The street was a graveyard of broken rubble and fading purple mist.
Every breath tasted of blood, and the cold, dead smell of the Grade 7 monster. Fourteen feet of twisted grey flesh loomed over the shattered road, its massive chest heaving as the pale, wriggling fingers inside its head twitched in rhythm.
The chorus of stolen voices, screams of children, dying gasps of students, weeping women, scraped out from its gaping mouth, vibrating through the rubble and hitting straight into the skulls of those still standing.
Twenty steps away, Roan spat a clump of dark, thick blood onto the ground.
His left arm hung useless at his side, the shoulder out of place and swollen purple. His silver hair, usually neat, was stuck to his forehead in bloody strands. In his right hand, he held the broken half of his spear, a jagged wooden piece barely three feet long.
He breathed through his teeth, each breath making a wet, rattling sound in his chest.
