Michael opened his eyes.
For a long moment, he thought he hadn't.
The light above him was wrong. Not bright enough to blind, not dark enough to hide anything. It pressed down instead, a dull green-gold haze that made his vision swim, as if the sky itself were sick.
He lay still, listening.
There was wind—dry, rasping, carrying grit that scraped against his skin. Every breath tasted of iron and dust. His tongue felt thick.
His throat burned.
Slowly, cautiously, he pushed himself up.
Pain flared in his palms.
The ground beneath him wasn't sand. Not really. It was sharp, uneven, mixed with fragments of broken stone and something that looked like rusted metal veins running through the earth. Cracks split the surface in jagged patterns, stretching far beyond what his eyes could follow.
A desert.
But not one he recognized.
The horizon was fractured. Jagged rock formations rose in unnatural shapes, some leaning as if they had been frozen mid-collapse, others thrusting upward like broken spears. No symmetry. No mercy. Just raw, violent terrain carved by something that hadn't cared what it destroyed.
Michael stood, unsteady.
His head throbbed. When he tried to remember how he'd gotten here, his thoughts slipped away the moment he grasped at them. There was a sense of before—of being alive, of choices, of responsibility—but no details. Just an empty outline where memories should have been.
A sound cut through the wind.
A scream.
Sharp. Panicked. Human.
Michael turned.
He wasn't alone.
Scattered across the cracked desert were people—dozens of them. Men and women in clothes from different places, different lives. Some stood frozen in shock. Some were shouting. Others were already running.
Something moved among them.
At first, it was hard to tell what he was seeing. Heat warped the air. Shadows stretched unnaturally across the ground.
Then the shadows rose.
The earth split open with a dry, tearing
sound.
Creatures burst forth.
They were insect-like, but wrong in ways that made Michael's stomach twist. Too many joints. Limbs bent at angles that shouldn't exist. Dark chitin covered their bodies, jagged and uneven, reflecting the sick light above in dull, oily sheens.
They moved fast.
One leapt from the ground, crossing several meters in an instant. It slammed into a man who hadn't even finished turning around. Hooked limbs wrapped around his chest, pinning his arms.
The creature's mandibles snapped shut.
The scream that followed was brief.
Wet.
Then gone.
Michael watched as two more of the things scuttled forward, their movements eerily synchronized. They tore into the body with practiced efficiency, ripping, consuming, reducing a living person to scattered remains in seconds.
Blood soaked into the cracked ground.
The desert drank it eagerly.
Michael's breath hitched.
More of the creatures emerged—climbing from fissures, crawling out from beneath rocks, slipping from places that had looked empty moments ago. They spread out, cutting off paths, herding the scattered people without any obvious signal.
They were hunting.
Panic exploded.
People ran blindly, tripping over the jagged terrain, crashing into one another. Some fell and screamed for help. No one stopped. Anyone who did was caught almost instantly.
Michael stumbled backward, heart hammering so hard it felt like it might tear through his ribs.
The wind shifted.
With it came whispers.
Not words. Not voices. Just a sensation, crawling along the edge of his hearing, brushing against his thoughts like fingers trailing across glass. His skin prickled.
He forced himself to move.
Step by step, he backed away, careful not to draw attention. Every instinct screamed at him to run—but running without direction felt like suicide. The ground was treacherous. One wrong step could leave him sprawled and helpless.
Another scream ended abruptly behind him.
The creatures were beautiful in a horrifying way.
Their movements were fluid. Efficient. Almost graceful. The chitin along their bodies caught the light in strange patterns, each motion deliberate, precise. They belonged here in a way the people did not.
Michael's foot slipped on a loose shard of stone.
The sound felt impossibly loud.
One of the creatures paused.
Its head—if it could be called that—tilted slightly. Multiple dark eyes reflected the distorted sky as it turned toward him.
Michael's blood ran cold.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
Then someone screamed nearby, drawing the creature's attention away. It sprang forward, vanishing into the chaos.
Michael didn't hesitate again.
He turned and ran.
The desert tore at him as he fled. Sharp stones cut through the soles of his shoes. Dry wind burned his lungs. He didn't look back—didn't dare to—but the sounds followed him all the same.
Clicking limbs.
Screams.
The wet, tearing noises that came after.
His legs screamed in protest, but he forced them to keep moving. He dodged between jagged rocks, nearly falling more than once. The terrain seemed designed to punish the careless.
Ahead, the land dipped slightly, revealing a stretch of cracked ground littered with strange crystalline growths. They glimmered faintly, catching the sick light above.
For a moment—just a moment—they looked almost beautiful.
Then a man ran straight into them.
The crystals shattered, releasing a cloud of shimmering dust. The man screamed as the dust clung to his skin, burning, eating away at him as he collapsed.
Michael swerved sharply, barely avoiding the same fate.
There was no safety here.
Only choices between different kinds of death.
His lungs burned. His vision blurred at the edges. Just when he thought his body would give out, he spotted a jagged rise ahead—a cluster of broken stone forming a narrow passage between two massive slabs of rock.
He veered toward it, slipping through the gap just as something slammed into the stone behind him.
The impact shook the ground.
Michael collapsed on the other side, gasping for air.
For several long seconds, nothing followed.
Only the wind.
Only the distant sounds of death echoing across the desert.
He pressed his forehead against the cold stone, fighting the urge to retch.
The silence didn't bring comfort.
It brought dread.
Because somewhere beyond the jagged horizon, beneath the twisted sky, this world was still watching.
And Michael understood one thing with terrifying clarity:
This place was not meant to be survived.
It was meant to be endured.