The first thing Ren noticed was the sound.
It wasn't thunder. It wasn't even noise in the normal sense. The sky just… bent. Like something massive was shifting behind it.
Then the clouds split.
A single eye opened.
Vast, red veined, and disturbingly moist, it hovered above the ruined skyline like it had always been there, just waiting for someone to look up.
Philetope's scream cracked through the air like breaking stone.
"That's the Plague God! RUN!"
Ren stared at the sky a moment longer.
The eye blinked slow, deliberate. The wind stopped.
Philetope tore open a black gate with a swing of his arm and launched himself through it without another word.
"Didn't you just said to me that you will remain here you coward"
Ren did not hesitate.
"Fuck this."
He sprinted after the Guardian and threw himself into the swirling dark.
.
.
.
He hit the ground hard. Crates shattered. Trash scattered. Something soft and wet broke beneath his elbow.
The smell hit next. Like hot metal, moldy socks, and whatever had died here fifty years ago but decided to stick around out of spite.
Ren lay there for a second, eyes closed.
He didn't move.
He just breathed slow, steady, through his mouth. Then he opened his eyes.
They'd landed in some kind of slum. Buildings made of rusted scrap and stone were stacked like bad Tetris. The sky was a boiling red bruise overhead, and yes—the eye was still there.
Watching.
"Of course it followed us," Ren muttered.
The street around him was narrow, and whatever passed for a road was more like a trench filled with oily runoff. Dead things floated in it. Maybe rats. Maybe not.
Philetope was crouched a few meters away, curled into a space that barely held half his frame. His shoulders hunched like a dog waiting to be hit.
"I thought this gate would be safe," the Guardian mumbled.
Ren sat up. "You thought?"
"I panicked."
Ren wiped blood from his lip. "You're a local."
"I'm not a divine tactician."
Ren stood, brushing something gray and flaky off his coat. His boots were soaked. His fingers were starting to tingle. Either poison or just another symptom of whatever the hell this place was.
The eye blinked again.
Ren didn't look up.
He kept walking.
Leave the gate guardian behind
The alleys twisted in strange ways too narrow, too dark. Buildings leaned in as if whispering about him. Shadows flickered where no light should've reached.
He passed corpses. Some are old. Some are still twitching.
He passed doors with no hinges. Windows without walls.
Children stared at him. Some had mouths. One had three.
He walked on.
His thoughts stayed quiet, boxed up somewhere between the nausea and the adrenaline.
There were no answers here. No sanity.
The Plague God had left its mark like a bootprint on the chest of the world. Rot wasn't the right word for it. It was closer to infection. Everything was wrong not dramatically, just enough to grind at the back of his skull like a misaligned jaw.
The ground squelched beneath his steps.
Every breath made his tongue taste copper.
He didn't speak.
He didn't complain.
He just kept walking because stopping meant acknowledging what was happening, and he didn't have time to break down in a gutter under a demon eye.
A shape lurched out of the mist once human, maybe. It held out a hand like it meant to bless him.
Ren looked at it for a long moment.
Then walked around it.
Its arm fell off mid-motion and landed with a wet slap in the street.