiling above him, a crack ran along the plaster. From it, thick drops of blood trickled down, one after another. His breath hitched as he tracked the slow, steady drip.
And then, a feather slipped through the crack. Black, slick, curling as it floated down to land across his knuckles.
Elias yanked his hand back like he'd touched a live wire. "Up there," he rasped, pointing with a shaking finger.
The boy with the bat followed his gaze. His mouth dropped open.
A sound split the quiet.
The rasp of claws against wood. The creak of beams shifting under weight.
Then glass shattered upstairs.
The little girl whimpered, pressing her face into her mother's chest.
Everyone froze. The older man's knuckles went white against the shelf he was holding.
Elias's heart drummed loud enough he thought the others must hear it. His eyes locked on the ceiling.
Then the window at the front burst inward. Shards rained across the floor.
Something climbed through.
Not a crow. Not like the others.
This one's chest glowed with jagged, crystalline shards embedded deep into its breast, each shard pulsing red like molten veins. Its wings stretched unnaturally wide, feathers gleaming as sharp as blades, edges smoking. Every movement crackled with a faint hiss, as if its body was burning itself alive.
It screeched. The shelves rattled. The bottles clinked.
Elias flinched as the thing's molten eyes locked on him.
And then it dove.