Seven days.

  That’s how long the portal had been bleeding into the world.

  It didn’t arrive with warning—no flash of light, no thunderclap of power—just a tearing. Like wet canvas being slowly, agonizingly ripped open in the middle of town square. The sky above it didn’t crack; it peeled back, revealing nothing behind it but swirling, infinite black. A cold, sucking void that breathed like a living thing.

  The gate stood three stories tall, its edges jagged and twitching like muscle spasm under skin. It didn’t shimmer—it throbbed. Pulsing with a lightless aura that sent a constant droning into the bones of anyone within miles. The sound wasn’t a sound, not truly. It was a pressure. A vibration in the meat of your mind that made teeth ache and noses bleed.

  The land around it began to die.

  First the plants—shriveling into blackened husks that crumbled at a touch. Then the animals—rats vomiting tar, birds falling mid-flight with wings twisted backward. Dogs howled for hours before turning on their owners, fur falling off in patches as their eyes turned pale and unblinking.

  The humans were next.

  Not all. Just those with mana sensitivity. But there was no way to tell who was cursed until they started coughing blood. Their eyes turned glassy, pupils dilating until there was no white left. Veins bulged black beneath their skin, pulsing with alien light. Organs failed. Brains hemorrhaged. And some… didn’t die.

  They changed.

  The government sealed Hervey Bay within two days.

  By then, it was already too late.

  Those left inside were called collateral. Protocol Blackwater.

  No rescue. No relief.

  Only a slow, screaming end.

  Malachai stepped over a bloated corpse, the air so thick with decay it clung to the back of his throat like oil. The remains had once been human. Now, it was just a sack of torn flesh filled with maggots that hadn’t stopped writhing. Even the bugs were changing.

  He was twenty, barefoot, bloodstained, hoodie torn and heavy with filth and rain. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. Not from exertion—he hadn’t run in hours—but because breathing was getting harder. The mana in the air was thick now. Chewable.

  Rain hissed softly from the sky. It didn’t clean anything. It burned.

  The town was silent now.

  Except for them.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  The Ghoul that dragged itself through the parking lot behind him was once a man. Now it had no lips—just an endless grin of broken teeth, slick with dark sludge. Its legs were shattered at the knees, but it didn’t crawl—it slid, belly grinding over broken glass, dragging entrails like wet ropes behind it.

  It sang as it moved. Low. Soft.

  Children’s lullabies—off key. Choked. Bubbled through rot.

  Malachai ducked into a shattered storefront. A chemist’s. Shelves overturned. Blood handprints smeared across the walls in looping spirals, like someone had tried to draw wheels. Or maybe sigils.

  Behind the counter, something twitched.

  He held still. Perfectly still.

  Then he saw the eyes.

  A Skinwalker hunched there, bones too long for its flesh, face stolen from someone else. A girl, maybe seventeen. Pretty, once. Now her smile was too wide. Teeth too sharp. She wore her own flayed skin like a scarf, peeling in strips down her neck, revealing a slick, blackened body beneath. Her hands ended in long, wet claws—not bone, not flesh, but something in between.

  She whispered his name.

  “Malachai…”

  He didn’t wait.

  He bolted.

  She screeched, all pretense abandoned, chasing on reverse-jointed legs that cracked with every step.

  He barely made it back to the alley. Tripped. Rolled. Came up with a length of rusted steel he kept in his belt—his only weapon. His fingers were numb. Vision swimming.

  She leapt for him—mouth stretching open like a dislocated snake’s, tongue flailing with hooked barbs—

  CRACK!

  The pipe caught her across the face. The sound wasn’t bone breaking—it was glass shattering. Her head twisted full around, but her body kept moving, claws raking his chest.

  Blood sprayed.

  His blood.

  He screamed and struck again. And again. And again.

  Until her skull caved in and the twitching stopped.

  Until the System came.

  You Have Awakened.

  Class: Reaper

  Grade: S (Unique)

  Your soul has absorbed death. You evolve through slaughter.

  Trait Gained: Deathbound – Ingest the essence of your kill. Traits are yours.

  +1 Trait Fragment: Skinwalker

  Passive Ability Unlocked: Voice Mimicry (Minor).

  He dropped the pipe, his hand trembling.

  Then he laughed. A broken, wheezing sound.

  It didn’t matter that he was bleeding. That he was alone. That the sky above Hervey Bay had turned black and alive. Because now… he had a chance.

  He looked back toward the gate, far in the distance.

  It pulsed once.

  And the creatures inside screamed back.

  Malachai was the last one left.

  But something new had been born.

  Not a hero.

  Not a monster.

  A Reaper.

  And death would follow him.