The sky was painfully clear. A silver moon hovered above like an indifferent eye, and the forest whispered with wind and distant movement. Adrian crouched low behind a moss-covered tree trunk, Glock 19 cold in his offhand, its matte black surface smudged with dirt and blood.
11 rounds left.
He could feel them. Seven of them. They pulsed on the edge of his senses like static pressure in his skull. Shadows with breath. Monsters wrapped in rotten skin and jagged bone, pacing just beyond the ring of trees. Getting closer by the hour.
In his right hand, his trusted steel tomahawk rested, the edge freshly sharpened.
Whatever they were, they were coordinated. Intelligent enough to spread out. To hunt.
The first line of defense was the pit trap. Dug three feet deep, lined with jagged metal—rusty rebar and scavenged shards from an old wreck. The bottom was a bouquet of death.
High above, May crouched among the branches, her eyes focused. Long blonde hair tied behind her, tomahawk in hand, she looked nothing like someone he'd only met once. But there she was. Calm. Ready.
Adrian waited.
And then—movement.
One of them. Pale. Almost translucent skin stretched tight across bones like drum leather. Taller than the others, but gaunt, and completely hairless. Its spine was visible through its back. Its eyes were missing—just dark pits where sight should be.
SNAP.
A creak of tension, a rush of air—the tree trap fell. The log came crashing down, catching the monster's arm. A second thud as another tree limb collapsed onto its leg.
The creature screeched—an awful, wet sound that split the silence and echoed through the woods.
It thrashed wildly, confused. It couldn't see her. Couldn't sense her.
But she was there.
May dropped like a blade, tomahawk raised. She swung, and again, and again. Blood sprayed up like mist as she hacked away at the thing's face, every blow landing with raw, physical weight. For Adrian, it looked real—felt real.
He glanced away, not needing to check if it was dead. The screaming had stopped. So had one of the flickers on his senses.
"Good work, May," he muttered.
Then—rustling.
Two more shapes charged through the trees. Fast—almost a blur. Their feet barely touched the ground, arms outstretched, claws ready. They were coordinated. Smart. Too smart.
Adrian didn't wait.
He blasted off the forest floor with a telekinetic burst, launching himself fifteen feet into the air. Tree limbs shook and leaves scattered beneath him as he rotated mid-air. The beasts below reacted too slowly.
He flicked his fingers—luck manipulation.
The two monsters collided at full speed.
CRACK.
A heavy, sickening impact. One twisted sideways, its shoulder dislocated on the spot. The other crashed face-first into a trunk. Bones snapped. Teeth scattered.
They twitched on the ground, not quite dead, but certainly out of the fight.
"Four left," Adrian muttered.
Without wasting another second, he raised the Glock and fired—two clean shots. One into each skull. Their heads snapped back, gray matter and clotted blood misting into the dark air. The twitching stopped.
He could feel them—the last four. Closing in fast.
Adrian steadied his breathing. The rotten blood from the fallen creatures had started to pool around him—inky, foul-smelling, thick as syrup. But he didn't flinch. This was his element now.
Blood Control.
The air shimmered with tension as the blood lifted. Thick, shimmering orbs of red hovered around him, trailing like floating lanterns. It was putrid, nearly black, but Adrian had learned something vital: despite the stench, despite the decay—
It could heal.
And it could burn.
That discovery had come days ago. From there, it was simple theory: Blood Control let him alter the temperature. May helped him train it. They tested it carefully, learned how to condense and heat the blood to the ignition point, a risky but brilliant solution to the island's horrors.
Adrian exhaled sharply, and the blood around him began to glow faintly—embers licking beneath the surface.
"Come on…"
He concentrated—pouring energy through his veins, his psychic core sparking. His breath caught.
First, a soft ember. Then, the color deepened—crimson edged with orange, licking outward as though the fire lived inside. One by one, the droplets ignited
Dozens of burning tears suspended midair. The flames flickered in slow, hypnotic waves.
And just in time.
They appeared.
All four. Thin, sickly, white-skinned things, their spines crooked like question marks. They circled him, six meters out, snarling in strange, gurgling speech, the edges of their mouths stretching into grotesque grins. Their howls layered over one another—wet and almost human.
Communicating. Planning.
Adrian didn't blink. He could feel May moving in the canopy above, waiting. Watching.
Then—two lunged.
He ducked beneath the first's swipe, pivoting low. In one smooth motion, he swung his tomahawk upward empowered by his telekinesis.
Blood sprayed in a high arc. It howled, staggering backward.
But behind him—a hiss.
The second beast was already mid-leap.
Adrian's eyes widened. He spun—
Too slow.
The creature raised its grotesque arm—bone exposed, sharpened like a spear, aimed directly at Adrian's spine. He had no time to dodge.
So he didn't.
With a sharp exhale, he focused his will on the burning droplets that hovered around him. A dozen of them ripped forward in a perfect arc, guided by his mind like tiny comets.
A staccato of tiny beams lacerated the creature's arm mid-air, slicing across its flesh with precision. Each droplet sizzled through skin and muscle, cutting perfect, cauterized lines as they burrowed deeper.
The beast screamed—a high-pitched, wet rasp, stumbling mid-air as its arm was flayed open inch by inch.
And then—
Adrian twisted his fingers.
Every last droplet hanging in the air detonated at once, plunging into the creature's bloodstream.
The effect was instant.
Its entire body ignited from the inside—veins lit up like glowing scars under its skin, bursting with heat. Flames erupted from its mouth, its eyes, its severed limb, as its blood burned from within like napalm-soaked gasoline.
The beast screamed, its trajectory faltering mid-air.
Adrian didn't wait.
He spun toward the first one—still stunned, twitching from the earlier strike—and drove his tomahawk through its neck in a blur of motion, cleaving through gristle and sinew.
In the same heartbeat, he pressed the muzzle of his gun under its chin and—
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The shots cracked through the forest like thunder.
Blood sprayed up his arm as the creature's head snapped back, eyes blank and mouth frozen in a silent snarl.
Both monsters collapsed at once
May's voice.
"Two left…"
May launched herself like a dart, landing hard on the back of the largest one—the towering brute with long, damp strands of dark hair draped across its gaunt, pale frame. Its six-meter body swayed slightly under the impact, but it didn't fall. Its milky, pupil-less eyes twitched, more curious than alarmed. May raised the axe above her head and slammed it down—once, twice, three times—into the hunched thing's shoulders and spine. Chunks of flesh tore free, black blood splattering the ground beneath, but the wounds sealed almost instantly.
It growled low, a sound like metal scraping bone.
Meanwhile, Adrian crouched low, clutching his torn ribs. His breath trembled. A haze of red hovered around him—droplets of blood suspended in the air from the earlier kill. He closed his eyes for half a second, focused. The blood crept into his wounds, stitching skin and rebuilding bone—but it wasn't enough. Not fast enough.
"I'm sick of being prey!"
His scream cracked the air. He thrust out his arm, fingers trembling, eyes glowing bright with a blood-tinged light.
The other creature—about six meters away—twitched in response. Before it could move, it was ripped forward with a violent lurch, dragged across the blood-slicked ground by Adrian's raw, crackling telekinetic force. A loud, wet scraping filled the clearing as it scrambled against the pull, claws tearing through stone and mud, its body contorting and flailing wildly.
The strain was immense—Adrian's nose exploded in a fresh gush of blood, the pressure pushing against his skull like a hammer—but he didn't let go.
It shrieked, an ear-piercing, inhuman wail, and thrust both elongated arms forward—aiming to impale him as it flew.
Too slow.
Adrian lunged, vaulting onto its extended limb with one hand, boots slamming into its rough skin as he flipped himself above its reach. He yanked the tomahawk from his belt and brought it down in an overhead swing—aiming for the skull.
CRUNCH.
Fangs—long, barbed, and yellow—clamped shut around his hand and the weapon mid-swing. The pain was immediate, unbearable. Bone shattered. Flesh tore. His vision blurred.
But he didn't scream.
With his free hand, Adrian force-pushed off the creature's face—blasting himself backward with a bloody explosion of telekinetic recoil. He landed hard, skidding on his back. The tomahawk was gone. So were his right thumb and pointer finger. Blood sprayed from the mangled mess that used to be his dominant hand.
But he breathed. He breathed and focused. The blood in the air obeyed.
He ignited it.
Red flame shimmered in his gaze.
But then—BOOM.
The massive one struck.
From nowhere, the hulking monster May had been hacking suddenly reappeared, arm like a battering ram. It caught Adrian off-guard and slammed him sideways—sending him flying.
Air whipped past him. Then, the world tilted again.
He twisted mid-flight using a desperate burst of telekinesis, skidding across the broken terrain in a crouch. His boots sparked against the stone as he came to a stop directly in front of the other beast.
Adrian met it with his left hand, already glowing with those burning tears of blood following behind him like vengeful spirits. He let the power wrap around his forearm, spiraling like a serpent.
And then, with the gentlest touch—
FWOOM.
The creature ignited from the inside out, reduced to embers in an instant. Its scream died with it.
Adrian staggered. He was running on fumes now. Every breath scraped like knives inside his lungs.
Where's May?
No time to look.
The big one was already coming—unstoppable, unfazed.
He concentrated, forced a flicker of luck, mixed with telekinesis. The monster's charge veered, just slightly. Enough to shift its aim. But not enough.
It still caught him—its grotesque arms stretching, snatching his waist mid-dodge.
Adrian grunted, bones groaning under the pressure. His eyes darted—
There.
A flash of steel: the other tomahawk, lodged in its back.
He dropped the gun. Let it hit the dirt.
And ran.
Every ounce of speed he had left surged through his legs, enhanced by telekinetic blasts at his heels. He launched into the air as the creature swiped at him with its claw—just missed—its talons slicing the air inches from his face.
He twisted, a blur.
His left hand shot out.
CLANG—
The tomahawk slid from the monster's back into his grip. A perfect, practiced motion.
But then—WHAM.
The beast bucked, twisting its spine with inhuman torque. Adrian flew again, this time hitting a jagged stone outcrop with a sickening crack. Blood exploded from his mouth. His shoulder bent the wrong way. Ribs shattered.
He couldn't feel his legs. Not at first.
But he got up.
One hand on the axe. The other on the ground.
Across from him, the creature lowered into a crouch. They stared at each other.
Then—they charged.
First strike—dodged.
Second—parried with a wave of telekinetic shock.
Adrian flew into the air, bounced off invisible footholds. With each rebound, he grew faster, bloodier. He struck again—and again—and again. Each impact left his knuckles raw, his arm bones cracking.
But he stored the blood of himself and the creature. All of it. Kept it hovering in the air around them like orbiting blades.
One hit. Two. Three. His ankle gave out. He didn't stop. His knee popped. Didn't matter.
The sphere of blood thickened.
His eyes flared.
Then—
He moved.
With a last spin in the air, he snapped his fingers—just the left ones. The blood exploded outward, wrapping the creature in a crimson cocoon of burning plasma.
A perfect sphere.
Spikes jutted out from it like spears, twisting, twitching, twitching—
Then—
BOOM.
The sky went red.
The light devoured the clearing.
The creature screamed, then was no more.
Ash. Smoke. Silence.