The last guttering light of the false sun bled out across the ruins, staining the broken city in bruised shades of red and black.

  Ren crouched beneath the twisted skeleton of a collapsed walkway, eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun dipped lower, slower than any real sun he remembered.

  The air thickened with every second.

  The ash that had drifted lazily during the day began to churn and twist, moving in strange currents he couldn't feel.

  The hunger stirred inside him, faint and restless.

  He ignored it.

  There were more immediate threats to worry about.

  Night was coming.

  He didn't know how he knew, but he felt it — a pressure, a heaviness sinking into his bones, grinding against his nerves.

  Something ancient and furious woke with the falling dark.

  The Nightkind.

  He pressed his back against the crumbling stone, gripping the rebar tightly in his right hand.

  Somewhere in the dying light, something screamed — high and shrill, a sound that had nothing human left in it.

  Ren closed his eyes for a moment, steadying his breathing.

  Stay low.

  Stay silent.

  Stay alive.

  The simple rules echoed in his mind, too clean and sharp to be his own thoughts.

  He moved cautiously through the ruins, following the paths of deeper shadow where the last of the sick light couldn't touch. His boots made almost no sound on the cracked asphalt, his body moving with a fluidity he hadn't possessed just days ago.

  Another unwanted gift.

  He didn't question it.

  Not now.

  The city around him seemed to change as the light failed.

  Walls leaned closer. Streets twisted. Shapes writhed at the edges of vision, too fast to catch, too slow to be entirely imagined.

  The first of the Nightkind appeared before the sun had fully vanished.

  Ren saw it from across a wide intersection — a loping silhouette hunched over cracked pavement, its limbs too long, its head swinging slowly side to side.

  It moved with a jerky, unnatural rhythm, sniffing the air in great wet gasps.

  He froze behind the broken carcass of a bus, heart hammering so hard he could feel it shaking the rusted metal against his back.

  The creature paused, head snapping toward his hiding place.

  Ren barely dared to breathe.

  The Nightkind shivered, a ripple running down its skeletal spine, then moved on, disappearing into the growing mist.

  He waited long minutes after it had gone before daring to move again.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The city was a labyrinth of death now, every turn offering new dangers.

  Shapes slithered between the buildings, heavy footfalls shook loose stones from cracked ledges, guttural noises echoed through the ruins.

  Ren learned quickly.

  No light.

  No sound.

  No sudden movements.

  Anything that marked him would bring death.

  Twice, he barely avoided detection — slipping into the shattered remains of storefronts, pressing himself into crawlspaces filled with broken glass and filth as massive shadows passed by, their footsteps shaking the ground.

  He caught glimpses of them sometimes — distorted forms of flesh and bone, stitched together by forces he didn't understand.

  Some walked. Some crawled. Some slithered.

  All were hungry.

  All would kill him without hesitation.

  The hunger inside him whispered otherwise.

  It urged him to lash out, to strike, to feed.

  He clenched his jaw so tightly it ached.

  Survival first.

  Everything else after.

  Hours passed — or what he guessed were hours, in the endless gloom.

  His muscles burned from the tension of constant movement and stillness, his throat raw from shallow breathing.

  The city was changing again, a deeper level of decay seeping through the stones.

  Webs of ruin-thread tangled across streets and alleys, pulsing faintly with invisible heartbeats.

  He saw them everywhere now — lines of invisible connection stretching between dead things, binding the ruins in an unseen net.

  He learned to follow the thinner threads, to avoid the places where the web thickened and pulsed stronger.

  The Nightkind clustered in the densest knots of ruin, drawn to it, birthed from it maybe. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.

  He just wanted to live through the night.

  At some point, he stumbled across a makeshift barricade — stacked cars and broken concrete forming a crude wall across one street.

  Symbols were daubed across it in dark paint: spirals, thorns, crude humanoid figures with crossed-out faces.

  Warnings.

  Or maybe prayers.

  Beyond the barricade, the ruin thickened into an almost physical thing.

  The very air buzzed with it, made his teeth ache and his vision blur.

  He skirted the barricade carefully, keeping to the outskirts of the thickest webs.

  In the distance, something massive moved through the ruins, a dark mountain of writhing limbs and gnashing teeth.

  He froze, heart slamming against his ribs, and watched it pass.

  It didn’t see him.

  Not this time.

  Ren forced himself onward, muscles trembling, the taste of copper thick in his mouth.

  Near the edge of the city’s heart, he found temporary shelter — an old maintenance tunnel half-collapsed under the weight of the city above.

  The entrance was little more than a jagged hole in the asphalt, hidden behind a tangle of rusted fence and fallen debris.

  Perfect.

  He slid inside, bruising his ribs against the narrow opening, and dropped into darkness.

  The air inside was cooler, damp with old mold and stagnant water.

  He pulled the lighter from his pack, thumbed it open.

  A weak, flickering flame lit the immediate area — cracked tiles, old maintenance signs, a few shattered tools left behind by whatever crew had last worked here.

  No Nightkind in sight.

  He allowed himself a single breath of relief.

  Not safety.

  There was no safety here.

  But a momentary reprieve.

  He wedged himself into a corner between two rusted pipes, the rebar across his knees, and closed his eyes.

  Not to sleep.

  Only to rest.

  Only for a moment.

  The hunger watched from the shadows behind his eyes, patient and endless.

  He ignored it.

  For now.

  The lighter guttered out after a few minutes, plunging him into darkness.

  He didn’t reignite it.

  Light attracted attention.

  He sat there, listening to the slow drip of water, the distant moans of shifting stone.

  He thought about the days before.

  The world he had known.

  The normalcy he had taken for granted.

  Jobs.

  Coffee shops.

  Late nights and early mornings and meaningless worries.

  Gone now.

  Burned away in a light that wasn't light.

  He didn't know if he could ever get it back.

  He didn't know if he should.

  A part of him — the part that grew sharper and stronger with every act of ruin — whispered that he had already crossed a line he could never return from.

  That survival wasn't just about living.

  It was about becoming something else.

  Something that could endure.

  Something that could thrive in this broken world.

  Ren clenched his fists until his nails — thicker and sharper now — bit into his palms.

  No.

  He would survive.

  But he would survive as himself.

  He would not become another monster lurking in the ruins.

  He would not.

  He repeated the words like a prayer, like a shield.

  Outside, the city moaned and shifted under the weight of its own death.

  Night reigned.

  And Ren, in the dark, sharpened his will like a blade.

  Tomorrow would come.

  And he would be ready for it.

  No matter what it cost.