Jan's body froze completely, turning into a pale marble statue beneath the twisted chassis of the car. Directly before his eyes lay those festering sockets—the eyes of Vejin—which appeared like black holes devouring both light and hope. In that heartbeat, Jan didn't think of survival; instead, he cursed the very day he dared to make a wish.
"How magnificent my luck is," Jan thought with bitter irony. "Out of billions of souls, the Author chose me to be the 'appetizer' for this towering freak."
With a sudden, frantic blur of motion, Vejin extended his long, distorted arm. Fingers resembling jagged talons crept toward Jan's face, carrying the stench of bodies that had rotted long before their time. Jan squeezed his eyes shut and began to mutter desperate prayers—not out of faith, but because he found nothing else to do in his final moments of being flayed.
"A miserable end befitting a miserable hero..."
But before those cold nails could touch his brow, the silence of death was shattered by a commotion from the opposite street. Vejin's head snapped at an inhuman angle, his neck creaking like a rusted spring. In the blink of an eye, the monster leaped toward the noise, unleashing a howl that tore through the air.
There, in the middle of the street, stood a drunkard, swaying and singing in a hoarse voice, utterly unaware that the Reaper had just manifested behind him.
Jan crawled from under the car, trembling, tears nearly escaping his eyes—not from terror, but from a surge of absurd gratitude. He muttered as he watched the beast vanish: "I was never a fan of drunks, but from this day on, I hope the world overflows with them. Let them drink until they are numb, so they may offer their souls in my stead!"
Ghostly Shadows: The Team of the Desperate
The rest of the team emerged from their hiding spots, mere shadows crushed under the weight of dread. Jan signaled them toward a nearby shop; they entered through the front and slipped out the back door into a narrow alley, scurrying through the ruins like terrified rats.
When they had distanced themselves enough to feel the bite of the cold instead of the monster's breath, old Yang whispered with a cryptic smile: "You are very lucky, my boy. Death was just brushing against your eyelids."
Jan let out a short, somewhat hysterical laugh: "Lucky? If this is luck, I'd donate it to a stray dog. This isn't luck; it's just a delay of the massacre."
Louie, the seventeen-year-old boy, spoke through his fear: "What do we do now? Where do we flee?"
Jan turned to him with icy indifference: "What is that to me? You've been haunting me since that cursed incident on the train as if I were the official guardian of your survival!"
Rosie, the woman in her forties, intervened, wearing a sly smile that felt entirely out of place. "You seemed like a reliable man to us, someone who knows secrets we don't, someone worthy of responsibility..."
Jan waved his hands frantically: "Me?! Reliable?! I am the most cunning, wretched person you will ever meet! I'm not even fit to care for a cat, let alone a herd of humans!"
Old Yang chuckled for the first time: "This is the first time I've heard someone confess their malice with such honesty. That alone makes you worth following."
The Madness of the Drive: Burning Roads and Souls
Caine, the stern naval officer with the gravelly voice, cut through the hollow argument. "Let's find a vehicle. We need to reach the next sector before the gates close entirely."
They rushed toward an SUV with its doors hanging open and an engine still warm. Jan shoved Caine away from the driver's seat. "Move! Are you going to drive with the slow pace of naval regulations? I'm driving!"
He turned the key and took off with a violent speed that slammed their heads against the seats. A wicked, delirious grin spread across Jan's face. He began to navigate through the wreckage, but the strange—and horrifying—part was that he wasn't trying to avoid anyone.
An old man stumbled in front of the car... (Thump!)... Jan ran him over without blinking.
A woman screamed for help... (Crunch!)... the wheels rolled over her bones.
Another man tried to escape... (Crash!).
Shock froze the faces of everyone in the car. Louie cried out in horror: "Jan! You're hitting them! Don't you care?! They're humans!"
Jan turned to him with a gaze of frozen glass, his eyes reflecting the madness of this new world:
"They stood in my way, and I didn't ask them to. They have eyes and they see the monsters, yet they stand there like statues. The beasts will tear them apart slowly anyway, making them suffer for hours. I simply gave them a 'peaceful death'—quick and at no extra charge. Consider it an act of charity in the age of the Gates."
A silence filled the car, a silence far more terrifying than the sound of bones shattering beneath the tires. They realized then that the man they were following was no hero—he was a nightmare of a different kind.