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March 17th, 20xx — 05:12 AM
Zone 3B-Δ – Rooftop
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The spear tore through flesh, bone, and something denser.
Not cartilage. Not marrow. Something underneath that pulsed not with life, but with presence.
The sensation travelled up the haft. Through my palm. Into my arm. Like I'd just driven the weapon through a living nerve.
Lao didn't fall.
He dropped, yes—down to one knee, the right side of his body trembling, blade-arm twitching like a dying limb still wired to a corpse. But he didn't fall.
Because falling meant yielding.
And he hadn't stopped changing yet.
Thick black blood spilt from the ragged gash in his shoulder and throat, down his chest, and across the rooftop in uneven circles. The scent followed—sweet, sour rot, old copper, the burn of oil on hot stone.
Then the sound.
He laughed.
Wet and broken, bubbling up from a place deeper than lungs. The kind of sound that meant something human was trying to breathe through something that wasn't.
