Darkness.
At first, there was nothing but that.
A suffocating sea of black — endless, cold, and strangely alive. I floated in it, weightless and numb, unsure if I was breathing or already dead.
Then came the sound.
A faint whisper… metal grinding against bone. The kind of noise that doesn't belong in any dream.
I tried to open my eyes — and the world bled into existence.
Above me stretched a fractured sky, gray and heavy like an old scar. The air smelled of rust and wet ash. Shards of steel jutted from the ground like the ribs of some buried giant. And everywhere I looked, the earth pulsed faintly… as though veins of faint red light beat beneath it.
A nightmare. That was my first thought.
But then the pain came — dull, real, biting through the haze in my mind.
I was lying on cold ground, drenched in filth. My hands trembled as I pushed myself up. My reflection glimmered faintly in a puddle beside me — pale skin streaked with grime, dark eyes wide and hollow.
I didn't recognize that face.
"Where… am I?" My voice sounded weak, almost foreign.
No one answered.
Only the distant hum of something alive — mechanical, maybe. A strange hybrid tone, the kind of sound that made the back of my neck crawl.
Then, the world shifted.
A vibration rippled through the ground, subtle but deep, like the growl of a beast hidden beneath the city's carcass. Dust fell from a half-collapsed wall nearby.
I froze.
The sound grew louder — a thudding rhythm. Not footsteps. Too heavy. Too distorted.
Something was moving out there.
I turned my head, spotting a narrow alley between two fallen towers. My instincts screamed at me to run — though I wasn't sure why. I didn't know who I was running from… or who I even was.
The hum grew sharper, closer.
Then I saw it.
A figure emerged from the haze — tall, misshapen, its limbs part metal, part flesh. A single glowing eye burned in its chest, and from its shoulders hung strips of living muscle woven into armor plating.
It wasn't human. Not anymore.
Every instinct I had screamed that this thing hunted.
I staggered back, searching for a weapon — anything. My hand brushed against a broken pipe, half-buried in the dirt. I snatched it up, heart pounding.
The creature turned its head — a horrible grinding sound following the motion. It looked right at me.
And then… it paused.
A faint light flickered between us, shimmering in the air like heat. For a brief moment, I saw something — an invisible pattern, threads of crimson weaving between me and the beast.
Then the vision vanished, and the creature lunged.
I swung the pipe. Metal clashed against metal. Sparks flew. My arm screamed in pain. I barely ducked as claws tore through the air, close enough to rip strands of hair from my head.
It was too strong. Too fast.
Desperation blurred everything. I hit the ground, rolled, swung again. A lucky strike caught the thing's joint — it staggered, shrieking in static and blood.
Then, before it could recover, a faint click echoed from somewhere above.
A blue flare tore through the fog — piercing clean through the creature's skull.
It dropped.
I froze. The smell of burnt oil filled the air.
"Not bad," a calm voice said from the shadows.
I turned. A figure stepped forward — tall, wrapped in a long coat lined with dull silver. A visor covered her eyes, faintly glowing. In her hand, a rifle that looked both primitive and impossibly advanced.
She lowered it slightly, studying me.
"Still alive," she said quietly. "That's… unexpected."
Her gaze lingered on the faint red glow beneath my skin — something I hadn't noticed until now.
"Who are you?" I managed to ask.
The woman tilted her head. "I'm your warden," she said. "Call me Iver."
Warden?
I didn't have time to ask what that meant.
Behind her, shadows stirred again — shapes moving through the fog.
And as the air filled with the echo of distant howls, I realized something terrifying.
The dream wasn't ending.
It was beginning.