Each drop shimmered in the faint light my eyes could still emit. It was warm and thick, and its strangely sweet scent spread through the air. Luckily, or perhaps not, the silence did not last.
Rupert, who had been following the scene with an unsettling curiosity written across his face, finally moved his lips, breaking the tension that hung heavily in the air.
“But seriously...” Rupert suddenly began, breaking the flow of the conversation and drawing not only my attention, but also that of the other members of the response team. He frowned slightly, as if the doubt had finally taken shape: “Why is the blood golden?” he asked, immediately making everyone turn to look at him.
Honestly, it was a pretty good question. The only problem? I had absolutely no idea how to answer it. Technically, up until a few seconds ago, I didn’t even know I could bleed, so it was ridiculous to assume I’d know why, out of every possible color, my blood was gold.
A few steps away from us, Arthur remained leaning against the canyon wall, his body far too relaxed for someone in our situation. A crooked smile played on his lips, filled with an almost irritating sense of amusement. He was clearly enjoying all of this, though I couldn’t begin to understand how, given everything that was happening.
Noticing the weight of the stares on him, Rupert cast a quick, uninterested glance around before shrugging: “What?” he asked, his tone mildly indifferent, almost casual: “I’m just curious. It’s not every day you see golden blood, you know?”
In response, Victor brought a hand to his face and slowly shook his head: “I think we’re getting off track” he said, letting out a restrained sigh.
After a brief pause, he continued, his voice firmer now: “The real question is: why is she bleeding? And why now, of all times? We ran every test imaginable, and she showed no injuries, no signs of bleeding at all”
He stopped speaking for a moment, as if pulling up memories he would rather have left buried. His expression tightened into a tense scowl, and his next words seemed heavier than the rest: “Even when we asked her to injure herself... there was no blood. Not a single drop. In fact, the wounds regenerated almost instantly. That clearly doesn’t match what we’re seeing now”
Victor looked up, his expression full of unease: “So why? What changed?”
Silence settled over everyone after Victor spoke. There was a thoughtful heaviness in the air, as if each of them were searching for an answer that simply wouldn’t come. No one had it. Instead, they exchanged brief, guarded looks before, almost in unison, turning their attention to me.
The expressions I found were hard to name, a deeply uncomfortable mix of hesitation, exhaustion, and something else, more subtle. Many of them looked like... pity. Which, in itself, was strange. After all, I was an anomaly. One of the beings that had been, quite literally, killing their friends, their teammates, and even their families.
Rupert snapped me out of my thoughts with his rough, yet precise words. His gaze remained fixed on the wall ahead, as if he were already calculating the moment it would fall: “Setting aside why her blood is golden... and the fact that she can bleed now” he said after a tense pause: “what do we do next? I want to believe this wall will hold until we no longer need it... but I’ve been in too many situations like this”
He took a deep breath, his voice losing some of its certainty: “Even I can’t really believe that anymore”
Ignoring Rupert’s moment of speculation, I forced my focus back to my own body. Honestly, my condition was far from pleasant to look at.
My feet, if they could even be called that anymore, barely existed. They were completely mangled, covered in cuts, punctures, and lacerations so deep it was impossible to recognize anything that had once been a leg.
My arms, however, were in even worse shape. The skin was peeled back, torn open, and marked by countless injuries: jagged cuts, open puncture wounds, overlapping gashes layered on top of each other. If there was still flesh beneath that ruined skin, the sight wouldn’t have been any kinder.
And then there was my neck, slashed open, golden blood slowly dripping down, slipping between my trembling fingers. It wasn’t hot or cold. It was just... different, as if it existed outside the body’s normal rules.
The smell hit me next: strangely sweet, something that shouldn’t exist at all. I lingered on that sensation for far too long before realizing how absurd it was, how strange it was to have thoughts like that about my own blood.
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My unsettling reflections were abruptly interrupted by Victor, who was still holding me upright, keeping me on my feet despite the pitiful state of my legs, shaking and barely able to support me. His voice was low, but urgent, when he asked: “How long do you think you can keep the wall standing?”
How long? I’d be genuinely surprised if that wall didn’t turn into gelatin within a matter of seconds. I sighed silently, trying to organize the chaos in my mind as I considered Victor’s words.
Truthfully, I had no idea how much longer I could keep the barrier up. There was no timer, no warning, no visible limit. Technically, it all depended on my mental strength, so long as I stayed focused, the wall wouldn’t fall.
The problem with that? I couldn’t even fully trust myself. Staying calm was already difficult under normal circumstances... now, depending on what that lunatic decided to do next, it was almost impossible to believe I’d remain composed for long.
Once I finally gathered my thoughts, I let them reach Victor: (I’m not sure...)
My words were anything but reassuring. That much was clear from the way Victor looked at me, his eyes wavering between confusion and poorly concealed anxiety.
He ran a hand over the back of his neck, as if trying to shake off an uneasy premonition, and sighed in resignation before murmuring beside me: “I guess that means we’re jumping into the canyon... though I should make one thing clear: this is, without question, a terrible idea”
He cast a quick glance toward the abyss ahead, his shoulders stiffening: “I can’t explain why, but the hair on my arms stands on end just thinking about jumping into that bottomless pit. It’s that kind of feeling that screams don’t do this”
Victor forced a tense half-smile: “And that’s saying something, because I’m usually the guy known for having terrible ideas at exactly the moments when having a terrible idea tends to end with someone being eaten, mutilated, dismembered, sliced, fried, frozen... and a long list of other equally unpleasant fates I’d rather not get into right now”
I shrugged at Victor’s words. Honestly, this was far from the craziest thing I’d ever done, or seen. I mean, I’d literally hitchhiked on the back of a giant octopus made of black smoke, an anomaly that, to add a layer of irony, had been created by my own hands... even though, at the time, I had no idea of it.
(It’ll be fine...) I answered silently to Victor’s earlier remark. He raised an eyebrow slightly, as if he’d picked up on my hesitation, then locked eyes with me for a moment that lasted too long: (... Probably?)
He kept staring at me for several long seconds, his gaze heavy and unblinking, before letting out a weary, resigned sigh. Then he slowly shook his head and parted his lips, about to speak again.
But at that exact moment, something stirred inside my eyes. The sensation began subtly, almost imperceptibly, as if something were trying to settle there, occupying a space where it didn’t belong.
A few seconds later, the faint feeling gave way to something violent, a brutal tug, as though invisible hands were trying to rip my eyes from their sockets, making my vision shudder and the world spin.
I didn’t feel pain, nor any immediate discomfort. Still, when I turned toward the man, the sight of his body’s condition was so disturbing that, for a brief second, I couldn’t suppress an instinctive inner shiver.
The mangled flesh, the unnatural posture, the empty stare, everything worked together to shatter my focus. Worse still, a knife was lodged in his eye, hanging there, slowly rotating, twisting the eyeball as it cut and churned inside.
The wet sound of that movement echoed in my mind. And that single moment was all he needed. I am absolutely certain he felt my barrier falter, yielding almost imperceptibly to the advance of his actions.
As if in response to that thought, my body began to regenerate, far too slowly. This wasn’t normal. I tried to force instant healing, as I always had, but my powers simply didn’t obey me, as if they were distant or muffled.
In cruel contrast, the man in front of me recovered almost the instant he was injured. The flesh sealed itself, the bleeding stopped, and without hesitation he raised the knife. His movements were cold, precise, and far too fast to react to. With a single burst of motion, he lunged toward me, slicing through the air like an unavoidable shot.
Before I could even begin to respond, Victor, who was at my side, wrapped an arm around me and lifted me off the ground. He spun on his heels and took off running, the wind slashing against my face as the chaos was left behind.
A single command tore from his lips, deep and urgent, echoing through the air in the instant before the leap into the bottomless canyon: “Jump!”
There was no hesitation. No words calling Victor crazy, no shouted protests, just hurried footsteps pounding against the cold grass as everyone ran toward the canyon before, one by one, we hurled ourselves into the void.
My body hung in the air for a few brief seconds, a cruel suspension, before gravity finally took hold and dragged us violently downward.
The cutting wind battered my partially disfigured face, tearing curses from my lips as we plunged into the canyon. I tried to see what awaited us below, but there was nothing, only absolute darkness, thick as a veil.
All my senses could pick up were warped sounds: something scraping along the walls, distant screams that didn’t sound human, and other, even more disturbing noises, names and echoes I’d rather not describe, following us throughout the fall.
“You absolute lunatic bastard! You’ve got to be kidding me!” Victor shouted as we plummeted, the wind screaming around us. His eyes were wide, locked onto something above us, as if death itself were watching from on high.
When I looked up at the sky, I finally understood Victor’s expression. Yes, technically, it was as if death itself was with us. The man with the knife had jumped as well.
His body fell at nearly the same speed as ours, tearing through the air with violent force, his eyes never leaving me, consumed by a sick obsession.
Even in free fall, he seemed determined to reach me, to continue his tortures... or whatever other hellish thing he was trying to do.
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