If Markus didn't know any better, he would have thought his mind had been utterly shattered at that point. Stained in blood and continuing to drip blood onto the concrete below him, he began to wonder if this was just a bad dream and that soon he would wake up. He closed his eyes, praying that the scene before him would vanish.

  Markus opened his eyes, but nothing had changed. The screen was still there, bright blue and unwavering. He clenched his jaw, trying to steady his breathing, but his thoughts were spiraling. This wasn’t normal. None of this was normal.

  The words on the screen burned into his vision:

  He shook his head. “This isn’t real,” he muttered, voice hoarse. He was losing too much blood, too exhausted, too shaken to deal with whatever the hell this was.

  Behind him, a car tore down the street, tires screeching as it swerved wildly past the alley entrance. Several of those fox-things clung to its roof and windows, their claws digging deep into the metal, hissing and snarling as they clambered to tear through the windshield. The driver was screaming. The car veered hard—too hard—before slamming into a streetlight. The impact sent the creatures flying in all directions.

  Markus flinched but forced himself to move. He couldn’t stay here. Ignoring the persistent blue screen, he pushed himself forward, clutching his bleeding side. His legs were sluggish, his vision swimming, but he had to get home. He needed a place to think, to figure out if he was losing his mind—or if the world itself had.

  ***

  The city felt wrong.

  Markus staggered forward, each step unsteady as he forced himself toward his apartment. The blue screen never faded, always hovering in his vision, no matter how much he tried to ignore it. The words burned into his mind like an afterimage, refusing to let him pretend this was just blood loss or exhaustion.

  The streets around him were eerily empty. the screaming that had permitted the air was gone by this point as people had either fled or were hiding. Storefronts were shattered, and some cars sat abandoned in the middle of the road, doors hanging open. Somewhere in the distance, he could still hear the sound of sirens, distant gunfire, and things roaring in the dark. The entire city felt like it was holding its breath.

  He turned the last corner and finally saw his apartment building at the end of the block.

  Almost there.

  ***

  Markus practically fell against the door, fumbling with his keys. His hands were slick with blood, and sweat, and shaking too much to work properly. He jammed the key into the lock, turned it, and shoved himself inside before slamming the door shut behind him.

  Silence.

  He stood there for a moment, head pressed against the door, his breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps. The momentary safety of his apartment did nothing to slow his pounding heart.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Then—he felt it. The screen was still there, watching him.

  His legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the couch. He pressed a hand against his side, hissing in pain. He needed to clean the wound, but the damn screen wouldn’t go away.

  A new message flashed beneath it.

  His eyes widened. It had a timer. He had five minutes before the system decided for him.

  “Son of a bitch…” Markus groaned, running a bloody hand through his hair. If this was a hallucination, it was the most persistent damn hallucination he’d ever had.

  The list of available classes appeared before him.

  The first four options were clear enough:

  Then came the last one.

  The text was glitched, words breaking apart and shifting like a corrupted file. The description was barely readable, letters warping in and out of existence.

  Markus narrowed his eyes, trying to focus on it.

  Then, buried in the glitched mess of words, he made out something that sent a chill down his spine.

  “…Asena would recommend.”

  His hands went cold.

  Asena.

  The woman from earlier. The one who had warned him. The one who had vanished into thin air.

  Was this a coincidence? Or was she somehow… guiding him?

  Markus swallowed hard. He had no idea what this class did. The others were predictable and, understandable. This one was a risk. A gamble. And yet—

  He selected it.

  The moment he confirmed the choice, his body reacted.

  Throughout his whole life, the most painful moment he could have thought of was when he tore his ACL during a high school soccer game. The pain had come in waves and at the time, he thought he was going to die because of the pain. But this—this was worse.

  The second his finger twitched over the selection, his entire body seized up, every nerve igniting in white-hot agony. It was like someone had driven red-hot nails into his bones, twisting and wrenching them into something unnatural.

  Markus let out a choked gasp, his vision blurring as a searing heat spread from his core to the rest of his body. His fingers curled as he fell off the couch, his back arching involuntarily as the pain surged through him in violent, rolling waves.

  It felt like his veins were being rewritten, his cells torn apart and stitched back together with something else entirely.

  A sound—a horrible, electrical distortion—filled his ears, a deep, unnatural buzzing that seemed to crawl beneath his skin. His vision fractured, momentarily splitting into four, six, and eight different images before slamming back into focus.

  His body convulsed. He could feel his heartbeat skipping, erratic, unstable.

  And then—it stopped.

  Everything went still.

  Markus lay on the floor, gasping, his body drenched in cold sweat. The lights in his apartment flickered violently before bursting, the bulbs shattering, leaving only the dull glow of the city filtering through the blinds.

  His body felt wrong.

  Not in pain—not anymore. But off.

  As if something had changed deep inside him, at a level he couldn’t yet understand.

  He pushed himself up with shaky hands, his breath unsteady, and when he looked down at himself—his wound wasn’t bleeding any more.

  Not healed. But sealed shut, in a way that defied logic. Like the skin had fused back together in an unnatural manner.

  And then, as he tried to process it all—

  A growl. Deep. Low. Right outside his window.

  Markus turned his head slowly, pulse hammering.

  Something was standing in the street, in the darkness, watching him.

  And it knew.

  It knew what he was now.