The city was no longer recognizable.
As Andre and Yue stepped out of the downed ship, their boots crunched over blackened glass and skeletal remains of what used to be a bustling monorail platform. The sky overhead was a swirling bruise of stormclouds and smoke, turning the sunlight into a sickly orange smear across the skyline. Wind tore through the ruins, carrying with it the distant screams of monsters and the static hiss of crumbling infrastructure.
A hollow groan echoed across the avenue.
The air reeked of ozone and rotting meat.
Andre took point, both hands gripping his dual-mod Winchester 1887s—shotguns rebuilt with synth-steel receivers and thermal-slug loaders. The barrels hissed faintly, still hot from their earlier use. The old world's craftsmanship married to present-day brutality.
Jingli trailed behind, gliding like a phantom in her elegant dress, her expression unreadable. Slung across her back was her trusty Armonia. She plucked a note—soft, mournful—and the air around her quivered subtly as the tune laced through the dust and silence. Her song rippled with hidden disharmony, ready to confuse and dismantle the minds of anything listening.
They crossed the first block in silence—then the horror began.
A twitching thing burst from an overturned taxi—ten feet tall, chitinous, its back covered in glistening spines like broken glass. Its face split into three vertical jaws, shrieking as it lunged.
BLAM.
The first shot took the jaw clean off. Andre spun on his heel, pumping the shotgun in a fluid motion—click-chunk—and buried a second slug into its torso.
BLAM.
The thing crumpled in a puddle of its own black ichor, limbs spasming violently.
"That's another one," Andre muttered, his voice gravel thick and calm.
More came.
A pack of smaller creatures skittered from the ruins—a mix of centipede-limbed, skinless hounds with eyes where their mouths should be. They ran on inverted joints, claws sparking against pavement. Behind them loomed a towering brute—pale, bloated, with the head of a man but the body of a half-melted bear, its flesh steaming with essence decay.
"Incoming—left!"
Jingli raised a hand. Armonia pulsed, emitting a deep harmonic hum that rolled out like fog. The melody warped suddenly, twisting into high-frequency dissonance. The hounds shrieked—yelping, stumbling, spinning in circles as if their senses collapsed inward. One of them turned and bit the brute's ankle, eyes wild.
"They're feedin' on each other now," Andre growled, stepping into the open and unloading two shells.
BOOM. BOOM.
The brute staggered back as thermal rounds cored through its knee and upper chest. Andre sidestepped, rolled, reloaded both shotguns with a practiced spin, and popped up behind cover just as a hound leapt at him.
BLAM.
It exploded mid-air, chunks of flesh splattering the scorched pavement.
Jingli stepped around him, serene as always. The song from Armonia crescendoed, a shimmering ripple warping space itself. The last two hounds stumbled, their limbs contorting as if gravity turned sideways. They slammed into the wall headfirst, bones cracking.
Andre huffed, breath visible in the frigid, rotted air.
"They're huntin' each other… for essence. This city's turned into a goddamn fever dream."
Jingli said nothing. Her eyes—cool and unreadable—remained locked on the horizon.
They turned a corner—and froze.
There, in the dead center of a shattered plaza, stood something far worse.
It was massive—easily fifteen meters tall. A bipedal abomination with skin like warped concrete and plated iron, cracked and steaming in places, fused with the skeletal remains of collapsed architecture. Human arms protruded from its chest and stomach, twitching like puppets on broken strings. Its face was hidden beneath a curtain of flesh, hanging like a priest's hood.
It was eating.
A smaller creature was pinned under its foot, drained of color, spasming violently as its essence was pulled away in threads of white light.
Andre took a step back.
"That's a big one…"
The monster stopped.
Its head turned. The curtain lifted—no eyes. Just a yawning, circular pit. A sensing organ.
It sensed them.
A gurgling roar welled up in its chest, then burst into a concussive pulse. Windows shattered. Loose rebar hummed.
It charged.
The ground shook with every step. It moved like a siege engine—slow, thunderous, deliberate. As it neared, the plated belly cracked open, revealing a second maw, ringed with twitching teeth, jagged shards of bone, and cartilage grinders that spun with a wet, hungry churn.
Andre didn't hesitate.
BLAM. BLAM.
Both thermal slugs smashed into its torso.
Nothing.
The rounds sparked and ricocheted off the concrete-steel flesh, leaving shallow dents and a faint hiss. The monster didn't even flinch.
Andre's jaw tightened as he chambered another round.
"Well, shit."
The beast let out a grotesque, gurgling roar and slammed forward. Concrete cracked beneath its weight. A building to the side groaned as it collided shoulder-first into its frame, tearing support beams like paper straws. Dust and steel rain fell in sheets as glass rained from upper floors.
"Move!" Andre barked.
Jingli didn't need the warning.
Her steps were fluid, detached, too precise to seem human. She weaved beneath falling debris as if she were waltzing through a music hall, her Armonia cradled against her side like a weaponized cello. Her expression remained the same: calm, calculating.
Andre dove behind a wrecked car as a piece of rebar stabbed the ground where he'd stood. He popped back up and lobbed a grenade toward the beast's exposed underbelly.
Clink-clink—BOOM.
Smoke. Fire. No damage.
The explosion cleared, revealing the creature still standing—still moving—with not a scratch in sight. The second mouth twitched, then closed back up like a vault, sealing shut with a fleshy grind.
"You kiddin' me?" Andre hissed.
The monster swiveled toward them with slow, jerking movements—like it was trying to decide which had more essence: the man or the girl.
Jingli raised Armonia to her shoulder.
She strummed once—then twice. The melody turned jagged. Dissonant, like broken glass and bent tuning forks. The sound bent the air around the beast's head. It froze, arms twitching as if suddenly unsure which direction gravity worked.
But only for a second.
It roared again, more furious now, and surged forward.
Andre sprinted and dove behind the scorched remains of a pillar where Jingli stood, unshaken. He popped up beside her, panting.
"That thing's skin's like damn tank armor. It just ate the whole damn grenade like it was a snack."
He spat into the dust, shaking his head. "Ain't no killin' this bastard the usual way."
Jingli's eyes stayed on the beast. Her voice was even, quiet—but cold.
"Then feed it more."
Andre blinked. "Wait, wha—?"
"Its second mouth is its weak point," she said, eyes narrowing. "Put the grenades inside. Not outside."
Andre grinned despite himself.
"Ohhh, I like the way you think, darlin'."
He unclipped three canisters from his belt with a metallic rattle and sprinted low across the street as Jingli strummed again, weaving sound like a spell. The creature slowed—snapping its head side to side, confused by false echoes Jingli conjured across the plaza.
"C'mon… open up… there we go—!"
The mouth began to open again, slowly, twitching like a hungry reflex.
Andre launched all three grenades in a perfect arc, right into the gaping pit.
He turned and dove.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
This time, the roars weren't rage—they were pain.
The monster staggered, howling as flames tore from the inside out. Cracks rippled across its belly as chunks of its armored shell blew outward like shrapnel. Its second mouth convulsed—then burst, spewing gore, smoke, and hunks of melted flesh. The abomination stumbled backward, limbs flailing—
And collapsed into the rubble with an earth-shaking crunch.
Silence followed.
Just the whistle of wind through broken glass.
Andre rose, brushing soot from his coat.
"Goddamn. Finally."
Jingli stood, as serene as ever, her instrument humming with the last vestiges of her melody.
"Well?" she asked, without looking at him.
Andre exhaled, reloading slowly as he eyed the smoking corpse.
"Let's keep movin'."
And so they did.
Past the wreckage of another monster, deeper into the bleeding heart of a city gone wrong—two shadows in sync. One loud. One silent.
Both alive.
For now.