A scream tears from my chest like my soul’s being ripped out. The smell—rank, sour, human—chokes me. “Eos!” A shrill voice.
Sharp, caring, distant. But it makes my insides twist. Saliva floods my throat—I gag.
Into dark, shit-streaked sewer water.
I’m on fire. My skin, my veins. Boiling. My throat tears open with every scream. My face is half in blood. I must look like a corpse. Pale. Lifeless. I stare ahead, unblinking. The red world stares back.
A man shouts again. “Are you alright?!” But I don’t respond. I can’t. My mouth won’t work. My head won’t move. My knees are buried in blood—green blood.
I don’t move for what feels like an age. The tears don’t stop. The dam has cracked. And not because I wanted it to—but because it had to. My body remembers how to cry even if my mind forgot. I sit in it—half an hour maybe—still, trembling.
They call me twice. “Eos.”
They stop calling me by the name I gave myself.
I remember them now. Gene. Cham. They don’t know my real name. Elliot.
The same time flows over us, but I am not them. They wait for me to rise, but I don’t. I can’t. I just breathe and cry.
Only when the final tear drops into the sewage, into the blood of the green, does my heart begin to stir.
Only then do I see it—my right arm is gone.
A sharp pang. Disbelief. Horror.
Beside me, a creature—massive. Its limbs are thicker than mine, and half its torso is missing. Its insides spill out—entrails and organs and maggots feasting like workers in a tavern after long labor.
The water has taken everything from me—drenched me, drowned me, destroyed me.
I move at last, slow and heavy. I look at them—Gene and Cham—two boys who still believe in something. I once called myself their god. Now I’m just this.
My gaze drops to the monster’s blood—still warm. Still fresh.
Then to Cham. His expression unsettles me. He doesn’t look shocked or disgusted—he looks melancholy. Like he’s seen too much for his age. A boy like him should be in school. Chasing grades. Laughing. Like Ren once did.
That means the void... was only seconds here? Minutes?
A hollow sigh leaves me. My eyes are dead oceans now. The water is gone. Only the red remains. Maybe that’s rage. Maybe that’s life.
My body shifts. I feel my right arm reach forward—only to remember it’s not there.
Phantom pain stabs at me. Sharp. Lasting. My jaw clenches. My left hand rises to my ear—half of its gone too.
Lucky it wasn’t my entire head.
Gene smiles—still trying to pretend things can be normal—but Cham doesn’t. He just watches, sorrow heavy in his gaze. I lean forward, drooling slightly as blood steams off my soaked body.
Only one thought guides me now.
I move toward the corpse.
No resistance. No strings pulling me back. Only light. Only the red.
My hand touches the surface of the pooled blood. The heat—the power—it calls me. My lips lower. I drink.
Sweetness hits my tongue like honey laced in copper. A metallic aftertaste, but I gulp greedily. A maggot slips in. I feel it crawl down my throat.
Everything fades—the void, the darkness, the pain. I don’t think. I feed. And with each swallow, I feel it—the rush.
The surge in my veins. The boiling. The fury.
This is what it feels like to be alive.
This is the power—the curse—the cycle. I have nothing to lose. And everything left to take.
I keep drinking. The blood bubbles on my tongue. My body soaks in the strength. I bite down. Flesh tears. I don’t stop.
Then a voice. Real. Sharp.
My eyes fly open. My head snaps back from the offal.
Blood stains my chin. My heart pounds. My mind collapses.
I vomit—hard. It splatters against Gene’s trousers. He flinches back—too slow. The next wave comes fast. My stomach contracts again, wringing itself dry.
Still watching. Still silent. A single tear runs down his cheek.
A memory, maybe. Family? Friends?
I don’t know enough about them.
I vomit again. Then gasp. My sight blurs. When I blink, Cham’s tear is gone.