The Fall of Utopia -7, Part 1

That slimy rustling in the distance. That sound, like dry branches being twisted... or bones being crushed by invisible teeth.

Kaito turned on his heels. He saw them.

Deformed silhouettes. Some humanoid, others completely unrecognizable, like figures plucked from an alien nightmare they emerged from the smoke and cracks, snaking, wailing with voices that were not human. One of them had limbs in places where there should be none. Another did not walk, but hovered inches off the ground, spinning on itself as if its gravity were broken.

Yuki let out a choked groan. "K-Kaito…".

He reacted immediately, grabbed her arm and forced her to stand up.

"We have to run! Now!"

Then he turned to Korrin, who was still motionless as if hypnotized by the pendant throbbing against her chest. Without thinking, he rushed to her, lifted her in his arms and ran. The warmth of the crystal shot through him like a shock, but he didn't stop.

Behind, the creatures began to move. They were not fast, not desperate either... but with a calmness that was even more terrifying. As if they knew they didn't need to run to catch them....

They wanted to play with their prey.

"I'm not going to let them stay here!" shouted Kaito between his teeth, as sweat and ash blurred his vision.

And as he fled with his two friends, with the pendant glowing ever brighter on Korrin's chest, and the torn sky spewing forth things that did not belong in this world, Kaito knew that his childhood had just ended.

The time had come to be brave.

The sky was roaring.

Not like a storm or hurricanes or earthquakes would. It was an unnatural sound, as if the very foundations of existence were protesting. A chorus of impossible, dissonant frequencies that vibrated in the lungs and made the teeth of those who were too close grind.

From the heights, the navy displayed its last hopes. The military ships cut through the air with mathematical precision, lining up in formation. They were perfect machines, cleanly designed and lethal, guardians of human order. Each opened its hatches with a metallic hiss, releasing projectiles of forbidden technology: gravity missiles that could collapse entire buildings in seconds, sonic bombs capable of disintegrating concrete from within, beams of blue incandescent plasma fired from spinning cannons.

But against the creature... nothing.

The explosions simply disappeared on contact with his skin. They left no smoke. They did not generate cracks. They didn't even provoke a reaction. It was as if whatever he touched disappeared, perhaps an invisible shield, or physics itself, refused to allow him to be harmed.

The creature remained motionless. As if it still did not consider them a real threat. As if it was not necessary to act.

And then, without warning, the being emitted a sound.

It was not a roar. It was a reverse twist of the soul.

An upside-down lament, a distortion of language and time.

It had no beginning and no end. It did not come from his mouth or his chest, but from the very space he occupied. It was as if the reality around him had let out a long, high-pitched scream, tired of supporting his weight.

People doubled over in the streets, holding their hands to their ears, even though there was no measurable sound. Some were bleeding from their eyes. Others were simply vomiting, collapsing in inexplicable weeping.

And the sky... broke.

Not the atmospheric sky. Not the clouds. But the membrane of the world.

Circular bands appeared floating, rotating on themselves at angles that should not exist. They were portals. Doors. Fissures. Flashes of parallel and horrible dimensions emerged from within them:

An inverted ocean falling upwards.

A prison made of throbbing flesh and rusted metal.

Eyes. Just eyes, floating in the nothingness.

And then they came out. The other creatures.

At first they were few. Creatures that crawled along the walls, their bodies elongated like skinless worms, with mouths on their backs and limbs that hinged backwards. Then came the flying ones: translucent wings, exposed bones, razor-like beaks and malformed human faces on their bellies. Some were humanoid, sheathed in shreds of alien skin, as if mimicking what humanity once was. Others were amorphous masses that crawled leaving a trail of acid, merging with the concrete.

The city, already fractured, erupted into final chaos.

Survivors screamed, ran, crashed into each other like frightened insects. Cars tried to escape, but the portals appeared without any pattern, engulfing them or making them come out the other side... broken in half. In the skyscrapers that were still standing, the improvised resistance tried to use hand cannons, but it was useless. The bullets only stirred the air.

A tank opened fire on a quadrupedal creature with a torso that looked like a broken cage. The shell hit. But the creature folded in on itself, swallowed the blast and returned it as a shock wave, pulverizing the armor into dust.

The dome... was still resisting. What little remained of it: fragments of floating hexagons, sheets of residual energy.

But the main creature, that living mountain, raised one of its colossal arms. A limb that did not exist seconds before descended with the slowness of an executioner.

The impact was final.

The dome exploded into millions of particles that soared skyward like cursed sparks. It disintegrated into absolute silence. As if even the noise had been annihilated.

And with it, the last shields of humanity disappeared.

The portals multiplied. Darkness descended like a living fog.

There was no more natural light.

Not even the sun.

No blue sky.

Only a dense gloom, saturated with inhuman screeching, buzzing, dripping flesh and metal. The city ceased to be a city. It was no longer Utopia.

It was a corpse... in the process of being devoured.