The sun hadn't moved.

  Ren watched it warily from his shattered shelter, the corroded bones of the overpass humming faintly with residual heat. It sat like a tumor in the sky, swollen and red, shedding not warmth but radiation, malice.

  His lips cracked as he licked them.

  Water. Shelter. Protection.

  He needed all three. Fast.

  But even before that...

  He needed answers.

  Ren flexed his fingers. His hands seemed... off. The callouses were gone. The scars he remembered — the small crescent under his thumb from the time he’d sliced it open fixing an old bike — were simply not there.

  It wasn't just the world that had changed.

  He had changed.

  The shackle burned faintly against his ribs — a constant, low thrum like the gnawing of rats at the edges of his mind.

  He couldn't afford to freeze.

  Not here. Not now.

  Gritting his teeth, Ren pushed himself upright and staggered out from the overpass, clutching the warped rebar he'd ripped free from the wreckage. It wasn't much, but it was weight in his hands — and weight was something he understood.

  The world around him was ruin incarnate.

  Husks of vehicles blistered and slumped along what might once have been a highway. Storefronts stood like broken teeth, their signs eaten by rust and flame. Trees — if they could be called that — twisted upward in brittle, glassy spirals, their leaves blackened tatters.

  And in the distance, through the hazy heatwaves:

  Movement.

  Ren stiffened, crouching instinctively.

  It wasn’t human.

  The creature was vaguely bipedal, but wrong — hunched, elongated, a mass of sinew and bone wrapped in peeling, translucent skin. Its head was a mass of knotted growths, like tumors forced into the shape of a crown.

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  It shuffled blindly, sniffing the air, its arms twitching spasmodically.

  Ren’s heart hammered against his ribs.

  Fight or hide?

  Fight.

  The answer was immediate, alien. It wasn't his thought. It was colder, heavier, filled with the metallic taste of hunger.

  The voice.

  Ren grimaced, shaking it off.

  He wasn’t a killer. He wasn’t a—

  The creature shrieked and charged.

  Instinct seized him.

  He raised the rebar just in time as the thing lunged, slashing with bone-bladed fingers. Sparks showered as metal met hardened bone.

  Ren staggered, caught off-balance.

  The creature shrieked again, a wet, ragged sound, and lunged.

  Adrenaline exploded through him.

  He drove forward, ramming the rebar straight into the creature’s chest.

  It shrieked once — a thin, pitiful sound — and crumpled, black ichor spilling out in steaming rivers.

  Ren stumbled back, gasping.

  The body convulsed once...

  Twice...

  And then lay still.

  A prompt flashed before his eyes — not written, but felt.

  Ruin Spread: +1

  Chain Score: 1/???

  The burning brand on his chest pulsed warmly.

  Ren stared, wide-eyed.

  He had spread ruin — ended a life — and it had fed something. Strength hummed faintly along his limbs, a faint static charge, as if the world had acknowledged his violence and whispered yes.

  He bent over, retching.

  Chain Score 1.

  What the hell did that even mean?

  He didn't have time to puzzle it out.

  The sound of the creature's death — the shriek, the scuffle — echoed outward across the ruins.

  And from the distance...

  Other things answered.

  Low, rattling growls. Scrapes. Shudders.

  The dead world was waking up.

  Ren wiped his mouth, staggered upright, and ran.

  He stumbled across broken pavement, his feet bloody and blistered. The city loomed ahead, a jagged skyline of melted steel and broken glass. Not welcoming. Not safe.

  But shelter.

  Maybe.

  He didn't look back.

  He didn't dare.

  He reached the outskirts of the city just as the sky began to deepen — not with sunset, but with something heavier, something thicker.

  The burning sun dimmed slightly, like an eye starting to close. The light softened from brutal white to a sickly orange, shadows lengthening into snarls and claws.

  He collapsed behind the shattered shell of what might once have been a gas station.

  Only then did he realize his hands were shaking — violently, uncontrollably.

  Not from exertion.

  From... hunger.

  Not for food.

  For ruin.

  The voice in his mind chuckled softly. You are learning.

  Ren clenched his fists.

  "No," he rasped. "I'm surviving."

  Survival is just ruin by another name.

  The shackle pulsed once, slow and deliberate.

  Ren didn't sleep that night.

  He sat against the broken wall, rebar across his knees, as the Nightkind prowled the streets.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  Whispering.

  And somewhere, deep inside the tangle of his fraying soul, the hunger grew.