The wind howled past his ears, mingling with his own ragged gasps. The sound was squeezed and bounced back within the narrow gaps between the shacks, creating an eerie reverb—as if countless versions of himself were in hot pursuit.
Erika was sprinting.
In this passage barely wide enough for one person, crushed stones, dried dung, and broken pottery shards were churned into the black mud. Every time his foot—the one Cole had nearly crushed—hit the ground, a sharp, piercing pain shot up from the sole. Every bone, every muscle protested, as if a dull saw were furiously grinding between the arch of his foot and his shinbone.
But this agony didn't slow his pace. Instead, it kept him brutally awake. The pain hammered his nerves, urging him to flee as far as possible before Cole could react.
He didn't dare look back. He was terrified that if he did, he'd see that dirty white robe blocking the alley mouth. He'd see Cole's ever-smiling face. He'd see that finger—the one that had tilted his chin up, fed him bread—crook slightly towards him… and then he would be unable to move again.
That suffocating feeling of being a plaything, manipulated at someone's whim, was more bone-eroding than hunger. It was harder to endure than the physical pain. Like invisible threads wrapped around his limbs, the harder he struggled, the tighter they bound him.
The night here was impenetrably thick. The sloping eaves on either side nearly met overhead, blocking out the scant moonlight. He could only rely on instinct, fleeing desperately in the opposite direction of that estate.
The alleys of the shantytown were a maze without end. Several times he burst out only to face another dead end, forcing him to hastily retreat into even narrower cracks. Once, he stumbled into a cesspool, icy filthy water filling his boots; he could only scramble out and keep going. He nearly tripped over vagrants huddled at the base of the walls. Those dark figures merely rolled over, letting out a vague grunt or two, treating him as nothing more than a passing night breeze not worth opening an eye for.
Almost there. Just get past the corner of this dead-end alley, cut through the more chaotic part of the shantytown, and ahead would be the ruins—
Right at the moment he thought he'd finally shaken off the nightmare. Right at the instant he was about to burst past the corner—
"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh—!!!"
A blood-curdling, piercing scream—one that simply could not have come from a human throat—exploded without warning right in front of him.
The sound was too close. Close enough to feel like it had detonated right against his face in the darkness. Erika's feet slammed to a halt. His whole body was nailed to the spot by an invisible iron spike, his heart nearly stopping in that instant.
Then came a wave of thick, coppery stench. Mixed with the night's dampness and an indescribable smell of rot, the scent of blood flooded his nostrils from the alley mouth like a tide, choking him, making him retch.
That scream held the absolute despair of being torn apart alive. It felt like a rusted saw viciously dragged across his eardrums, furiously churning inside his skull. He instinctively tried to raise his left hand to cover his ears, but found his whole arm trembling uncontrollably.
He recognized that sound.
That afternoon. That side alley. That crawling, long-haired figure scurrying down the street… it had made this exact cry.
A Crawler.
It was ahead. Right at the front of this alley, just around that corner.
Erika held his breath. It wasn't conscious control; it was fear made tangible. His lungs felt crushed by an invisible hand, all air squeezed out, leaving his chest containing only a heart that felt like it would burst through his ribs. He bit down hard on his lower lip, letting his teeth sink into the flesh, forcibly swallowing the gasp that was about to escape, along with the bloody froth in his mouth.
The sweet, metallic liquid slid down his esophagus, churning nauseatingly with the expensive food in his stomach.
His remaining left hand clawed desperately at the slippery mud wall at the corner. His fingernails dug deep into the filth, gouging five cold, wet grooves. He needed this piercing, icy sensation to prove he was still alive, to anchor his sanity.
Taking advantage of a thin, pale ray of moonlight breaking through the clouds, he peeked half his head around the corner and finally saw what was happening in the dead-end alley.
This wasn't slaughter. It wasn't a beast attack.
It was a punishment infinitely more hair-raising than slaughter.
Two people knelt in the muddy water. A girl of about fifteen or sixteen—it was impossible to tell if her face was covered in mud or tears—was using all her strength to pin a man beneath her.
That agonized scream just now had come from him. But now, he couldn't scream anymore.
Crack… crunch…
The sickening sounds of bones dislocating and splintering came rapidly from within the man's body. Amplified in the dead-silent alley, it sounded like the crunching of dry twigs. Each snap seemed to strike directly against Erika's own bones.
Erika watched, paralyzed, as the man's body convulsed and twisted wildly in the girl's arms, undergoing a distortion that completely defied human biology.
The spine that had supported his upright walking began to bend backward in a horrifying arc. Protruding vertebrae instantly tore through the clothes on his back. With a sickening ripping sound of fabric, pale, mutated skin was exposed. One after another, the vertebrae pushed through flesh and muscle, as if something were trying to violently tear him apart from the inside.
His arms uncontrollably stretched forward, surpassing normal human limits. A dull pop came from his shoulder, followed by a sharp crack at the elbow—the elbow joint was forcefully reversed! The elbow pit, originally facing down, twisted towards the night sky. In the moonlight, his arms contorted into bizarre, insect-like limbs.
"How could this happen…" the girl murmured.
Her voice was low, filled with endless fear and despair. She didn't run. She didn't push away this man who was turning into a monster. Instead, she used her body to desperately press down on his wildly flailing limbs, both hands sealing his mouth shut.
What she feared wasn't the monster before her. It was something else.
"Please, don't make a sound… the night patrol will hear…" Her voice was shattered, trembling. Tears, mixed with mud, dripped onto the man's transforming face.
Yet she comforted him in a tone that was chillingly familiar, "Bear with it a little longer, it'll be over soon… it won't hurt soon…"
As if she had long known this would happen. As if everyone in this slum had long been familiar with this kind of "sickness."
The man's mouth suddenly ripped open. Not opened—torn.
It split directly from the original corners of his mouth all the way to his ears. In the gaping, flesh-rolled wound, teeth, shattered from extreme pain, were visible, piled up in that bloody cavity that could no longer be called a "mouth."
The whites of his eyes rolled back completely, his eyeballs bulging as if about to burst. The last trace of "human" rationality in his pupils, at this moment, completely collapsed. It was replaced by an ultimate, bestial emptiness.
"Grrr… gurgle…"
A low hiss, completely devoid of human vocal characteristics, squeezed out, sounding like some giant insect vibrating its abdomen.
The transformation was complete.
The newborn "Crawler" turned into a black shadow, violently breaking free from the girl's embrace. The body that had been convulsing a second ago was now crouched steadily in the black mud, all four limbs touching the ground with reversed joints. It looked like a giant, deformed spider. Its back arched at an unbelievable angle, long hair trailing in the filth.
It didn't attack the girl.
It just rotated its inhuman head on the spot, letting out a hair-raising hiss, as if adjusting to its new body, or listening for distant sounds.
Then, its limbs forcefully pushed off. With a sudden whoosh, it shot up like a gecko, clinging to the nearly vertical earthen wall. Its limbs moved with terrifying speed, and within seconds, it completely vanished into the depths of the night.
Only the torn clothes were left in the muddy water, crumpled and empty, paralyzed on the ground like a shed, dead skin.
The alley sank back into a deathly silence. This vacuum, sucking away all wind and insect noise, was more oppressive than the bone-cracking sounds just moments ago.
The girl slumped in the mud. She didn't chase after it; she didn't scream. Just slowly, tremblingly bent over, as if each movement drained the last of her life's strength. She picked up the torn clothes from the mud and clutched them tightly to her chest.
Then, she pressed her forehead into the freezing mud and let out a whimper, suppressed to the utmost limit, one that bled from the very soul. The sound was so faint it was almost inaudible, yet every syllable carried flesh and blood, pouring out an unspeakable despair.
Erika froze in the shadow of the corner, his mind entirely blank.
Crawlers.
Those black shadows scurrying down the streets, the ones that drove Darren completely insane, the ones licking food scraps at the stall entrance. The "pets" Cole and Linglong treated with such casual indifference.
All of them were people.
All of them were living, breathing citizens of Darenz, unable even to die in this hell. They weren't monsters. They weren't mutants from the gutter. They were the man who had just been screaming. They were fathers, brothers, neighbors. Every soul struggling in the muck with no way out.
Erika slowly lowered his head.
In the pale moonlight, he looked at the high-quality dark blue soft robe he wore beneath the coarse white one. This fabric was soft as a second skin, gleaming with a gentle luster in the moonlight, exuding expensive incense. It formed a glaring, nauseating contrast with the pitch-black mud and the rags in the girl's arms.
A bone-deep chill shot from the soles of his feet straight through to the top of his skull. It wasn't cold, but the absolute, sobering clarity of finally seeing the complete picture of this purgatory.
Those exquisite meals. The luxurious bath. The specially chosen soft robe. And those words: "Eat, everything on the table is yours."
Cole. Linglong. The laughter from that estate.
What did they know?
They sat in their warm dining room, eating steaks with silver utensils, discussing "pets" in light tones, watching living humans transform into crawling dogs on the ground with amused, doting eyes.
And him.
He had just escaped that estate, escaped from that table. But the ruler's soft robe still clung tightly to him, its scent still lingering on his skin. And those expensive foods, tainted with the flesh and blood of the lowest commoners, still churned in his stomach.
The girl's whimper continued. Piercing the night, passing through the dark alley, each sound hammering violently against his heart.
Erika slowly raised his left hand. That hand, caked with black mud and filth, stopped mid-air, facing the moonlight, like a solitary bird unsure where to land.
Then, he clenched his fist. Hard. His nails dug deep into his palm.
That faint sting was the only thing he could grasp, at this moment in this mad wasteland, that still belonged to a "human."