Barcelona, Spain
The morning breeze in Barcelona had been perfect—salty, warm, and laced with the heady aroma of spring flowers. It danced through the narrow streets, brushing against marble façades and filling every crevice with the spirit of life and celebration.
Javier and Pamela's wedding had drawn their closest friends and family to a small, picturesque plaza near the marina. The stone-paved avenue was framed by arches blooming with roses and silk drapes fluttering in the wind. Musicians played softly, their melodies weaving into the laughter and clinking glasses.
Pamela stood in her ivory lace gown, her hair crowned with a simple circlet of flowers, her hand clasped tightly in Javier's. He looked into her eyes and saw nothing but peace, hope, and love.
Then the ground shuddered.
At first, it was subtle—glasses tinkled against each other, birds flew off in spirals, and the ripples across the lake turned jagged. Then came the low rumble, bubble rising from the water nearby, a deep moan that reverberated through every chest.
People paused. Musicians stopped.
The officiant faltered, looking around.
Then it happened.
From the serene lake that mirrored the soft morning sky, the water exploded.
A geyser of crimson erupted from the depths. Blood. Not water.
From within that vile eruption, tentacles emerged. Massive, sinuous, and impossibly long. Each one glistened dark red, textured with hundreds of pulsing, suction-like mouths that twisted open, shrieking an unholy screech. The tentacles snapped into the air, whipping across the buildings, shattering glass and concrete as if they were toys.
The plaza became a graveyard of poor souls who happened not to be lucky enough to avoid the falling concrete, the tentacles were so massive when one slammed to the ground, causing destruction far enough to exceed anything in its way plummed to rubbles.
Screams tore through the crowd. Tables overturned. Chairs scattered. People ran, tripping over flower petals and each other.
Pamela stood frozen.
Javier yanked her arm. "Run!" he shouted, but she wouldn't move.
Not until a shadow fell over them.
A massive tentacle crashed into the stone arch, pulverizing it into rubble. Javier covered Pamela with his body as dust and debris rained down. The sky above them turned red from the sheer size of the monster.
The lake continued to boil as the full Crimson Leviathan rose—a massive octopus-like kaiju, made entirely of coagulated, writhing blood. Its body pulsed with a grotesque heartbeat, the skin semi-transparent, revealing twitching muscle and what might have once been faces.
It let out a sound that shook the heavens—a deafening, gurgling roar:
"GLUURRRGHHH… SHLLKKKK… KKKKHHHHH…"
Its eyes—if they could be called that—were orbs of liquid crimson, fixed hungrily on the city.
Tentacles whipped in every direction. Cars were flung like toys. Buildings cracked. The water surged in red waves, flooding the streets.
Javier and Pamela crawled through the wreckage. Around them, wedding guests screamed, some vanishing under falling debris, others caught by the writhing appendages and lifted screaming into the air, only to be torn apart.
"Here!" Javier pointed to a nearby alleyway.
He pulled Pamela, blood smeared across her gown. They ducked behind a stone bench, trembling. The sound of destruction echoed around them—bone and brick, metal and screams.
"What is it?" Pamela whispered, tears streaking down her face. "What is that thing?!"
"I don't know."
Another tentacle crashed into the nearby bell tower, sending centuries of stone plummeting to the ground.
Javier's heart pounded. "We have to get away from the water!"
They ran. Every step soaked their shoes in crimson sludge. People fled in all directions—some toward the hills, others trying to hide inside buildings that wouldn't stand long.
And still, the Crimson Leviathan rose higher, its massive limbs spreading across half the marina. Boats were hurled inland, torn apart midair. Blood rained from the sky.
Some who fell into the lake didn't resurface.
Because they were pulled under.
And from beneath the lake, more tentacles emerged. Smaller. Faster. Searching.
Pamela and Javier made it to an underground parking garage just as another tentacle swept across the street above, crushing a row of scooters. They ducked beneath a parked car, heartbeats thundering.
There, in that tight darkness, surrounded by concrete and the distant echoes of death above, Pamela clutched Javier's hand.
"We were supposed to be happy," she said, her voice cracking. "Just one day. Just one day."
Javier wiped blood from her cheek. "We still are. If we survive—"
"Don't say that."
He held her. For a moment, nothing else existed.
"El padre...el madre...mi tito...mi tia...gone...gone...everyone gone..." She started to lightly sob.
Then the concrete above them cracked.
A tentacle pierced the floor, dripping with viscous blood. It whipped toward the cars, smashing them like tin cans.
They ran, Pamela had no time to clean her messy mascara of tears. The garage filled with the shriek of twisting metal and the hiss of hydraulic fluids. From the exit ramp, they saw other survivors—people pulling children, limping, bleeding. A small group waved them over.
"Here! This way!"
Javier pulled Pamela through the chaos, narrowly avoiding a blood-soaked appendage that lashed down from above.
Outside, the city was unrecognizable. Streets were flooded in red. Buildings groaned under their own weight. Sirens wailed. Explosions echoed. And in the distance, the Crimson Leviathan screamed once more.
And yet, something worse stirred beneath the lake.
The ground trembled again.
And from the red waters… rose another.
A second Crimsonborn, smaller but more agile—this one with razor-like fins and a maw filled with blood-forged teeth.
Pamela gasped. "There's more?"
Javier pulled her close.
"O'o Yahweh...please watch over us..."
______________________
A woman among the survivors introduced herself—Isabella, a former coast guard officer. Her uniform was torn, bloodied, but her eyes remained sharp. "We can't stay here," she barked. "There's an old emergency tunnel that connects the portside warehouses to the rail depot. If we can get there, we might have a way out."
Javier didn't hesitate. "Lead the way."
The group of a dozen moved cautiously through side streets and shattered storefronts, skirting pools of blood and twitching limbs of fallen Crimsonborn spawn. The smell was nauseating—iron, rot, and ozone. The sounds of shrieking monsters echoed in the distance.
They ducked into a cracked metro entrance where Isidora led them through darkened tunnels. Occasionally, the power flickered, revealing more graffiti, more blood.
Pamela held tightly to Javier. She no longer cried—there were no more tears.
Eventually, they reached a steel door, partially covered in debris. With effort, the group pried it open and descended a forgotten maintenance shaft into the bowels of the city.
Here, in this dark artery beneath Barcelona, they rested. For a moment.
"Where does it lead?" Javier asked.
"To the hills. Maybe even the old military base. If it's still standing."
And with that, hope flickered.
Above them, the Crimson Leviathan roared again, unaware—for now—that some had slipped through its bloodied grip.
As they progressed deeper into the tunnel, the air grew colder. The silence was stifling. Until the earth itself rumbled again.
From the darkness ahead, a hissing slither echoed.
"What is that?" Pamela whispered, her voice cracking with dread.
Isabella raised her flashlight—and saw it.
A giant tunnel snake. Nearly twenty meters long, its flesh composed of blood-slick scales and bone-plated armor. Its fangs were needle-like, and dozens of tiny, twitching blood-filled eyes lined its serpentine head. It was a creature born of the same grotesque crimson corruption.
It lunged.
Screams erupted. The survivors scattered. The snake's tail slammed into the wall, sending rubble cascading.
people got eaten, some got into the sewer water, and panic was set in motion trying to get on the surface again. But they were quickly swallowed as the Tunnel Snake slithered itself to the people in sewer water, and they could not be saved.
Javier threw himself in front of Pamela, shielding her as dust and debris fell. "We can't outrun that thing!"
Isabella looked around wildly—then her eyes locked onto an old steel panel mounted in the wall.
"There!" she pointed. "That conduit—it's part of an old cryo system. Cold War-era military tunnels under the city. They ran emergency bio-containment experiments here decades ago. I heard stories from old colleagues. If it's still got pressure…"
A man in their group—Mateo, a rail depot technician—rushed to the panel and ripped it open, exposing an array of dusty gauges and frost-laced tubing.
"It's CO₂ with cryogenic backups," he muttered, tapping a corroded dial. "This might work."
Javier grabbed a length of metal pipe and sprinted forward, waving it. "Hey, over here, you blood-bloated bastard!"
The snake hissed as it ripped apart the final person from the sewer water, his lower half apart, and lunged toward Javi.
Pamela screamed, afraid.
"Now, Mateo!" Isabella shouted.
Mateo turned a rusted valve with all his strength. The piping groaned—then with a sharp crack, the lines ruptured.
A roaring jet of cryogenic vapor burst forth—liquid CO₂ mixed with supercooled gas, meant for rapid atmospheric purges.
The snake's flesh sizzled and cracked, its forward lunge halted mid-motion as a sheen of frost spread across its head and torso. Its eyes burst like frozen grapes.
Javier dove away as the serpent screamed—a gurgling, glassy noise—and froze solid.
The others watched in awe as the tunnel snake, caught in mid-attack, shattered under the weight of falling debris.
Silence fell, thick and uncertain.
Pamela gasped, eyes wide with disbelief.
Javier, panting, leaned on a pipe. "That actually worked…"
Mateo stared at the frozen chunks. "Barely held together. But if more of these systems are still buried in the tunnels… we might be able to use them."
Isabella nodded slowly, then looked up at the group. "We just found a weapon."
As the remaining survivors stood among the frozen shards of what had moments ago been a monstrous predator, Isabella stepped forward, examining the creature's fragmented anatomy.
Its scales—layered like armor forged in blood—glinted faintly in the flickering tunnel lights. Its eyes, though now shattered, still seemed to twitch with malevolence, as if some fragment of its mind endured.
Mateo muttered under his breath, "That wasn't just any creature. That thing was thinking. It didn't just attack—it hunted."
Isabella nodded grimly. "There's a name I heard... during my old navy days. A myth, whispered by deep-sea miners who drilled too far beneath the Pyrenees basin. They called it Val'Moras."
Javier raised an eyebrow. "That thing has a name?"
"They called its species the Sangravorid, which means 'Blood-Eater' in the old language. They were thought to be a subterranean myth—creatures that swim through the crust of the earth, drawn to blood like sharks to water. Only now, with the...whatever evolved this monster...it seems the myths were true."
Pamela clung closer to Javier, whispering, "If that was just one… how many more are there?"
Javier stared into the cracked ice, the coiled remnants of the beast half-submerged in frost.
"I don't know. But if that was Val'Moras... I doubt he is the only one..."