"Get out the damn house, ya buncha sour turds!" The grey-haired man cloaked in grey, Hill's father, yelled, his gravelly voice echoing through the tenement stairwell. "The plague beasts are on their way, and you lousy cretins are still packin' bags!"
His mother's shrill voice shot out from the door of their flat. "I'm packing food for the kids! I'm not risking us starving to death once we leave!"
"Yeah, father!" His older sister, Meira, voiced her support for her mother. "We live in a damn metropolis! How will we eat when we reach the mountains?"
Hill's father spat angrily on the stairwell wall before rushing back up the crooked steps. He kicked the door of their rickety flat open and marched inside, his voice rising as another bout of yelling between him and Hill's mother began.
Hill sighed, his crimson eyes turning away from the door as he began descending the stairs. He clutched a sack full of clothes—most of which belonged to Meira and some of which had been passed down to him when she outgrew them.
Through the windows at every level of the stairwell, Hill could hear the thunder of Gargath fighter jets as they streaked toward the wall of red smoke consuming the horizon.
The Gargath Air Force had recently upgraded their meager arsenal, finally matching the aerial might of the Peridian Empire. Despite their fleet of only ninety warplanes, they had achieved parity not through numbers but through superior technology—an impressive feat for the small coastal nation that had clawed its way up from being the bottom feeder of the Laushia Continent to a regional power.
But as Hill watched the scarlet-painted planes disappear into the distance, he knew they would never return. After all, Peridia was no more.
The empire's landmass of over five million square miles had been devoured by that same crimson cloud. Their superior warplanes hadn't saved them, nor had their armies or weapons of mass destruction.
The Gargath fighters launched their payload toward the advancing wall of smoke. Muffled explosions bloomed in the distance, briefly illuminating the darkening mass with flashes of yellow fire. Within the cloud, Hill glimpsed ominous shadows—winged shapes that sent the surviving planes banking away in desperate retreat.
As the aircraft fled and the explosion-light faded, the cloud rolled forward, unabated and undeterred.
His father's voice echoed down the stairwell. "Wait for yer family, you deviant little shit!"
Hill cleared his throat and yelled back with all the energy his frail body could muster. "Yes, sir!"
---
Within fifteen minutes, the family of four had fled their tenement and pushed through the downtown market square toward the bridge crossing. Unfortunately, nearly everyone within a five-mile radius had the same idea. They found themselves trapped in a growing bottleneck at the entrance to the pedestrian walkway.
Without hesitation, Hill's father shoved his family forward and pressed himself against the man ahead of them. The rest followed suit, struggling to maintain their footing as more panicked souls crushed against them from behind.
His father gripped his mother's hand, who clutched Meira's, who held Hill's so tightly that tears pricked his eyes from the pain.
Agshaka, Gargath's capital, straddled the muddy Gion River. Beyond those murky brown waters rose the Jazadir Mountain Range—not a safe destination, but anywhere seemed better than staying in the city. The crowd's collective hope was that enough people could cross the various bridges before the government destroyed them, buying millions of civilians time to escape further inland.
We'll all be dead before we reach the other side, Hill thought.
His father's strained voice cut through his dark musings. "Move! Keep moving!" The older man pushed with desperate strength, even spitting on the bald head of the unfortunate soul in front of him.
The victim said nothing—most people had enough sense not to pick fights with drunken fools, especially now.
The sounds of explosions grew louder. Hill refused to look back. Despite accepting his likely death, he couldn't bring himself to stare it down.
The footage that had aired on international television remained burned into his memory—monsters of unimaginable horror and scale devouring an entire continental empire, then traversing twenty thousand miles of ocean to reach Laushia. The world government's misguided attempt at transparency had backfired spectacularly. Truth had bred only panic.
---
"Hill...you alright?" Meira gasped, struggling for breath as she glanced back at her younger brother. She shared his crimson eyes and raven hair—the only traits that distinguished them from their parents. More importantly, she had been more of a parent than either of their actual ones. Only now, with death stalking them, had Hill begun to truly appreciate her steady presence.
"I'm alright," he managed, tugging her arm as he squeezed through a gap between bodies. "Don't worry about me. I'll hold on as tight as I can."
She smiled grimly before turning back to their mother. The family inched forward along the eastern railing, where slightly more space existed—most people feared being crushed against the metal bars or pushed into the murky depths below.
Hill twisted his torso and craned his neck to look behind them. Through the narrow gap between the mass of heads and the vehicle roadway above, he could see the crimson cloud clearly. They had barely moved fifty yards, while it had devoured miles of cityscape.
The roar of jet engines suddenly thundered overhead. Everyone on the walkway looked up as a low-flying warplane screamed past, unleashing a salvo of missiles toward the advancing cloud before banking sharply away. The explosions shook the bridge's foundation.
The crowd cheered, momentarily heartened by this show of resistance. Even Hill managed a smile—until reality crushed their hope.
From the depths of the crimson cloud, now perhaps a mile behind them, a massive shape burst forth. Wreathed in writhing darkness and built like a pterodactyl the size of a passenger jet, it rocketed through the air like a living missile. It slammed into the fleeing warplane's tail section, detonating the aircraft in a fireball that lit up the sky before the creature plunged into the river.
The crowd's cheers became screams. People surged forward with renewed desperation. Hill felt his arm being wrenched at an unnatural angle as bodies compressed around him. His ribs creaked. He couldn't draw breath.
Then the beast erupted from the water.
River spray cascaded from its obsidian scales as it rose, wings spreading wide enough to cast shadows across half the bridge. Its elongated skull split open to reveal rows of teeth like broken glass, each one the size of a sword blade. Water poured from its maw as it angled directly toward the walkway.
The crowd instantly stampeded toward the western railing, but the narrow passage couldn't accommodate the sudden shift. Hill watched in frozen horror as the creature struck the eastern rail just ten feet behind him.
The impact was devastating. The reinforced metal crumpled like paper. Concrete exploded outward in chunks. The people who had been pressed against that section simply vanished—erased in a spray of bloody mist and twisted metal.
The bridge shuddered. Cracks spider-webbed through the walkway's surface. Hill felt the structure sag beneath their feet as screams erupted from every direction.
But the monster wasn't finished.
It wrapped itself onto the bridge from the underside, claws the size of pitchforks gouging deep furrows in the concrete as it cemented its hold. Its serpentine neck swayed as it surveyed the trapped crowd, and Hill saw intelligence burning in those coal-black eyes—not the mindless hunger of a beast, but something far worse. This thing was choosing its victims.
People trampled each other in their panic. Hill's father released his mother's hand and shoved past an elderly woman, sending her sprawling. "Run!" he screamed. "Every man for himself!"
Hill's mother stumbled, nearly falling before Meira caught her arm. "You bitch! Come back here!" Meira screamed over the chaos, but her voice was lost in the pandemonium.
Time seemed to slow as those massive jaws began to open. Hill saw every detail with crystal clarity—the strings of saliva hanging between the teeth, the darkness beyond that led to its gullet, the way its throat muscles contracted in preparation to strike.
He realized with perfect, terrible certainty that the beast was looking directly at him.
Hill tried to run, but his legs had turned to lead. The crowd pressed against him from all sides, trapping him in place. Meira's hand slipped from his as she was swept away by the surge of bodies.
"Hill!" she screamed, reaching for him desperately.
But it was too late.
The monster's head swung to the left and then pitched right like a hammer, jaws spreading impossibly wide. Hill could smell its breath—the stench of rotting meat and sulfur. He could see his own reflection in its black eyes.
The world narrowed to those approaching teeth, each one sharp enough to cleave him in half. Hill opened his mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. There was only the rushing darkness as the creature's maw moved in, ready to devour him in one crushing bite.