After about another day's walking, Glen was starting to feel very sore. Fortunately, he hadn't run into anything else like the group from earlier, but he had noticed a few locations where they appeared to have camped.

Nonetheless, he was exhausted.

He was confident that there was a town between where he was and the border fortress, but he still hadn't seen it. He planned to stop in the town for a day or two to rest and restock his water and food using a few coins that were dropped on the ground during the panic in Jeraea.

While the time it was taking to reach the village could be disheartening to some, Glen thought that the longer he went without reaching the village, the closer he must be to it. He was able to stay positive with this mentality.

Sure enough, in a few minutes, he saw the roofs of the town peaking into his field of view.

Glen felt immeasurably relieved as he approached the town, but his relief was gradually replaced with dread as he realized that there wasn't a single person walking around.

Then, he remembered; this was a town built near the very edge of the palisade. How could he have forgotten?

The group he saw passing by a few days ago had unquestionably passed through this area considering the direction they were marching from and the camps he'd seen on the way here.

The more he thought about it, the more obvious it became. Had he been avoiding thinking about it so that he could remain comforted by the idea of rest? His pace slowed as he realized what he was about to see.

On the grass a few yards ahead was a motionless body. It grew closer and closer as he continued walking. He looked down at the body. It was a man who looked to be around his thirties.

He had strong arms, likely from working his farm to feed the family he probably had. An honest man like that was laying on the grass below Glen, with a hole gouged out of his right shoulder and a gash across his chest.

The man laid dead in a pool of his own blood.

Glen felt like he might vomit at the sight.

Despite how sick he already felt, he still walked into the town and took it all in. There were corpses littered everywhere. It was clear from the look on their faces that none of them died a painless death.

Fortunately for his heart, Glen didn’t see any children, but that was no longer a point of comfort once he considered the implications of that fact.

As he walked through the town, he almost forgot that he needed to scavenge for food. Was it really okay for him to take food from the victims of such a tragedy? Yes, it was.

Glen felt terrible for the people of this town, but he understood that leaving the place untouched wouldn’t do anything to help himself or the people who lived in it. These people were dead, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. The least he could do was make sure he stayed alive to remember that they lived.

With his newly sorted mind, Glen set aside his sympathy and entered a nearby house to search for supplies. There had clearly been a struggle. He looked around the room.

There were four windows, one on each wall, a table to his right, a cooking area in the back, and three beds to his left. There looked to be a pantry at one end of the cooking area, so he figured that would be the best place to start searching.

Before he took the first step, he looked back to the third bed. There must have been a child here. Why had he not seen any children’s bodies? Where did the children of this town go?

He tried to push the unanswerable question to the back of his mind so it wouldn’t bother him.

Just as he was about to check the pantry, Glen’s train of thought was interrupted by a loud crash from somewhere outside. Abandoning the task at hand, he crept over to the window and peeked outside as quietly as he could.

The door to a house diagonal to the one he was in had been busted down, with the perpetrator nowhere in sight. He was sure that that door wasn’t broken when he arrived.

Defying his cautious nature, Glen leaned out the window a bit further, desperate to locate whoever broke down the door, hoping it to be a survivor. A short, green-skinned creature was standing in front of the house adjacent to his.

Before he even had a chance to realize it was too late, the creature immediately recognized his presence and turned towards him.

Glen listened to his gut and dashed to the back of the house the second he was spotted and climbed out the back window. Once he fell through it, there was a brief period where time seemed to slow as he was pulled towards the ground.

He braced himself for the impact that was sure to come soon.

In an instant, his breath left his body and his mind felt like it was rattling in his skull. After a few moments, he came back to his senses, albeit in a good deal of pain, he stood up and dashed away from the window, hearing the creature moving through the house behind him.

He saw a bigger, more-intact house a ways away and dashed toward it. The creature had somehow already figured out where he was and had begun chasing him down.

A few years prior, Glen had gotten himself into a spot of trouble by making himself a target for his eldest brother. When he accidentally revealed to a large number of people in the tavern during a drunken stupor that he was a member of the Hiscovol family, the incident found its way back to the Hiscovol house and his brother was outraged by his disgracing their family.

To solve the problem, his brother blackmailed thugs to kill him, as one might in such a relatable situation. He barely escaped death that day, but it was probably the only reason he could even run in a state like this.

He remembered the drive he felt back then and tried to summon it again. Try as he might, the pain wouldn’t go away.

Glen’s lungs felt like they were burning as he ran.

He desperately wanted to sit down.

He’d been walking for days already and his feet were covered in blisters. Every night, he’d slept on hard ground with only a sheet to keep him warm.

He was sick of moving around.

Each time he took a breath, it grew more and more difficult to take another.

After only a few seconds, the force it took to inhale felt like he was lifting a boulder, but he knew that he couldn’t stop or the creature would catch him.

After reaching the end of the longest twenty seconds of his life, passing by three more corpses, Glen slammed into the door to the bigger house and opened the door as fast as he could, immediately closing it behind him.

As the creature grew ever-closer, he frantically searched for the lock, slamming it over the door the moment he spotted it.

He backed away and fell to the ground as the creature began banging on the door and shrieking at him.

He tried to slow his breathing and get up to no avail.

There was more space in this house than he expected. It definitely belonged to someone with a good bit of money.

Somebody with money probably kept something to defend themselves.

He managed to pry himself off the ground despite how painful it was to move.

Just as he was about to search for something to defend himself with, the creature outside broke down the door, scattering dust and debris through the room.

Glen dashed for the door behind him and found himself in a hallway. He hectically searched for somewhere to run and spotted a reinforced door, lunging for it.

The creature behind him caught up as he reached the reinforced door and tried to close it.

It grabbed him by his leg, slamming his upper body and head into the ground. Time ran slow again as his head approached the ground. He braced himself for the impact, remembering when he fell out of the window.

Tick...

Tock...

There was something so incomparably terrifying about how endless it felt. Countless thoughts ran through his head as it approached the ground.

Would he even survive the impact? Was it worth surviving this encounter even if he somehow managed to? The world he knew was already gone and nobody could say whether or not he would have the fortitude to survive in a world not a single member of his species was prepared for.

Any second now...

BANG!

Glen’s head slammed into the ground, rattling his mind again. Back to full speed.

He pushed through the pain and kicked at the creature with all the strength he could muster, stunning it for a moment; a moment just long enough to slam the door shut on the creature's arm.

It yelped in pain and pulled its hand back, letting Glen close the door and pull down the lock. He fell to the ground and passed out from exhaustion and panic before he could see the contents of the room.

Everything faded away.