The alley was painted black and red. Blood pooled around Nikolai's boots, mixing with dark and sticky ichor that clung to the concrete and ran in greasy rivulets toward the open street.
Brian's hamr dripped with gore. Alexei was already knuckle-deep in the remains of a mutant, fangs bared, his movents fluid, yet almost lazy despite the carnage.
The monsters poured in from the sewer, windows and surrounding storm drains; it wasn't normal by any sense of the word. Nikolai could sll it—a heavy, corrupt scent under the blood. Sothing ancient, wrong, leaking into S-City's veins.
"Back up!" Brian barked, planting himself between a trio of cowering civilians and a fresh pack of things with too many legs and eyeless faces. "We gotta clear a path out!"
Alexei grunted, dodging a talon, his fist crashing through a mutant's ribcage with sickening force. "They're getting faster."
A rumble shook the ground, causing Nikolai to stumble, staring at the end of the alley.
The pavent cracked like a spider's web from the tremors. Black goo oozing through the cracks in the street, boiling and popping, coating everything it touched in a greasy film.
Nikolai froze as he realised what had happened and the source of this.
That familiar stench of corruption, rot, pure tower filth.
He'd seen it before.
This… It's like the tower again.
He rembered the endless nights, the choking darkness, monsters pouring from holes in the world. He rembered the way it felt to fight and bleed and lose, clawing for survival as the abyss tried to swallow everything whole.
Brian smashed another mutant, sweat streaming down his face. "Niko! We gotta move!"
Nikolai's voice ca out in a raw shout.
"There's a breach. The monsters—these aren't wild. Soone let them in."
Alexei snarled, blood running down his knuckles, eyes flickering gold in the dim light. "You think soone opened is responsible for this? Here?"
Although he had experienced the actions of the Nosferatu in the past, he couldn't imagine they would reveal the existence of monsters to humans like this. Such a showy reveal could only go horribly wrong and lead to conflict.
A scream reverberated down the street.
"Shit!"
Brian struggled as more monsters poured out, snapping and aggressive, the black ooze dripping from their jaws. The ground beneath them was weak and crumbling from the sudden rush of monsters from beneath.
Nikolai felt it in his bones that if they didn't cut a path out now.
The city would drown in monsters before anyone understood what had happened.
"Brian, Alexei—clear a line. We're moving. I'll take point."
They moved as one: monsters falling to fists, blood, and brute force, the darkness thickening around them as the first true night of chaos began.
The street outside had gone to hell.
Glass littered the pavent, cars smashed against poles or each other, alarms howling in a broken rhythm. The neon lights still flickered with bright, stupid lies against the blood-spattered windows. Smoke rose from sowhere further down, and bodies lay in the open like discarded dolls.
Brian bulldozed through, hamr swinging in tight arcs. One of the taller mutants lunged at him and cracked its skull open mid-air, but didn't stop moving.
"Fucking hell, this place went sideways fast!"
Alexei dropped a beast with a roundhouse to the neck, its head twisting with a crunch before it folded.
"That goo… it's spreading."
"Don't swallow any! It's dangerous."
Nikolai saw it too. The black corruption stretched from the gutters, climbing walls like rotten vines. Windows lted around it, tal curled where it touched. It was alive. Hungry.
A young woman scread from behind a flipped car. Two of the slithering things were dragging soone, no, a child, from beneath the wreckage.
Nikolai didn't think. He launched across the pavent, slamming one monster aside with his forearm. The other hissed and bit down. He grabbed its face and drove it into the concrete, over and over, until the noise stopped.
The child, dazed but alive, was snatched into the arms of the woman, who sobbed a breathless thank you.
Brian covered their retreat. "Go! Into the bar! Reinforce the doors!"
BANG!
They pushed the survivors back into the building they'd just left—shattered windows, but solid walls. The bartender, bleeding from one arm, helped drag the door closed behind them.
Alexei kicked a table into place. Brian wedged a beam through the handles. It wouldn't hold forever, but it'd slow the monsters down.
Inside, the survivors—half a dozen at best—cowered in silence. One sobbed quietly. Another rocked back and forth, eyes wide, whispering prayers to gods that didn't answer cities like this.
Nikolai paced the floor once, knuckles still dripping. His breath ca hard, chest tight.
That goo… it wasn't just the monsters.
It was the sa as the tower.
And if it had made it this far, it ant soone—sothing had brought it in. A monster with enough knowledge. Enough motive.
Soone had torn open a door they were never supposed to touch.
And now S-City would pay the price.
The door shook again. Another impact. Wood splintered and groaned as sothing heavy pounded on the other side.
Inside, silence gave way to frantic whispers and sharp breathing.
"What the hell was that thing?" a man near the bar shouted. His shirt was soaked in soone else's blood, eyes darting between the windows. "That wasn't a bear, or a freak accident. That was... that was sothing else."
"Monsters aren't real," soone snapped. "This is a gang thing. A weapon or a freak drug! It has to be."
"You saw what it did to him!" the first man yelled. "It ripped his fucking spine out! What kind of drug does that?"
"Shut up," a woman muttered. She was crouched near the corner, holding her daughter tight. "Just stop talking. Please."
Alexei stood with his back to the door, breathing steady. Brian leaned against a pillar, hamr across his shoulder. Nikolai said nothing.
But his eyes didn't leave the floor.
'It makes no sense... why now?'
That black ooze. The spreading stench. The way it consud concrete and tal alike.
He'd seen it before. In a different place, under a different sky.
His voice ca quiet, low enough for only the two beside him to hear. "This is from the tower. It's like those damn caves... first the wraiths, then the ghouls. What's going on?"
Brian's brow furrowed. "You're serious?"
"Look at the walls." Nikolai pointed toward the cracks spreading through the brick, the way the black liquid pulsed inside them. "It's not just alive. It's feeding."
Alexei shifted slightly, watching the shadows. "You think soone opened a gate?"
"Not a natural one. This was done on purpose. Soone brought this through."
Brian clenched his jaw. "But why here?"
Nikolai didn't answer.
Suddenly, a little girl started crying, her mother holding her desperately, whispering that everything would be fine, but her trembling voice sounded horrible.
Then...
The lights went out.
Just a second. One blink of full blackness.
However, the mont the light ca back on, sothing was standing in the middle of the street. It wasn't close yet, but nobody could miss that creature.
A tall, pale figure, with long, narrow limbs twisted in a strange form, and thin. No mouth, face, but Nikolai could feel it looking through the windows.
Right at Nikolai.
It tilted its head, slow and deliberate.
Nikolai stared back. His fingers curled.
"This isn't random," he spoke slowly while focused on the monster. "This was aid."
Alexei stepped up beside him.
"You sure?"
"Yeah... It's as if soone just declared war."
The glass in the window cracked. Just a hairline fracture. A sound so soft it might have just been his imagination. But everyone heard it.
The crying stopped because no one dared speak.
Brian stepped forward, body tensing. "We going out there?"
"No," Nikolai said. "Not yet."
The figure outside didn't move.
It remained still in the middle of the street, covered in black fluid while sinking into the pavent below.
No breath, no twitch. Like it was waiting for permission.
Or watching them.
Alexei narrowed his eyes. "It's testing us."
Nikolai turned away from the window and looked over all the civilians. They remained frozen, too shocked to scream, too confused to run.
'Fifteen people at least... none of them can fight or run, damn it.'
The people hid behind broken furniture and overturned tables. If Nikolai attacked the big monster, then the dozens of small monsters would pour inside and massacre the humans.
None of them knew what was really happening.
No one should've needed to.
"We hold here," Nikolai said, voice steady. "Brian, watch the front. Alexei, check the stairwell. If more co through the alley, I'll stop them myself."
Alexei nodded and disappeared into the dark stairwell without a word. Brian rolled his shoulders and moved toward the front door, hamr resting against his shoulder.
Nikolai stood alone in the centre of the ruined bar.
The sll of blood was thick now. Not just monster blood, but human. Sothing had broken. And there was no putting it back the way it was.
He stared down at his blood-covered hands.
That black liquid still pulsed through the cracks in the walls. It wasn't spreading fast. Not yet.
But it would.
And when it did, S-City wouldn't be a city anymore.
It would be a nest.
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