Zion rolled down the road, the only sound he could hear the steady hum of his engine. Even out in the middle of nowhere South Carolina, there were usually at least a few cars passing through, but today there was no one. The road stretched empty for miles in both directions.
Zion frowned. Something felt… off. Still, he ignored the feeling and kept moving forward.
He rode past a row of dilapidated buildings. He'd passed them hundreds of times before, but now they seemed different. The air around them shifted and warped, like heat rising off the hood of a car on a summer day. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something. His bike slowed to a stop, and he turned his head toward the figure, but there was nothing there.
"Weird. Forget the E.R., I need a psych ward." Zion said aloud to himself.
He turned back toward the road, but before he could even accelerate, something hit him, the hardest he had ever been hit in his life. He was ripped from his bike and slammed into the road with the force of a bullet.
Zion groaned as pain flared through his body. He wasn't sure how he was even alive. He tried to sit up, expecting resistance, but there was none. The force of the blow should have shattered his ribcage.
He pushed himself upright and realized he'd landed a good fifty feet from his bike. The motorcycle was now nothing more than a mangled heap of metal on the side of the road.
Slowly, he got to his feet and looked around, but there was nothing there. No sign of what had hit him. The only difference was the air; it was warping more violently now.
It felt like the atmosphere itself was collapsing inward, cracks spreading across the sky. Zion's heart began to race, sweat beading down his face. Maybe… maybe everything he'd been seeing wasn't just in his head.
He took a step back. Then another. Then he turned and broke into a full sprint.
He didn't know where he was going, or even what he was running from, but he knew he had to get away.
He wasn't even thinking anymore, just moving. His vision blurred, whether from exhaustion or whatever was happening to the sky, he couldn't tell.
Then he slammed into something solid.
Zion hit the ground hard and looked up, expecting a tree.
It wasn't a tree.
A hulking creature stood over him, its body covered in emerald-green scales as thick as iron. Its head was crocodilian, its jaws lined with jagged teeth. Two violent, glowing red eyes locked onto him. Claws as long as daggers curled at the ends of its gnarled fingers.
The air warped and curled around it, as if reality itself was trying to hold it back, but if it was, it wasn't working. The creature moved forward without effort, stalking toward him.
Zion's heart pounded so hard it felt like it might burst from his chest. The only sound he could manage was a strangled scream as he scrambled backward.
Then he heard it.
The groan of metal under strain. A sharp, metallic snap that echoed in his mind like it was inside a cave.
And just like that, the calm returned.
Heavy. Unnatural.
His heartbeat slowed, his breathing steadied, his thoughts sharpened. But this time, the fear didn't disappear completely. That same uneasiness lingered, the sickening awareness that the calm didn't belong to him.
It made him feel like a puppet… aware of its own strings.
Worse, he had the distinct feeling that whatever was influencing him had left that awareness there on purpose.
The creature raised its massive, clawed hand, but it moved slowly, too slowly.
Zion rolled out of the way and sprang to his feet, his body moving almost on its own. He turned to run, he knew he didn't stand a chance, but something in him resisted.
The uneasiness twisted into something sharper.
Determination.
Everything in him screamed at him to fight.
Zion clenched his jaw. He wasn't the smartest, but he knew when he was outmatched. He forced the feeling down and broke into a sprint. He wasn't particularly attached to his life, but he also didn't want to end it getting torn apart by some monster, his death written off as just another disappearance, another statistic no one cared about.
So, he ran.
He didn't know where.
Branches tore at him as he cut through the woods, careful not to trip over exposed roots. Behind him, he could still hear the creature's heavy footsteps pounding through the trees.
He ran until he burst back onto the road. He kept moving, even as exhaustion set in. Every breath burned, like he was swallowing boiling water.
An abandoned house came into view.
Zion didn't hesitate. He dove inside and collapsed into the thick, overgrown kudzu that choked the interior.
Silence.
No footsteps. No growl.
Just his own breathing.
He stayed there, barely breathing, listening.
He had no idea how he was going to survive this.
But he didn't plan on dying here.
Zion finally heard the footsteps again.
They were close.
Then they stopped.
He could hear the beast sniffing the air, then a low growl.
The wall of the house he was hiding in came crashing down. The monster burst inside and immediately tore away the vines of kudzu he was hiding behind.
Zion thought it was over. He was certain this was where he was going to die.
Then all the hairs on his arms stood on end.
A crack of thunder split the air overhead. A blinding flash of white tore through the building—and in an instant, the monster was reduced to two clean halves, split straight down from the top of its head.
For a moment, everything was still.
Through the settling dust, Zion made out the figure of a woman standing where the lightning had struck.
The last thing he remembered before passing out was her raising a hand… and pointing toward him.