Chapter 1: The Last Supper
The pavement was more rust and grit than stone, biting into Crimson's skin through his thin trousers. He sat there, a frail figure defined by sharp collarbones and the deep, violet shadows carved under his eyes. In his trembling hand, he held a slab of dried rations. It looked less like food and more like a piece of tanned leather stiff, grey, and smelling faintly of sawdust. He turned it over, inspected the edges as if the cracks in its surface might hide some secret nourishment, but it remained just as unyielding, just as tasteless.
He stared at it with a quiet, hollow intensity. Today, perhaps, was the day he would die. The thought didn't terrify him; it just settled in his stomach like a cold, jagged stone, heavy and immovable. Life had not been kind, but neither had it been surprising. Hunger had become a constant companion, its sharp insistence a metronome ticking off the slow, grinding days of the Dark Fog era.
"I should have bought the meat," he whispered, his voice cracking from disuse. "Even the cheap, mystery gristle from the lower markets. Who knew actual military rations would taste like compressed cardboard? Well… at least it'll stop the shaking for an hour."
The words were almost absurd, but that faint humor was a fragment of old habits, a shard of the boy who had once laughed at things that didn't matter. He could barely remember that boy now. In this world, memory was a luxury, and comfort, an impossible indulgence.
He looked up, squinting through the gray haze, trying to find the sun. The sky offered nothing but a muted void. The world had been swallowed by the Dark Fog years ago, shortly after the Great Wipe. Time had become fluid, meaningless; gold mornings and crimson evenings were now just illusions from a life that no longer existed. The fog swirled lazily between skeletal skyscrapers, thick enough to muffle sound, thin enough to let the nightmares through. Shadows stretched and twisted in the half-light, seeming to reach for him with unseen hands, whispering of forgotten dangers.
Crimson forced a bite. It was laborious. He chewed mechanically, his jaw aching, forcing the dry crumbs down a throat that felt as though it had been lined with sandpaper. Taste buds be damned; his body needed fuel, even if it was just to power him through the walk to the mouth of the cave. Each swallow scraped his throat, and he coughed softly, tasting dust and regret.
When the last of the "bread" was gone, he wiped his dusty hands on his shirt a garment so worn the original color had long since surrendered to the grime. He stood, knees popping like dry twigs in protest. The air was cold, carrying a faint tang of rot and metal. Each breath was a reminder that this city, this pit of ash and ruin, had swallowed everything once familiar.
This sector of the city was a graveyard of ambition. The humans who once scurried through these streets were long gone, replaced by something else entirely. Figures moved at the periphery of the fog: multi-limbed things with luminous eyes that seemed to pierce the very marrow of his bones. They did not look at him with hunger, not exactly; their curiosity was something stranger, more mocking, as though they delighted in observing weakness.
Crimson felt their judgment weigh on him. He was unhealthily thin, clothes draping off his frame like a shroud. He felt like a ghost who had forgotten to vanish. Across the plaza, a group of them glided with impossible grace, tall, elegant, and terrifying, their movements almost ceremonial in their precision. A flicker of envy sparked in himnot for their strength, but for their freedom from hunger, from the slow erosion of life itself. Yet he did not cower. Instead, he stooped, picking up a jagged pebble from the ash-strewn ground.
"I bet a meal of actual protein would help my aim," he muttered under his breath.
He flicked the pebble toward a stagnant pool of dark, tacky blood nearby. It bounced uselessly three feet to the left, striking a piece of rebar with a metallic click. Crimson exhaled a dry, exasperated sound. Even in the face of monsters, he couldn't manage drama convincingly. He trudged over, boots squelching in soot, and stomped the pebble with a petty sort of vengeance. Then, with a grunt, he kicked it squarely into the center of the crimson pool.
Splash.
A small, twisted grin touched his lips. Small victories. In this world, even petty triumphs were worth savoring.
Turning from the ruins, he faced the cave. Its entrance was a jagged tear in the side of a collapsed subway tunnel, smelling of wet earth and something metallic, almost alive in its staleness. Crimson did not hesitate. He stepped from the fog into the darkness, leaving the gray world behind.
Inside, the air thickened, warm and heavy, smelling faintly of damp stone and decay. Perched on a slab of fallen concrete was a creature that might have been human once, now a mosaic of iridescent, olive-green scales stretched across a frame reminiscent of a monitor lizard. Tattered silk hung from its shoulders, and in its hands, it sharpened a knife fashioned from bone. The creature froze as Crimson approached, its slit pupils contracting with sudden wariness.
Its nostrils flared, scenting his hollow cheeks and trembling hands with visible disgust.
"Are you lost, human?" it hissed, voice like sliding rocks. "The slaughterhouse is three blocks back. We don't take donations of skin and bone here."
Crimson did not flinch. Fear had long since been a luxury he could no longer afford. His gaze wandered over the walls of the cave: carvings etched deep into the stone, nests of black moss that clung like shadows, remnants of who had come before. He wondered, briefly, if the creature had spoken, or if hunger had finally driven him into hallucination.
"Hey! Skinny meat! I am speaking to you!" the lizard-man roared, its seven-foot frame towering. The sound reverberated through the cavern, shaking the floor beneath him.
Crimson cleared his throat. Tiny, insignificant. "Uh… no. Not lost," he replied, his voice flat. He reached up, scratching the back of his head with a bored gesture, his expression a mask of fatigue rather than terror.
He let his gaze drift down the creature's massive, clawed hands, noting every ridge, every scar. Then he spoke again, voice quiet but deliberate.
"So," he said, flat, almost uninterested, "are you actually strong, or is the yelling just a hobby?"
For a heartbeat, the lizard-man froze. The irritation vanished, replaced by sharp wariness. Its grip on the bone knife tightened; it leaned closer, searching Crimson's eyes for hidden strength, a spark of dangerous intent. All it found was a man worn thin, a body bending under the weight of hunger and hardship but one who did not care, one who had already stared death in the face and found it dull.