The boy sat slumped against a broken examination table, deep in the hollow corpse of the hospital.

  The pale light filtering through the cracked ceiling did him no favors.

  It showed the ruin of him — skin stretched tight over sharp bones, black hair matted with ash and blood, brown eyes dulled into lifeless mud.

  Every breath rattled against cracked ribs. His ankle was swollen grotesquely, his shoulder hung wrong, and deep cuts marred the length of his arms and side.

  He should have been dead already.

  Maybe he still was, in a way.

  Across the broken floor, a small ash-caked pup barked — high, sharp, impatient.

  It pawed at the ground, as if commanding him to hurry up and stop bleeding already.

  The boy didn’t answer at first.

  His hands shook violently as he wrapped filthy strips of cloth around his worst wounds, but it was a pitiful effort.

  The cloth slipped over slick blood. The knots were loose and clumsy.

  It didn’t matter.

  Nothing would hold for long anyway.

  The pup barked again, sharper, almost scolding.

  "Yeah, yeah," he muttered hoarsely, jerking the makeshift bandage tight until it bit cruelly into his side.

  And still, floating stubbornly in the air above him, the glowing window pulsed:

  <"Congratulations! You have become a Hero!">

  The boy stared up at it, breathing hard through his nose.

  No awe.

  No triumph.

  Only exhaustion.

  Only bitterness.

  He wiped a shaking hand across his mouth, smearing dirt and blood across his cracked lips and looking down at the pup.

  "...You’re real," he said, voice so quiet it barely stirred the stale air.

  "Not like this damn thing."

  He jerked his chin toward the blinking window — bright, stupid, and oblivious to the corpse of the world around it.

  He forced himself upright, grabbing the cracked wall for balance. His body screamed, but he ignored it.

  He had ignored worse.

  The pup tottered over to him on shaky legs, tail wagging furiously.

  The boy stared at it.

  "No," he said simply.

  He turned his back, limping toward the shattered doorway that led into the dead city beyond.

  One step.

  Two.

  Something tugged at his boot.

  He looked down, frowning.

  The pup had latched onto the worn leather, tiny teeth clamped tight, growling with ridiculous stubbornness.

  The boy exhaled a slow, ragged breath.

  "You’re not my problem" he said aloud.

  He shook his foot.

  The pup’s little body lifted slightly off the ground, but it refused to let go.

  He dragged his boot toward the doorway — the pup dragged with him, refusing to be shaken off.

  The boy didn’t look back.

  He didn’t want to.

  But the smells and sights clung to him anyway.

  The sour stink of blood and foam.

  The broken bodies left behind in the dark.

  He hadn’t meant to kill them.

  He hadn’t meant anything at all.

  It was survival.

  Instinct.

  Blind panic, swinging wildly in the dark.

  And somehow, against every sane expectation, he had survived.

  Still breathing.

  Still moving.

  At the edge of his mind, he could almost hear their laughter — the dead men and woman he'd left sprawled in pools of their own blood.

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  Not angry.

  Not vengeful.

  Mocking.

  Mocking not because he killed them —

  but because he had been crowned "Hero" over their broken bodies.

  A Hero.

  Him.

  A half-dead rat in human skin.

  The boy clenched his jaw so hard it sent another spike of pain into his skull.

  He limped into the ruined lobby, past shattered glass and broken waiting chairs, each dragging step a small miracle.

  The pup refused to let go, gnawing stubbornly on his boot as if anchoring him to something — anything.

  The boy glanced once, briefly, at the wreckage behind him.

  He shouldn't be standing.

  He shouldn't be breathing.

  By all the twisted rules of this broken world, he should have been just another smear of blood and silence on the cracked floors of that hospital.

  Yet here he was.

  Dragging himself toward the cold, gray light leaking in from outside.

  Dragging himself forward.

  Always forward.

  The hospital groaned behind him, the echoes of dead men still rattling its broken halls.

  The boy stepped into the dead city, the pup clinging stubbornly to his ruined boot.

  The ash hit him like a wave, dry and bitter against his tongue.

  And somewhere, beyond the collapsed towers and bone-white ruins,

  [something] had begun to wake.

  The boy limped forward through the ashen streets, the cold gnawing at his skin through the holes in his coat.

  The pup still clung stubbornly to his boot, teeth sunk into the battered leather, refusing to be left behind.

  The sky overhead was a flat, endless gray.

  The broken towers of the Ruins rose around him like the ribs of some long-dead beast.

  He kept moving.

  Step after step.

  Breath after rattling breath.

  The boy didn’t make it far.

  He stumbled into the open ruins, dragging his wounded body under the crushing weight of the ash-choked sky.

  Each step sent knives through his ankle, his ribs grinding like broken glass.

  The pup clung stubbornly to his boot, refusing to let go.

  He wasn’t even sure why he kept moving.

  There was nowhere to go.

  Nothing left to find.

  But forward was all he knew.

  He barely noticed the soft hum at first — that sick, vibrating purr that made the broken window frames rattle in their sockets.

  When he did, it was already too late.

  The Dreamer oozed into view from the skeletal remains of a collapsed building — a monstrous, shifting shape, its joints bending at angles no living thing should survive.

  Floating eyes drifted lazily around its body like dying stars, scanning the ruins with mindless hunger.

  The boy froze, heart hammering wildly against his cracked ribs.

  Frantic, his gaze darted around.

  Ahead — maybe twenty meters away — lay a heap of collapsed stone and twisted metal, one of the old buildings crushed by time and storms.

  Two holes stood out:

  one at ground level, wide enough for a body to crawl through;

  another, smaller and ragged, high above, hidden in the tangle of debris.

  Without thinking, the boy bolted for the ground hole.

  Pain screamed through every step, but he dropped low, dragging the pup with him, and wriggled inside the dark crevice.

  Ash and dust filled his mouth and nose, but he pushed deeper, curling into the tightest ball he could.

  Inside, the world was choked and narrow.

  Jagged concrete pressed in around him, old beams leaning at precarious angles.

  The air was stale, thick with the scent of rust, mold, and long-forgotten blood.

  The boy hugged the pup against his chest, heart pounding so loudly he was sure the Dreamer could hear it.

  The little creature whimpered but stayed silent.

  Time seemed to stretch.

  The Dreamer's purring vibrated through the ruins, making the broken stones hum under the boy’s skin.

  For a long, agonizing minute, he heard only that —

  —and then silence.

  Slowly, painfully, he dared lift his head, peering through the gloom.

  He realized the second hole — the one above him — was there, a jagged gash in the debris overhead.

  He couldn’t see much through it — just shifting gray light and pieces of the ruined sky.

  He shifted slightly, trying to glimpse more.

  And then —

  He looked directly into an eye.

  A glowing, floating sphere — one of the Dreamer’s many wandering orbs — drifted into view just above the hole, peering down at him from the rubble.

  It tilted lazily — and then locked onto him.

  The boy’s breath caught.

  The Dreamer's body tensed above the rubble.

  Its mouths opened wider, the sick purring spiking into a shrill vibration.

  And then it jumped.

  The boy barely had time to scream.

  The Dreamer slammed into the rubble, writhing, trying to force its hideous body through the ground-level hole he had crawled into.

  Limbs twisted, mouths snapped hungrily at the edges, claws scraping furrows into the stone.

  One clawed limb lashed through — catching his leg, dragging sharp talons across his thigh.

  The boy cried out, blood soaking instantly through his torn pants.

  He kicked frantically, shoving backward deeper into the rubble, but the Dreamer kept squeezing in, crushing debris and howling with a high, broken sound.

  His vision blurred.

  Pain and fear flooded his senses.

  He clutched the pup tighter against his chest.

  "I really... shouldn't have saved this damn dog..." he thought numbly.

  The Dreamer's breath washed over him — hot, rancid, close enough to feel.

  He closed his eyes.

  This is it.

  Instead —

  The Dreamer was yanked backward with sudden, brutal force.

  A sickening crunch sounded as the creature was torn out of the rubble and hurled across the ruins.

  The boy lay gasping, half-conscious, blinking blood and dust from his eyes.

  Through the top hole — that jagged tear in the collapsed roof above him — a figure appeared.

  Someone crouched down, peering casually into the wreckage.

  The figure wore simple clothes — worn boots, dark pants, and a loose black hoodie with the sleeves casually rolled up with gloves.

  No armor.

  No weapon in sight.

  Just a strange birdlike doctor’s mask — a long-beaked relic of some forgotten age — covering his face.

  He tilted his head slightly, regarding the broken boy below.

  "Mm?" the masked man mused, voice light, almost amused.

  "I thought I heard a dog."

  He crouched lower, the beak mask casting a long shadow over the boy's broken form.

  "But instead..."

  A pause.

  A glint of something sharp behind the voice.

  "I found a rat."

  END OF CHAPTER 3