As I raced to catch up to the scavengers, I realized, I left a fortune of items behind. I doubted anyone would be kind enough to take care of them for me until I returned.

I huffed and puffed as I raced past a few people. I was fit for my age, having practiced sword fighting for hours a day for years so it wasn’t much of a surprise. The people I passed looked older and out of shape. I couldn’t help shaking my head, they had no reason to be here where speed and endurance could be the line between life and death.

The only sounds as I ran were the sounds of people panting for breath, the slap of feet against the hard ground, and the rush of wind past my ears.

The fastest runners were already passing the first line of surviving buildings. I saw Lydan among them. The man quickly vanished between two buildings. He was likely well acquainted with the outskirts of the town and knew every bolt hole and hiding spots thanks to his many runs into the city.

I wanted to follow after him but my thoughts were interrupted by a scream coming from behind me. I turned and saw a monstrous wolf-like creature bound out from behind a building. It breathed a gout of blue flames at people on the far side of the road we were running along, setting the unfortunate souls on fire. I instinctively flinched away from the flames as the heat reached me.

The screams of the dying people brought more movement from within the city and buildings. The monsters were eerily quiet as they descended on us like a pack of fire ants. A monster no larger than a house cat leaped from an opening on a second floor and landed on an unfortunate runner ahead of me.

The man screamed as he tried to tear the beast off but his flailing was for naught as the creature dug into the man with its claws and teeth, causing his flesh to melt off his body while he screamed and flailed.

I choked down my vomit and added another burst of speed as I finally crossed into the city. I searched frantically for a place to hide before the monsters targeted me. A deformed stag bolted from an alley toward me and I skidded to a halt. The woman next to me missed the charging creature as the beast impaled the poor woman on its glowing red horns. The smell of roasting meat and burned hair assaulted my nose and I nearly broke.

Fear of the monsters blocking the path out of the city drove me forward as I ran past the screaming woman. My conscience said I should stop and help her, but the reality was she was already dead and I needed to save myself. I rushed for the alley the deer had come from as it appeared vacant. It was choked by fallen rocks but I scrambled over them and down the other side and past multiple bends until I lost sight of the carnage behind me. Eventually, I spotted a partially caved-in doorway.

I slipped my pack off and shoved it through the opening before squeezing through behind it.

The area past the doorway was small, barely enough for me and my bag. I pushed a few broken bits of the collapsed ceiling toward the door and set my bag between myself and the remaining opening. I also drew my sword and prayed to the Mother to keep me safe from these monstrosities.

Listening to the screams as I hid away like some coward was the worst torture I could imagine. My childish dreams of being fully prepared to brave this city and easily surviving the monsters had been quickly and thoroughly washed away. Not in my worst nightmares had I imagined anything this horrific and it hadn’t even been an hour. If I wasn’t already sure my escape had been cut off, I would have fled back to the clearing, packed up, and gone home in shame.

Even my stubbornness had its limits.

I grew antsier and antsier as time ticked by. The screams had almost come to a stop but the sounds of things moving nearby had increased significantly.

The worst scare had been when a dislodged rock tumbled through the doorway I was hiding inside. I held my breath and waited with my shaking sword pointing at the opening for what felt like minutes before I heard the thing outside, leave.

I knew going out there anytime soon would be suicide but I couldn’t remain here long. I wasn’t a coward but fighting a wolf that breathed fire, a cat that could melt your skin off, or a deer that was so quick I barely had time to react, was impossible for a normal person. But I couldn’t remain here and hope to remain undetected, there was also the fact that my time in the city was limited.

I scanned the small room I found myself in. It was dark but my eyes had adjusted to the dim light while I hid away and I could just make out a bit of light coming from a corner.

As quietly as possible I moved the rubble from that corner, uncovering a hole that led to another room where the ceiling had caved in in spots.

I worked quickly but quietly to move enough stone to finally slip through. I was glad I had such a skinny frame or this may have taken hours.

I was able to continue moving through this building and into the next without running across any more monsters. But I had to stop when I reached the end of the second building. I found myself hiding behind the rotten remains of a countertop, staring out the gaping opening of the building and onto a cross street. No fewer than three monsters had passed in front of the building in the last couple of minutes. They seemed to be particularly agitated as they attacked anything that moved or made a sound. The trees and vegetation in the area had been torn apart by claws and unholy power.

Most of the monsters seemed to completely ignore the interior of buildings unless they saw movement. This fact was confirmed for me when a few pebbles clattered to the street from an old window, on the second floor of a building farther down the street. The monsters hearing the rocks or seeing the movement, raced toward that building, shortly after there was a series of screams from whoever had tried to hide inside the structure. I shuddered but stayed still and quiet until the street was clear.

I already spotted where I wanted to go. I quickly scanned the street one last time before bolting across it and into a building I had seen from my previous vantage point. I managed to vanish into the gloom of the building. Although, I did turn and hold my weapon at the ready just in case something came running in behind me. I had faith in my sword skills but I wasn’t sure how much my blade would do against any of the horrific monsters I had seen thus far. But if they could bleed, I could kill them… potentially… hopefully.

I waited with my weapon at the ready – in the dark hallway – for what felt like minutes before I finally edged backward and eyed the moss-covered stairway – that led to the second floor – dubiously.

I had chosen this building because the top floors had fallen across multiple other buildings in the direction I wanted to travel. It also conveniently led away from the kicked beehive of monsters that were now roaming over the entrance to the city.

I kept my sword at the ready as I slowly made my way up the stairs, trying to avoid kicking any loose debris or making too much noise.

The silence inside the building was even more disturbing than the occasional screams I could still hear. I kept glancing behind me and at every corner, waiting for a monster to leap from the shadows and devour me whole.

The third floor of the building tilted wildly and I had to pick my way across the wall – which now acted as a floor – with great care. The glass that had once covered the windows was long gone, leaving large openings that were far too easy to fall through with a careless step. Or accidentally kick some dust or stones through. I avoided getting near them as much as possible until I came across one area.

I think I was on what was once the fifth floor of this building. It was hard to tell by the state the building was in. The area ahead of me was simply gone, leaving a gaping hole a good ten feet across that looked over a forty-foot drop.

There was a thin lip on one side of the hole where the wall of the building met another wall and it was the only way to get across unless I could fly. I took in a deep breath to calm my racing heart and frayed nerves. I could do this. Heights weren’t my favorite but I could manage if I didn’t look down.

I stepped near the hole and like an idiot, looked down. A wave of vertigo slammed into me and I took a step back to steady myself. At least I hadn’t seen any movement below.

I decided to turn my backpack around so it was across my chest. This way I could press my back against the wall. I had momentarily debated on whether to toss the pack across the gap but decided that the possibility of missing the other side was too dangerous.

I slowly shifted my feet onto the ledge. My boots knocked a few loose stones away and I sucked in a worried breath as they clattered against the ground below, echoing out of the silence. I didn’t hear any movement though, so I kept going.

I was almost across the gap when I heard something pounding up the stairs from the direction I had come from. Realizing I had been detected, I quickly shuffled the rest of the way across before sprinting down the now open area beyond the hole for a place to hide. I risked a glance back and paled at what I saw.

Standing at the other side of the opening was a man. This wasn’t an ordinary man though, he was covered in moss and had the same dead red eyes that matched the other monsters. He glared menacingly at me for a moment. Then he backed up from the hole and took a running jump.

My heart leaped into my throat as the man sailed across the gap and landed on the edge of the hole on my side. Panic threatened to drown me for a moment before the wall below the man caved from his landing and the thing that had once been human fell through the hole without a sound.

I did not stick around to see what became of the monster in human form. I ran through the building like the Father himself was chasing me.

I made it to the end of the building and found a way down through the building it collapsed upon. I didn’t stop there. I ran and evaded creatures for another two hours before I found a spot I felt safe enough to hold up in for the evening. There was no way I was running through the city in the dark and even these few hours had exhausted me physically and mentally.

As I crouched in my hiding spot with my legs tucked against me, I rocked quietly and tried to eat. The dry and tasteless trail rations were extra tasteless today as I contemplated my foolish choice of ever coming to this city. I knew after what I had seen today that sleep would not come easily for me. Every noise, every gust of wind, or spec of disturbed dust, all made me jumpy.

Even the shadows became menacing as they lengthened across the buildings like evil hands ready to pluck me away. It made me feel like I was being shut in a box and sent to the underworld. I couldn’t stop the tears from leaking out of the corners of my eyes and leaving trails down my dust-coated face now that I had time to process everything that had happened. How could anyone survive the horrors of this place? Why would any sane man want to? If I wasn’t already here, I would turn back. But I was committed to this path whether I liked it or not as I was unlikely to escape the same way I entered until things returned to normal and I failed to find out how long that would actually take.

Fining another exit might be the smart choice but if I left now, that meant giving up on my dream. I was already here though and already past the mass of monsters that seemed to surround the outer edges of the city, so continuing on was probably safer than trying to make my way back out the same way I entered. It was a realization that left a heavy pit in my stomach.