The Fall of Utopia -7, Part 2

A man was running.

Her lungs burned, and each step seemed like a heartbeat closer to collapse, but she kept running. She held her daughter tightly against her chest, a girl barely five years old, with her hair pulled back in two pigtails and a backpack of dolls bouncing on her back. She wasn't crying. She watched everything in silence, as if her eyes did not yet comprehend the magnitude of the horror that loomed over them.

The city around him was crumbling.

Towers that once skimmed the sky as symbols of hope collapsed like sand castles. The sky, once blue and protected by the dome, was now a grayish canvas riddled with portals and impossible shapes crawling like cosmic worms. But the man did not stop. He could not stop.

"Almost there, my love... almost there..." he mumbled, his voice cracking with panic.

And then, the mistake.

A crack of energy ran down the avenue like a living scar, barely visible, as if the very fabric of reality had been torn. It seemed harmless... until he touched it.

There was no sound.

No warning.

His legs collapsed in an instant. They transformed into a gelatinous substance that pulsed as if it had a life of its own, giving off a blackish vapor. The man fell on his face with a dry groan, instinctively wrapping his arms around his daughter. It was an act of love, his last.

But love was not enough to stop the collapse.

The rift opened beneath their feet with a dry rumble, like the laughter of a cruel god. A flash of distorted energy engulfed them in an instant, and Daren screamed. It was a scream of pure instinct, of a father trying to protect with his body what the universe had already doomed. The girl screamed too, but her voice was a brief whisper, drowned out by the crackle of liquefying flesh.

Their bodies melted, like wax under an invisible flame. Skin turned liquid, bones twisted with a wet, brittle sound, and their figures blurred into a glowing mass of vaporized flesh. The air smelled of burnt hair and hot metal. Where once there had been a father and daughter, now only a bubbling puddle remained, dotted with bone fragments that vibrated slightly, as if still remembering the warmth of embraces.

A few meters away, a floating bus, out of control, spun in the air like a mindless spinning top. Its engines screeched with a high-pitched hum, unable to stabilize. The vehicle slammed into a lamppost, bursting the cab with a burst of blue sparks. Passengers who were not killed instantly crawled through the wreckage, some without eyes, others with their arms at impossible angles.

A woman crawled out, half her face hanging like a torn veil. A boy with his school uniform melted into his skin clung to his calves, babbling nonsense. An embracing couple burned in flames without moving, like statues incinerated in a last gesture of petrified love.

On the sides of the buildings, the advertising screens were still glowing... but they had gone crazy.

A cereal ad showed a holographic mother serving a spoonful of human teeth.

The optimistic slogans collapsed in on themselves: "Long live the Experience of Tomorrow!" was becoming "To...rrow...dea...ath."

"BUY NOW" flashed urgently, then warped: "RUN AWAY NOW."

A childish tune, which used to brighten the mornings with its lively voice, began to play in reverse... slow, low, dragging. The cheerful notes turned into a guttural wail, as if a non-human throat was trying to sing through the remains of a broken radio.

Street lamps shook. Structures creaked.

And the air... the air tasted of copper and glass.

No one was safe.

Nothing was logical.

The apocalypse had not arrived.

It was already here.

The streets were no longer streets. They were corridors of smoke, blood and debris. Kaito ran ahead, tugging at Korrin's wrist while Yuki followed close behind, his breath coming in short gasps of terror. With each step, they dodged corpses, vehicle fragments, collapsed structures and tongues of flame that erupted from the pavement as if the earth had decided to burn from its core.

In the distance, deformed creatures were tearing bodies apart, laughing with claws and screeching in ear-bleeding frequencies. But none had touched them. Not yet.

"Why aren't they following us...," Yuki gasped, looking over her shoulder as they ran before shadows stalked them.

Kaito didn't respond, but clenched the fist that held Korrin. "Men must be brave... and protect what matters," he remembered Dr. Elias's husky, warm voice rumbling in his head. "Even if everything around you trembles, even if your legs want to run away... move forward. Because cowards save no one."

He gritted his teeth and squeezed Korrin's hand tighter.

And then, they saw it.

In the middle of a collapsed avenue, among smoldering embers and flickering lights, there was a blackish puddle, thick as tar. From the mass vapors slowly emerged, bubbling as if breathing. Korrin slowed for a moment when he saw something glint inside the puddle. A metal shard... no, a piece of a child's watch, with a tiny screen still lit. On it, a broken hologram: a smiling girl, with a virtual wreath on her head.

"Is that... a person?" muttered Korrin, transfixed.

Kaito didn't let her answer. He pulled her harder. "Don't think about it, run!".
They passed by the puddle, but the vapor rose just then, and for a second, it seemed that a figure, like a denser shadow within the smoke, was trying to join in. It had no shape, but emitted a soft moan, almost like an echo... or a cry. Something that had been human, or still was... on some impossible plane.
Korrin turned, but the flash of her pendant blinded her for an instant. A blue flash covered her briefly, and the shadow in the vapor faded as if rejecting her.

Yuki was trembling. Kaito said nothing. They just kept running, getting lost in the crumbling alleys, not knowing if they were running away from death... or running straight towards it.

The light from Korrin's pendant flickered, wavering. For a moment, the air, already fetid from the chaos, grew even heavier as a gigantic shadow covered the city. From above, a monster descended, its figure unfurled in the air as if it were a sack of black flesh taking on the grotesque form of a giant human. Its body, muscular and disproportionate, looked like a mixture of flesh and shadow, with no defined skin, exposed sinews writhing beneath its frame. His eyes, or what looked like eyes, were two empty spots of pure darkness, without light or bottom, like abysses into which no one wished to fall. His height, easily three or four meters, made the buildings around him look like toys.

A thick, cold breath, smelling of freshly turned earth and decaying flesh, preceded his every movement. It did not roar. It made no sound. Its silence was more terrifying than any scream. It raised only one arm, a formless mass of palpable darkness, and with a gesture that seemed to alter the gravity around it, swept the facade of a nearby building. Glass and steel did not break; they dissolved, absorbed by the nothingness of their contact.

Then he turned around. Slowly. And those empty wells that were his eyes seemed to rest directly on the three children, as if their very escape had been a beacon in the gloom.