maya invited me for a grocery trip to the supermarket which was about 3kms away from our house.
Mom was quite hesitant to send me as i recently overcame my coma of 5 years and suggested to rest
But i said i would rather prefer going outside than sitting here at home.
On the way to the grocery store
I saw the city once again,the hustling crowd,the stylish cars,modern infrastructure as it felt like it came out of a sci-fi movie.
I thought in my mind
can a city be developed this much in just 5 years or is it intentional?
We finally reached at the grocery store and i looked at it's exterior
"Ozeki Supermarket hm"
"Oh it was recently built isn't it great looking"
Maya replied
"it does"
The supermarket exterior was quite modern and new as maya said.
We went inside to buy the groceries mom gave us a list of which Maya was looking at curiously
"Hm so it states we need to bring Rice,soy sauce,miso,Eggs,tofu,cabbage and green onions. Mom also said that we both can buy something for ourselves aswell! What do you need Klein oni-chan~?"
"Is that so? Well it's been a while but i would prefer my black coffee can"
"Ehh you never change do you?"
"It's the best drink to have you know,you should try it kid- i mean maya."
"Haha i know it's quite awkward for both of us to be talking like this again brother it still feels like a dream that you are here with me"
"Indeed specially when you were just a cry-baby back then or you still are one?"
"Muhhh stop teasing me! Lets go buy soy sauce first"
Maya never required any effort from me. With most people there was always a layer of reading involved — figuring out what they meant beneath what they said. Maya wasn't like that. She was exactly as loud as she felt, exactly as obvious as she was. She'd call me an idiot with complete sincerity then defend me to anyone who looked at me wrong. Five years hadn't changed that. She was taller now, carrying herself differently — but the moment she hit my shoulder in that hospital room and called me a stupid brother, I knew she was exactly the same person. Just more of her than before.
"Alright"
As we went towards the sauce counter
I noticed an employee fidgeting or rather shivering near the counter. He was kneeling down looking at the ground. It felt like something was weird about him and when i was about to ask about it. Maya spoke up
"Umm a Mister are you all right? Why are you shivering like that?"
The guy never replied he was still looking at the ground.
"Brother what's wrong with him? Should we call the staff? He's not replying either"
"Yeah i think that would be better you stay here I'll call the staff"
As i started walking towards the main counters for help the employee stood up and started walking towards my opposite direction wall
"Um mister are you alright?"
As maya asked the question again the employee face started turning pale while sweat accumulating all over his body. The employee then held up his head with both of his hands while kneeling down again
"Mister!! Are you alright??"
"Wait maya something is wrong with him we should call for help first!"
"But- he looks like he's in a lot of pain we gotta help him brother"
At that moment the guy screamed that felt like a thousand screeches combined together probably more than 115 decibels
As i held my both hands to cover my ears as they started hurting physically and closed my eyes.
That scream might be an equivalent to a fighter jet's runaway takeoff
When I opened my eyes a moment later, the scream had stopped.
But something was wrong.
The fluorescent lighting of the supermarket was gone. The faint background music, the hum of refrigerators, the distant sound of shopping carts — all of it, gone. Replaced by a silence so complete it felt like pressure against my eardrums.
I looked down at my feet. Rock. Solid, uneven rock where polished tiles had been a second ago.
I looked up.
The mountain ranges hit me first — massive, overwhelming, climbing so high into the sky that their peaks disappeared into a reddish haze. They dwarfed everything I had ever seen. Mount Fuji would have looked modest next to them.
Then I noticed the moon.
It was crimson. Enormous. Radiating a deep red luminescence that soaked the entire landscape in a colour that felt wrong — the kind of red that doesn't belong to anything natural. It was at least three times the size of any moon I had ever seen, hanging low and heavy in the sky like it was watching.
I stood completely still for a moment.
The grocery store. Maya was right next to me. The employee screamed and then—
I turned in every direction. Rocky terrain, barren twisted trees, mountain ranges bleeding red light in every direction. The land stretched out infinitely with no visible end and no familiar landmark. No walls, no ceiling, no exits.
This didn't feel like a dream. The wind was too cold against my skin. The smell — something stale and rotten carried on that wind — was too specific, too unpleasant to be something my mind had invented.
But none of this was possible. I was just standing in a supermarket. I was just talking to Maya about black coffee.
"Maya!"
My own voice startled me. It sounded small out here, swallowed almost immediately by the vast silence around it.
"Maya! Maya! Where are you? Can you hear me?, Maya!"
As i tried to call her out again and again in a hope to find her i couldn't shake a weird feeling of this being a dream as this situation didn't make any sense
I started walking toward the crimson moon, toward that open land that felt like it stretched out infinitely. The terrain was rocky and harsh — barren trees, a stinking wind, and mountain ranges bathed in that deep red glow from the moon above.
I kept calling Maya's name, hoping for a reply from somewhere.
Then I heard a scream coming from my south-west. I ran toward it.
By the time I reached the area, the scream had already stopped. I looked around from the side of a large rock — and what I saw burned itself into my memory.
Human bodies scattered across the ground, half-eaten. One missing its limbs. One without a head. One with no torso, completely smashed. It felt like I was still in a dream, but I forced myself to hold it together. That was when I noticed creatures in the middle of it all, devouring what appeared to be the very employees of the grocery store I had been in just moments ago. Their remains were scattered around the creatures on the ground.
The creatures were hunchbacked, furious-looking animals that felt like wolves, yet wrong in every way — where eyes should have been, there was nothing. Just rows of sharp, flesh-devouring teeth currently buried in what had once been a person. They were reddish-orange in colour, with sharp claws and a T-rex-like posture. Their legs were powerful and thick, built for speed, with sharp nails that dug into the rock beneath them with every movement. Looking at them, I had no doubt they could outrun anything alive.
Extraterrestrial was the simplest conclusion I could reach at that moment. But if the grocery store employees were here, then Maya could be here too. Holding onto that hope, I quietly began to pull back.
Then one of the creatures started moving in my direction. I had to get out before it noticed me.
I was already halfway back when one of them spotted me from the other side of the plateau and let out a scream — not to attack, but to call the others.
I felt true horror at that particular scream.
They came at me all at once, full force.
I ran with everything I had. The adrenaline hit me like a wave, pushing my legs faster than I thought they could go after five years of lying still. But the creatures were closing the gap quickly — their powerful legs were no joke. A faint dizziness crept in at the edges of my vision, the coma's leftover toll on my body reminding me it hadn't forgotten — but stopping wasn't an option.
While running, I spotted a cavity in the rockface — the entrance to a cave. I circled around a plateau to bait them, bought myself a few seconds, and slipped inside before they could track me.
I pressed myself against the inner wall, chest heaving, legs burning.
That had been a life or death situation. And I was only just starting to understand that every moment from here would be the same.
"Who are you and why the hell did you come in here?!"
I spun toward the voice. Two men and one woman, pressed into the shadows of the same cavity.
I took a moment to actually look at them. Two men, both appearing to be in their forties. One was in an office suit — slightly rumpled, tie loosened, the look of someone used to being in control of situations who was not handling the loss of that control particularly well. The other was wearing a supermarket uniform, sitting with his back flat against the cave wall, staring at nothing. The woman was also in office attire, arms folded tightly around herself, breathing slow and deliberate — the breathing of someone consciously trying to hold themselves together.
None of them looked like people who had ever prepared for something like this. None of us had.
"People? Are you guys okay?"
"Forget about us — you could have gotten us all killed, you idiot!"
"I'm sorry. I had to run for my life."
"Tch."
An awkward silence settled over the four of us.
"Um, can I ask what's going on? I'm really confused."
"Huh? You're joking in a situation like this? Are you out of your mind?" the office man said.
"No — I genuinely don't know what's happening."
He looked at me for a long moment, like he was deciding whether I was being serious.
"You don't know? We're stuck in an Eidolon invasion."
"Eidolon invasion?"
That word again. I had heard it somewhere before — on the streets of the city, from one of those uniformed people.
"Yeah, we're stuck in this invasion and we can't escape until members of E.D.O arrive."
"E.D.O?"
"You don't know who they are?" He almost laughed, though nothing about the situation was funny. "They're the defence organisation against these beings. Every time an invasion like this happens, they're the ones who come in and end it. Those people in uniform you've probably seen patrolling the city — that's them."
"So we just... wait?"
He didn't answer that. The supermarket employee shifted against the wall but said nothing. The woman exhaled slowly through her nose.
The man began to speak
"Why are yo—"
A loud screech cut him off — followed immediately by the woman's scream.
I turned. The wolf creature had already torn through half of her torso. She was gone before any of us could move.
All three of us ran. I was closest to the opening and rushed out first, then turned back immediately with my hand extended for the two men still inside.
Another scream came from within. Then another.
Blood splashed across the rock at the entrance.
I stood there for one terrible second with my hand still outstretched. Then I pulled it back and ran.
I didn't stop until I reached an open stretch of flat land. I stood there, breathing hard, the red moonlight pressing down on everything.
Why is this happening. I need to find Maya. I couldn't save those people. Even though I'm losing my sanity — I have to stay calm.
"A human, wandering in here on his own."
The voice was slow and echoing, coming from the centre of the open area.
"You chose your own demise, huh?"
I looked towards the voice.
Standing there was a humanoid creature — ten, maybe eleven feet tall, and impossibly thin, like a skeleton wearing pale skin. It was white-greyish in colour, completely bald, with deep yellow eyeballs and sharp claws on both its hands and feet. Its movements were sluggish, its skin looking parched and dehydrated, as though whatever sustained it was running out.
I was looking at a completely extraterrestrial being.