Chapter 50: Disaster

"Here!" Shry voiced out, celebrating his minor accomplishment after finding his phone hidden beneath a pile of tools.
Quickly pressing the power button, the phone lit up, revealing something that Shry couldn't comprehend.
On the lit screen was displayed a picture of what could only be described as a mystical dumpster, but that was not what bothered or caught Shry's eye. Layered above that odd wallpaper was a set of numbers reflecting the ones he saw on his alarm clock.
"Huh? What is—" Suddenly, as Shry was questioning what was really going on, he suddenly felt an intense shiver running down his spine.
Confused about this feeling and his current situation, Shry looked out his window to first observe the street lamps closer; he even opened the window to get a closer look. 
However, as he leaned out the window, observing whatever the light from his room could illuminate, he noticed something odd...
Today was supposed to be special, the parade that comes before the Resonance day, so even though it's still early, there should still be at least some noise and activity, but yet, the area is unnaturally quiet, like it was in the middle of the night.
Although Shry does feel a tiny tingle from his inner ear canal, picking up a distant sound, far from his home, a sound that is as far from the joy of a parade as it could be
"Is my phone broken too?" Shry said to himself, scratching his head in contemplation.
After saying that, Shry moved his head, tilting it upwards and coming face to face with the cause of this darkness, something ominous barely visible at the corner of his eyes.
Immediately that feeling that Shry had before suddenly came back, plowing through with 10 times the force, immediately sinking Shry in its ominous sea.
"What's that in the sky, and—" Before Shry even finished what he was saying, he cut himself off.
Whether in urgency or denial, Shry didn't want to say what he was thinking, almost like if he believed in it, then it'll manifest and become real.
*BANG!* Shry purposefully swung his door open with great force, leaving a small indent as the knob dug into the white paint on the wall.
"WAKE UP, MOM AND DAD, THE PARADE IS TODAY," Shry yelled as loudly as he could, denying what he saw and perpetuating the facade he created for himself. 
There was no response, and though it's very common for Shry to not receive responses whenever he does this, something about it this time left Shry extremely antsy and uncomfortable, like someone had just doused him in freezing cold water.
Shry looked in front of him in the hallway, feeling like something was wrong.
Shry's room was lodged in between the stairs and the bathroom, and above it, although the hallway was adorned with two lights, they only ever used one of them: the one that's directly above Shry's room. 
The light wasn't as bright as it used to be, only managing to shine bright enough to illuminate the stairway and up to a quarter of the hallway, while leaving the rest of the hallway in complete darkness.
(Was the hallway always this dark?) Shry thought to himself as he stared at the opposite end of the hallway.
Feeling a deep sense of foreboding, Shry, after waiting for what felt like an hour but was actually less than a minute, finally began to make his way to his parents' room, each step faster than the other as his senses bombarded him.
Within a second, Shry ran and now stood in front of the room; only a single, easy-to-open door stood in between him and his parents.
Reaching out and wrapping his right hand on the doorknob, his hand froze.
(Why's my hand not moving?) Shry thought to himself in a mildly composed state of mind, though his body seemed to think otherwise.
After a bit, Shry finally regained control, his hand smoothly turning the doorknob, creaking open the door. 
Pushing the door inwards into the room, it was revealed that the lights were on, as light crept through the crack that kept on getting larger and larger as Shry pushed.
Finally able to see what was in the room, Shry's eyes shook, widening to their limit, mortified by what he saw.
"MOM, THAT'S—" Shry screamed.
Creeping up behind their parents's bed was a black, void-like wall, expanding and devouring everything in its way within its dark maw.
This black wall expands quickly, almost at the speed of a walk, but just barely faster. It had already taken half a quarter of the bed current, and now it's already quickly advancing to consume a whole pillow, measuring to about the width equivalent to a quarter of the bed.
But...
That wasn't the only thing this black wall caught in its vast darkness, because... Half kneeling in front of it was Shry's mother, Shelt, with her fingers up to her knuckles stuck just above the mattress of their bed.
"Get away; run as fast as you can!" Shelt raised her voice, still sounding partly composed even though her fingers, and soon her hand, were being taken in front of her.
Just like how normal people would react when they get a limb or some kind of appendage stuck in the Slette, Shelt fell into the trap of thinking she might be able to escape the hold the Slette has over whatever is stuck in there.
1 second: the Slette completely swallowed Shelt's knuckles.
2 seconds: the Slette takes a quarter of Shelt's palm.
3 seconds: the Slette takes half of Shelt's palm.
"GET OUT OF HERE!" Finally not being able to maintain her composure anymore, Shelt shouted, her voice squeaking as she did so, clearly not adapted to screaming.
"NO! WHAT ABOUT YOU?" Shry shouted in a terrified voice, hesitant to run away.
In a feat of bravery or foolishness, Shry was about to rush into the room when he was suddenly stopped by his mother's movements.
With her free hand extended, shaped in the universal sign for stop, Shelt gritted her teeth and took a strained breath filled with stress before speaking out.
"Look away," Shelt said in a serious and affirming voice, regaining some of her composure as adrenaline began to kick in.
It was then, without even checking if Shry was looking or not, that Shelt quickly flared up her Node with her remaining hand, making her arm up to her elbow glow metallic.
Moving her fingers more in franticness than elegance, a rough metallic melody sounded before silver particles began to converge into a flat shape.
*Cheec cheek*
Finally completing her improvised sequence, the particles consolidated, creating a ragged blade, like a cleaver without the handle. 
And though it looked nothing like a proper knife or razor, when the completed blade finally landed on her hand, it immediately drew blood even though the fall was barely a centimeter high.
"Urgh" Shelt quietly grunted in pain as to not alarm her son.
By now, since it took Shelt just a little over 10 seconds to conjure the blade, more than half of her arm had already been taken by the Slette, beginning to inch closer to her head.
While all of this was going on, Shry had surprisingly obeyed his mother's demands, nervously standing outside of the room as he anxiously waited for his mother, not willing to abandon her. 
"LOOK AWAY," Shelt shouted one last time, trying her best to reassure her son before she committed to what she was about to do.
Trembling, Shelt took one quick breath, which unsurprisingly only made her choke as air rushed into her throat. However, she didn't have time to come about that, so, with sheer will, Shelt painfully lifted the blade with her bloodied hand just above her right arm.
With as much strength as she could muster, she slammed the blade down on her captured arm, cutting through flesh and bones, but unfortunately...
It didn't cut all the way through.
"Agh! Urg!" Shelt desperately tried to contain her screams of pain, turning them into high-pitched squeaks that Shry could thankfully hear.
Even through that immense pain, Shelt was still fully lucid, and without even a second thought, she let her split arm hold the blade upright before placing the palm of that same hand atop the blade.
Finally, right as the Slette was nearing, inches away from taking the blade itself, Shelt used the strength of her palm to perform the final push.
"WE HAVE TO GO, NOW!" Shelt screamed, substituting her screams of pain with words.
Due to the rush, as soon as Shry heard his mother's yell accompanied by footsteps closing in, Shry didn't look back and immediately ran, knowing full well that they couldn't lose any more time.
Panicked, Shry ran so fast that it was like time had slowed, concentrating purely on escape so as to not hold his mother back. But due to this, Shry wasn't able to hear the sound of blood dripping down onto the floor. 
*SPLUTT*
It was then that Shry's slowed world suddenly changed, immediately speeding back up as he heard something softish fall flat on the ground behind him. The worst thing was... The fall sounded more like a splatter than a thud.
Time resumes, and Shry looks back... only to be met with a horrific sight.
A line of blood, some in drops and some in strokes, leading onto one big pool inches away from him.
And above it was his mother.
"MOM!" Shry screeched in horror. 
Quickly, Shry immediately kneeled down, pulling on his mother's remaining hand that had a large gaping cut in the palm.
However, no matter how much he yanked, Shelt's body wouldn't move.
It is already too late...
Shelt's toes were trapped in the Slette.
"GO NOW, GO NOW, PLEASE GO!" Shelt, pulling on her own leg, shouted at Shry with a trembling voice.
"..." Shry said nothing as he kneeled, too stunned to even make a noise.
At that moment, everything in his vision began to blur, as his mother's pleas to run were muffled.
As that went on, all of Shry's senses began overloading his mind, causing his body to respond defensively by numbing his brain.
...
Suddenly, through all the muffled noises, a gentle voice pierced through.
"Let me hear your voice." 
It was only then, after hearing that familiar tone from so many of his best memories, that Shry began to acknowledge everything that was going on around him again.
As his eyes began to clear up, Shry immediately wished they hadn't...
Because what he now sees in front of him is the worst sight he could possibly see.
In front of him, all that was left of his mother was her head, with the brightest but also saddest smile he had ever seen, her last attempt to genuinely connect with her son, knowing that this was her last chance.
"Mommy... Please don't go." Shry spoke, his voice low and defeated, trembling with every portion of each word he spoke.
Despite his despair, Shry did his best to look at his mother, searching for something, anything that could fix this, which inadvertently caused him to cycle through all kinds of emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and even embarrassment.
Unintentionally, as Shry cycled through all those expressions, Shelt, whose mind slowed down to less than a crawl, began experiencing time at a much slower pace, kind of like how a person's life flashes before their eyes before they die.
Every microsecond to Shelt right now almost felt like the length of a whole day, watching her son and cherishing every last second she had left, and as Shry cycled through all these emotions, it was like Shelt was seeing a whole lifetime of expressions during that last moment.
Until night finally came, as darkness shrouded her vision...
...
..
.
"WUUOM WUM WUM WEOM"
Suddenly a dozen large transparent black barriers appeared around the empty space around the stairway, each stacked around 30 centimeters apart from the other.
*BRAK BRANG BRAG*
Immediately, as soon as they appeared, all the barriers were attracted into each other, destroying everything in their way.
*Zuuk zuk zuk*
Dust clouded the area, hiding what happened for a whole 5 seconds before it settled and finally revealed that the area, specifically where the stairs were, was completely demolished from the roof to the basement.
*TUMV TUMV TUMV TUMV*
Suddenly, within seconds after the dust cleared up, frantic, odd-sounding footsteps could be heard coming up from the basement and arriving onto the second floor, where Shry is.
"Is everyone okay?" Kanum, his black hair covered in dust, emerged from the rubble.
As soon as Kanum got to the second-floor hallway, he wasted no time, looking from left to right frantically, taking note of every single detail that met his eyes.
Immediately, he found Shry, but... there was something wrong. 
Kanum's heart sank to the deepest part of his soul, to the point where he felt like his heart had directly sunk through him and dropped onto the floor in the physical world.
His son, kneeling in front of the ominous dark wall, motionless as it loomed closer and closer to him with every second that passed.
But what made this scene worse for Kanum wasn't just that, because below Shry was a seeping pool of blood of unknown origins.
"Why is there blood..." Kanum shakily mumbled beneath his breath.
For only a second, Kanum was frozen, but...
The Slette waits for no one; it just relentlessly, emotionlessly creeps toward Shry until it is just away from taking Shry away from this world; one trapped limb and he's gone.
Kanum's heart pumped harder and faster than it had ever done before, numbing all of his senses as his body began to move on its own.
In a blink of an eye, Kanum's figure went from the stairway and arrived next to Shry, and with one quick and smooth motion, Shry was thrown through his bedroom entrance and halfway into the room, knocking into some of his inventions before snapping him out of his hypnotized state.