The creature’s jaw moved in an irregular rhythm, opening too wide, closing too far, as if it had never been meant to do that—yet somehow still worked. Bones snapped with dry, brittle sounds, immediately muffled by the mass of flesh being crushed between them.

  We were eight now.

  The human ability to make split-second decisions in life-or-death situations is impressive.

  In fractions of a second, the brain abandons anything unnecessary—pride, doubt, morality—and reduces everything to a single, brutal calculation:

  To stay is to die.

  There, without words, without orders, all of us understood what the real problem was. And the brain, recognizing it, reached the only possible conclusion:

  Run.

  Three people reacted the same way, at the exact same moment.

  The instant the creature—nearly four meters long—fully emerged from the snow, their bodies moved before thought could catch up.

  They turned and ran in the opposite direction.

  It all happened in a second and a half. Literally.

  At first, it seemed like a smart decision. Running as fast as possible felt like the best option, since trying to fight something that large in our condition was the equivalent of a pack of hyenas trying to bring down an elephant.

  Ilen’s shout tore me out of my thoughts.

  “Idiots! If we split up, we’ll become easy prey!”

  That was when the creature stopped.

  Its jaw froze mid-chew. One final dry crack echoed, and the silence that followed fell too heavy to be natural.

  The silhouette slowly straightened. Its head—if that thing could even be called a head—turned precisely toward the ones who were running. There was no haste. No hesitation.

  It looked.

  The wind seemed to quiet down. Even the blizzard, for a brief moment, appeared to hold its breath.

  The creature swallowed hard. What remained of the brawler slid grotesquely down its throat, creating an uneven bulge beneath the carapace. Then the silhouette lowered itself.

  The ground exploded.

  Snow and dirt were thrown upward in a dense cloud, completely cutting off our vision.

  Wait… did it …?

  I didn’t even need to say it. Everyone realized it at the same time.

  The creature’s trail went straight beneath the caravan.

  The brute force was enough to snap the axle with a sharp crack, violently flipping the vehicle. The horses screamed in panic, rearing and pulling at the reins as the wood groaned.

  Underground, it was faster than any human.

  When it reached the three marked ones who had fled, the snow ahead of them burst open.

  Insectoid claws erupted from the ground—long, curved, something between deformed praying mantis limbs. No serrations. No blades. Just muscle.

  The claws closed with brutal precision.

  Two of them seized two of the three at once, dragging them beneath the snow as if they were nothing more than dead weight.

  The screams lasted less than a second.

  The third stumbled. His body reacted faster than his mind, and he managed to fall backward—just enough to escape by mere centimeters.

  The creature was hungry.

  It didn’t even give him time to stand.

  He was grabbed moments later.

  I wanted to close my eyes.

  An insectoid jaw met the back of his neck. Opened. And then devoured his head.

  The sound continued—rhythmic, wet… disturbing.

  Running was impossible.

  Ford cursed the creature in a word I didn’t even know existed. He drew his short sword and charged alongside the remaining armed guards, shouting orders no one truly heard.

  It wouldn’t work.

  Brute force wouldn’t solve this. It never did.

  I glanced at the overturned caravan and counted quickly.

  We are seven.

  It was a cowardly idea.

  And precisely because of that… it was the only one with any chance.

  I locked eyes with Ilen—the most lucid among us. No explanation was needed.

  “I have an idea.”

  “I have an idea.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  We spoke at the same time.

  We didn’t smile. We just nodded.

  “The caravan,” I said quickly. “If we lift it, the horses can bolt.”

  “Better than becoming food.”

  We shouted to the others—no preamble. It wasn’t a plan. It was an organized impulse.

  Four of us went to one side. Three to the other.

  Hands sank into frozen wood. Feet slipped on blood-stained snow. The weight was absurd. Our already abused bodies screamed for us to stop.

  My fingers began to bleed.

  Then something hit.

  We couldn’t do it. Not like this.

  Our arms trembled. Our feet slid. Every attempt felt more useless than the last.

  When I turned—

  The aberration had retreated. Not because it was injured. Because it chose to.

  From the darkness, someone stumbled back.

  Ford.

  The only one of the three still breathing.

  He was shirtless. His torso was covered in jagged cuts. Blood flowed too slowly for someone who should already have collapsed. One arm hung uselessly at his side. The other slammed into the caravan’s wood.

  He said nothing.

  He stepped forward and pushed.

  Metal screeched. Wood cracked.

  Against all logic, the caravan rotated back into place.

  Ford dropped to his knees immediately.

  I knelt beside him. He laughed—a broken sound that became a cough.

  “Sorry… I can’t do more than that.”

  With his good hand, he pressed the hilt of his short sword against my chest.

  “Now… it’s up to you.”

  His eyes closed.

  They never opened again.

  “Relax…” I murmured softly. “You’ve done enough.”

  I didn’t know if he could hear me. But I needed to say it.

  The caravan was upright, intact.

  The horses screamed. Terrified, but alive.

  For a few seconds, no one spoke.

  Then someone laughed.

  “We…” Darien swallowed hard. “We did it, right?”

  We were few, bloodied, shivering...

  But alive.

  The creature had retreated.

  Silence.

  “So that’s it?” Rafe muttered. “Fuck… is this what we’re going to find when we enter the portal?”

  He forced a crooked smile.

  “I think I lost my excitement.”

  Some laughed. Weak, exhausted. But they laughed.

  We began to move. Someone grabbed the reins. Another climbed onto the side of the caravan to check the harnesses. The cold didn't feel as sharp anymore. The fear… had given way to something else.

  Hope...

  Until the ground started to shake.

  There was no warning. Just impact.

  The snow exploded beneath us with a deafening roar, and something colossal tore through the space where the caravan had been seconds earlier.

  Wood shattered like paper. Iron twisted in a single, brutal motion. Half the caravan simply ceased to exist.

  The horses were thrown with it—bodies and screams tangled in red and white chaos.

  Rafe's smile died mid-air.

  And within the cloud of snow and debris, the wet clicking echoed again.

  Close.

  Everyone froze completely.

  Some had been thrown onto the wreckage, suspended above the ground by broken planks and twisted metal. Others lay face-down, on their sides, on their backs—whatever position the impact had forced upon them.

  I wanted to say I was in the same situation.

  In a way, I was. But luck had not been fair to me.

  A little over three meters away, the creature stretched out before me.

  That was why no one moved.

  It wasn't courage. Or strategy. It was pure ignorance. None of us knew what to do when a single mistake meant death.

  I was facing it directly, propped against the remains of the overturned caravan.

  When the dust finally settled, its form was revealed.

  The creature raised its head.

  And in that instant, everyone turned as pale as the snow beneath our feet.

  Its body resembled that of a colossal water bug—a heavy, overly segmented insectoid exoskeleton. Its arms were long and warped, larger than its own torso, hanging like limbs borrowed from another creature. Nothing about it was proportional. Nothing was right.

  But it was the head that held the gaze.

  A wrong fusion of insect and something… unknown.

  The jaw was poorly formed, loose, trembling without control. The lower half knocked against the upper in an irregular rhythm, producing a dry, wet sound—like human teeth chattering from cold.

  But the worst part only became clear when I looked closer.

  Where eyes should have been, there were mouths.

  Filled with sharp teeth, pulsing in the wrong place. They never closed—likely due to its dysfunctional biology. They trembled and throbbed like organs rejected by the very body that carried them.

  A viscous liquid leaked from within them, its origin impossible to determine—saliva, perhaps… or something worse.

  Unable to close, they never stopped drooling.

  A constant flow slid down the creature's face, dripping onto the ground at irregular intervals, like eternal tears from something that didn't understand why it existed.

  It wasn't just ugly. It wasn't just frightening. It was something that clearly had never been designed to function.

  I forced an ironic smile as I closed my eyes, waiting for the fate ahead of me.

  The others understood my intent. Some simply closed their eyes as well, trying to at least respect my death. Others—like Rafe and Darien—tried to do something, but their bodies refused to move.

  I felt the snow beneath me being pushed as the aberration approached.

  I had already accepted my death.

  …

  The message appeared vividly in my mind.

  A thought that had never crossed my mind echoed—and immediately after, despair surged like a stampede.