As Sibir stumbled out of the crumbling remains of the building, the city around him had become unrecognizable.
People were running, screaming, bleeding, some vanishing entirely as if swallowed by the shadows themselves.
The sky had turned a hellish shade of red, and the quakes didn't stop.
If anything, they intensified, pulsing like the world itself was being torn open from beneath.
In the distance, the Salvador Corp skyscraper, once a monolith of ambition, stood visibly strained.
It swayed slightly, unnaturally, as though bowing to an invisible force pressing from above.
Sibir stood frozen, confusion and fear gnawing at his limbs.
Instinct screamed for him to drop and cover, the basics of earthquake protocol flashing through his mind.
But before he could act, the ruins beneath his feet shattered with a deafening crack.
The ground split open.
He bolted, barefoot, shirtless, dressed only in a pair of trousers as jagged crevices raced alongside him like veins of death.
More cracks split toward him and the scattering crowd.
In a surge of panic, he dove diagonally away.
Just as his body hit the ground, the earth stopped.
Something sharp jutted up from the center of the crack, a black, obsidian-like spike, humming with heat.
Barely ten meters away, Sibir watched in horror as the spike grew taller, thicker, transforming, its form shifting into a pyramid.
It rose slowly as though it was struggling but eventually higher and higher until it loomed twenty feet into the air.
Then came a thunderous boom as it settled.
The shockwave sent debris and dust rolling in every direction.
Sibir couldn't move.
He didn't know if it was curiosity or pure terror that glued him to the earth.
Then the pyramid shifted.
A seam split open down its face.
Panic overrode everything else.
He scrambled up and shouted at the top of his lungs,
"Get away from pyramid buildings!"
But no one listened.
They ran towards it.
Men, women, and able-bodied strangers rushed toward the structure as if in a trance.
Their faces were blank, almost serene like salvation awaited them.
He stood alone, the only one going opposite it.
Maybe they thought it was military shelter, maybe salvation. But he'd been closest.
He knew what he saw, what he felt...
Monsters.
The gate within the pyramid opened fully, and from its black maw came the first: a winged creature with leathery bat wings, blood-red eyes, and too many limbs.
And then more.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Pouring out like insects.
Sibir was already running.
Screams erupted behind him.
Bone-snapping, soul-ripping sounds of agony filled the air.
People were being ripped apart.
The crowd behind became a cloud of dust and blood.
And still, he ran.
No matter how far he went, the screams never faded.
They clung to him like shadows.
Fatigue gripped his muscles.
His chest burned.
Then, his foot caught on a jagged rock.
He fell hard slamming his jaw into stone.
He was never a good athlete but panic had driven his stamina below earth levels.
A loud crack.
Something fractured.
He didn't care.
He curled into himself as the stampede closed in.
Never fall during a stampede, he thought grimly.
People trampled over him.
Some screamed apologies.
Most didn't care.
He wasn't the only one down.
Dozens fell, and the stampede devoured them without pause.
When the wave passed, he gasped for air, body shaking.
The monsters were focused near the pyramid, and thankfully not here.
At least not yet.
They seemed intent on devouring their meal.
He forced himself up.
His ankle screamed in protest, twisted.
Limping, he moved forward, away from the slaughter.
But the horror wasn't over.
The pyramid rose again, another twenty feet warping and stretching until it resembled an obelisk.
A second gate opened.
And the ground gave out.
Cracks spiderwebbed out violently.
The whole building sank.
Earth crumbled into a void below, a swirling gorge of darkness.
People ran, crawled, pushed.
There was no direction.
Only away.
Sibir limped through the madness.
The space was shrinking.
The earth itself shrinking.
People fought for every step of the ground.
Then a sudden wind howled from behind.
Cold gripped their chests
The second wave was coming.
Before he could turn to at least see which creature it was this time.
Curiosity killed the cat
Someone slammed into him from behind.
He stumbled.
Reached for balance.
There was nothing there.
Only empty air.
He fell.
But the fall felt wrong.
There was no drop.
No bottom.
Just weightlessness.
The world around him twisted and distorted.
Light and sound blurred then disappeared.
Time unraveled.
He saw flashes of people falling upward, of cities breaking apart, of the obelisk glowing like a pillar of blood
The dizziness overtook him, and he couldn't tell how he was falling or where he passed out.
...
The ground beneath Sibir was uneven, part solid, part strangely soft and the air reeked of something foul and chemical.
The sky... it felt unnaturally close, like he could reach out and graze it with his fingertips.
He tried to move, but a bolt of pain shot through his ankle, searing up his leg.
He opened his mouth to scream, but another jolt of agony from his jaw silenced him.
His groans came out muffled and choked.
Rolling instinctively to the side to vent his pain, he narrowly avoided a spike that slammed into the spot he had just occupied.
It wasn't an arrow, slightly bigger and more sleek.
It was thin and jagged, gray with a green slime dripping from its sharpened tip.
The shaft looked like hardened stone, but... organic.
He blinked at it in disbelief until his eyes traced the direction it had come from.
And then he saw it.
A creature.
It stood on two inverted goat-like legs, hunched over with four twitching arms, two unusually small maybe for backrubs, and the other two humongous huge
Thick, foamy spittle poured endlessly from its misshapen mouth, pooling on the ground and coating the two big limbs.
It had no eyes.
Instead, its entire face seemed to be a grotesque ear turned inside out, pulsing slightly like it could hear every beat of his racing heart.
Sibir barely had time to think before the spittle on its arms hardened and formed another pike.
This time, it hurled the weapon straight at him.
And the thing was twenty meters away, yet it stood seven to eight feet tall.