Blue fire coiled around Kael's fingers like living things.
The orderlies froze, their syringes glinting under the emergency lights. The lead nurse's pupils dilated as she stared at Kael's right eye—where the blue glow had spread like cracked lightning across his iris.
"Sedate him! Now!" she screamed.
Kael moved without thinking.
His palm lashed out. The nearest orderly's syringe melted mid-air, molten plastic dripping onto the linoleum with a hiss. The fire spread up the man's arm—not burning, but unmaking. Flesh peeled back like parchment, revealing bone that blackened to ash in seconds.
"Good," purred the voice in his skull. "But you're thinking too small."
Kael's vision flickered. For a heartbeat, he saw:
The hospital walls pulsing like organs
The orderlies as skeletal shadows
His own hands wreathed in celestial script
Then reality snapped back—just as the fire alarms wailed to life.
THE BEAST WHISPERS
The dying orderly's mouth stretched too wide, his jaw unhinging like a serpent's.
"He sees us," the man gurgled—but the voice wasn't his. "The lock is rusting, Tianxiao."
Kael stumbled back as the corpse's ribs burst outward, forming black tendrils that clawed at the air. The other orderlies turned—and their eyes rolled back, veins bulging with the same inky darkness.
"Run," urged the voice. "Unless you want to meet your jailer already."
Kael shattered the window with a kick and lunged into the hellscape outside.
APOCALYPSE REALIZED
The city was a grotesque collage:
A dwarf fused waist-deep into a taxi hood, his beard tangled in the engine
Elven warriors picking through a mutated police barricade
The sky itself peeling back like rotten skin to reveal something behind the clouds
Kael's boots hit the pavement just as an arrow hissed past his ear.
On the hospital roof, three elven archers nocked fresh shots. Their leader—a silver-haired woman with runes carved into her face—lowered her bow slightly.
"Vanya's breath," she whispered. "The Eclipse Harbinger... is human?"
Her second-in-command didn't hesitate. The arrow he loosed exploded mid-air, becoming a net of living vines that
Rate this chapter! 🔥 Will Kael:
A) Fight the elves
B) Surrender to their net
C) Something worse?