A scream tore through the slums.
Not the usual kind. Not the cries of a thief caught stealing or the shouts of a drunkard picking a fight.
This was different. It was raw. Terrified. Hopeless.
Kai's head snapped toward the sound.
Down in the streets, people had stopped moving. A woman stood frozen in place, her wide eyes locked on something above. Her lips trembled, her hands clutched her child close. Then, her mouth opened again—
And this time, she didn't scream.
The sound simply died.
One second, she was there—alive, breathing, afraid—and the next, she was gone.
Erased.
No blood. No body. No trace that she had ever existed.
Just a ripple in the air where she had once stood.
Kai's breath hitched. His pulse pounded in his ears, a deafening drum of instinctual terror. He had seen people die before. But not like this.
"What the hell was that?" Lloyd's voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper.
Lory rose to her feet, her expression dark. "We need to move. Now."
But Kai barely heard her. His stomach churned as he took a hesitant step forward, eyes still fixed on the spot where the woman had stood.
That was when the sky moved.
At first, it looked like a trick of the light—clouds shifting, warping strangely. Then the fabric of the world rippled, bending like stretched leather. The sun, once hanging lazily in the late afternoon sky, flickered like a dying flame.
Then—
The tear appeared.
It started as a thin, black line across the sky. Small. Harmless. Then it split open.
A wound in reality.
A gaping void. Black. Endless. And from that abyss, something stepped through.
Not stepped.
Poured.
It had no defined shape, no clear form. A writhing mass of shifting limbs and churning flesh, moving like liquid but carrying a crushing weight.
Eyes. Countless, seething eyes blinked open across its shifting body—watching, searching. The air around it curdled, growing heavy with a suffocating pressure that pressed against Kai's chest like a vice.
Then the whispers began.
Faint. Incoherent. A language not meant for human minds. The moment Kai heard it, his thoughts fractured.
For a split second, he was not himself—he was everywhere and nowhere, drowning in a sea of voices that weren't his own—
A hand grabbed his wrist.
"Kai!"
Rena.
He gasped, blinking rapidly as his vision refocused. She was gripping him, her expression tight with fear.
"We have to go!" she shouted.
The others were already moving.
Cassie clutched Lory's arm, her small frame trembling violently. Lloyd was dragging them toward the alleyways, shoving aside the panicked mob that was trying to flee in every direction.
Kai nodded numbly. Move. Just move.
Then the Eidolons came.
They slipped through the breach like ink spilling into water. Their forms were wrong—humanoid but not, their limbs stretching too far, their mouths opening too wide. Their bodies pulsed with shifting darkness, bending and twisting in ways that made Kai's stomach turn.
The first one landed in the middle of the street.
The world warped around it. The stone beneath its feet rotted, turning brittle and crumbling to dust. The air around it soured, thickening like spoiled milk.
A merchant, too slow to run, froze as the creature turned toward him. His body convulsed—his limbs twisting at unnatural angles, his mouth opening in a silent scream—
Then his flesh burst.
His skin peeled away first, sloughing off like wet paper. Then his muscles melted, dissolving into thick, black sludge that sizzled upon contact with the air. His bones shattered from the inside, breaking apart into fragments too small to be real.
And then—
He was gone.
Not vanished. Not erased.
His body had simply been undone.
Kai staggered back, bile rising in his throat.
This isn't real. This isn't happening.
But it was.
The street descended into chaos. People screamed, ran, collapsed into nothing. The Eidolons moved like ghosts, drifting through bodies and snuffing them out like candle flames.
Kai's legs refused to move. His breath came in sharp, panicked gasps. His body screamed at him to run, but his mind was frozen—caught in the sheer, impossible horror of what he was seeing.
A hand smacked his face.
His head snapped to the side, his vision blurring.
"Focus, dammit!" Lloyd's voice rang in his ears, sharp and desperate. "We need to move or we're dead!"
Kai swallowed hard. His chest ached, his lungs burning as he sucked in a ragged breath.
Move. Just move.
They ran.
The slums were a labyrinth of crumbling buildings and winding alleyways. Normally, they were a death trap—filled with thieves, gangs, and desperate souls willing to kill for a loaf of bread.
Tonight, none of that mattered.
Because tonight, the city itself was dying.
Kai sprinted ahead, his heart hammering against his ribs. Behind him, Cassie stumbled, her breath hitching.
"I— I can't—"
Lory scooped her up without hesitation, her expression grim. "No stopping."
They turned a corner—
And froze.
The main road was gone.
Where once there had been stone and dirt, now there was only a gaping void. Buildings teetered on the edge, crumbling into the abyss. People screamed as they tumbled forward, their bodies swallowed by the darkness—vanishing without a sound.
Kai's stomach dropped.
"No. No, no, no—"
A bell rang.
Deep. Resonant.
The Monolith.
The great spire at the heart of Havenreach rumbled, its surface pulsing with golden light.
For a moment, the Eidolons hesitated. The air crackled. The sky trembled. The breach shuddered—
Then, the light flickered.
Kai's blood ran cold.
No.
Not now.
The Monolith's glow stuttered like a failing heartbeat. The golden energy that had kept Havenreach safe for years dimmed, shrinking against the expanding void.
And Kai knew.
The city was going to fall.
Panic surged through him.
No, no, no. We need more time.
Then—
The Monolith went out.
The last sliver of light died.
And the Abyss swallowed the city whole.
To Be Continued in Chapter 3