Content Warning — Gore & Psychological Horror
This chapter contains graphic imagery, unsettling
themes, and intense scenes that may disturb sensitive readers.
If you're uncomfortable with blood, violent
descriptions, or horror elements, it's strongly advised to skip this section or proceed with caution.
Reader discretion is highly recommended.
The passengers had fallen into a heavy, suffocating silence—
not out of calm, but out of instinct.
Everyone knew that too much noise after dark was an invitation.
An invitation for something they didn't dare name.
Parents clutched their little ones tightly, shielding them with trembling arms. Couples sat shoulder-to-shoulder, hands intertwined, struggling to hold back fear with whatever warmth they could offer each other. The air inside the carriage was thick—fear had a taste, and tonight, everyone could feel it on their tongues.
"How much longer do we have to wait?" a man at the front finally snapped, pounding both palms against the conductor's door. The metallic thud echoed through the cabin like a warning shot. "It's been thirty damn minutes! No rescue team takes this long!"
His frustration spilled over, and he slammed the wall beside the panel again, each strike harder than the last. The conductor spun toward him with a glare sharp enough to cut.
"If you keep freaking out like that," he hissed, "it's not going to make them arrive any faster. And you're going to get us killed. All of us." His voice dropped into a tense whisper. "Do you want them to hear us? You think they won't come running if you keep pounding like a lunatic?"
The words hit the man harder than any shove.
Not because they were cruel—but because they were true.
The cabin collectively understood it: panic wouldn't save them.
Noise wouldn't save them.
Nothing would, except time and silence.
The conductor exhaled shakily, trying to keep his own fear from cracking his voice. "And let's be realistic here," he continued, lowering the volume. "We're stranded in the worst damn place possible. The nearest town is several kilometers away. There's nothing out here but woods and open plains, miles of track and no cover. If we stepped outside now, we'd be exposed—with no lights, no buildings, no roads, nothing."
His hands tightened on the edge of the control panel.
"We're sitting in the middle of nowhere… completely isolated. If something wants to find us out here, it will."
The passengers held their breath.
Outside, the night pressed against the windows like a living thing.
An older man, his posture bent slightly with age and experience, stepped forward from the crowd. His voice carried the weight of someone who had lived through too much of Aoshima's recent nightmares.
"We're already standing at the edge of our fate," he murmured, not with panic, but with a grim acceptance. "Keeping this noise up… arguing, shouting—none of it will save us. All it will do is draw their attention faster."
He rested a steady, weathered hand on the agitated man's shoulder, his touch firm but not unkind.
"Listen to me," he said, lowering his voice further. "These things—whatever they truly are—once they mark someone as prey, it becomes inevitable. They don't lose the trail. They don't give up. We've all heard the stories. The best any of us can hope for now is to keep quiet, keep calm, and hope fate shows mercy."
The passengers around him hung onto every word, his solemn tone sinking into their bones.
He continued, voice grave and deliberate.
"Everyone in this carriage is in danger tonight. Great danger. And if we provoke them—if we panic, if we lash out, if we make ourselves louder targets—we'll only be feeding the wolves before they even reach the door."
His gaze drifted toward the dark windows, as if he half-expected something to stare back.
"So for the sake of the little ones, and for every soul in this train… hold yourselves together. Fear is natural. But recklessness?" He shook his head slowly. "Recklessness will get us all killed."
The man beside him swallowed hard and lowered his hands.
Silence reclaimed the cabin once more.
Without warning, the train lurched violently, a deep shudder rippling through every carriage. The floor trembled beneath their feet, the windows rattled in their frames, and a harsh metallic groan echoed through the walls as if the entire structure were being twisted in invisible hands.
Gasps broke the silence. Dozens of heads snapped upward.
"What was that…?"
"Are we—are we moving again?"
Hope flickered desperately in their voices, fragile and short-lived. For a heartbeat, many clung to the belief that the nightmare was ending, that the train had somehow come back to life.
But the truth settled quickly.
The wheels hadn't turned.
The engine was dead.
The train remained frozen on the tracks, incapable of taking even a single breath forward.
Whatever shook them—it wasn't mechanical.
"Maybe… maybe it was an earthquake?" one man suggested, trying to steady his trembling voice. He forced out a weak laugh meant to comfort himself and those near him, but it only cracked under the weight of rising fear.
Because deep down, everyone knew:
Earthquakes didn't sound like metal screaming under pressure.
And they didn't come from a single, focused point beneath a train stranded in the middle of nowhere.
The violent rumble silenced the cabin far more effectively than any warning could. Panic didn't erupt—
it froze.
People went numb, stiffening as the weight of dread settled over them like a heavy, suffocating blanket.
The elderly man lifted a single finger to his lips, his expression stern and uncompromising.
"Not a sound," he whispered harshly. "None of you speak. Not a single voice. Not even a breath louder than a whisper."
Men, women, children—every soul in the carriage obeyed.
Because in that tone, in the trembling certainty behind his words, they understood.
"One sound," he continued, voice barely above air, "and this carriage turns into a feast table."
Before anyone could react, strange movements began to appear just outside the windows—
blurry distortions gliding past, like ripples sliding through the night air.
Shapes without form.
Presence without bodies.
Something unseen, circling with intent.
Then more emerged.
Not one.
Not two.
But several—drifting around the train in silent, unnerving patterns, closing in like predators tracing the heartbeat of their prey.
A woman, trembling despite her effort to stay composed, mouthed a whisper so fragile it nearly dissolved in the air.
"They're here…"
Her voice was so soft, so brittle, that no one should have heard it.
But the night outside the train seemed to tilt—
as if something had.
The distortions clung persistently to the train—sliding along the walls, skimming across the windows, drifting over the roof like invisible creatures tracing the metal with hungry curiosity. Above them, heavy footsteps thudded against the ceiling, stiff and uneven, moving in rapid, unpredictable bursts. The sound alone made the passengers snap their gazes upward, eyes wide, following the erratic path of whatever clawed its way across the roof.
Then came a sound that drove ice through their veins—a thin, piercing screech that echoed through the carriage like metal being dragged across bone. It was shrill, grating, almost painful to human ears. People flinched instinctively, palms flying to cover their own ears and those of their children.
Another roar followed—low, guttural, vibrating through the walls.
Then a rasping growl that rolled across the ceiling.
And finally, another screech—sharper, closer, unmistakably deliberate.
The movements intensified.
Something slammed against the side of the train.
Then again.
Each impact made the carriages jolt violently, metal groaning under the pressure. It felt as if unseen bodies were testing the structure—pounding, slumping, pressing heavy force onto the walls, looking for a weak point.
With every thud, every quiver of the floor beneath them, the passengers knew:
Whatever circled the train wasn't simply passing by.
It was hunting.
But then—
as suddenly as they had begun—
the noises stopped.
The pounding ceased.
The footsteps faded.
The screeches dissolved into the night.
One by one, the distortions outside flickered and thinned, slipping away from the windows until nothing remained but darkness and the hollow reflection of the passengers inside. The oppressive weight in the air lifted just enough for people to breathe again.
A shared realization washed through the cabin:
They'd survived.
Or at least… it seemed that way.
Relief spread cautiously, trembling at first, then stronger as hope tried to reassemble itself inside each frightened heart. Whispered prayers, shaky exhales, and grateful tears filled the silence the creatures left behind.
And then—
of course—
there was him.
A man, drunk beyond reason, staggered out of his seat. His steps wobbled, his unfocused gaze drifting lazily across the frightened passengers. A sloppy grin hung on his face, utterly disconnected from the terror everyone else felt.
He hiccuped loudly and spread his arms wide.
"Oh, come on, seriously?" he slurred. "You're all scared of some ghost wind? Hah! What a joke!"
Everyone froze in horror.
But he kept going.
"We're fine! See? They left! If anything wanted to eat us, it would've done it already! Hell, I bet they ran off 'cause I'm too handsome for 'em!" He laughed, a loud, obnoxious bark that echoed through the carriage. "Relax! Go on, scream, shout, sing—doesn't matter! They ain't comin' back!"
People motioned frantically for him to stop—hands slicing across their throats in warning, some shaking their heads violently, others whispering harshly for him to shut up.
But the drunk man puffed his chest out and shouted even louder:
"HEY! YOU HEAR THAT, YOU UGLY BASTARDS OUT THERE—WE'RE STILL HERE!"
Chaos erupted instantly.
"Shut him up!"
"Grab him—quiet him down!"
"He's going to get us killed!"
"Sit him down before they hear!"
"Are you insane?!"
Fear surged back through the cabin like wildfire.
Because everyone knew—
Silence didn't mean safety.
Not out here.
Not tonight.
And noise… noise was an invitation.
And that invitation was accepted.
It came not with footsteps, not with warnings, but with a sound that seemed to tear the sky open.
A shriek—high, metallic, unearthly—ripped through the night.
A second followed, sharper, vibrating every bolt of the train.
A third screech spiraled in pitch until the windows themselves began to tremble.
Then the world burst.
One window shattered—
then the next—
then all of them, one after another, in a violent domino of destruction.
Glass erupted inward like a storm of razors. Shards didn't merely cut—they embedded, burying themselves in skin, sinking into forearms, cheeks, shoulders, throats. Blood sprayed across seats and walls, fine mist drifting in the air like crimson powder.
People screamed as their faces split open.
Children fell to the floor, their hands over their heads, their mothers shielding them with trembling bodies.
A man staggered back with a shard lodged deep in his eye socket, shrieking until he collapsed.
And through the shattered remains of the train's windows came the shapes.
The distortions surged forward—sliding, writhing, warping reality as they slipped inside. They didn't walk or crawl. They simply appeared, like half-formed nightmares glitching through existence.
The first to die was the drunk.
He stood closest to the blown-out window, still blinking stupidly at the glass that had exploded around him. A sick grin lingered on his lips—one last remnant of his earlier bravado.
Something invisible hooked into his rib cage.
His body arched unnaturally, lifted clean off the ground.
He barely even gasped before he was pulled forward—
half outside the train—
spine bending backward as though ready to snap.
And then it did.
His torso ripped open with a wet, splitting sound.
Muscle peeled apart like fabric soaking in water.
Ribs snapped outward like jagged ivory wings.
His guts spilled onto the floor in coiled ropes—steaming, pulsing, the stench of iron flooding the cabin instantly.
His lower half was snatched upward and dragged out of the train, leaving a slick smear of blood across the window frame. His upper body dropped to the floor with a fleshy thud, twitching for several seconds before falling still.
Then the distortions attacked everyone.
One slammed onto the ceiling, denting it outward before descending like a hammer. A man beneath it convulsed as unseen claws tore into his shoulders—lifting him upward until his bones cracked from the pressure. His spine snapped with a sound that silenced everyone within earshot.
Another distortion rushed through the aisle, nothing more than a warped blur. Wherever it passed, people's skin tore open as if slashed by multiple blades. A woman's throat opened in a perfect crescent, blood jetting across the seats like a fountain. She collapsed over her child, whose face was painted red instantly.
A father shielding his daughter screamed as an invisible weight crushed down on his back—shattering vertebrae, folding him until his chest caved inward. His daughter's shrill cries echoed beneath him, muffled by his collapsing body.
A young couple grasped each other's hands, clinging desperately—
but something grabbed them from opposite directions.
Their arms stretched—stretching, stretching—until the tendons snapped and one was pulled through the left window while the other slammed into the right wall with bone-splitting force.
People tried to run.
Some tried to crawl.
Some simply curled into balls, waiting for pain.
It didn't matter.
The distortions were everywhere.
They slammed against walls, making the metal buckle.
They scraped across the ceiling, leaving trails of dents shaped like claws.
They flung bodies like rag dolls—some into windows, some into each other, some in pieces.
The floor became slick.
Warm.
Sticky.
Bodies piled atop each other—twitching, crying, or unnervingly silent.
A man gagged as he slipped in the pooling blood, falling face-first into what remained of someone's arm. He screamed, scrambling back, but something slammed him against the wall and held him there. His chest compressed inward until the bone cracked like dry wood. Blood sprayed from his mouth in thick bursts before he went limp.
In the center of the chaos, the elder, trembling but lucid, whispered:
"They've accepted the offering we gave them…"
He closed his eyes as the shadows warped around him.
"And now they feed."
The elder stood amidst the chaos, blood dripping down his cheek from shrapnel he hadn't even bothered to remove. His trembling voice faded into the screams around him as the distortions swarmed overhead.
He lifted his head, as if accepting his fate.
That's when the nearest distortion solidified—just enough to take shape. Just enough for a shadow of its intent to become visible.
A pair of blurred points hovered before his face.
Then—
stab.
The elder's eyes were punctured cleanly, perfectly, as though plucked out by invisible talons.
He staggered, blood streaming down his cheeks like dark tears, his mouth open but voiceless.
His hands clawed instinctively at his ruined face, but he couldn't even touch the thing devouring him.
Another distortion sliced downward.
His body split from shoulder to waist—
a smooth, horrific cut that sent his upper torso sliding off his lower half like butchered meat.
He collapsed in two separate pieces, spilling onto the blood-soaked floor.
The creatures shrieked—this time in unison.
And the entire train responded.
A tremendous force slammed into the side of the carriage, tilting it violently. Seats tore from the floor. Bodies flew across the cabin, slamming into walls, windows, one another.
Then a second impact—harder.
The train pitched fully off its rails.
Screams swallowed each other as the metal behemoth tipped, scraped, and finally rolled down the steep embankment beside the tracks. Carriages crumpled and bent, windows shattering anew, bodies tumbling like lifeless dolls.
As the first carriage flipped, a woman was thrown upward, neck snapping on impact.
A man flew out a broken window and hit the ground far below in a twisted heap.
Children's cries dissolved beneath crushing metal.
The conductor barely had time to scream.
The control cabin crushed inward as the train rolled, the roof shearing downward in a single brutal motion. He raised an arm—reflex, futile—before the collapsing metal slammed him onto the console. His ribs imploded beneath the weight.
Then a massive shard of window glass, loosened during the fall, plunged downward like a spear.
It drove through his chest, pinning him to the wreckage.
He twitched once, blood bubbling from his lips, before going still.
The carcass of the train finally skidded to a stop on its side, smoke and dust billowing into the night. Twisted metal groaned under its own weight. Faint, dying screams echoed from inside the mangled wreckage.
Then—
silence.
Only the distortions remained, drifting across the ruined steel like vultures searching for any survivors worth finishing.
And the darkness swallowed the last remnants of Aoshima's doomed train.
To be continued...