Deven leapt from his seat and bolted for the door, grabbing Aisha by the wrist and dragging her behind him.
"Wha—What is that?!" she cried out, stumbling as desks scraped and toppled around them.
There was no time to explain. No time to even think. Every second was a countdown to bloodshed.
Behind them, chaos bloomed like a fire.
Screams ripped through the room. Someone cried out for their mom. Another tried to crawl away. Then—something wet and heavy slammed against the whiteboard with a splatter. A desk was thrown like a toy, crashing into the wall.
The Skald was moving.
Deven risked a glance back.
Tall and twisted, all jagged bone and twitching sinew, the creature lurched through the carnage. Its jaw unhinged and split sideways like cracked porcelain, leaking tar-like fluid. A single eye glowed red-hot in the center of its skull-like face.
Just as he'd feared, it attacked without hesitation, its instincts driven by madness and blood.
Mr. Takeda didn't even have time to scream.
The Skald's claws tore into him, carving him open from shoulder to hip. Blood sprayed across the chalkboard like some grotesque lesson plan. The teacher's body crumpled, lifeless, into a heap.
Deven felt bile rise in his throat.
"Damn it," he whispered, the weight of his own imagination crushing him. "Why did I have to make the Skald the first monster?"
It was one of his earliest creations—brutal, efficient, merciless. A horror designed to thin the cast, to make a statement. A creature introduced to show just how dark the story would get.
But now it wasn't fiction.
This was real.
The panic in the room turned frantic. Chairs flipped. Students cried. One girl tried to leap out the window before another pulled her back. Everyone was scrambling, but no one was escaping. The Skald was too fast.
Deven's grip on Aisha was weakening. She was shaking violently, lips parted in silent shock. Her knees buckled as the screams grew louder.
They wouldn't make it. Not like this.
No weapons. No powers.
Only knowledge.
And knowledge told him the awful truth:
He had to awaken.He had to die.
It was the only way.
"I have one extra life," he muttered to himself, breath shallow. "One. Just one."
Use it.
He turned to Aisha, who was on the verge of collapsing.
"When I let go, run," he said firmly. "Don't look back."
Her eyes locked with his. Fear. Confusion. Desperation. "What are you—Deven?!"
But he was already gone.
Sprinting toward the Skald.
Straight into death.
The creature turned to him instantly. It recognized motion like a predator. There was no delay—just instinct. A blur of movement. A hiss like steam.
Claws slashed through the air with surgical precision.
Deven didn't even feel the pain. Just a thump in his chest, then a sudden, suffocating cold. The world tilted. Blood flooded his throat.
He dropped to the floor, limbs twitching.
Aisha's scream reached him like a sound underwater—muffled, distant.
Damn. Why does dying have to hurt so much?
The light drained from the world. His heart gave a final, sluggish beat.
He was fading.
He was dying.
And then—
Ding.
Congratulations on Awakening.You have unlocked your exclusive ability: Rebirth.
Everything froze.
Time. Sound. Pain.
It was like falling upward into an endless sky of nothing. A void of white, then black, then white again. In this in-between, he felt everything and nothing all at once.
Then the system's voice echoed again—calm, clinical, impossibly loud in the silence of death:
Condition Met: First Death
Extra Life Consumed.
Extra lives left: 0
Revival in: 30 seconds.
Deven's soul—or whatever was left of it—floated in the void.
He couldn't scream. Couldn't move.