Grog wiped the filth, blood, and his own disgusting entrails from his eyes. He ignored the sharp sting in his still-functioning eyeball, now bloodshot from irritation and rage. He blinked once, trying to clear his vision of the layer of grime obstructing it...
And his world vanished.
The colors faded. The roar of the fire burning fiercely around them, the hiss of the burning wood, and the screams of the dying cultists outside, all of it dimmed. The sound didn't disappear, but distorted into a silent, distant static hiss, like a radio off its station. The burning house vanished, replaced by... nothingness.
An endless gray plain stretched out beneath a dead, overcast ceiling, as if all life and hope had been sucked clean from the universe. Cold. It suddenly became incredibly cold, colder than the worst winter, a cold that pierced right to the soul.
In front of him, Oldred was no longer there.
In the place where the battered, blood-soaked soldier had stood, there now loomed a... something. The figure was gigantic, at least three meters tall, its shadow creeping along the gray ground like a living oil spill. Its body was slender yet woven from pure darkness, a piece of night forced into a humanoid shape, writhing and pulsing as if it could barely maintain its form.
And its head... its head was the skull of a giant German Shepherd. On its forehead, where a third eye should be, was etched the symbol of the Rans Augumm Rose, but the rose glowed. Red. An impossible red, a living red, the only color in this dead world. The rose pulsed with a terrifying rhythm, dripping liquid red light that flowed down like bloody tears from its empty eye sockets, carving glowing red lines down its pitch-black snout.
Grog's perception of reality didn't just change; his reality had been hijacked, rewritten, and destroyed by the presence before him.
Grog's breath caught in his throat. The gray air was too thin, too dead to breathe. The smoke from his own lungs felt frozen in his windpipe. His primitive instincts, a nature forged by his Horse Sin Mark—a symbol of raw power, speed, and escape—screamed hysterically inside his skull. RUN! RUN NOW! KILL! DESTROY THIS BEAST BEFORE IT DESTROYS YOU!
However, his feet were rooted. His steel-hard muscles, now powered by the supernatural strength of the Sin, betrayed him. They were frozen, locked in place, completely paralyzed by the aura of pure terror radiating intensely from the figure. It was a pressure he could feel—a spiritual weight so heavy it felt like his already shattered knees would explode into dust. The Horse Mark on his forehead, which had been burning hot with battle rage, now trembled violently, dimming, terrified. His will had been severed from his body.
Suddenly... the heat came.
Not the heat from the fire in the house. This was an internal heat. His brain felt like it was being boiled from the inside, hissing and sputtering within his skull. His heart, as strong as an engine, began to pound uncontrollably, THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP, before the rhythm broke into a single, painful vibration, as if it would explode from his chest.
He screamed internally, a silent roar tearing his throat, trying to fight this paralysis. He growled like a dying dog, unable to make a sound.
Blood seeped out. Not just from his gaping wounds. Fresh blood spurted from his nose, streamed heavily from the corner of his intact eye, and burst from his ears. The layer of black exoskeleton that had just formed over his wounds began to crack under the unseen pressure.
The world seemed to crush him from the outside and push out from the inside. This beast's presence alone filled Grog's entire world, so absolute, so oppressive, as if the Dog monster's very Existence was incinerating Grog's own. His Horse Mark screamed in silence, burned by the dominant Dog Mark.
And Oldred... just stood there.
In the middle of the burning house, he stood, coughing up blood, his own body shattered. His gaze was vacant, hidden behind the dented steel mask covered in blood and filth. Why this guy? he thought, confused in the fog of his concussion. Why is he screaming? Why is he bleeding... more? Oldred didn't understand what was happening in Grog's head, unaware of the terror effect now radiating from his newly evolved Sin Mark.
He only felt an overwhelming exhaustion and an instinctive need to end this.
With a slow, painful, mechanical movement, he bent down. He ignored Grog convulsing in front of him. He grabbed his steel arm, which lay among the smoldering debris. With a satisfying HSSS-KLAK! sound, he reattached it to his dislocated shoulder. He put it back on as if it were a long-lost part of his very soul.
Oldred was just about to take a step forward, to drag his body and end this ridiculous fight.
KREEEKK... GROOOOAN...
The cracking roof finally gave way. With a roar of splintering wood and an upward blast of fire, the burning chunks of the roof collapsed. A giant, flaming wooden beam that supported the entire structure fell directly onto Oldred, burying him in a deadly avalanche of fire and debris.
And at that very moment, Grog returned to reality.
SNAP!
The gray world shattered into pieces. Colors rushed back into his vision—the blazing red of the fire, the pitch black of the smoke, the sick pale silver of the moonlight. The roar of the flames once again deafened him.
The crushing, burning pain in his brain vanished. The supernatural heat that surpassed the inferno of the burning house subsided. His heart beat normally... well, as normally as it could after being repeatedly beaten to the point of exploding.
All that remained was the extraordinary physical pain from his disemboweled stomach, his shattered knee, and his torn-open face. Strangely... it felt like a relief.
Grog coughed violently, spitting up blood and filth. From the beginning of the fight with this beast, all he had wanted was to kill it. But now, for some reason, he felt relieved.
He stared at the smoldering pile of debris where Oldred was buried.
Maybe... maybe it's over? he thought, nearly passing out from blood loss.
The Horse Mark on his forehead, which had been screaming in terror, now only glowed weakly, flickering like a candle in a storm, barely surviving the effect of that terrifying existence.