I didn't even scream. I should have. Everyone else did.
But when your skin prickles from the sheer pressure of dying souls and your ears are ringing from the sound of people being ripped to fucking pieces, you don't get the luxury of screaming. All I could do was watch.
And I mean watch.
My senses were on fire. It was like I could hear each heartbeat in a two-mile radius. I could smell every drop of blood that painted the pavement. I could feel the weight of every corpse collapsing into the earth.
The first creature that dropped from the sky landed like thunder and twisted like a spider mid-motion. Its arms were knives, its face was nothing, just a gaping cavity that breathed like a lung and pulsed with teeth. It didn't hesitate.
It tore a man's spine clean through his chest and used it like a whip. The whip cracked through another person's skull. Just like that. Brain matter on the ground like spilled yogurt.
It was like watching a meat grinder chew through the people I'd taken tours with last week. Ordinary folks. Recruits. Kids.
God, I saw a child screaming for her mother—who wasn't even there—and a beast that looked like it had fish gills and eagle wings snatched her up, bit her in half mid-air, and rained her intestines down like streamers. I gagged. I retched so hard bile hit the back of my teeth, but I couldn't stop looking.
There were no survivors. Just delays in dying.
Then came the Elites.
Flux warriors. The legends. Our salvation in skin and steel. They surged in, blazing with power that shattered streets and bent physics like string. One of them landed like a meteor, his boots cratering the ground, and every step he took melted the pavement. He held a hammer made of special metal. When it struck, the explosion sent two monsters flying into pieces. Their parts landed near me were still twitching.
But I couldn't stand there, even if I wanted to. Because I was already running.
Mira.
Mira was all I had left. My idiot, loudmouthed best friend who believed that collecting duck plushies and drinking bubble tea during apocalypses was a personality trait. If she was dead, if she was gone... hell, I wasn't even sure why I was going. It was suicide but I couldn't sit back.
So I ran with no shoes, cuts on my legs, blood on my tongue but I ran.
Only I wasn't just running.
I was moving like a bullet. My body kicked into gear and I didn't know how to stop. My feet slammed the ground and left cracks. I slipped on blood and debris more than once, hit a chunk of fallen concrete face-first and rolled like a ragdoll. I was scraped, bruised, bleeding, but I barely felt it. My nerves were high. My lungs didn't burn. My pulse didn't race.
Everything was… too much.
I heard a scream and my eyes zoomed in, literally. I could see the pores on a woman's face as she died. I could count her teeth. My ears could pick up someone praying through their sobs.
I fell again, skidding across broken glass and exposed rebar, and when I got up, blood on my knees, a gash running across my thigh, I saw the thing that made my stomach flip.
They weren't attacking me.
Those monsters were everywhere but none of them even looked at me. I was exposed, injured, and stumbling like a damn idiot… and they didn't care. I was an easy target and still, they turned away. They passed me like I was invisible.
My breath hitched. I didn't understand it. I still don't.
By the time I reached Mira's apartment, my legs were shaking. A glitch in my mind. A crack in my courage.
Her building wasn't a building anymore.
It was wreckage.
Twisted beams, broken tile. Her floor was caved in, half the place was on fire, and I could smell the rot of death everywhere. Burnt hair. Cooked meat. Blood iron. My senses overwhelmed me so hard I dropped to my knees, screaming into my own hands like that would shut the world up.
"Mira…" I whispered. "God. Please. Please be alive."
I crawled over concrete and busted furniture, dragging myself inside what was left of her living room. The walls were bleeding shadows. Furniture was shredded. Her favorite mug was shattered, and I had this dumb memory of her yelling at me for using it.
I found a shoe.
Her shoe.
My throat tightened.
I started tearing through debris with my bare hands, throwing bricks like paper, flipping couches like nothing. I could hear my bones groaning from the strain, muscles pushing past their limits but it didn't matter.
That's when I saw blood.
A trail. A handprint. And…
"Mira?" Mira, if you're here—don't you dare be dead. I swear to God I'll—"
No response.
I heard it.
At first, I thought I imagined it. But then I heard it again. A breathy, rasped sound, like someone struggling to stay awake.
"...Per…"
I froze. My heart dropped into my stomach and my body moved before my brain could even catch up.
"Mira? Mira—where?!"
I vaulted over a chunk of rebar that used to be her kitchen ceiling and shoved aside a slab of drywall with both hands. More groaning. Then a cough. Blood. I could smell it thick in the air.
"Mira! I'm here—I'm right here!"
I dropped to my knees and clawed at the mess. My fingers tore through insulation, furniture, burnt plastic and brick dust. My body ignored the cuts and the bruises. All I knew was she was under there, still alive. Still breathing.
And then, I saw her.
She was crumpled under a collapsed arch beam, her torso crushed at an angle no human spine should ever bend. Her hair was matted with soot and blood, her lips pale and trembling. There was blood in her mouth. A lot of it. And it was seeping out the corners like wine.
But she smiled when she saw me.
"Holy shit," she croaked, her voice barely audible, "you really are alive…"
I gasped and slid next to her, cradling her head with my hand, heart jackhammering behind my ribs.
"Don't talk. Don't move. I got you—I got you—just hold on."
She blinked slowly, her lashes wet with tears.
"No… I'm so done. This is it. I actually died early. Kinda iconic, huh..."
I let out a sound between a laugh and a sob, trying to hold it together. But my hands were shaking. She was too light. I could feel it.
Her life was flickering like a cheap bulb on its last gasp.
She gave me a crooked grin. Her bloody hand trembling rose to touch my face.
"But damn… look at you." You awakened. You're glowing like one of those main characters I used to scream about in trash novels."
"Stop. Don't talk like that. You're gonna be fine. We'll find help, I swear there has to be a medical unit still intact—"
She shook her head.
"Don't bullshit me, Permonelle. You know... I'm going to die..."
She hadn't called me by my name in days. We always joked in stupid nicknames. Duck Queen. Beer Goblin. Flux Trash.
But now it sounded like a goodbye.
"You're so strong now. I always knew… you had it in you." Her smile cracked with blood. "I only had a 0.5 rating. I wasn't meant for this world. But you… this is your time."
"No. No, Mira, don't do this to me," I whispered, leaning closer. "Don't you dare talk like you're done. We still have duck plushies to collect, remember? You still owe me boba for the last time you cheated at karaoke night. You promised, you dumbass!"
Her eyes were barely open now. Her fingers slipped from my face.
"I'm glad… I met you. Even if it was just… to see you become this. Thank you… Permonelle."
The silence after that was… wrong.
I sat there, on my knees, holding what was left of her, shaking so hard I thought my bones would break. Her blood was warm on my hands. Her weight was fading. Her last breath clung to my chest like a ghost that wouldn't let go.
And I did something I hadn't done in years.
I cried.
Ugly, broken sobs that raked through me like claws. Mira was gone.
And the last thing she did was believe in me.
Me. The tour guide. The nobody.
Permonelle.
I curled around her and screamed until my throat burned, while outside, the world was dying. But in that tiny ruined corner of the city, it felt like my world had already ended.