Ren walked.

  The floor beneath him twitched with each step.

  He tried not to look directly at it, at the way the ground would ripple slightly when he pressed his foot down, or how the surface occasionally pulsed like it was breathing. A translucent film covered the path, thick enough to smear beneath his soles. His boots were already stained a color somewhere between rust and bile.

  He wasn't sure how long he'd been moving. Time didn't feel real here. The sky was the color of wet muscle, veiny and twitching, always moving in slow, nauseating waves. Above him, strange growths floated like organs suspended in fluid. Some beat softly. Others had no rhythm at all.

  There were no stars. Just endless red sky, and air that reeked of something metallic and chemical. Iron mixed with vinegar.

  He kept walking.

  Every now and then, something flickered at the edge of his vision. A vein pulsing beneath the wall, or a shadow vanishing just behind him. No noise. Just movement. Just pressure. Like being watched through a microscope.

  His hands wouldn't stop shaking.

  He rubbed them together. The sweat on his palms didn't help. It felt like his nerves were misfiring, his body reacting to a threat it couldn't name. He hadn't seen anything yet, not clearly. But whatever lived here, it was near. And it had eyes.

  Eventually, the ground changed.

  The fleshy road gave way to cracked stone, laid out like cobblestone, though uneven and chipped. The town unfolded around him one broken block at a time. Victorian in shape, but twisted in structure. The buildings leaned at awkward angles. Windows faced the ground. Some doors were shaped like mouths. Others hung open, still swinging from invisible wind.

  Gas lamps lined the street, black iron frames wrapped in dried sinew. Their glass was shattered. No flame burned inside.

  Ren stepped over the first body without realizing it.

  A creature, long limbed and jointed wrong, skin peeled back in layers like bark, lay face down in a pool of black blood. A little further ahead, a human-shaped corpse slumped against a wall, jaw cracked open, teeth broken. Fingers curled like claws around an empty rifle.

  He slowed his steps.

  The blood on the street wasn't fresh, but it hadn't dried either. It had a sheen. A shine that caught in the sky's red glow. The deeper he walked, the more bodies he saw. Some ripped in half, others dismembered. Some just crumpled like their bones had turned to powder.

  And then, the silence broke.

  A scream.

  Sharp, wet, human.

  Ren froze.

  The scream came again, then stopped abruptly, cut short like someone pressing stop on a recording.

  He stood there, heart thudding in his chest.

  "I could go back," he whispered. His voice sounded small. "I should go back."

  But he didn't.

  The Voice hadn't said it outright, but it didn't need to. If he failed the Trial, if he didn't pass whatever test this world had carved out for him, he would never leave.

  This would become home.

  Forever.

  He ran.

  Not because he wanted to be a hero. Not because he believed he could help.

  Because staying still felt like death.

  The buildings blurred past him. The air grew heavier, hotter. The stone beneath his feet began to stick again, dampness leaking back up from the earth like the ground itself was sweating.

  The road opened into a plaza.

  At the far end stood the remains of a crumbled cathedral. Its front wall had collapsed, exposing a jagged mouth of broken stone. Above the wreckage, a single glyph burned in the air, tall, angular, yellow as sulfur.

  Ren's eyes were drawn past it.

  Something lay slumped against the ruin.

  Something massive.

  The creature's body resembled a human, if a human had been sculpted by someone who'd only heard vague descriptions and used too many limbs. Its skin was pale, almost gray-blue, stretched over exposed veins that shimmered like wet string. Its chest had been torn open entirely, ribs pried apart like the jaws of a bear trap.

  Twelve arms. Six on each side. All limp.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Its head hung forward. Horns curled back from the skull like broken antlers.

  Ren stared, his mouth hanging open.

  "What..." His voice came out hoarse. "What the hell is that?"

  The answer came in movement.

  Its eye opened.

  Too large, glassy and gold. It blinked slowly, then focused on him.

  The rest of its body didn't move.

  Only the breath. A slow, ragged pull of air through something damaged inside. The skin around its chest cavity shivered faintly.

  It was alive.

  Barely.

  Ren's mouth went dry. He took a step back, his legs feeling weak.

  "No," he whispered. "No, no, no. This isn't... I can't..."

  No Voice came. No instructions. Just that single phrase, still hovering in the air.

  Heal the Broken Gate Guardian

  He stared at it, his hands trembling at his sides.

  "This isn't a human," he said aloud, his voice shaking. "This isn't even close to anything I've seen before. I don't know what this is."

  It was a goddamn divine corpse trying not to die.

  "You want me to operate? On that?" He gestured at the massive creature, his voice rising slightly. "I don't know anything about this. I don't have the right equipment. I don't have anyone helping me. I don't..."

  A wheezing breath rumbled from the creature's chest, rattling through split bones.

  Ren looked down at his shaking hands. His throat felt tight.

  "I can't do this," he said quietly. "This is too much."

  But even as he said it, he knew the truth.

  He didn't have a choice.

  He reached into his coat with trembling fingers and pulled out the anesthetic vial.

  The label was gone, but he could feel it thrumming against his palm. A presence. Like the liquid inside wanted to wake something up.

  He walked forward slowly, careful to stay in the Guardian's sight. His legs felt unsteady. Each step took real effort.

  "I don't know if you can understand me," he said, his voice tight and uneven. "But if you do... this will numb you. Not put you to sleep. Not make it better. Just... silence. No pain."

  He pressed the vial against one of the exposed veins pulsing along the creature's chest.

  The liquid hissed as it was absorbed.

  The breath slowed.

  The tension in its arms dropped.

  Ren took three steps back, his hands still shaking.

  His stomach lurched. His legs felt like wires ready to snap.

  He looked down at his palm.

  "I don't want this," he whispered.

  His fingers flexed. The skin rippled.

  And split.

  A circular mouth opened in his hand, lined with teeth, twitching, hungry.

  Ren looked up at the creature. He swallowed hard.

  "But you're dying. And I'm the only one here."

  He turned his wrist, staring at the mouth in his palm.

  "Okay," he breathed. "Okay. Just... just work with me here."

  .

  .

  .

  Ren stepped into the light bleeding through the Guardian's open chest.

  Its ribs were cracked apart, each one the size of a tree trunk, glistening with a layer of blood that wasn't red. Something in the air around the wound hummed low, constant, like standing beside a failing generator. The smell was sharp. Not rot. Something colder. Almost chemical.

  He wiped his palm against his coat, but it didn't help. His skin was damp with sweat, and the ground beneath his feet had started to stick.

  The Guardian's eyes remained open. Its body didn't twitch. The Awakening Anesthesia was doing its job, locking the nervous system in place while leaving the mind painfully alert.

  "Let's make this quick," Ren muttered, his voice tight. "Please let this be quick."

  He raised his arm.

  The mouth on his palm uncurled, teeth parting with a quiet twitch. The air around it cooled. Tiny tongues flicked forward and slithered into the wound. It wasn't violent. Not exactly. But it wasn't clean either. Ren gritted his teeth as sensation poured through the connection.

  He saw the layout of the damage, not in diagrams or outlines, but in pressure. Blood flow was wrong. Muscle bands had torn inward. The central core, whatever passed for a heart in this thing, was fractured. Not just cracked, but misaligned. Leaking.

  And beneath that, something foreign. A thread of decay coiled around the break like fungus growing between broken stone.

  Ren pulled back. The tongue-mouth retracted with a sick, slick sound. He flexed his hand once, trying to steady himself.

  "Okay," he said quietly. "I need the tentacles. Come on."

  They emerged at once, four of them bursting from his back. Each one moved with eerie precision, ready. He didn't give commands. He didn't need to. They already knew what to do.

  One gripped the Guardian's exposed rib and pulled gently to widen the opening. Another reached behind Ren and retrieved the Outer God Scalpel, placing it into his hand. The blade felt light, even familiar, though it had no real weight. It didn't shine. When Ren brought it down, it cut through dense, translucent tissue like it wasn't there.

  No resistance. No tug.

  Just a parting of flesh.

  He worked in silence, his breath coming in short bursts. The tentacles moved with him. One held the retractors in place. Another dipped into the Guardian's chest to steady a collapsed structure that might've once been a lung. The third brought out the forceps, then hovered, waiting for his signal.

  The central core came into view, massive, spherical, cracked along its center like a split pearl. Mana leaked out slowly, floating into the air in thin strands. Beneath the break, black threads curled around the damage.

  Ren felt his stomach turn.

  "There's something else in here," he muttered. "Something that shouldn't be."

  He reached forward and began suturing the severed veins. His fingers moved on instinct, not memory. The Guardian's biology didn't follow any human map. The blood was too thick. The tissue fought against closing, like it had forgotten how. But the re-threading wire in his hand responded to thought, slipping through as if it had done this before.

  He sealed one vessel.

  Then another.

  The heartbeat began to steady.

  Tentacles kept pace beside him, passing tools, cleaning edges, holding rib structure in place. One of them handed him the bone saw when a shard of rib blocked access to a deeper vessel. It hummed faintly as it cut the obstruction away.

  He wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand.

  Then turned to the rot.

  It was alive. It didn't pulse, didn't move, but Ren could feel it watching. Feeding. Nestled deep inside the core crack, just beneath the repaired surface.

  He glanced down at his right hand.

  The palm mouth opened again.

  "Get it out," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "Just get it out."

  The tongues launched.

  They burrowed into the fracture, wrapped around the rot like vines, and pulled. The black mass came free with a wet tearing sound and hissed the moment it hit the open air. Ren felt it resist, felt something pull against him, not physically, but inward, like it didn't want to leave the host.

  It didn't have a choice.

  The moment it touched the ground, it crumbled into ash.

  The pressure in the air lightened.

  The Guardian's core glowed stronger now. Not healed. But alive.

  Ren stepped back, his legs unsteady. The tentacles slowly retracted into his spine with quiet, wet movements. The mouth on his palm sealed itself, teeth folding inward.

  He looked at the creature.

  Its eyes were still open.

  Still unmoving.

  He turned and walked away, his hands still trembling.

  There was a crooked building just past the edge of the plaza, sagging between two shattered lamp posts. Its door hung askew on a single hinge, creaking faintly. Ren pushed it open and stepped inside.

  The moment he was alone, everything caught up to him.

  He dropped to his knees.

  And vomited.