The bridge fell quiet, littered with the remaining corpses of men and monsters. Except for the cleaning crew, the unbolted lesser men, a few elites, and the Chief King, all others had left the metallic rustyard for the sanctuary they called home. Among the pile of corpses, the lesser men began cutting and slicing each part, organizing them based on the head, leg, arm, and the amount of flesh that could be extracted from the dead. It was not always the monsters; sometimes, it was their brothers.
There was a hierarchical order given out by Murad Xie to feed the Dain—the flesh machine. It wasn't as intelligent as a man, but in terms of utility? The Dain could rival the entire elite squad. From the accounts of the lesser men, the Dain had existed since the time of the Founder, Idris, who brought it and saw that it was necessary for humans to extract every bit of nutrients from their environment. But Murad Xie, the Chief King, often said that the Founder himself had predicted the evolution of these monsters. Back in the time of the Founder and earlier generations, the monsters were mostly dormant prey, unable to protect themselves much. They were often called pigs, cows, and goats—and in one instance, chickens, which went extinct in the early centuries. The accounts of Irwana harshir, who followed the teachings of the chiefs, told stories of how those pigs, cows, and goats consumed the foulness that accelerated their thirst for blood and hunger for flesh.
Next to the sealed gates at the end of the bridge, the company of elites stood guard. Klein, Murad, Haveth, and Malrvr gazed down at every aspect of the rust, algae, and the newly formed claw marks that had never existed before.
"Cutting through scrap steel... The strongest armor we have is far weaker than the gates," Malrvr said with deep concern, as the elite soldier who had drunk the monster's blood from its throat gulped in fear.
On the other hand, Murad Xie was more interested in the piled-up bodies and parts separated from the rest, containing the black flesh likely tainted by the miasma. Seeing the amount of flesh, bones, and good-quality fur being thrown away, Klein felt a sense of dissatisfaction as he clumped the meat together.
"How sure are you that it isn't edible?" Klein asked.
"Not sure," Murad Xie replied, before pointing his cane toward one of the lesser men who was separating the black from the red. "Contribute to the survival of mankind in the way you can... I command you to give your life for knowledge," Murad said to the frightened man.
Immediately, the man began to shake. He shivered along with the knife in his hand—not just out of fear, but seeing that this could fill his belly, even if it resulted in his death. Just like every other lesser man, they would give their lives just to fill their stomachs. Ironic, Klein wondered. The concept itself was too absurdly funny to him.
Soon, the man approached Murad Xie, who instructed Klein to give the final rites to the poor soul. Klein was good at not just war, but the rites and rituals personally taught to him by Murad himself. There were nine rites for death in total: one for war, one for disease, and others for specific ends. Placing his hand on the frightened, shivering man in the coldest hour of the day, Klein recited the 9th Rite—the Rite of Sacrifice.
"The Twins, the sister... three and their grace... fear no death as you walk towards your eternal slumber, for the women of death are virgins and in many, and the song of the bards shall not let you be buried in history... for your valor is not in strength but in verses that shall be sung for generations, saving many men..."
The rites ended, and Klein stepped back. The man took a piece of the flesh. Hesitantly, he put it in his mouth, even though he was starving. Taking a closer look at the monstrous amalgamation of pus, black sludge, and tumors, his gluttony was finally satisfied. The moment he swallowed, the man gagged, then gulped it down. Malrvr passed him a cold beer made from fermenting monster eyes to wash it all down.
"It doesn't seem harmless," Klein said.
But Murad Xie's eyes were ever intimidating as he slowly reached for the claymore on his back. "Look at his veins," Murad said, and quickly the others picked up on it. "Stand your guard!" Murad ordered.
Klein watched in horror as the man's teeth turned black. His eyes flushed white and red, and all his veins took on a shade of green that seemed to move beneath his skin, all while the man appeared perfectly normal.
"What do you feel... are you alright?" Klein asked, approaching the man, but he did not move.
"I-I feel pain... but I also feel f-free." The man vomited a torrent of black blood all over the floor and collapsed on top of it, splashing the dark sludge onto Murad and tainting his premium armor. With that, Klein ruled out that he had survived.
"So it doesn't turn one into a monster," Klein murmured. Why did humans rot while the monsters had a second chance? He noticed Murad reaching the exact same conclusion.
"Burn all the flesh and fill the char into the gaps and cracks... no meat or fur from it shall be taken back to the sanctuary! It is a commandment and the new law of the Sanctuary!" Murad proclaimed loud and clear, and the few men on the bridge nodded in agreement. Klein, who had been his right hand for as long as he could remember, wrote it down in a leathery book to update the Constitution later.
Before they left the area, Klein slowly approached the dead man, closing his eyes. "Thank you... we shall use the knowledge well."
Klein walked away, catching up to the pace of the other elites who had reached the long carriage cars. These mechanical giants were loaded with slices of meat, fur, bones, and the corpses of human soldiers, followed by other carts filled with the armor, weapons, and scrap of the dead waiting for them next to the rustyard. Only the elites had access to these beautiful mechanical wonders. The lesser men had to carry their own weight, but they were handsomely paid with whatever they could carry for themselves from the corpses. Leather men scraped excess leather to clean and sell to handi-women for fashionable underground clothes; bone carvers took teeth, horns, and other calcium-rich solid blocks to create ornaments, pills, and tributes to their three Goddesses; and the fellow children filled their pockets with meat as a reward for all the hard work they had done on their very first day. Deinne's pockets were the fullest.
Klein also noticed Akira was missing from the crowd. They probably took Roste and Akira together to the sanctuary for treatment, he thought. Even though medical treatment was strictly reserved for the elitists, Klein had offered him a hand.
The distance from the gates to the sanctuary wasn't far, but the journey was slow. Even for someone in the cars, it wasn't much better, since they were not only filled with elites but weighed down by the massive amount of gathered resources. Sitting together, sharing a single car, Murad Xie had connected his ride to the main car to increase the engine power. Klein noticed Murad's face; he looked angry. His eyes were too shallow, and he kept gripping his armor and weapons. For someone who had spent a long time reading the Chief King, it was no difficult task to see his mind at work. Sitting beside the elite in all his glory and heavy armor, making space for his long claymore, Murad Xie shared his concern.
"The meat yield was the lowest ever," he growled. "I swear by the Founder... today's harvest was merely a fraction of the previous ones, and with a lot more dead."
"Thirty of them," Klein pointed out.
"Yes! If the next harvest is just as bad, we will lose all our soldiers within a few months, and all of mankind the very next day!" Murad rubbed the black blood from his metal boots, showing it to the others. "No Chief before me has seen such a thing. Forgive your Lord for being ignorant," Murad said, gesturing toward Klein.
Klein saw the look of distress and sadness. Perhaps the anger he felt earlier was just Murad being harsh on himself again, Klein wondered. Even though eating another human was legalized by Murad Xie, Klein and the others did not refuse him, nor did the rest of the population, because even his worst actions always resulted in the survival of their species. That was exactly why Klein respected him, and exactly why Klein felt a deep, gripping sadness in his heart whenever he saw the Chief. Pulling himself away from the depressing thoughts, Klein offered Murad Xie his own leather kerchief, decorated with fur in the shape of a sword.
"Is this a new evolution?" Klein asked.
"The Gritmaws affected by the black flesh were many, but none of the Mawtorus showed any signs of infection, and the earlier Gritmaws that came out of the gates were pure as well," Murad said, rejecting Klein's kerchief. "The last ones to spring out of the gates... I noticed that too. Even while fighting them, it felt as if they were more afraid than hungry... But definitely not evolution. An evolution that helps one after death? I might have to read Hyrae's books or ask Irwana about it," Murad muttered as the light on the ceiling of the sanctuary slowly began to dim.
"It's going to be night soon, and with that, it'll be freezing. I'll speed up the lesser men," Malrvr said before jumping off the slow-moving car.
"What are you going to do?" Murad asked Klein.
"I made a promise to a new friend... I might want to check on him," Klein replied, staring at the beautiful dimming of the lights. Lanterns and bulbs were being lit within the sanctuary, the smell of fried Gritmaw overshadowed by the stench of the dead, the sound of metal and weapon smiths, the footsteps of guards, the moans of women in the breeders, and the chants of praises in the temples.
The dimming of the light determined nighttime, and its rise determined day. The crazy lady of the town would tell you there was noon, evening, and twilight, but that's why they called her crazy. Night was the time when lesser men were more active and higher men more productive—both in producing future generations and reducing the stress they incurred from the harvest. Starvation was not the only danger to the sanctuary; the decline of the younger generation was another massive threat. Just earlier, there were no thirteen-year-olds. That was the case last year too, where only three reached maturity, forcing Murad to lower the age of recruitment. This year, there were none, except some twelves and elevens.
To solve the dying population crisis, the Chief before Murad Xie had opted to open breeding chambers where selected women were bred with selected men. There were no vows of marriage, no love. Klein had always been disgusted by this concept, primarily because he did not want to be treated like an animal, and secondly, because he hated the smell of a naked woman. That wasn't true for Haveth, who was said to have slept with every woman in the chambers. Despite the perverted idea, often said to have been created out of selfish reasons by the Chiefs before Murad, no one dared to say it out loud. No one except the crazy lady of the town, who had tried to save many girls before, screaming that there was no love or consent—as if the stronger men cared about such things.
The cars passed by houses with steep roofs made of black-dyed, low-quality metal reinforced with leather, featuring pointy, long arches and gothic carvings. The metal roads were bricked, illuminated by street lamps that burned with fire and other lights connected by cables. All the houses had long central cables that flowed toward the center of the city, accumulating and connecting to the deep, dark, endless void of the underground sky. Safe to say, men had tried climbing it, but those men were also fed to the Dain for trying.
The car stopped at one such house, lighter, bigger in structure, and pristine in its beauty and aesthetic—a rare sight in the sanctuary. It was the house of Irwana and her son, Irfahan, of the Harshir family. Everyone in the sanctuary knew who they were. Known as the Knowledge Keepers, second only to the Askardya Family, and among the eight influential families of the sanctuary, they were also called Angels of Life, Divine Patriarchs, or simply: Doctors. Klein opened the tightly packed doors while waving goodbye to Murad, who did not reply except for a respectful glance.
"It's Klein! It's Klein!"
Almost immediately after he opened the doors into the warm, enclosed room smelling of harsh chemicals, a little girl jumped out of her seat and held tightly onto Klein's leg.
"Why didn't you take me to watch you fight!" she pouted, pinching his clothes.
Klein immediately hoisted her up in the air. She was one of the few people Klein genuinely cared about. Her eyes were large, her hair short and brown, but they still lacked any spark of light—just as deep and hollow as anyone else in the sanctuary.
"Hush... We are treating a soldier, Jenn. Stop causing a ruckus." From the other room, a man as tall as Klein walked in. He held several blood-stained medical tools and wore a mask made of fur fibers and thin leather straps that covered his face. It was Irfahan Harshir, son of Irwana. His hair was just as brown as the girl's, but his eyes were much smaller, likely inherited from his mother.
"Ask your wife to cook this with a bit of Blood-spice," Klein said, handing him a kit of meat.
But rather than being delighted, Irfahan carefully examined the package and frowned. "This is too little. This won't last us a week," Irfahan burst out.
"The yield was bad... there was nothing more we could do other than wait for the next harvest," Klein replied, setting Jenn down. "Unless you want to take from the Dain, that is," Klein continued.
"Don't be foolish, Klein. My mother won't let us touch anything from the Dain, even if it meant we starved to death!" Irfahan stepped closer and whispered.
"Rejecting food from the Dain is a capital offense," Klein reminded him, removing his long, stitched leather boot with Jenn's help.
"That's why we trust you. We even let you break the law by treating that man in here." Irfahan was visibly annoyed, trying to keep his rising voice as low as possible. Klein nodded, clarifying that he would try to sneak in more food before the monster meat reached the Dain or the general market for exorbitant prices. Irfahan closed the door behind Klein and led him to the other room.
It was Klein's first time seeing the inside of the building. Even though Klein had his own body treated before, he mostly did it at the Temple Clinic right by the Chief's office on the central platform. Normally, no underground medical treatments were allowed—a strict rule by Murad to track medical supplies—but trusted people like Irfahan often let it happen. The room was mostly lit by bulbs in every corner, connected via unordered, rugged wires. The floor was made of decaying, slippery wood, but Klein had more important things to focus on.
"How is he?" Klein asked.
"We couldn't save his arm. It had to be removed alongside his right leg... the only way we could have stopped the infections was to amputate. Unless we had access to Murad's treasury, but I doubt he'll ever let Roste or you use it," Irfahan explained as they entered a fully sterile room. Here, the floor was made of metal and tiles to prevent infestations.
Klein saw a small patched bed, and next to it, two wrapped items. Judging by the leaking blood, Klein figured they were the amputated parts.
"Roste!" Klein called out.
The man looked exhausted. Irfahan had explained how the amputation process didn't use anesthesia, and Roste had experienced severe trauma from the ordeal. But when he saw Klein in perfect health, Roste rose slightly from his bed and sat up.
"You have seen what happened to me," Roste said. Klein nodded.
"You won't be able to fight anymore," Klein replied.
Roste closed his eyes and smiled. "Then I guess I am free."
Klein turned to Irfahan and waved his hand, requesting privacy. Klein had seen many men lose their lives in battle, but he had never seen one survive in this condition. Often, they were either euthanized or left to die naturally and fed to the Dain. Klein felt another gripping sadness. Will I regret this help? Was it a blessing or a curse? This man wouldn't be able to survive the harshness of the bunker, where cripples, women, and children faced fates worse than the monsters.
"Do not worry about me, Klein. Don't regret it... I am forever thankful," Roste said. "I never used a sword or a claymore to kill my enemies; I always relied on a gun. With the left arm I've got, I have all the strength in the world to mitigate my troubles... so don't burden yourself." Roste smiled.
A change in a man? What is that hope? Klein asked himself. He hadn't interacted with Roste regularly, but he knew the man often swam in a series of depressing episodes and troubles. This resilience was a miracle, he wondered.
"I was worried I did you great harm," Klein expressed his grief and turned around to leave. I hope he will be okay, Klein thought.
But Roste called him back. "Don't leave without my arm and leg... give it to the Dain and get Irfahan the monster meat," Roste stopped him.
Klein saw his determination. It was a pragmatic idea, but as Klein picked up the wrapped limbs, Roste's expression turned serious. He didn't meet Klein's eyes. He was remembering something. Klein had hoped he would ask for help, but instead, Roste mentioned the strange events at the bridge. Just before the final wave of monsters arrived, the watchtower had collapsed. When Klein suggested it was the monsters that walked after death, Roste rejected it. He hadn't known about the dead beasts walking, but he was certain no monster took down that tower.
Roste's tone turned sharp. "There is something strange happening in the underground sanctuary. If this goes on, they won't make it... if it wasn't a monster, it was a man, or something far more sinister... I know it's selfish... but can you help train the boy that saved me? I just don't want to see him die early," he requested.
Klein went silent. Carrying both body parts, he prepared to walk out before stopping. "I had planned on training him before he even met you... before he had even turned one... It's the least I could do for his mother."
Roste was confused. "What do you mean?" he asked in panic.
Klein smirked. "Do you feel like eating human meat?"
Roste glanced at his remaining arm and remembered the boy. "After watching that child... it somehow feels disgusting to even think about it," Roste replied.
"The boy couldn't save your arm or leg, but he could save your humanity... this is what we believe in... this is what he'll do for us," Klein continued. "You said that boy will be the last of us, remember? No, he won't be... he'll bring a new era of humanity, far better than anything we have seen."
"Klein... don't tell me you are part of that crazy c-cult... why you, of all people?" Roste gulped and started to sweat.
"We are simply people who wish to regain our humanity, save the women, children, and men of the sanctuary... and reclaim our rights in this world." Klein left through the door.