The town was silent now.
Silent, except for the crows.
They had come at dawn, a black storm of wings that settled upon rooftops and lampposts, pecking at the crimson-soaked remains scattered across the square. Their caws echoed like laughter, a cruel chorus that made Miyu's skin crawl.
She sat in the middle of it all, knees to her chest, hair matted with dried blood. Her fingers trembled as they traced the cracks in the cobblestones. Her extra eyes twitched and blinked on their own, restless and unblinking.
She hadn't moved for hours.
Because she was afraid.
Afraid that if she stood, the tendrils would wake again. That the mouths on her back would lash out, eager to feed, eager to rip apart anything within reach.
But the voices—they never rested.
> Why do you cry, Miyu?
We saved you. They wanted to kill you. We killed them first.
She pressed her hands harder against her ears, rocking back and forth.
"Stop… stop talking… you're not real…"
> Not real?
Her own voice. Clear. Soft. Whispering back from behind her.
Slowly, with the dread of someone turning toward their own grave, Miyu glanced over her shoulder. The shadows twisted, forming a vague, distorted mockery of her own face—eyes glowing red, lips curling into a grotesque smile across the tendrils' slick flesh.
> We are you, Miyu.
Her breath hitched. She scrambled backward, only to slip in blood and fall hard on her side. Her fingers sank into something warm—something soft.
She looked down.
A severed hand.
The nails bitten, the knuckles torn. She recognized it—the hand of the mother who had tried to protect her child.
Miyu's scream echoed across the empty town square.
She threw the hand away, gagging, bile burning her throat. She crawled back until her spine struck the cold stone wall of a building. Her extra eyes darted frantically, seeing too much, always too much.
The shadows giggled.
And then they began to whisper things she couldn't ignore.
> Look at them. All the faces staring at you.
Do you see how they judge? Even in death, they hate you.
She turned her head—and the corpses were no longer still.
Every body in the square had shifted. Their eyes—empty, glassy, dead—were all turned toward her. Watching her.
Miyu clutched her head, screaming, her nails digging bloody crescents into her scalp.
"Stop looking at me! Please stop!"
But the eyes would not close.
The mouths on her tendrils stretched wide in gory grins, teeth gnashing. They repeated her own words back at her, warped and cruel:
> "Stop looking at me… stop looking at me…"
Her laughter broke suddenly—sharp, high, painful—tearing from her throat as if her mind had snapped under the weight of the silence, the corpses, the voices.
"Maybe… maybe it's better this way," she whispered, trembling, blood dripping down her face from where she had clawed her skin. "If no one comes near me… no one will die…"
But deep down, she knew the truth.
It wasn't about them.
It was about her.
Because the hunger inside her would never fade. The voices would never leave.
Even if she locked herself away from the world, she would always carry the monster with her.
And worse… she was beginning to believe the monster's voice was her own.