A sharp blade carved through the dark, colorless sky in a clean horizontal arc, its silver edge catching what little moonlight remained and flashing like a sudden fracture in the night.
The strike was wielded by the red-haired woman—fluid, precise, practiced. She slid a step backward, boots scraping against asphalt as she reset her stance, body squared and balanced. Across from her, something massive loomed, drawing itself up as if answering the challenge. It raised its arms—huge, misshapen pillars of muscle—preparing to bring them down in a crushing, hammer-like blow.
The creature was built low and wide, its frame grotesquely powerful. Dark, coarse fur clung to dense muscle packed tight beneath its skin, each movement rippling with raw strength. Its long arms dragged close to the ground, far too long for a human body, ending in thick, clawed hands shaped for crushing bone and tearing flesh. Despite its bulk, there was an unsettling agility in the way it shifted its weight—feral, unpredictable, ready to spring.
Its face was hidden behind a warped, bone-like mask twisted into a permanent, savage grin. Jagged teeth jutted through the mask's design, bared as if frozen mid-snarl, while glowing red eyes burned fiercely from within the hollow sockets. Wild black hair spilled down its back in tangled sheets, giving it the presence of something untamed, berserk—less a beast of instinct, more a force of violent intent.
The creature's immense arms descended with crushing force as the blade swept to meet them. Steel flashed in a clean arc, slicing through its fist with surgical precision. Blood burst outward at the point of contact, dark crimson scattering across the night air before splashing against the broken pavement.
Without hesitation, the red-haired woman shifted her weight and slipped beneath the follow-through of her own strike. She dropped low, rolling across the ground with disciplined control, keeping the sword angled safely away from her body as she repositioned.
A fraction of a second later, the monster's attack struck home.
Its arms slammed into the cement with catastrophic power, shattering the surface instantly. Concrete fractured and erupted into debris, chunks of stone thrown aside as cracks radiated outward from the impact zone. The ground itself seemed to recoil beneath the weight.
The wound did nothing to slow it.
Even as blood streamed from its damaged hand, the ape-like creature twisted its massive frame with startling speed, rotating to face her once more. She had gained distance—enough to breathe, not enough to escape.
The beast thrust its torso forward, drawing its arms back as its muscles bulged beneath the dark fur. Then it roared. The sound tore from its throat in a violent screech, jagged and distorted, saliva spilling freely from its open maw. The air vibrated with the force of it, sending tremors through the surrounding structures and rattling loose debris across the street.
She steadied herself, realizing there would be no clean opening.
The creature surged forward, dropping to all fours as it charged, its long limbs pounding against the ground in a brutal display of speed and power.
"This one's a savage," she muttered under her breath as the beast launched itself skyward.
The pavement beneath its takeoff collapsed into a crater, pulverized by the explosive force of its leap. Its colossal body rose high above her, blotting out the faint light overhead. Midair, it raised both arms once more, muscles tightening as it prepared to drive them down.
It fell toward her like a descending mass of destruction—intent on crushing her beneath its weight, reducing her to nothing more than a fragile figure in its shadow.
Her footing slipped against the rain-slick pavement as she steadied herself, drawing the blade up in front of her torso. Two fingers slid along the hilt with practiced precision, her grip tightening as her breathing slowed.
"Spill. Bleed. Dance."
She dragged her fingers along the steel in a single, deliberate motion.
The blade answered.
Crimson flooded across its surface, swallowing the silver in an instant. The weapon fractured and reshaped itself mid-motion, warping into a curved form as vein-like patterns ignited along its length, pulsing with a blood-red glow as though the sword itself had a living circulation.
The monster struck.
Its massive body crashed down where she had stood a heartbeat earlier, arms slamming into the ground with devastating force. The impact shattered the pavement, sending shards of concrete and dust exploding outward as the street caved beneath its weight.
She slipped past the destruction, rolling cleanly to the side and rising in one fluid motion.
Before the creature could recover, she surged forward.
The blood-forged blade cut through the air in a swift, controlled arc. Steel met flesh as the edge tore across the ape's arms, carving deep into dense muscle. Where the sword connected, glowing vein-like marks spread across the creature's limbs—crimson lines etched into its body, pulsing as if its own blood had been forcibly rewritten.
The beast recoiled, its roar twisting into something sharper—angrier.
Elsewhere, darkness lingered in an oppressive, unbroken silence, heavy enough to feel deliberate. It was the kind of stillness that suggested patience rather than peace, as though the city itself were waiting.
"I haven't seen one… but I know they're out there," she murmured, forcing each step to be as quiet as possible as she searched for signs of the creatures she knew were roaming nearby.
She moved toward the pedestrian bridge spanning the highway, ascending the stairs with careful restraint. Every footfall was measured, every breath controlled. Up here, she could observe more ground while keeping distance from the streets below—distance meant survival. "Empty…" she added softly, scanning the roadway beneath her as she advanced.
Then the streetlights flickered.
Once. Then again.
In the next instant, a roar erupted across the district, violently close and impossibly loud. The sound carried enough force to rupture the bulbs outright, glass exploding as the lights went dead, plunging the area into total darkness.
Pain detonated inside her head.
She dropped into a crouch, hands clamped tightly over her ears as the noise tore through her, sharper and more invasive than anything she had endured before. This time, it was worse. The pressure spread rapidly, searing through her skull as blood began to flow freely, warm against her skin.
Her breath staggered as she fought to remain conscious.
The sound was no longer distant. It was not approaching.
It was already there.
And before she could recover, before the pain could recede, the presence revealed itself, promising something far more dreadful than the silence it had replaced.
"Why is it so loud?!" she shouted, clamping her hands over her ears in a desperate attempt to dull the agony tearing through her skull. The effort barely helped. The sound pressed in from every direction, vibrating through bone and thought alike.
But the noise quickly became the least of her concerns.
From the corner of the nearby skyscraper, a shadow began to move.
At first it was nothing more than a distortion clinging to the wall, sliding unnaturally along concrete and glass. Then it crawled fully into view, its movements precise and deliberate, like an insect navigating a vertical surface. It clung to the building with ease, limbs bending at impossible angles as it descended.
She froze.
The creature was slender and deeply unsettling, its compact body wrapped in short, dark fur stretched tight over a lean, sinewy frame. Long, spider-like limbs extended from its torso, each joint bending too sharply, too cleanly, allowing it to crawl with terrifying agility. Atop its head rose a pair of tall, rabbit-like ears, twitching faintly as if tuning into every sound she made.
Its face was hidden behind a bone-like mask, smooth and pale, molded into a shape that felt wrong even without expression. From within the hollow sockets, glowing red eyes burned intensely, fixed on her with predatory focus. They did not blink. They did not waver.
The creature stopped its descent and turned its head slowly toward her, the motion deliberate, aware.
It had found her.
The creature continued to crawl along the skyscraper's walls, shifting through a variety of unnatural postures as if gravity were merely a suggestion. Its limbs folded and unfolded at sharp, insectlike angles, clinging to concrete and glass with effortless precision. Then, with a sudden coil of its legs, it leapt—springing like a rabbit through the air and landing atop the next streetlamp with a hollow metallic clang.
From there, it moved again, bounding across the row of shattered lights with unsettling grace. Each landing was perfectly measured, each motion fluid and deliberate, like a seasoned climber navigating familiar terrain. In a final, silent hop, it perched on the lamp directly above her, crouched low, its elongated limbs wrapping around the pole as it leaned forward.
It looked down at her.
The bone-like mask tilted slightly, glowing red eyes burning through the darkness, fixed on her kneeling form below.
"Fresh… meat…" it rasped.
The sound froze her blood.
It wasn't a roar. It wasn't a screech. It was speech—low, breathy, and heavy, dragged from deep within its chest as if the words themselves hurt to form. The realization struck harder than the fear: these creatures didn't just hunt. They understood.
"Food…" it murmured again.
Slowly, it began to descend. Its movements were deeply wrong—jerky yet controlled, joints twisting as it slid down from the lamp and onto the bridge. Its limbs bent backward and sideways, fingers and claws scraping lightly against metal and concrete as it advanced. Each step was deliberate, savoring the moment, savoring her fear.
The thing did not rush.
It stalked.
Facing the enormous creature before her—towering above her as it crept closer, its masked eyes locked onto her body—Yuna forced herself to move. Slowly, deliberately, she straightened her posture and began to step back, each retreat measured and careful, as though sudden motion might trigger the thing to strike.
Fear rooted itself deep within her chest. The knowledge that it could speak left her momentarily stunned, her instincts lagging behind her thoughts. It wasn't capable of conversation, not in any human sense, but that didn't matter. Words alone were enough. Enough to strip away any illusion that these creatures were mindless beasts.
Its presence was overwhelming.
The grotesque shape, the unnatural movements, the hollow gaze burning behind that mask—everything about it repulsed her. Horror twisted in her gut, followed closely by a sharp wave of disgust. This wasn't just a predator.
It was something that understood what it hunted.
And that realization made backing away feel far more dangerous than standing still.
As she retreated, the creature adjusted in perfect synchrony.
Each step she took was answered by one of its own, measured and precise, maintaining the same suffocating distance between them. It neither rushed nor hesitated. That, more than anything, unsettled her.
It did not attack.
Instead, the spider-like entity observed her in silence, its bone-like mask angled toward her with unnerving intent. The glowing eyes behind it remained fixed, unblinking, as though cataloging every shift in her posture, every change in her breathing. This was not the behavior of a mindless predator driven by hunger.
It was stalking.
Studying her movements. Testing her composure. Evaluating how fear alone shaped her retreat.
Its long limbs repositioned with unsettling grace, claws scraping faintly against concrete as it subtly altered its angle, preventing her from finding an escape. The restraint in its actions was deliberate, controlled—almost calculated. That patience carried a far deeper menace than outright aggression ever could.
Then it spoke.
"Closer," it murmured, the word drawn out through a heavy, wet breath. "You… smell pleasant."
The sound of its voice sent a cold shiver through her. The creature leaned forward slightly, inhaling as though savoring her presence. A thin trail of saliva slipped from beneath the mask, striking the ground in slow, deliberate drops.
This was not simple hunger.
It was indulgence.
And in that moment, Yuna understood something far more disturbing than the danger itself: the creature was not delaying because it needed to.
It was delaying because it wanted to.