The road east was brittle silence.
Their boots crunched over broken glass; soft, each step measured, each breath a thing they tried not to hear. Smoke curled low across the street, crawling from gutted towers.
Jonah was still spiraling. He couldn't shake that feeling… something's wrong.
At first he muttered under his breath. Then louder. "He's coming. He's coming—"
"Shut it," Mara said without looking back.
But Jonah didn't stop. His eyes darted, fever-bright, his lips flecked with spit. He jabbed a trembling finger at Hana.
"It's her. She calls him. Whispering, always whispering. Don't you see? She wants him back."
Hana flinched, clutching Nia's scarf tighter, knuckles white. "That's not true."
Jonah lunged.
He snatched for the scarf, fingers clawing at the threads. "He hears you! He comes because of you!"
Hana screamed, yanking it back, twisting away. Her heels scraped against grit. Jonah's other hand swung, wild, almost striking her cheek.
And then steel slammed against his throat.
Mara had him pinned against the wall in a heartbeat, crowbar pressed hard enough that his breath rattled. Her teeth were bared, her eyes burning.
"You touch her again," she snarled, "and I'll bury you here."
Jonah spat blood. "Blood streaked his chin, and somehow he grinned through it. "Go on. Throw me out. When he comes for you, you'll beg me back."
Hana sobbed behind Mara, clutching the scarf to her chest like a lifeline.
Darius didn't move. He stood a few paces away, arms folded, eyes narrowed—not intervening, not speaking, just watching. A faint curl touched his lips, not quite a smile, not quite anything human.
The silence stretched.
Mara's crowbar trembled once, then lifted away. She spat into the dust at Jonah's boots. "You walk alone."
Jonah stumbled forward, coughing, rubbing the bruise on his throat. He opened his mouth to spit back a curse, but Mara cut him off.
"Pack. Now. You're done."
He froze.
"You heard me." Mara's voice was steel. "Strip it down. Food, water—leave it. You get what you can carry in your pockets. No more."
Jonah's grin faltered. He glanced at the others. Hana's eyes were wet with fury. Darius's face was carved stone, unreadable.
Slowly, Jonah slid his pack off his shoulders. He unbuckled it, let it drop to the ground with a heavy thud. The sound echoed in the hollow street.
He kept the rusted knife at his belt until Mara's crowbar twitched. His lips peeled back, but he dropped it too.
"Fine." Jonah's voice cracked, high and raw. "You'll see. You'll all see."
He backed away down the street, eyes darting, muttering as he went. Ash swirled around him like snow.
The group stood silent as he vanished into the fog.
For a long time, no one spoke.
Only Hana's soft sobs.
Jonah's steps dragged, uneven, every crunch of glass echoing too loud in the ruins. He muttered with each breath, words tumbling out in fragments.
"They'll beg me back. They'll see. I don't need them. Never did. Never will. Alone is better. Safer. Stronger. Alone is—"
His voice cracked. He bit down on the words until his teeth squeaked.
A rusted pipe jutted from rubble nearby. He wrenched it free with both hands, metal groaning. The weight was wrong, awkward, but it felt better than empty hands.
He smeared ash across his cheeks with filthy fingers, streaks of gray war paint. His reflection in a shard of window glass startled him—eyes too wide, lips trembling. He smashed the glass with the pipe, laughing too loud.
"They're prey," he muttered. "Not me. Not me. Hunter's after them, not me."
But the city didn't answer right.
The shadows stretched long, black arms across cracked pavement. The air thickened, damp with a copper tang that coated his tongue. Above, the circling crows shrieked once, sharp and high—and then scattered, wings beating as they fled into the gray sky.
Jonah froze.
His grip on the pipe went slick with sweat.
The birds weren't afraid of him.
They were afraid of what was following.
Jonah's bravado collapsed into a whimper. His chest heaved, shallow and fast. "No," he whispered. "No, not me. Not me."
He stumbled faster into the ruins.
The convenience store still stank of rot.
Its windows were spiderwebbed with cracks, the metal shutters ripped halfway down like claws had worried at them for hours. Dust powdered the shelves, wrappers split open, cans rusted, flies dead in the corners.
Jonah slipped inside, pipe clutched in both hands. His breath rasped too loud in the stale air. He yanked open a shelf drawer, scattering brittle bags of chips, and found crackers buried beneath. He tore them open with his teeth, shoving them into his mouth, crumbs choking him. He chewed too fast, gulped too loud, shoving more in as though his stomach might vanish if he didn't.
A floorboard creaked.
Jonah froze. Crumbs stuck to his lips.
The store aisles groaned faintly, a long sigh of weight shifting.
"I know you're there," Jonah rasped. His voice cracked high, too sharp, a child pretending to be a man. He swung the pipe at empty air. "I'm not afraid of you!"
Silence.
Then another creak, closer.
Jonah stumbled down the aisle, crackers spilling from his shaking fingers. The shelves loomed crooked, and on the lower racks he saw wrappers shredded open. Meat jerky bags gutted, cans dented and split. Not rats. Too big. Too deliberate. Something had eaten here.
He backed away, panting. His heel struck something soft.
A crow.
Pinned beneath a collapsed sign, one wing broken, feathers slick with black ooze. Its eye rolled white, beak snapping weakly.
Jonah grinned, sudden and savage. He lifted his boot and slammed it down. Bone crunched under his heel.
The bird shrieked, high and thin—
And Elias's voice came through it.
"Jonah."
Jonah reeled back, nearly dropping the pipe. His breath stuttered.
The crow's head twisted on its broken neck, beak working soundlessly, and yet Elias's whisper came again, low, deep, and certain.
"Jonah."
Jonah screamed, a raw, breaking sound, and bolted for the door. Crackers scattered behind him, pipe rattling against the shelves as he ran.
The crow lay crushed, silent, its ruined eye still staring.
The streets had never been so quiet.
No wind. No drip of water. No flapping wings. The whole city held its breath.
Ash fell soft, thin as snow, settling on Jonah's shoulders as he staggered into the open. His chest heaved, every breath a sob.
And then the voices started.
Hana's cry, sharp and broken. "He saved me—"
Mara's growl, rough with steel. "Quiet, idiot."
Darius's low, curling laugh. "He shed."
Jonah clapped his hands to his ears. "Shut up! Shut up! You're not here!" He screamed until his throat tore, voice bouncing off the dead walls.
And then, silence.
Too much silence.
Jonah's hands dropped, fingers trembling. He looked up.
On the rooftop across the street, a figure crouched.
Shoulders hunched, head tilted, ember-red eyes blinking once.
Jonah's legs gave out beneath him. He scrambled to his feet, pipe clattering, and bolted down the nearest alley, sobbing. "Not me, not me, not me—"
Jonah's lungs burned. His sobs tore holes in his breathing as he careened down the alley, smashing into walls slick with moss, tripping over shattered bricks. The pipe slipped from his fingers, clattering loud in the silence. He left it behind without looking.
He flung himself toward a yawning gap in a collapsed building, a jagged mouth of rubble leading down into shadow. He crawled inside, scraping his hands raw on concrete, his knees tearing open against stone. He shoved himself beneath the broken slabs, curling into the dark, panting like an animal caught in its own trap.
His heart hammered.
No—it wasn't just in his chest anymore. The sound throbbed in the walls. In the floor. A low, heavy drumbeat, reverberating through the ruin.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
He pressed both hands over his chest as if to smother the noise, as if silence could save him. Hot piss ran down his thigh, pooling beneath him, steaming faint in the cold.
Above, rubble shifted. A long shadow dragged itself across the cracks in the ceiling.
Jonah clamped his teeth shut, breath hissing through his nose, shoulders shaking. His eyes watered in the dust.
Then came the sound.
Claws against stone.
Not quick. Not frantic. Slow. Deliberate. Scrape by scrape, a knife sharpening itself on the bones of the earth.
Jonah whimpered, trying to bury it in his palms. His teeth chattered, clicking against his tongue.
Then a voice, not his own, not human, and yet lodged in the pit of his mind.
The System, velvet and venom both.
"Yes. Jonah first."
The ceiling above him exploded. Rubble crashed down, splinters of rebar and stone raining like knives. Jonah screamed as hands—no, talons—dug into his ankles and wrenched him from hiding. He clawed at the debris, nails tearing bloody, but the grip was too strong.
He was dragged screaming into the dark.
Jonah hit the floor hard, ribs cracking against stone. The air punched from his lungs in a squeal. He tried to scramble back, his nails ripping against concrete, but the thing in the dark was already there.
Elias.
Or what was left of him.
He stepped into the thin seam of moonlight bleeding through the rubble, and Jonah's mind folded. The figure was broad, hunched, his shoulders quivering as though the muscles beneath his skin didn't quite fit anymore. His hands, if they could still be called hands—ended in black talons, tips glowing faintly ember-red, like metal dragged from a forge.
And his face—God, his face—
The jaw split wider than it should, skin stretching, teeth gleaming too sharp, too many. His eyes burned like twin coals sunk deep into a mask that wasn't wholly human anymore. For a heartbeat Jonah saw Elias, the man who had stood in front of Hana, who had fought off the crows, but then the light shifted, and he was nothing but hunger in the shape of a man.
Jonah raised a rusted pipe with a cry. It shook in his hands, pathetic. He swung once. Elias caught it mid-air, claws closing around the metal until it shrieked, bent, and snapped like wet bone.
Jonah's scream was high and thin. He dropped backward, palms skidding through dust. "Elias, please—"
But Elias lunged.
His mouth found Jonah's chest, and the teeth went in.
The world shattered into red. Jonah's body arched, his scream bursting ragged into the night as Elias tore through flesh and muscle, blood spraying hot and metallic across the rubble. The sound was obscene, sucking and tearing, like meat stripped from a carcass.
Jonah thrashed. His arms hammered uselessly against Elias's shoulders, his boots scraping against stone. Each kick grew weaker as the blood drained out of him, pooling beneath his spine.
And Elias fed.
The taste was fire. Hot, human. It flooded his mouth, copper and salt, and with it came something else, something that wasn't his. Memories.
Jonah's.
They crashed into him in shards: Nia's scarf clutched in Hana's hands; Jonah's laughter, wild and broken; his muttering, his hate, his paranoia. All the bile that had festered in him poured into Elias with every swallow.
For a heartbeat, Elias froze.
The blood ran hot down his chin, slicking his throat, and he saw his own reflection in Jonah's eyes. Not a hunter. Not a man. A monster bent over a dying body, lips red with a friend's blood.
The ember light in his eyes flickered.
What am I doing?
He wrenched back with a guttural snarl, spitting blood onto the stones. His chest heaved, trembling. The hunger roared inside him, clawing at his insides, demanding more. But his hands; his human hands, trembling beneath the claws, pressed against the floor as though to hold himself back.
Jonah gasped, his chest torn open, lungs wheezing through torn ribs. His heartbeat was faltering, a broken drum losing its rhythm. His eyes rolled, but he clung to the shred of life, whispering, choking.
"I… should never… have pushed…"
Elias staggered, hands trembling, torn between devouring and recoiling.
The System's voice slithered through the silence, smooth as oil:
"Yes. Feed. This is who you are. Do not deny it. Hunger is truth."
Elias squeezed his eyes shut, blood still dripping from his lips. "Shut up…" His voice was rough, barely human. "Shut up."
The heartbeat beneath him rattled on. Weak. But alive.
His claws flexed once, then stilled.
With a growl strangled into his throat, Elias rose. He turned away, every step a battle, dragging his hunger like chains. His shoulders heaved with restraint. The taste of Jonah's blood burned in his teeth.
He left Jonah bleeding in the rubble.
Above, the crows descended. Black shapes lined the rooftops, hundreds of them, wings folding as they stared down into the wreckage. But they did not descend on Jonah. Their eyes tracked the retreating shape of Elias, his ember-glow vanishing into the ash-veiled night. They watched their new predator leave, and none dared follow.
Jonah lay gasping. His chest was a torn cavern, every breath rattling like broken glass. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth, spilling down his chin. His hands twitched weakly in the dust, clutching at nothing.
"I was right…" he whispered, voice cracked and faint. "I was… right…"
His head slumped. His eyes glazed, staring sightless at the ceiling. His chest stilled.
For a moment, silence.
Then—jerk.
His body convulsed. His chest shuddered, drawing one more gasp, wet and ragged. His heart still clung on, weak, fluttering like a moth pinned under glass.
And then came the whisper.
Not to Elias.
To Jonah.
"Hate is meat too. We'll use it."
His eyes rolled back, lids fluttering, a grotesque half-life clawing through him. The crows shrieked once, a ripple of sound that broke into the night like mocking laughter.
The scene faded into ash, Jonah's heartbeat staggering but not gone, tethered by something darker than blood.
Fade to black.
A.T:
If this chapter unsettled you, that was the point. Horror works best when it lingers. If you're still hearing Jonah's screams or Elias's claws, then we're on the right track.
Drop a power stone if you want more nights like this one.
Big Thanks.