It started like fire.
Not real fire—something worse. Something alive beneath my skin, writhing through my fingers like parasites burrowing toward bone.
I stumbled to the bathroom, vision blurring. My hands wouldn't stop shaking—couldn't stop—as I wrenched the tap open and plunged them into the stream.
The water was ice-cold.
The burning got worse.
Then it moved. Slithering down my wrists, into my arms. My legs. It felt like something was crawling inside my veins, mapping every pathway, claiming every inch.
"What—what is happening to me?!"
That's when I saw it.
Floating in the air. Suspended like something out of a nightmare.
A red window.
◈ Time Remaining: 00:00
[You have failed to meet the blood quota...]
[ACTIVATING AUTOMATIC CONSUMPTION PROTOCOL.]
"Wh—what...?"
The words barely left my mouth before—
CRACK.
The sound was wet. Organic. Wrong.
All ten fingernails ripped off at once.
Not pulled. Not torn.
Consumed.
I screamed—or tried to. The sound that came out was something else. Something animal. Raw.
Blood erupted from my fingertips, painting the sink crimson in violent spurts. I watched, paralyzed, as the exposed flesh beneath pulsed and bled, nerves screaming in unison.
The pain didn't stop.
It multiplied.
Something warm—sickeningly warm—slithered up from my feet. Not blood. Something else. Like my body was digesting itself from the inside out.
I stared at my ruined hands.
Ten open wounds where nails used to be.
Ten raw, weeping craters.
"My nails... where—"
My voice cracked. The bleeding wouldn't stop. The blood kept coming, dripping into the sink, pooling at my feet.
And the red window?
It stayed.
Silent.
Watching.
Waiting.
As if this—
—this horror, this violation—
—was only the beginning.