It started in absolute silence.
Not a barked alarm. Not a single footstep. Just the still, cold air of night—so normal, so peaceful it felt wrong.
Reivo woke with a jolt, drenched in sweat. His skin crawled with an unfamiliar fear. Something was off. He sat up slowly, holding his breath. The room was dark, lit only by slivers of moonlight. His younger brother shifted beside him, murmuring in his sleep.
Then came the sound—low, guttural. Wet and animalistic. Not human.
A scream tore through the night. High-pitched. Desperate. Raw.
Reivo bolted upright. Another scream. Then another. Each closer than the last, like a chain reaction of agony spreading across the village. No warning horns. No watchtower bell. Just the spreading chaos of panic and pain.
His father burst through the door seconds later. Hair wild, breath heaving.
"Get your brother. Wake your mother and Mira. Now."
"What's—"
"MOVE!" he barked, voice sharper than Reivo had ever heard.
Outside, the world was already on fire.
Homes burned, the air filled with smoke and the scent of scorched flesh. Shadows—massive and misshapen—moved through the village with purpose. Towering figures, humanoid only in the loosest sense. They stood nearly three meters tall, with pale, cracked skin that glistened in the firelight like stone soaked in blood.
No armor. No weapons.
They didn't need any.
Reivo watched one of them tear through a man like he was made of paper. A second caught a fleeing woman by the ankles, dragging her over jagged stone. Her fingernails snapped as she clawed at the earth. Then it casually gripped her legs and pulled—ripping her in two. It tossed the pieces aside with a childlike lack of care, as if bored already.
They weren't just killing. They were enjoying it.
Reivo ran.
He found his mother and Mira trying to herd his younger siblings toward the back door.
"We need to run! The forest path—"
The wall behind them shattered.
A creature burst through, dragging the corpse of a child behind it like a toy. The body was limp, head twisted unnaturally, little arms dangling. The beast dropped it with a wet slap and stepped forward. Its mouth twisted into something like a smile, though there was no warmth, no amusement. Only cruelty.
It lunged.
Reivo met it head-on, instinct guiding his hand. He swung a short sword he'd grabbed in his rush, aiming for the creature's chest. The blade shattered against its flesh.
The monster's hand closed around his throat and flung him like a ragdoll. He slammed against the wall. Pain exploded in his chest and vision. Something cracked. His head spun.
Mira screamed. She leapt onto the beast's back, stabbing at it with a knife. It caught her mid-lunge and yanked her arm backward until the bone jutted out like white porcelain. She shrieked. It didn't kill her. It wanted her alive.
Another monster stormed in, grabbed his mother, and slammed her against the floor. She screamed as it pinned her down, while another dragged their youngest brother out from under her arms by the hair.
Reivo tried to rise. Another beast landed beside him and stomped on his arm. Bones cracked under its weight. He shrieked. The creature leaned in, studying him like a curious predator. Then, with deliberate slowness, it drove two fingers into Reivo's thigh and began twisting—tearing muscle from the bone.
Agony swallowed him whole.
And then—they made him watch.
Held down by thick, cold hands, Reivo saw his world collapse.
Mira, face swollen and bloodied, her jaw dislocated, was stripped and humiliated. They beat her until her screams turned to gurgles, then began breaking her ribs one by one, fingers sliding between them, snapping them like twigs. Her eyes locked with Reivo's once—just once—before they gouged one of them out with a sharpened claw. Her scream was inhuman. Not of pain alone—but betrayal, fear, despair.
His mother fought harder than any of them. Even with both arms broken and legs pinned, she screamed prayers, curses, anything. The monsters took it as a challenge. They peeled skin from her back in strips. Burned her with a broken lantern. Stuffed ash into her mouth and laughed as she choked on it.
Their youngest brother didn't even understand what was happening.
They used him as a weapon—threw him into their father's face like a sack of meat. He hit the wall, limp and silent. When his father cried out, they dragged him away and gutted him from groin to chest, pulling out organs as if studying them.
Reivo's father, the strongest man in the village, screamed until his voice cracked. They pinned him to the wall, drove claws into his shoulders, and made him watch as each member of his family was defiled and butchered. They shattered his knees, peeled his scalp back, then slowly slid a burning brand down his throat.
Reivo's mind cracked.
Something inside him—something fragile and human—shattered like glass beneath a hammer. The world blurred through tears and blood, but the horrors in front of him burned with cruel clarity. Mira, twitching in the dirt with her face caved in. His mother, screaming as flesh was flayed from her back in slow, cruel ribbons. His father, forced to watch, unable to die fast enough. His baby brother, reduced to red and bone.
Everything he loved was being erased.
And something in him refused to let it happen quietly.
Reivo thrashed against the weight of the beast pinning him down, a choked scream ripping from his throat—not in words, but in a feral, primal sound that came from the marrow of his bones. His broken arm spasmed, fingers clawing uselessly at the mud. Blood streamed from his mouth as he forced himself upright, joints grinding and failing, yet still he tried.
"STOP!" he screamed, voice cracking into a shriek. "STOP! I'LL KILL YOU—I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"
There was no strategy. No sense. Just rage—a fire hotter than anything he'd ever known. He didn't care about survival. He didn't care about pain. He just wanted them to hurt. To suffer. To die.
"I'LL RIP YOUR THROATS OUT!" he roared, froth bubbling at the corners of his mouth. "I'LL BURN YOU TO ASH! YOU HEAR ME?! YOU BASTARDS—YOU ANIMALS—I SWEAR IT! I'LL WIPE YOUR KIND FROM THIS WORLD!"
He tried to lunge forward, tendons snapping, bones shifting unnaturally under his torn skin. Blood poured from his eyes and nose, but he kept screaming. Spitting curses. Vomiting grief and hatred in a language barely human. The monsters paused—not in fear, but in fascination.
They tilted their heads in unison, like wolves studying a wounded thing that still dared to snarl.
Reivo's voice gave out mid-scream, torn ragged by the force of his fury. But still his body convulsed with the need to fight. To kill. His fingers dug into the earth, pulling him forward an inch at a time, leaving bloody smears behind.
Then one of the creatures stepped forward.
It crouched to eye level, its face mere inches from his—a mockery of a face, almost human in shape, but devoid of empathy. Empty sockets glimmered with cold malice. Its breath was sour with blood. Reivo met its gaze, unflinching.
And he smiled.
Even now—broken, defeated—he smiled.
"I'll come back for you," he whispered hoarsely, barely a rasp. "I'll remember your face when I end you."
That was when it struck him.
Not to kill—but to break.
The backhand came like a hammer. His jaw cracked. His teeth shattered. The world spun and darkened—but still he didn't fall silent. His head lolled, blood leaking from his ear, but his lips still moved, forming the shape of curses no one could hear.
That's when they brought him forward.
And that's when the true torment began.
Held by the hair, they dragged him across the blood-soaked ground, over the corpses of his mother and sister. They shoved his face into Mira's shattered body—forced his nose into the cavity where her chest had been. He screamed, throat already torn raw.
Then they broke him.
First one leg, then the other. Slowly. Methodically. They shattered his kneecaps with stone. Drove claws into the joints and twisted. Each time he passed out, they brought him back—ice water, slaps, jolts of pain.
They took his fingers. One by one. Twisting until bones snapped. Ripping the nails off. Laughing silently the whole time.
They sliced open his back and peeled the skin like bark from a tree. One of them inserted a claw into the wound and traced letters he couldn't read—burning them into his flesh.
When he tried to close his eyes, they tore the lids open.
When he screamed too loud, they stuffed ash in his mouth.
When he whimpered, they whispered back—mocking him in that twisted, guttural language. Cruel lullabies sung over the corpses of his family.
And when they were done, they dropped him in the mud.
No final blow. No ceremonial finish.
They simply stood above him, observing the ruin they had made. A few tilted their heads, as if curious that he still breathed. One crouched, extended a claw toward his throat… then hesitated. It sniffed the air, clicked its tongue, and stood back up.
Not worth it.
He was nothing now.
A carcass that hadn't realized it was dead yet.
One by one, they turned. They melted into the smoke and flame, disappearing into the forest with the same silence in which they'd come—no triumph, no howling, no celebration.
They didn't spare him.
They didn't need to.
They just didn't care.
And that indifference—more than the pain, more than the grief—carved deepest into his soul.
Reivo lay in the mud, barely conscious. His chest heaved, every breath shallow and wet. Blood pooled in his mouth, seeping from wounds too numerous to count. He couldn't feel his legs. Couldn't move his arms. Every nerve screamed.
But inside the wreckage of his body, something remained.
A spark.
Small. Flickering.
But real.
I should be dead.
They think I will die.
Maybe I will.
The darkness pressed in, pulling at him like a tide. Part of him wanted to let go. To slip into the void and forget everything—the pain, the loss, the sound of Mira's scream.
But something held him back.
Not strength. Not hope.
Hatred.
It burned cold and deep, coiling inside his chest like a buried coal. Not a scream this time. Not a roar. Just a whisper—so quiet it could barely be called a thought.
Live.
Live, so they pay for this.
Live, so they remember your face before they die.
Live, because dying now would be mercy—and you don't get mercy.
A tear slid down the side of his blood-caked face.
His fingers twitched.
Then, finally, darkness claimed him.
But the spark did not go out.
Not yet.