The city burned like a dying heart.
Smoke coiled from shattered towers, the air thick with ash and screams. Fires leapt from building to building, a crimson rhythm beating in sync with the chaos below. In the streets, the fragmented — those once-human shapes forged from fear and shadow — moved as one. Their bodies pulsed with black energy, tendrils whispering against the walls as if feeding on despair itself.
> "The harvest begins," a voice seemed to murmur from everywhere and nowhere. "Every scream feeds the shadows."
Civilians stumbled through the wreckage — bloodied, hollow-eyed, clutching at the wounded. A mother's voice cracked as she called her child's name. Somewhere beneath a pile of rubble, a small hand reached for light — only to find the gentle touch of a shadow curling around its fingers.
A monster grinned, teeth like broken glass, and silence followed.
---
The City as a Prison
The once-living streets had become a labyrinth of terror. Militia checkpoints crumbled beneath the monsters' relentless assault. Shadows coiled up lampposts, blending with smoke until even the sun was forgotten. The creatures' movements were precise — too precise — their actions orchestrated like soldiers in an unseen war.
From high above, in a reinforced control bunker, the Overseer watched.
Monitors bathed him in cold light — every screen a window into a living nightmare. He smiled, almost tenderly, as the city convulsed under his creation.
"Magnificent," he whispered. "The experiment… complete."
Drones hovered through the smoke, capturing the ruin in perfect clarity. Every scream, every detonation, every collapsing wall fed into his data streams. To the Overseer, it wasn't death he saw — it was progress.
> "From broken humans," he murmured, "come perfect instruments of terror."
---
Shadows in Motion
In the streets, the monsters tore through steel and concrete like paper. Cars burned. Marketplaces exploded into flame. The air vibrated with a strange pulse — the heartbeat of something vast and unseen.
Tendrils wrapped around fleeing civilians, whispering lullabies of obedience. One creature paused over a dying man, its form flickering — half-human, half-nightmare. For an instant, a trace of memory crossed its face: a wedding ring, a smile, a child's laugh. Then it turned away, its expression cold once more.
> "Feed… take… destroy," it muttered, and vanished into the fog.
---
The Overseer's Ecstasy
Inside his control room, the Overseer leaned back in his chair. The glow from the screens made his eyes look hollow — like twin voids reflecting a thousand small apocalypses. He raised a glass of wine to his lips and laughed softly.
"They called me a monster once," he said. "How ironic. They never understood—chaos is purity. Pain is truth. Fear is… control."
Behind him, the monitors flickered between live drone footage and archived scenes from old wars — Syria, Iraq, Gaza — as if past and present had become one continuous loop of destruction.
Every death recorded. Every emotion stored. Every terror quantified.
He smiled wider.
> "Entropy," he whispered. "My masterpiece."
---
The Streets of Despair
Civilians ran through streets that no longer obeyed logic. Walls pulsed like lungs; asphalt rippled like liquid shadow. A woman carrying an infant stumbled past a row of corpses still smoldering from the last explosion. Her tears cut trails through the soot on her cheeks.
An ambulance tried to break through the fog, siren wailing — but tendrils coiled around its tires, flipping it into the air.
The baby cried once. Then even the sound was swallowed by the dark.
> "Every scream," the narration seemed to echo from the smoke,
"is a note in the symphony of shadows."
---
Memory of Men
The monsters continued their work.
They moved like a tide — devouring streets, ripping open buildings, breaking the sky's light. In one window, a survivor filmed the horror on his phone. The screen flickered, freezing just before a tendril reached him.
The footage would later loop endlessly on news broadcasts worldwide.
Journalists shouted through broken radios, soldiers screamed coordinates no one could hear. Drones hovered, capturing it all for the Overseer's archive. The rest of the world could only watch the city vanish beneath a living fog.
---
The Last Spark
Yet, amid the ruin, humanity persisted.
A few civilians banded together — police, firefighters, children with makeshift weapons. They struck back with whatever they could: Molotovs, blades, raw defiance. For brief moments, the monsters faltered. In their glowing eyes, something flickered — not obedience, not rage, but confusion.
One of them whispered, its voice shaking:
> "I… remember…"
Then the shadows surged again, devouring that spark. The human part died with the next breath.
---
The Overseer's Plan
In the command room, the Overseer tapped his console.
Every camera feed responded. Every drone adjusted its orbit.
On a holographic map, red dots pulsed across the city grid — control points, containment zones, harvest routes.
"Phase Two," he said quietly.
"Let them multiply."
He closed his eyes as if savoring the taste of his own triumph.
Outside, the shadows obeyed.
---
The Night Crowned in Fire
By midnight, the city had ceased to be a city.
It was a breathing organism — a fusion of concrete, blood, and fear.
The skyline bent under the weight of smoke. The moon hung blood-red, reflected in pools of oil and flame.
A monster stood atop the ruins of a church, staring down at the chaos below. For a brief second, it looked almost human — face twisted not by rage, but by sorrow.
Then it turned, melting into the fog.
---
The Overseer's Whisper
Alone in his chamber, the Overseer spoke softly to the screens:
> "They will destroy… they will obey…
and in their fear, they will learn beauty."
His laughter was almost gentle. Almost human.
The last camera feed showed a swarm of fragment monsters gathering at a massive intersection — moving as one, forming a symbol that could only be seen from above.
A spiral. Endless. Consuming.
The lights flickered. The feed died.