Kaai saw the hideous monster and froze. Its proportions didn't make sense—anatomy jumbled together as if the bones had been forced into the wrong sockets, its maw stretched wide and unreal. Every step it took reverberated in the hollow silence of the ruined street, a sound that pressed on his chest like a second heartbeat.
His throat dried. Panic seized him.
He raised the rifle with trembling hands and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Each shot cracked like lightning. Sparks burst against the creature's plated hide, bullets collapsing into dull fragments that fell uselessly to the ground. Not even a scratch.
The monster flinched—but not from pain. It twitched from the echoing sound. Then its head snapped toward him, tendons grinding audibly in its neck, and it charged.
The ground shook.
Kaai's mind blanked. He stumbled back, nearly tripping, the rifle slick in his sweaty grip. His instincts screamed run but his legs were heavy. He fired again and again, each shot bouncing off, each wasted second pulling the beast closer.
Its maw opened wider than a jaw should, unhinged, the breath inside hot and reeking of rot.
Kaai turned on his heel and bolted.
He didn't think—his body simply obeyed the raw command of survival
Kaai's boots slammed against the hardened soil, each step jarring through his legs. Behind him, the beast lunged—its entire mass airborne, a living missile with a gaping maw ready to snap shut the instant it reached him.
Kaai's body moved before thought. In a heartbeat he dove sideways, squeezing between two hollowed-out trees, the monster's shadow grazing his back as it crashed past. He had evaded—barely.
But he wasn't safe. Not even close.
The forest shook with a terrible sound—metallic tendons grinding and shrieking against each other, a chorus of tortured steel. The trees that had separated Kaai from the monster groaned, then exploded upward, roots dangling as they were wrenched from the earth and hurled aside like kindling.
Kaai scrambled deeper into the forest, crawling under massive roots slick with moss, forcing himself through splintered branches that tore at his skin. Behind him, the cacophony grew louder: wood snapping, soil tearing, stones crushed into pebbles beneath the beast's weight.
Then the sound came too close. Far too close.
Kaai froze mid-step, every muscle screaming at him to move but locking instead. His breath hitched. He turned his head—
An enormous arm swept out of the shadows, carving through the undergrowth with terrifying speed. The air itself seemed to shudder from the force of it, a sonic crack echoing like thunder.
Kaai didn't even have time to raise his rifle.
The blow never reached him—at least, not directly. A tree trunk between them took the strike. The impact was cataclysmic. Bark exploded, wood splintered, and the trunk snapped clean in half. Even cushioned by the tree, the force launched Kaai off his feet, slamming him through a tangle of roots.
Pain flashed through his body as he hit the ground hard, dirt choking his lungs. His ears rang, but above the ringing, he still heard it—the grinding of those metallic sinews, the steady advance of the beast tearing the forest apart to reach him
Kaai lay broken in the dirt, every breath a jagged knife in his chest. Pain lanced through his ribs when he tried to move, so he didn't. He couldn't. His legs shook violently, refusing to bear his weight. Tears stung his eyes—not from the wounds, but from the sheer suffocating terror clawing at his throat.
His heart pounded so hard it hurt. He pressed his forehead into the soil, dragging himself forward inch by inch, crawling like a wounded animal. The gnarled roots of an ancient tree loomed ahead, and he forced his battered body beneath them, curling into the earth's embrace.
His lips moved he was praying. "God please save me, spare me," his whispers drowned in thunders of the prusuit.
Then—another sound split the world.
Not the screech of grinding tendons. Not the beast's guttural roar.
A voice.
"Draakthuun Kael-drun ."
The syllables detonated through the forest like a hammer striking the bones of the earth. The ground buckled. Branches snapped from their trunks. Kaai's eardrums rang until his vision blurred.
And then he saw it.
Emerging between the trees came a figure more terrible than the abomination chasing him. It moved with deliberate, unnatural grace, its body wrapped in rotting black cloth that clung like funeral rags. Where a face should have been, a strip of dark fabric bound across hollow sockets.
Even blind, Kaai knew it was looking at him.
Every nerve in his body screamed, It sees you.
But after a heartbeat—after an eternity—the creature turned away. It dismissed him with the indifference of a giant ignoring an insect, its attention already shifting toward the beast that had pursued him.
Kaai's stomach twisted. Not relief. Not hope. Just the crushing realization: he was too small and too powerless to be even worthy of consideration.
The beast that had hunted him, the one plated in iron-like flesh, bent back as if cowed, then bellowed with rage. The ground shook as it lunged, claws rending through the air.
The blindfolded figure simply raised one clawed hand.
The clash that followed was like thunder given flesh. Trees splintered, soil exploded upward in waves, and Kaai's body was thrown hard against the roots of a massive grafted trunk. His ears rang, his vision swam, but he could still see the two horrors locked together—one a juggernaut of metal and tendon, the other a shadow swaddled in rotting cloth.
Neither spared him another glance.
To them, he wasn't prey.
He was nothing.
Shaking, Kaai clawed at the dirt, dragging himself deeper under the roots. His breaths came sharp and wet, heart beating so hard he thought it might break through his ribs. Every blow between the monsters made the ground convulse like a drumbeat.
He didn't understand what they were. He didn't want to.
He just wanted to live.
The world had become a symphony of ruin. Each thunderous impact from the clashing titans sent fresh tremors through the earth, shaking the grafted trees until their fused trunks groaned in protest.
Kaai didn't think. Instinct, raw and survival-born, took over.
He stayed low, his body a smear of mud and blood against the roots. The monsters, their battle a storm that consumed all attention. He was a ghost in the chaos. he groaned " T…they are fighting…..Use it". Forcing his tired muscles to move, but his battered body screamed in protest "MOVE!" He screamed shallowly.
He dragged himself into the hollowed-out carcass of a greatroot, the inside spongy with decay and smelling of wet rot. He held his breath, not against the stench, but at the sound of a colossal body crashing down mere meters away, shaking the earth and raining soil down upon his hiding place.
Forcing his trembling limbs onward, he spilled out the other side and into a trench formed by two collapsed, interwoven trunks. He kept moving until all signs of the monster, their signs and their battles were gone he didn't even hear anything or anyone.
Just silence.