The sun didn't rise that morning.
Instead, a blood-red hue stretched across the clouds, casting eerie shadows over the broken cityscape. Cracked towers loomed like skeletal remains, their glass eyes shattered and blind. The wind howled low, carrying the scent of rust, ash, and decay.
Kael stood on the edge of a rooftop, eyes narrowed toward the east. The horizon pulsed like a dying heart. "That's not natural," he muttered.
"No," Reyna replied, climbing up beside him. "It's never natural when the sky bleeds."
Behind them, the rest of the group moved in silence. Exhaustion hung heavy in their footsteps. After surviving the ambush in the sewers, they hadn't had a real break in nearly two days. Food was running low, bullets scarcer still.
Ari turned her face upward, her youthful features drawn tight with worry. "Is it the Crimson Bloom again? Another surge?"
"No," said Reyna, voice grim. "It's something worse. The Bloom doesn't change the sky. This... this is something new."
Kael pulled out the battered journal he had taken from the dead cartographer back in Zone 13. Most of it was a mess of scribbles and old-world maps, but toward the back, a few pages had been marked with symbols—strange glyphs and red Xs. The eastern skyline was one of them.
"They knew something was coming," Kael whispered. "They tried to warn us."
"Who?" Ari asked, stepping closer.
"The ones who disappeared before the first Collapse," he answered. "Scientists, researchers, prophets... call them whatever you want. But they left clues. Maybe because they knew we'd be too late."
"Too late for what?" Sam's voice cracked from behind, rifle slung across his back. "Too late to stop the world from ending? That ship's long sailed."
"Too late to stop what comes after," Reyna said coldly.
A deep rumble shook the building beneath their feet. Dust sifted down from a broken antenna. The group tensed, weapons drawn. But it wasn't a monster or an ambush—it came from the earth itself. A tremor, faint but unmistakable.
"Earthquakes now?" Ari whispered.
"Or something waking up," Kael replied. He flipped another page in the journal. A sketch of a buried tower, half-sunken in rock and bone, stared back at him. The words beneath it chilled his blood.
"The Crimson Heart will beat again."
He didn't tell the others that part.
They descended from the rooftop and moved through the city ruins in a tight formation. Every alley reeked of rot. The silence was oppressive—no birds, no insects, not even the growls of scavenging beasts. The quiet was wrong.
Too wrong.
They crossed an abandoned marketplace. Sun-bleached bones scattered between broken vendor stalls. Signs still dangled with faded slogans: FRESH MEAT! LOWEST PRICE GUARANTEED! A twisted joke now.
Reyna stopped, holding up a hand. Her expression was tight, listening.
"What is it?" Kael whispered.
She turned slowly. "We're not alone."
Sam raised his weapon. "Raiders?"
"Worse."
From behind a collapsed wall, something shifted. Then emerged—no, unfolded—a figure cloaked in black, its face hidden behind a mask of stitched leather and glass. Its movements were jerky, like a puppet whose strings had frayed. The stench hit them next—cloying, sweet, like rotting fruit dipped in gasoline.
Kael aimed. "Identify yourself!"
The figure tilted its head. Then, from beneath the mask, came a voice—not human, not machine, but something... filtered. "The sky remembers. The blood returns."
Another stepped out beside it. Then another. And another.
Six figures in total, dressed the same, moving in unison like a hive. Each of them had the same insignia burned into their chest: a bleeding eye.
Kael's grip tightened. "Crimson Witnesses."
"I thought they were a myth," Reyna whispered.
"Everything we thought was a myth is real now," Kael said. "Including them."
The Crimson Witnesses began to chant softly, their voices overlapping, forming a low hum that vibrated the teeth. Ari clutched her ears.
"They're calling something," Reyna hissed. "We need to stop them."
Kael didn't wait for a second command.
"Fire!"
Gunshots cracked through the air. The first Witness staggered but didn't fall. The second flinched, blood spraying from its shoulder—but still they chanted. Their voices grew louder, deeper.
One of them raised its hand.
The ground split open beneath them.
A wave of crimson mist erupted, swallowing the plaza in seconds. Kael's eyes burned. He coughed, trying to see. Screams pierced the air—Sam shouting, Ari crying out, Reyna barking orders.
Then silence again.
Kael stumbled, half-blind, gripping his rifle like a lifeline.
The mist began to clear—and he froze.
Where the Witnesses had stood now stood a thing.
A towering abomination, skin like black marble streaked with glowing veins of red. Its mouth stretched far too wide, filled with rows of glistening teeth. Eyes—too many eyes—blinked across its chest and arms.
"Contact!" Kael screamed.
He fired.
The bullets sparked off its skin like pebbles. The creature let out a shriek that shattered windows across the plaza.
Reyna charged in, blade drawn. She moved like lightning, slicing through air and shadow, but the beast was faster. It caught her mid-swing, hurling her through a storefront.
"Ari, run!" Kael barked.
But the girl didn't move. She stood frozen, eyes wide, lips trembling.
"Ari!"
"I... I hear them..." she whispered.
"Hear what?"
"The Witnesses. Inside my head."
Reyna pulled herself from the rubble, blood running down her arm. "Kael! Get the girl out of here!"
He reached for Ari, but she stepped back, trembling violently.
"I can't... they're singing to me... I can't block it out..."
Kael cursed and grabbed her anyway, throwing her over his shoulder as the creature howled again. Reyna covered them as they retreated, laying down suppressive fire.
Back in the alleys, they didn't stop running until the beast's cries were lost behind crumbling walls.
Only then did Kael set Ari down.
She collapsed to her knees, weeping. "I'm sorry... I tried to resist... but it's inside me now..."
Kael looked at Reyna. "What the hell was that thing?"
She shook her head slowly. "An Echo. I've read about them—ancient guardians of the Crimson Heart. Woken only when the balance is about to be shattered."
"So the Heart is real."
"Yes. And someone is trying to wake it."
They sat in silence, each weighed down by the truth. The sky, the Witnesses, the Echo—they were all pieces of the same nightmare.
But worse was yet to come.
Kael opened the journal again. A final note scribbled in haste, ink smeared by what looked like blood.
"If the Heart wakes, the world forgets itself."
He looked up at the blood-red sky above them, then at Ari—who now rocked slowly, eyes unfocused, humming a strange melody none of them recognized.
The clock was ticking.