Talia shook her head, her eyes wide, breath caught somewhere between panic and disbelief.
The rifle butt struck her ribs with a dull, heavy force. The sound left her mouth as a broken cry as she fell backward onto the ground, the air driven from her lungs.
The soldier followed immediately, his weight pressing down as he straddled her, one knee grinding into her stomach until she could barely breathe.
His hand caught in her clothing and wrenched upward, exposing her skin to the cold night air as she struggled beneath him, the reeds around them whispering uselessly in the dark.
She tried to curl inward, but he forced her hands out. His other hand hovered above her chest, fingers curling.
There was nothing human left in his eyes. No hesitation, no shame, just a dull, feral shine.
But the hand never reached the delicate skin. Instead, fountains of blood sprouted from the soldier's neck where the head should have been just a moment ago.
The decapitated body collapsed on top of Talia, twitching.
Blood poured in a thick curtain, dark and heavy, splattering across Talia's face and the soldier kneeling in front, pinning her hands down.
He stumbled back, staring at Ethan holding his teammate's severed head.
Nobody moved at first. The world held its breath. Then Talia's scream cut through the silence like a knife, raw and terrified.
Soldiers snapped around, rifles rising. One shouted, "Scheiße, Feuer, Feuer!" Another roared, "Erschieß ihn!" A volley cracked through the air, but Ethan had vanished before the bullets reached him.
The only thing left in that spot was drifting dust and a head.
He reappeared beside the soldier near Rivka, the one still yanking his pants up in panic. The man's eyes bulged as he stumbled backward, cursing, "Was ist das? Was ist er?"
Ethan raised a fist, ready to punch him hard enough to break bone, but the gear on the man's chest glinted, thick and solid iron plates.
He shifted his aim toward the head, trying to knock out the bastard.
But something else took control.
His nails lengthened into curved blades. His fingers stretched, joints cracking. Veins swelled beneath his skin, pulsing with a fierce light.
The arm lashed forward as if some instinct had seized him, driving it through armor, flesh and ribs with no resistance at all.
Blood splashed warm across the forearm as the fingers closed around something beating and alive.
The soldier gagged on a scream, whispering, "Mein Gott… nein…"
Ethan pulled back in shock, staring at the heart throbbing between his fingers. For a moment, the world dimmed around him.
That still-beating heart in his hand… It should have disgusted him, but its smell rose in gentle waves, sweet and metallic, almost fruity, as if the heart itself were whispering to him.
"TASTE ME."
The idea should have revolted him. It should have made him gag. Instead, his mouth watered.
It felt like holding a cracked watermelon on a hot day, the scent rising warm and sticky. The heart pulsed again, and Ethan felt something inside him pulse back.
The soldier saw his own heart and collapsed with a strangled gasp, eyes wide open with disbelief.
The other soldiers' morale broke immediately. One shrieked, "Monster! Weg hier!" Another screamed, "Renn, renn, renn!" Boots pounded the dirt as they scattered in every direction, yelling over each other in blind terror.
Shmuel stopped applying pressure to Baruch's wound.
Rivka, still half naked, froze on the ground.
The children started crying.
Ethan barely registered the voices around him. His attention remained fixed on the bleeding heart, on the slow, vivid pulse of it.
The sweetness tugging at him was impossible to ignore. He knew it was wrong. He knew it should have repulsed him. Instead, it settled somewhere deep and unsettling, and he did not look away.
He liked it.
That realization did not arrive with panic or shame. It came quietly, carried on a warmth that spread through his thoughts. A red haze crept into his vision, softening the edges of the world, curling inward like drifting cotton candy. His mind felt loose, buoyant. The air itself seemed sweet on his tongue.
Somewhere within that haze, footsteps reached him. Soldiers moving closer, their boots striking the ground in steady rhythm, each step echoing through his skull like a distant drum.
He remembered, dimly, that he had intended to hurt them. That they were supposed to make him angry.
But the rage never came.
There was only a lightness in his chest, and a simple, almost childish satisfaction at having something to run after. Something to hunt.
He moved toward them without realizing, gliding through the red fog. One soldier tripped in the sand, screaming "Bitte nein, bitte…" before Ethan appeared beside him and delivered a chop to his neck.
The man burst apart in a spray of bright red confetti, pieces fluttering down.
Ethan's perspective rose suddenly, drifting high above the landscape like a floating spirit. He saw another soldier sprinting across the field, tiny legs pumping.
Ethan dropped back to the ground in front of him, tapped the helmet with a lazy slap, and watched the body explode into shimmering red fragments. To the next target…
When the last scream faded, Ethan stood alone in the sweetness of it all. His heartbeat blended with the taste of watermelon juice still blooming on his tongue.
The haze receded slowly, leaving him shaky, buzzing, half drunk on the violence.
He returned to the refugees. They stared at him as if he wasn't human anymore. He looked at them and let out a soft, dazed laugh, wondering if they would burst the same way if he touched them.
The thought slid across his mind like silk, wrong in every way, yet strangely delightful.
Then the world turned dark for a moment.
His vision cleared next, the red haze thinning until it evaporated completely. He looked down at his hands just in time to watch the claws slide back under his skin, disappearing as if they had never existed. The veins that had bulged moments ago settled beneath the surface, pulsing with a human rhythm again. Confusion poured in fast and heavy.
"What is this?" he whispered to himself. "Polymorphism? But how? Is it the Aeternum Serum?"
The question tugged open another memory. He thought back to the claw marks on the bodies in the camp, the savage bite wounds on the dead, the torn tendons and the broken ribs.
For the first time, the answer stood before him with painful clarity. The monster they feared, the one tearing men apart in the dark, had not been some creature lurking outside their camp.
It had been him.
Shmuel was kneeling over Baruch, pressing a wad of cloth against the man's bleeding thigh. The man spat curses between clenched teeth, cursing the soldiers, cursing his pain, cursing the war itself.
Salman was holding sobbing wife and consoling even though his nose was bleeding.
The children behind them were crying and screaming, their tiny bodies shaking like leaves in a storm, but the moment they saw Ethan approach, every sound died instantly.
Their mouths hung open. Their eyes went round. Their fear hit him like a slap across his face.
He had no idea what to say. These people were already drowning in grief, fear, hunger, and exhaustion. Now he had added another nightmare to their already unbearable world.
A creature they did not understand.
A creature that did not fully understand himself.
He considered stepping away, creating distance before his presence made things worse.
But then a small body wrapped around his waist from behind.
He turned, startled, and found Talia clinging to him like a koala gripping a tree. Her hair was matted with blood, her ribs bruised, her breathing uneven, yet her arms tightened around him with surprising strength.
She did not look at his hands. She did not flinch from the blood on his shirt and jacket. She simply held him, steady and stubborn, as if she refused to let the darkness claim him too.
Shmuel limped up beside him, leaning heavily on a stick. His beard was trembling, his eyes watery, but he still managed to slap Ethan's shoulder with a hand, "Next time you turn into a demon," he grumbled, "at least warn us first. My heart cannot take these jump scares."
A few people let out weak, exhausted laughs. Even the children began to breathe again, their tiny hands releasing the adults' clothes they had been clutching so desperately.
The tension dipped, not all the way down, but enough for the air to feel less suffocating.
Rochel hurried over to Rivka and Talia with Mirium at her side.
Both carefully checked the girls' injuries with gentle hands. Rochel removed her shawl and wrapped it around Talia's shoulders, murmuring soft, reassuring words.
The other woman opened a cloth bundle and handed each girl a fresh garment, something loose and long that would hide the torn fabric and the bruises.
Rivka's hands trembled as she dressed. Talia winced with every movement but kept her chin tucked down, refusing to cry.
The group needed rest and time to recuperate, but there was none. Everyone understood, they had to either leave the port and go back, try another route or take one of the boats and face the sea.
Waiting and crying would not solve anything, when the next patrol comes they will be killed, no questions asked.
Ethan walked up to the German patrol boat, somehow everything felt familiar to him, like he operated the equipment hundreds of times.
He went back and informed Shmuel and others that he knew how to drive the boat, so they could use it perhaps instead of the worn fishing boat.