Dark, Dark, Dark

The sky was collapsing into itself--bruised purples drowned in iron-grey clouds, a horizon swallowed whole. The fog tasted of burnt flesh and something older, something that didn't belong to the human world. It pressed in on her, thick and sentient, as though it knew her name.

Two hundred meters. If the dark lets you.

The city was dissolving into night. Light didn't fade here--it was devoured. Buildings leaned like hollowed-out carcasses with their broken windows yawning open like mouths. The twisted metal frames of abandoned cars jutted from the street like ribs. The world felt skinned.

And beneath it all, the air --heavy, chocked--buzzed faintly, as if humming with the memory of screams.

She forced herself forward, tongue coated in ash that felt almost warm. The humvee crouched in the distance, trapped in the ruins like prey frozen in a predator's gaze. Every step toward it deepened the darkness. Shadows weren't soft here--they were thick, viscous, alive.

The city exhaled.

A form slid down from above, unraveling from shadow like tar spilling from a crack in reality. It struck the ground without a sound, then slowly it rose. It stood under the darkness of an alleyway, behind the vehicle opposite to her. And when still, its body would blend into the night, only the voids of its eyes were visible; two twin abysses darker than the night surrounding them.

Behind her, another scream ruptured the air--hollow, ancient, wrong. The kind of sound that made the world itself flinch. The hollows didn't walk. They drifted like smoke with purpose, hunting where light dared not reach. And in that dark, everything they touched either burned away..

... or joined them.