Clara Sterling was a magnetic woman.

  She had these eyes—deep, mesmerizing pools that felt like they were reeling in your very soul whenever you locked gazes. But that beauty evaporated the moment those same eyes began sprouting in clusters, wet and blinking, from her forehead and across her cheeks.

  Her teeth had shifted into jagged, serrated rows. She chewed with a look of drug-like ecstasy, her jaw working with mechanical precision. Arthur realized, with a start, that he was seeing his own ear for the first time in his life without the help of a mirror.

  It was in her mouth.

  In that thing’s mouth.

  The white-hot agony snapped him into a state of crystalline focus. There was no time to process the permanent loss of an organ. Arthur coiled every ounce of strength he had and swung his right arm in a desperate arc, aiming for the back of Clara’s head.

  Perhaps when terror and shock hit a certain ceiling, the human mind simply levels out into a cold, flat calm. Arthur’s thought process was now terrifyingly simple: Whatever this thing is, it is a threat. If it tries to kill you, you kill it first.

  THUD.

  His fist collided with her skull, but it felt like punching a solid block of reinforced steel. A sickening crunch echoed in the room as Arthur’s knuckles shattered. The pain was bone-deep, but the monster didn't even flinch.

  Instead, dozens of eyes, dilated with a mixture of predatory lust and bottomless hunger, locked onto him. Blood smeared her chin, making her look like a jackal mid-feast. And Arthur was the prey—a helpless, soft-bodied animal that had walked willingly into the slaughterhouse.

  She swallowed the mangled remains of his ear. The small offering didn't sate her; it only stoked the furnace of her hunger. She lunged again, snapping at his face.

  Arthur tried to roll away, but she pinned him to the mattress with a force that defied biology. It wasn't just a girl holding him down; it felt like being trapped beneath a collapsing mountain. The power disparity was that of an ant trying to shove an elephant.

  Rrip—

  Another chunk of flesh was torn from Arthur’s cheek. The pain was an ocean, threatening to drown his consciousness. Blood geysered into his throat, choking him, as the jagged white of his cheekbone was exposed to the air. The metallic tang of blood filled the room, thick and cloying.

  Clara’s body began to warp into something truly alien. Her slender arms and legs elongated, hardening into razor-sharp, sickle-like appendages. The tips drove deep into Arthur’s shoulders and thighs, pinning him like a specimen to a board.

  Her skin began to crack like parched porcelain. From the dark fissures, something squirmed—fleshy, worm-like tendrils pulsing with a life of their own. A foul, emerald-green fluid leaked from the cracks, smelling of rotted meat and chemical waste.

  A single drop of the green bile landed on Arthur’s chest. It hissed against his skin, burning through the flesh like liquid fire. He could feel the caustic heat searing toward his lungs.

  Clara’s jaw unhinged, widening further than any human skull should allow. The sweet, soft mouth Arthur had kissed just an hour ago was now a cavern of needle-teeth. Her eyes glowed with a frantic, manic light.

  She lunged one more time. This time, she was going for his head.

  SHLICK—

  Gritting his teeth against the soul-crushing pain, Arthur wrenched his impaled arms free. The sight of his own shredded muscles and hanging skin was enough to make anyone lose their mind, but Arthur found himself horrifyingly composed.

  He was calm—unnervingly so.

  Even with half his face gone and his body screaming in a cacophony of agony, he could still think. He manipulated his body like a pro gamer controlling a character on the screen, detached from the damage.

  Arthur lunged upward, his hands clamping around Clara’s throat. He didn't have the strength to overpower her, so he used his arm bones as pillars, bracing himself to keep that snapping maw away from his skull.

  “Why won’t you just let me eat you?” Clara roared. It wasn't one voice, but a hundred.

  Dozens of tiny mouths opened across her torso, each spilling out a different sound. A chorus of the damned.

  “Why do you fight?”

  “It’s all your fault.”

  “I’m sorry, I don't want this.”

  “You deserve to die.”

  “Run, run away!”

  “I love you so much.”

  “I hate you.”

  The voices—old men, crying children, sobbing women—warped together into a song of madness. Then, a single, booming roar drowned out the rest, vibrating with pure, unadulterated hatred.

  “No! It’s not you! It’s your parents! Those two devils did this to me!”

  “It was their fault! So it’s only fair that I consume their son!”

  Then, her voice returned to that seductive, melodic hum:

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  “Stop fighting. Let me in. Don't you want to be one with me? Just let me eat you…”

  The thing on top of him was no longer Clara Sterling. It was a nightmare stitched together from the parts of a spider, a lizard, an octopus, and a vulture—a shifting, kaleidoscopic horror. Her expression flickered between predatory madness, confusion, and a strange, deep-seated grief.

  Frustrated by her unreachable meal, the monster went into a frenzy. Her chest split open.

  Ribs unfurled from her sternum like the legs of a gargantuan spider, or perhaps the skeletal wings of a dragon. Her entire torso opened outward, revealing a secondary, massive maw lined with rows of churning teeth.

  Arthur wasn't just a bookworm.

  While he had spent his life chasing academic excellence, he hadn't neglected his vessel. He’d never had the money for fancy gyms or MMA classes, but he’d spent a decade training in the shadows. He’d "pirated" every technique he could find online—Muay Thai, Taekwondo, Krav Maga.

  He had prepared himself for specific enemies:

  The entitled trust-fund brats who looked for trouble; the street punks who mistook his intelligence for weakness; the gym rats who thought muscle was a license to bully. He had even mentally prepared for a scenario involving an armed terrorist.

  But he had not prepared for a woman whose chest could transform into a giant, acid-dripping mouth.

  The massive torso-maw, dripping with emerald saliva, descended toward him with the weight of a guillotine. His legs were pinned by scythe-like appendages. His hands were occupied holding back her primary head.

  In this moment, the only part of him that could still move was his... "little brother."

  But that wasn't a magic wand. There was no spell he could cast with that particular rod that was going to exorcise this demon.

  The teeth sank in.

  Arthur felt his body being pulverized. The pain of tearing muscle, the sound of his ribs being crushed under the pressure... it was too much. The caustic acid began to dissolve him from the inside out.

  GOD DAMN IT!

  DAMN IT ALL!!

  Arthur was done.

  When he tried to work hard and change his life, fate dropped a billion dollars on him, making his efforts a joke. And when he finally decided to throw it all away and live like a decadent scumbag, a man-eating monster crawled into his bed.

  You think I'm an easy mark?

  You want to eat me?

  Fine. Let's see who's really on the menu!!

  Arthur stopped his useless struggling. He ignored the scythes in his limbs and the teeth in his chest. He lunged forward, baring his own teeth, and bit down hard on the thing that used to be Clara Sterling’s neck.

  You want to eat me?!

  I’ll eat you first, you bitch!!

  A geyser of scalding, hot blood erupted, flooding his throat.

  Suddenly, a wave of unparalleled euphoria washed over him. It was a high far more intense, far more addictive than the act of sex itself. Every nerve ending in his body sang with a dark, primal pleasure.

  In that moment, Arthur’s sanity finally snapped like a dry twig.

  ...

  ...

  An ashen sky.

  A ruined city.

  Red mist drifting through the air.

  Floating corpses everywhere.

  A giant eye hung suspended in the heavens.

  Countless tentacles dangled down from the sky.

  "This dream again?"

  Arthur stood up from the ground, looking at the bizarre, grotesque world before him. His head was spinning.

  "Did something terrible just happen?"

  "What was it again?"

  "Forget it, doesn't matter."

  Just as he had before, Arthur began to walk down the streets of this shattered town. He didn't know why he was doing this. He just felt an undeniable pull, like something in that direction was drawing him in.

  "Brother..."

  "It hurts so much."

  "Save me."

  "Brother..."

  The little girl's voice reached his ears clearly once again.

  Thinking about his biological parents whom he had never met, it wasn't entirely impossible that he had a biological sister he'd never met, either. Since those parents could birth him and toss him aside like a piece of trash, leaving him to fend for himself, it made sense that he might have a sister who suffered the exact same fate—or perhaps an even worse one.

  Ultimately, what was this place?

  Was it really just a dream?

  Arthur observed his surroundings as he walked. The world was filled with deformed, hideous monsters that would shatter a normal person's worldview. But they all seemed to be dead. They didn't look dangerous.

  As for the city he was currently walking through... Arthur evaluated his surroundings, feeling an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

  "...Could this be Serenity?"

  Serenity Diner.

  Save-A-Lot Supermarket.

  Starbucks.

  Lucky Slice Pizza.

  Arthur identified the relatively intact store signs among the ruins. When he saw a half-shattered sign for the "First National Bank of Serenity," he was finally certain.

  This was indeed his hometown.

  The town of Serenity, located in Oregon.

  Arthur recalled the streets he had just walked down. The ruined city before him gradually overlapped with the hometown in his memory. He had grown up in Serenity, Oregon, and later got into a university in Massachusetts, living there ever since.

  He hadn't been back in three years.

  "If I remember correctly, this should be Gold Leaf Avenue, and further ahead is Hope Street..."

  "Right, there should be Serenity General Hospital in that direction. It's the biggest hospital in the county; I used to pass by it on my way to and from school."

  "The inheritance left by those parents who dropped from the sky includes this very hospital."

  As Arthur got closer to Serenity General Hospital, the feeling that something was drawing him in grew stronger.

  "Brother."

  "Brother."

  "Save me."

  The girl's voice became more urgent, more distinct.

  ...

  Before long, Arthur was standing atop a pile of collapsed rubble.

  This was Serenity General Hospital from his memory. He felt certain that what he was looking for was right here. The "sister" calling out to him was here, too. Yet, it felt as if they were separated by an invisible barrier; he couldn't find her no matter what he did.

  "What's going on?"

  "You told me to come, and now I'm here."

  "Now what?"

  Arthur looked at the utterly destroyed ruins in confusion. Compared to the rest of the town, the destruction here was far more absolute. It looked as if it had been carpet-bombed by missiles dozens of times.

  Suddenly, a violent wave of dizziness hit him, and the entire world began to shake.

  Arthur felt he was about to wake up. In that hazy space between sleep and wakefulness, he once again heard that hoarse, gravelly voice—

  "Three days left. Return to Serenity. This is your last chance."

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