Elias nearly dropped the phone. Panic clawed at his ribs, his breath breaking into ragged shreds. He snapped his gaze to the others; maybe they'd heard it, maybe this wasn't just inside him.
But the way they looked at him told him everything.
The older man raised his wrench with shaking arms. "Stay back." His voice cracked with terror. "He's not human. He's one of them."
The young mother clutched her daughter against her chest, eyes wide, lips trembling. The girl whispered through tears: "Please… don't come closer."
Their faces weren't only terrified. They were condemning.
Verdict already passed.
Elias's gut twisted. After everything; the glass storm of wings, the blood, the fight that nearly killed him, this was what they saw. Not a man who had saved them. A monster.
"Wait—" His throat burned, words choking off. What could he say? That the crystal burning in his chest hadn't finished eating him yet? That the voice wasn't his?
He took a step forward despite himself.
Clatter.
A bottle whistled through the air.
Before his brain registered it, Elias's hand shot out.
Smack.
Glass stopped dead in his palm, shards cracking under the force of his grip.
The room froze.
The bat slipped from the college kid's hands with a hollow clunk. The older man swore under his breath. Even the little girl's sobs cut short.
They weren't staring at the bottle. They were staring at him.
Elias's stomach dropped. He didn't even know how he'd done it. His body had moved on its own—too fast, too precise. Instinct.
A burning itch surged down his arm. He gasped, clutching at it. Flesh bulged beneath his sleeve, writhed.
Then split.
A feather; black, sleek, glistening wet like something grown from blood, burst from his skin. It twitched like it was alive.
Elias screamed, stumbling back, smacking his arm against the counter as though he could knock it free. The survivors screamed with him.
The feather curled in the air, then dissolved into ash, scattering in the stale fluorescent light. The wound sealed instantly.
Silence.
And then, across the inside of Elias's skull, letters blazed like fire:
[ Carrion Growth Detected ]
[ Mutation Suppressed ]
The world spun. Elias's knees buckled. His palm still trembled around the bottle, veins writhing dark beneath his skin.
The shard wasn't just inside him.
It was rewriting him.
He dropped the bottle, glass shattering at his feet.
The air went still.
He could hear it; A rhythm of wings. Far off, then closer. Closer.
His new senses sharpened without his will: the faint rattle of metal gutters, the tremor of glass panes before they burst, the oily reek of feathers riding the storm air. The survivors heard nothing yet. But he knew.
"They're coming," he rasped. His own voice startled him, it sounded lower, rougher, like it had been scraped raw on stone.
The survivors only pressed tighter to the wall.
Then the System's voice carved through his skull, jagged and cold:
[ Predator-class Flock Detected ]
The windows detonated inward in a hurricane of glass and feathers.
Crows poured in. But these weren't the same scavenger things as before, these were larger, hungrier, eyes glowing a feral red, talons so long they screeched sparks against tile. Their wings dragged shadows with them, oily and wrong, as if the storm itself bent around their flight.
One hurtled at Elias, shrieking.
His hand shot up, faster than thought, and clamped around its throat mid-flight. Bones crunched under his grip. With a roar he slammed the creature into the ground so hard its skull split like rotten fruit.
Another raked across his shoulder, feathers bursting around his face. He spun, letting its momentum carry, and hurled it into a rack of canned food. Metal shrieked. Blood splattered.
His body moved before his mind. It was like dancing to a rhythm only he could hear. Every arc of wings, every slash of talons, his vision slowed, each movement predicted before it landed.
Three dived at him at once.
He dropped low, shoulder grazing the floor tiles, and rose into them like a blade. One's ribcage collapsed under his elbow. Another's wing snapped with a crack as he twisted it like dry wood. The third, he caught mid-air, fingers digging into its skull. He twisted.
Snap.
Feathers scattered like black snow.
The survivors screamed. But not at the crows. At him.
Elias staggered upright, chest heaving. His hands dripped hot blood.
And without thinking, his tongue flicked across his lips.
The taste hit him like lightning. Copper and iron, thick and sharp. It burned down his throat, and for a second, just a second, he wanted more.
His chest clenched as the System flared again:
[ Shard Fragments Absorbed: +0.2 ]
[ Corruption: 1.3% → 1.7% ]
The numbers seared across his vision. And beneath them, the whisper came back.
Yes. Feed. Tear them apart. Drink. Ours.
Elias's knees almost buckled. His hands shook; not from fear, but from the aftershock of pleasure. The speed, the precision, the power, his body craved it.
The blood-smeared glass reflected him in shards from a dozen angles: eyes glowing hotter, veins blackening along his neck. A stranger's face.
"Monster…" the old man whispered.
Elias's gut knotted, but his body didn't care. His body wanted to move again, to rip, to feed—
The walls rattled.
A thunder of wings. He looked toward the shattered windows, and his sharpened vision caught it: dozens of glowing eyes in the storm outside, pressing closer.
The second wave.
And this time, there would be no walls to hold them back.
The storm screamed through the broken windows.
The second wave hit like a black tide.
Wings crashed through glass, talons raked across shelves, glowing eyes filled the dark like embers from a furnace. The survivors cowered behind a toppled freezer, but there was no hiding now. The store became a slaughterhouse.
Elias moved.
He didn't remember choosing to. His body snapped into motion the instant the first bird darted near. His hand shot up, caught it mid-air by the beak, and tore its head free in a spray of gore. The next, he pivoted, spine twisting with unnatural fluidity, his boot exploding through its ribcage.
Time bent around him. Every flap of wings slowed. Every strike bloomed in his vision before it landed. His world had reduced to angles, arcs, trajectories.
And hunger.
The blood spraying his face wasn't just blood anymore. It was fuel. His tongue flicked across his cheek, tasting copper. His chest ached with fire, but deeper than that, something pulsed in pleasure.
[ Shard Fragments Absorbed: +0.5 ]
[ Corruption: 1.7% → 2.5% ]
The text seared into his skull, and a second heartbeat thundered through him.
Yes. More. Tear them. Break them. Feed.
His arm split open again, just for a second—and another black feather thrust outward like a blade. He raked it across a crow's flank, the feather cutting like obsidian, leaving a sizzling wound that smoked as the creature dissolved into oily ash.
The survivors screamed at the sight.
"Stay away from us!" the old man shrieked, voice breaking. "He's not human!"
Elias barely heard. He was already spinning into another strike, claws scraping his arm, his boot slamming into a bird's skull. Blood sprayed his lips. He licked again. It burned through him, intoxicating.
And then the freezer gave way.
The survivors bolted, screaming, shoving into the night.
"Wait—!" Elias's voice tore from his throat, raw, human, desperate. "Don't—"
They didn't look back.
The young mother dragged her daughter into the storm. The college kid was gone before her. The old man stumbled after them, wrench clenched, never once glancing over his shoulder.
They left him.
Left him with the flock.