The sky was split like a wound—dark, pulsing, bleeding light. The tear stretched wider now, groaning as if the heavens themselves were being pried open.
Below it, chaos bloomed.
People screamed. Cars crashed into each other. Sirens wailed like they were crying out for mercy. But none came.
Vina darted across rooftops in her partial transformation—golden eyes glowing, claws out, ears twitching at every sound. Her boots scraped across shingles, her tail flicking with tension.
No one noticed her.
They were too busy running for their lives.
And for good reason.
Because the monsters had come.
From every alley. Every crack. Every shadow.
They poured into the streets like a flood of nightmares.
The first was a Fleshling.
A low-class monstrosity. Humanoid, but only just—its body hunched and twitching, skin flayed open like ribbons. Its jaws were vertical, splitting its face in half, and as it caught a man trying to crawl away, it clamped down over his entire head and crunched.
