My new arm itched.
Not like a mosquito bite. No, this was deeper—like every vein housed spiders spinning webs beneath my skin. I turned it over in front of my face: this thing, crimson and pulsing with veins that looked anything but human.
Lumina yanked me back so hard I nearly fell.
"Don't move, idiot!" she hissed, her fingers digging into my wrist. "They see through shadows now."
Above us, the tear in the sky flickered. Those eyes—those fucking countless eyes—scanned the battlefield. A mechanical groan echoed, like old metal being twisted.
"What the—"
Her slap cut me off mid-sentence.
"Shut up and run!" Lumina's pupils were cross-shaped—I'd just noticed. "There, the ruins!"
She pointed to a dome-like structure three hundred meters away. Between us and it:
- Puddles of shadow that moved on their own
- Reanimated corpses with crystals jammed into their necks
- And that godforsaken choir—children's voices singing from nowhere
My arm twitched suddenly. Like a dog catching a rabbit's scent.
"Not now!" I growled, clutching it to my chest. Yesterday, I'd been a high-schooler cheating on math tests. Now I had to deal with a possessed limb?
The first corpse spotted us.
It opened a mouth too wide, filled with glass teeth, and screamed:
"THE SEAAAAAL!"
Then everything went to hell.
Lumina drew a bone dagger. "Hold still!"
She stabbed straight through my palm.
The pain was so sharp I saw my own blood as equations—spiraling formulas explaining how I was stealing the undead thing's energy.
My arm exploded into black filaments.
And for the first time, I understood:
1. This wasn't an arm.
2. It was a mouth.
3. And it was hungry.
The last words Ren hears before passing out: "Welcome to the 117th Experiment, Subject Ren."
The last words Ren hears before passing out: "Welcome to the 117th Experiment, Subject Ren."
End of chapitre 2