The beast was swaying right and left, its revolting nose twitching sporadically— Each sound struck Noah’s consciousness like a direct blow, planting an ever-growing dread within him.

  Hidden behind the tree trunk, Noah’s body was rigid. Every muscle was taut, his heart racing with a speed he had never felt before. His mind shrieked internally:

  "Should I... should I run? Or stay still? Do I take this final chance—this gamble between life and death—or do I pin all my hopes on something as absurd as luck?"

  Every second passed with a crushing weight. The air around him grew heavy, as if the darkness itself were pressing down on him. The internal whisper of his mind echoed relentlessly:

  "If I make one wrong move... it’s all over. I’ll die... I’ll die right here... and no one will ever know I existed."

  Then, Noah gathered the courage to steal a quick glance, but what he saw made him freeze entirely.

  Though the beast was stationary, its chest rose and fell slowly with a heavy breath; every movement sent a vibration through the ground, as if the entire forest were breathing in unison with it. But the true shock came when Noah caught a glimpse... the beast was facing directly toward him.

  "Has... has it found me?!" Noah muttered internally, nearly choking. His mind refused to believe it. "Impossible... h-how did it know my location so quickly?"

  Noah recoiled behind the tree even faster, holding his breath, his body trembling, every hair on his skin standing on end. He could hear the beast’s footsteps approaching— Every step vibrated in his heart before it hit the ground. Each tremor emptied his mind of thought, leaving him as nothing but raw, silent, terrifying fear.

  Noah looked around—for anything that could help, any movement, any place to hide. Everything seemed futile. Suddenly, he spotted a cluster of small stones on the ground. A desperate idea flashed through his mind:

  "If... if I throw a stone far away... maybe... maybe it will follow the sound... and I can run... run with everything I’ve got... to find a place to hide..."

  His hand trembled as he picked up a stone. His heart was on the verge of exploding from the strain; every muscle in his body translated fear into a rigid tension, and every breath became a struggle between life and death.

  In that moment, the silence around him grew even heavier, as if the entire forest were awaiting the next move. Every heartbeat and every of the wind pressed down on him, making every potential step more threatening, more brutal—a matter of life or death.

  Noah felt the stone in his palm; it was cold and jagged, much like the fate that awaited him. His heartbeat no longer pulsed; it thrashed against his chest from the inside like a caged bird trying to shatter its ribcage. He recalled every wrong decision, every moment of cowardice, and every squandered opportunity. The world around him had shrunk into just two choices with no third: "Now... or death."

  Suddenly, he spotted a dark patch in the distance between the twisted tree trunks. Gathering every shred of hope, resentment, and regret into his arm, he charged his muscles until they nearly tore before launching the projectile.

  

  The stone struck a distant tree trunk with staggering force. The echo was enough to shatter the forest's funereal silence. In that instant, everything froze. The beast—that nightmare on all fours—turned its head with terrifying slowness toward the source of the sound. It let out a hoarse growl, a sound that wasn't just a roar, but more like the grinding of rocks deep within the earth.

  

  The beast vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving behind a terrifying void. Noah screamed in his depths: "Now or never!" and bolted. He ran, feeling his leg muscles scream, his lungs burning as if they were filling with molten lead instead of air. Ahead, he saw a glimmer of hope: a cave, a settlement, or even a hole to hide him from sight. He remembered the fires he had seen moments ago... he realized now with a fatal certainty that those who tended those fires hadn't left by choice. They had left inside the bowels of this monstrosity.

  But unfortunately, after only a few steps, he felt a cold breeze brush against the nape of his neck. It wasn't ordinary air; it was the breath of death.

  

  A pain he had never experienced in his life exploded in his right side. He felt his ribs shatter like dry twigs. He was sent flying through the air, and in those few fleeting seconds, he tasted the sharp tang of metal—the blood choking his throat.

  

  He slammed into a massive tree, then slumped to the ground like a piece of "rotting meat" cast aside. He tried to gasp for air, but his chest was crushed. He spat out globs of crimson blood, his right eye half-closed from the swelling. His shoulder was completely dislocated; his one functional hand cramped as it clawed at the soil soaked with his own blood. He didn't have a chance—not even the shadow of one.

  Then he heard it... A rhythmic hissing, followed by the sound of heavy, approaching breaths. Noah raised his head slowly, only to find the nightmare looming over him. Long yellow teeth like rusted daggers, gray skin covered in revolting mucus, and muscles rippling beneath the surface like battling snakes. The beast had no eyes; instead, there was a void filled with an eternal hunger.

  With sadistic coldness, the beast raised its claw and drove it into Noah's thigh until it lodged in the bone. Noah’s scream tore through the forest's atmosphere. He writhed like a worm crushed under a heavy boot. In that moment, he surrendered.

  As the beast’s claw settled deep into Noah’s thigh, the pain wasn't just a physical sensation; it was like a lightning bolt that completely shredded his nervous system. He felt the blade of the claw scraping against his pelvic bone, severing the tendons that once carried him.

  "Please... stop... Nooooo!"

  Noah’s voice came out raspy, a choked rattle of blood and tears. The beast retreated slightly after embedding its claw, as if contemplating its new "prey," watching the twitching muscles of its victim with a lethal coldness. In that moment, as the warm blood began to soak the cold earth, Noah lost every last shred of his courage. He shattered. He was no longer the hero trying to survive; he had become a terrified child facing a darkness he could not comprehend.

  Noah tried to crawl backward using his hands, but his leg was a lifeless corpse, dragging behind him like a heavy piece of wood. He looked at the beast with glassy eyes and extended a trembling hand, stained with dirt and blood, toward the monster’s hideous face.

  "Please..." Noah gasped, tears carving furrows through the ash covering his face. "Don’t kill me... not now... not like this. Please, my lord... O great being... let me live."

  He was pleading with an entity that knew no mercy—a biological killing machine that did not understand the language of men—but despair drove him to grovel at the feet of death.

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  "Layla..." He uttered his sister's name in a broken voice, as if it were a protective incantation. "My little sister... she has no one but me. My mother is dead... she’s gone. I can’t leave Layla alone. Who will feed her? Who will protect her from the cold? Please... let me go back to her. I’ll do anything. I’ll be your servant... I’ll bring you other food... just don’t eat me!"

  Noah knew it was all a lie. His sister didn't need him. She was likely relaxing in her home right now with her friends, indulging in delicious dishes, having forgotten him entirely.

  Noah writhed on the ground, dragging his shattered body toward the beast’s legs in a desperate attempt to stir a non-existent mercy. He grabbed the edge of the creature’s coarse, revolting skin and began to kiss it in a state of shock, pleading with unintelligible words, while the beast’s cold saliva dripped onto his forehead like poisoned raindrops.

  "Mother!" he suddenly cried out, looking up at the dark sky. "Mother, help me! Tell him to leave me! Tell him I was a good boy... I didn't steal... I didn't hurt anyone... I was just trying to live!"

  He remembered his mother's face in her final moments—how she would stifle her cough so as not to wake him. He remembered how her fingers, bleeding from the factory work, would stroke his hair. He remembered his promise to her over her grave: "I will take care of Layla, Mother; I will make her proud of us."

  And now... here he was, begging a filthy monster, groveling with his face in the forest dirt, weeping with a bitterness that could melt stone, watching his punctured leg bleed his life away.

  But the beast didn't care. It didn't even move. To the creature, Noah wasn't a human being with dreams, a sister, and a deceased mother; he was merely "loud protein." The beast emitted a sound resembling a muffled laugh, or perhaps it was just the hiss of air escaping its foul lungs, before turning away with cold indifference.

  The beast retreated suddenly. It didn't kill Noah; instead, it left him bleeding like a tethered sacrifice. It moved toward the nearby body of the girl, grabbed what remained of her—the mangled upper half—and dragged it slowly, leaving behind a long trail of entrails and blood, until it sat just a few meters away from Noah.

  The sound of the girl's bones shattering in the beast’s mouth was like the snapping of dry crackers. The beast chewed and relished, licking its long fingers with its revolting tongue. It was then that Noah realized the bitter truth: the beast hadn't killed him immediately because it wanted him "fresh." It had paralyzed him and wounded his leg to ensure he remained a "reserve feast."

  After some time,

  As the bleeding drained Noah’s consciousness, he fell into the well of his memories. He was transported back to that cold room, smelling of dampness and poverty. He remembered his mother... that woman who was nothing but a skeleton wrapped in love.

  He remembered her returning from the factory at midnight, her hands swollen from the pressure of the machines, her face covered in white textile dust that settled in her lungs like a curse. She would cough violently—coughing until her stature bent—but when she saw Noah and little Layla, she would quickly hide the blood-stained handkerchief behind her back.

  "Mother, you’re sick, please rest," Noah would plead with her when he was only ten years old. She would give him a pale smile and stroke his head with her coarse hand: "Don't worry, Noah, it’s just dust... tomorrow I will buy you and your sister a piece of meat. The factory owner promised me a bonus."

  But the bonus never came. She worked three consecutive shifts, refusing food to give it to them, feigning fullness while the sound of her intestines shrieked with hunger.

  He remembered that day specifically, when he returned home with a disfigured face: a swollen blue eye, bleeding knees, and neighborhood dust covering him from head to toe. She rushed to him in a panic: "Noah! What happened? Who did this to you?"

  Noah wiped the blood from his lip and said with childish pride, "It’s nothing, Mother... I got into a fight with one of the kids from the next neighborhood. But don't worry, he’s in much worse shape than I am. Your son is strong, hehe."

  She began dabbing his wounds with a damp cloth, then looked at him with a sternness he wasn't used to: "Why did you fight him?" Noah cried out, tears fighting to stay in his eyes, "Mother, he started it! He said bad things about you... he said that you're a... and that I have no father! I couldn't let him finish, so I hit him!"

  The mother fell silent for a moment. She bathed his face in a sorrowful gaze and said in a quiet voice, "My son... I understand you, but I don't want you to ever do that again." "But Mother!—" "No buts," she interrupted, placing her warm hand over his heart. "It isn't necessary to hurt yourself over every word that is said. I know you are strong, but I want you to be stronger somewhere else... here... in your chest. Not just for your sake, but for mine and for your little sister's."

  Noah lowered his head with a scowl, then turned to Layla, who was sleeping peacefully on the dilapidated wooden bed, and muttered, "Fine, Mother... it won't happen again."

  The mother finally smiled and embraced him tightly, as if wanting to shield him from the entire world. Then she whispered with a loving mischief: "But tell me... how did you hit him? Did you land a direct punch?"

  Noah jumped from her lap in joy, forgetting his pain: "Yes, Mother! You should have seen it! I dodged his blow brilliantly, and then... BOOM! I landed one right here, then I jumped and—"

  Noah snapped back to the present. The beast had finished its meal, licking the last drops of brain matter from its claws. The beast rose, its colossal body eclipsing the pale firelight from Noah. It began to approach... step... by step... ().

  A pain sharper than the beast’s claw squeezed his heart as he recalled the gazes of contempt that had followed him like a shadow.

  "Even you, Layla? Even you, my sister?" He remembered how her looks had shifted from love to pity, then to that cold kind of disdain—the kind expressed not in words, but in silence. She began to see him as the "failure of a brother," the one who couldn't even secure the price of a loaf of bread without humiliating himself. He remembered how she was ashamed to mention him to her friends, and how she avoided walking beside him as if he were a plague.

  "And everyone else... everyone stepped on me!" He recalled the mockery of his friends, who devoured his dignity with poisoned laughter every time he failed to keep up with them. He remembered his boss at work—a man who saw him not as a human being, but as a worn-out machine to be replaced for pennies. He remembered the manager's shouts in his face as he fired him for a trivial reason, and how Noah had stood there bowed, apologizing for a sin he hadn't committed, just so he wouldn't lose the crumbs of bread he brought home.

  "I tried... by God, I tried!" Noah screamed in his consciousness with a chest-rending despair. "I tried until my feet bled in the streets searching for work; I tried until my fingers were eroded by the cold; I tried to be the person you wished for, Mother... I tried to be a pillar for Layla... but I was always falling! Every time I laid a stone, the world demolished it over my head! I wasn't lazy... I was just broken by a world that has no mercy for those who try!"

  He looked at the approaching beast and felt that this monstrosity was nothing but the embodiment of all the injustice he had witnessed. "I am the failure everyone despised... I am the one who reaped nothing from his attempts but scars... I am the one who will leave this world leaving behind nothing but the stench of poverty and disappointment."

  In that moment, something snapped inside Noah. He no longer felt fear. Fear is a luxury the broken cannot afford. He looked at the beast, and instead of pleading, his eyes filled with a black hatred.

  The sorrow suddenly transmuted into rage—a malice the likes of which humanity had never known. He stared at the beast with bloodshot eyes shimmering with a manic glint. "Damn it... damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it," he whispered bitterly, then screamed in his mind with all the venom he possessed: "Damn this life that gave us nothing but pain! Damn the people who looked down on us! Damn this unjust world! And damn you, you filthy beast!"

  At this point, the weeping ceased. The tears in his eyes dried, turning into burning salt. Instead of begging, something black and cold began to sprout in the depths of his soul. He began to watch the beast...

  Noah gathered the remnants of his soul and looked directly into the beast’s eyes, screaming within his inner sanctum: "I swear... I swear by every drop of blood I have bled, if there is another life, I wish to be born in it as a monster more hideous than you! I swear that I will hunt you to the bottom of hell; I will tear your flesh piece by piece, I will grind your bones to dust, and I will make you long for death and never find it! I will eat you alive, just as you intend to do to me now!"

  He descended into a manic fury, raining down insults and curses in a dead, absolute silence. His eyes did not blink; they challenged the very death standing before him. The beast paused for a moment—perhaps it sensed the dark energy radiating from the body of this broken creature, or perhaps it was baffled by this prey that had suddenly ceased to tremble. Then, with agonizing slowness, the beast unhinged its wide maw, reeking of death, and lunged at Noah’s rage-swollen face.

  "? If you’re enjoying the descent into the Void, a rating or follow helps more than you think."