The mist swallowed him whole.
Kane stepped through the iron door, Boneglass knife cold in his hand, coat heavy with warding symbols that buzzed faintly against his skin.
The world beyond was not right.
It looked like a parking structure — cracked concrete, collapsed beams — but the laws of physics seemed... softened.
Shadows moved where nothing cast them.
Gravity flexed like something breathing under the floor.
A voice crackled in his ear — a comm-link woven into the coat's collar.
Halstram:
> "Subject: Riftborn anomaly. Codename: Skinwither. Target's forming off your contamination signature. Stay sharp."
Kane swallowed.
He didn't know what any of that meant.
He moved forward, boots crunching over broken glass.
Somewhere ahead, he heard it:
Breathing.
Too fast, too wet.
He edged around a shattered pillar.
And froze.
---
The creature hunched under a collapsed staircase.
It was shaped almost human — but wrong.
The limbs were too long, bent backward at the joints.
Its skin was raw meat, sloughing off in wet sheets, revealing pulsing black veins underneath.
No eyes.
Just a stretched, lipless mouth dragging open across its entire skull.
It was gnawing something — a corpse, maybe — but not eating.
Peeling.
Layer by layer.
As Kane watched in horror, the creature lifted a piece of skin and slapped it onto its own body, where it stuck, bubbled, and merged.
Building itself.
Becoming something else.
His comm crackled again.
Halstram:
> "It's constructing a new form. The longer you wait, the stronger it gets.
Kill it now — or die badly."
Kane tightened his grip on the Boneglass knife.
The creature twitched — it smelled him.
It turned, body convulsing, mouth gaping wide in a howl that shook dust from the broken ceiling.
It charged.
---
Kane barely dodged.
The thing moved fast — skittering on all fours, claws sparking against the concrete.
It slammed into the wall where he'd stood a moment before, leaving a spiderweb of cracks.
Kane slashed — the Boneglass blade singing through the air.
The cut connected — the creature shrieked as the black veins under its skin ignited, hissing green vapor.
It wasn't bleeding.
It was leaking smoke — thick, greasy smoke that screamed faintly if he listened too closely.
The thing swung a clawed hand at him.
It grazed his coat — and the sigils stitched along his sleeve flared white, throwing the creature back with a concussive boom.
The wards were active.
Kane moved without thinking.
He lunged, drove the Boneglass knife deep into the creature's chest.
The blade sank in like stabbing rotting wood.
The creature shrieked again, convulsing — but instead of dying, it burst apart.
Not in blood — in hundreds of tiny, black, spider-like things, each no bigger than a coin, scuttling away in every direction.
Kane stumbled back, horrified.
Some of the things tried to crawl up his boots.
He stomped them instinctively — but more kept coming, pooling, seething, forming new shapes.
Halstram's voice snapped urgently through the comm:
> "Burn them! Boneglass alone won't purify Riftborn fragments! Use your Rot!"
Kane didn't know how.
He didn't even know what Rot was supposed to be.
But inside him — something answered.
The thing he had felt wake up inside his ribs.
He gritted his teeth and let it loose.
---
The air around Kane cracked — not like sound, but like glass under pressure.
The world bent inward around him.
From his free hand, a black flame erupted — not fire, but something colder than death, flickering and writhing with screaming shapes.
The Rot.
It was part of him now.
He swept his hand outward.
The black fire roared across the floor — catching the spider-things, devouring them instantly in shrieking gouts of nothingness.
The concrete blackened and blistered where the Rot touched it.
Within seconds, the creatures were gone.
Only the faint smell of burnt bone remained.
---
Kane dropped to one knee, gasping.
The mist cleared slightly.
Ahead, at the edge of the ruined parking structure, a set of heavy iron doors stood — covered in rust and ancient warnings.
Painted on the doors in something dry and brown was a single symbol:
A black circle, crossed out twice.
The same symbol on his coat.
The same symbol that pulsed now under his skin, right over his heart.
Halstram's voice returned — this time lower, colder.
> "Good.
You survived the easy one.
Now the real hunt begins."
Somewhere behind the doors, something enormous moved.
Something old.
And it was awake.