Arada watched helplessly as her little brother was threatened by the mysterious person with the mask. The device they held, which most likely could fire those arrows, was aimed at him. At the same time, she became aware of the intehrobbing pain near her liver. The Master had struck deep, and she had lost a lot of blood.

  She turned her head a bit further and saw that Irgos was doing as Mask had asked.

  With all the energy she had left, she tried to think.

  It made no sense. Why would they save us from those bald creatures only to threaten us afterward?

  "Pl-please," she stammered, "h-he hasn't... done anything... wrong... Leave him alone."

  Ow. I hought talking could be this exhausting.

  Mask ignored her and stepped closer tos. "Your upper lip," they said in their smooth, inhuman voice. "One of them has touched you. I'm gonna have to kill you. I'm sorry."

  One of them? Does he mean... the jelly monster? Arada saw the red mark that the creature had left on him earlier this m. It was still clearly outlined on his face.

  Mask aimed their device at her brother, ready to fire.

  "Wait," Irgos said, his eyes brimming with panic. "Please look at her first." He poio Arada. "She's badly hurt and has lost a lot of blood. She won't make it if she doesn't get help."

  Mask remained silent for a moment. Arada thought they were really going to shoot.

  "Please," Irgos begged. "Save her. After that, you do whatever you want with me."

  His words seemed to work. Mask lowered their on and attached it to their backpack. "You're right," they sighed—a sound that seemed oddly absurd ing from the voice-altering mask. "I'll help her. But what I said earlier still stands." They pointed firmly at Irgos. "You stay here and don't move a muscle. One wrong move, and it's over for you."

  Irgos nodded, and Arada could see the tensio off him.

  "Thank you, really," he said, as tears seemed to form in his eyeers.

  Mask went to one of the ets in the room and pulled something out. They returned with a small white box with a red cross on it. They k beside Arada and ope, but she didn't have the energy left to follow their as. As her eyes closed, she just barely saulling up her blood-soaked t-shirt with gloved hands, revealing the wound. They took out various items, but their shapes became blurred. Sounds faded into the background. Even the pain seemed to lessen. She felt her sciousness slipping away.

  * * *

  "Sis."

  Arada opened her eyes. Immediately, the wound iomach fred to life.

  She was sitting upright against the wall on the floor in the underground room where Mask had brought them. Irgos sat beside her.

  "Does it still hurt?" he asked.

  She nodded. A bandage of some sort was ed arouomach. It had stopped the bleeding, and the pain was already less. Apparently, Mask had done something to the wound so it wasn't as painful anymore.

  "H-how l-l-long—," she started.

  Irgos spoke for her. "You passed out," he said. "Maybe twenty minutes or so. We have—"

  "Good to see you're back so soon," she heard Mask's voice say. They were sitting across from them on the ground. "You're lucky. I don't know how much more blood you could have lost."

  "W-who—" she stammered. "W-who are you? Why did you help us?"

  "Ah, time to get acquainted," they said. The figure reached behind their head and undid the strap holding their mask.

  Mask—now Ex-Mask—was a man with a broad face. His wild, brown curly hair flowed into a thick beard, and his rge, dark eagle-like eyes gave him an intimidating look. He must've been older than her, somewhere in his mid-twenties. He reminded her a little bit of Alexander.

  Definitely someone you wouldn't want against you, she thought immediately.

  "Sorry, the mask be a bit awkward sometimes," he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. "I didn't mean to scare you."

  "Then why wear it?" she asked.

  "This is called a gas mask," he said. "I use it to see and breathe during a smoke gre."

  "Are you saying you created that smoke on the square?" Irgos asked.

  The man nodded. "They're like tiny stones you throw on the ground that produce smoke on their own. It's an old gadget. We used them regurly to escape in an emergency from..." He oward the ceiling. "...from him, up there. But that was our st one. Now we're on our own."

  He tucked the mask into his backpack. "I'm Aplin, by the way," the man said. "What are your names?"

  Irgos poio his sister. "This is Arada; I'm Irgos."

  "And how oh did you end up iown?"

  "We fled," her brother expined. "From those bald lunatid their leader. They destroyed our vilge, Overmore."

  "Overmore?" His eyes grew wide. "Did I hear that right? Overmore?"

  Irgos nodded. "Why? Do you know the pce?"

  Aplin stood up. "Sounds like we have a lot to discuss. I'll grab you something to eat first. I'm sure you ."

  Only now did she realize how hungry she was. They haden sinore.

  Aplin walked over to one of the strange devices in the room. He took something out of a white box that emitted a low buzzing heood in front of a round pte, pressed a few buttons, and pced a dish on it.

  Very different from the cooking ptes in Overmore.

  Now Arada also remembered holin had just threatened Irgos. "Does he suddenly not see you as dangerous anymore?" she whispered so Aplin wouldn't hear it oher side of the room.

  "He reized the mark here." Irgos poio his upper lip. "He says it came from a... a monster."

  "A jelly monster, I assume."

  "I think so. He said it was tagious and that I o die as soon as possible." Irgos said it as if it were nothing. "But then he realized that if that's true, all three of us must already be ied, si spreads so quickly."

  Ied?

  Arada was silent. In Overmore, they had learned about the jelly monsters all too well. They are silent, fast runners, and thanks to them, many people had mysteriously disappeared. But she hought they could also be tagious.

  When she didn't respond, Irgos tinued. "‘If all three of us are ied, then it's already too te,' he'd said. So, he figured it would be better to spare me and help us."

  Too te?

  Arada swallowed. "So, are all three of us, like... siow?"

  Irgos shrugged. "He didn't say anything else. I still o hear the details."

  She looked over at Aplin, who was busy oher side of the room. A moment ter, he returned with two bowls. He alsht a bottle for them to drink from, simir to the one in their backpack. But that was now in the hands of that dreadful Master.

  Aplin handed each of them a bowl with a squishy brown blob in it. Arada examihe food carefully.

  "What—" she started.

  "Rabbit," Aplin answered. "Just yesterday—"

  Her red eyebrows quickly knitted into an angry frown. "You monster!" she shouted. "Do you really think I'm going to eat this?"

  "You're weak. And this is a highly effit food source. It help yain strength."

  "H-how dare you j-just—" she stopped mid-sentence. An awkward silence fell.

  She had only ever knowables, fruits, and other natural products her whole life. Eating dead animals was taboo for her. How could you just take another creature's life purely for your own enjoyment?

  But now, faced with meat oe while she was starving, it was a different story.

  "We don't have a choice," Irgos told her. "We ."

  "But it's just... wrong," Arada protested.

  "It's wrong, I know. But now is not the time to fight."

  Arada fell silent.

  "Do you want to starve, sis?"

  She sighed. Relutly, she took the piece of rabbit and took a small bite.

  Irgos ate too, though he wasn't too enthusiastic about it either.

  "We're from Overmore," he started after swallowing his bite. "It was a normal evening when the vilge was attacked by those bald people with hammers. They smashed everything."

  Aplin nodded. Irgos took a sip from the bottle and began a new bite.

  "My father had gathered us just before they arrived," Arada tinued for him. "He told us we had to go to a pce called Aquinox and gave us two peculiar items."

  Together, they told him the whole story. The appearance of the Master. The long gray road. Tusin. The jelly monster, and their pursuit iolin listened ily, letting them tell their story uninterrupted.

  "But we don't uand anything," Arada finally said. "Who is this insane 'Master?' Why is he after us? Why does he want our 'elixir?' What happeo the Old World?"

  Aplin shifted his position. "Maybe it's best if I start with that st question. I e from what you call the 'Old World' myself."

  Arada and Irgos looked at each other, then back at Aplin.

  What are you waiting for? Tell us.

  Aplin began. Arada and Irgos hung on his every word.

  * * *

  "It was July 12, 2023, een years ago now, when it started. I was seven years old then, but I remember it well. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of an air raid siren. Everyone in our house—my father, mother, and older brathered together. OV, we saw that one of the storm surge barriers proteg our try had given way. With an earsplitting roar, a massive wave of seawater surged into the nd. The sand and soil it swept up gave it a muddy color. The pressure became so great that the water spread rapidly. It showed no mercy. Houses, cars, skyscrapers—everything was swept away."

  Arada interrupted him. "TV? Storm surge barrier? Cars? What are you talking about?"

  Aplin sighed. "cepts from the Old World," he said. "Didn't they teach you anything about that in Overmore?"

  Arada and Irgos both shook their heads.

  "Alright, then. Storm surge barriers are enormous walls ier. TVs are elec... devices that could show pictures from far away. And cars are four-wheelers people used to travel in. You must've seey along the way."

  Arada nodded. So those four-wheelers were indeed vehicles.

  "I'll try to speak in words you uand," he said.

  "No, no," Irgos protested. "I'd like to hear about all the unknown things from back then. We'll ask if anything's unclear."

  Aplin tinued. "That's wheV stopped w. The anization responsible for, um... well, the energy for the TV was gone. Right after, we heard people screaming ireets. A massive wave was ing our way. Half of the houses around us were swept away by the current. We were just about to climb to the roof, but as my brother and I were oairs, the window burst, and in seds, the entire living room was uer. Our parents were swept away by the current and never returned. We barely had time to process their loss."

  Arada swallowed. Just like with us.

  "When my brother and I finally reached the roof, we saw the devastation around us. Our neighborhood had bee a vast o with rooftops as tiny isnds, where people looked around fearfully. Further away, the unstoppable flood was drowning our nd. We saw how the Atra River, which raween North and South Catsroes, turned into the Atra Sea."

  So the Atra Sea was once a river?

  "One person in our neighborhood kept a boat at home. He was driving across the water to pick up as many people from the roofs as possible. He went by our home and took my brother and me on his boat. After that, he steered northward, to the new shore of the Atra Sea. When we reached the shore, we saw the full extent of the disaster. The entire southern part of the try had bee sea. It was irreversible damage.

  Together with other people we moved further innd and found a small vilge, Overmore. Back then, it was just a few farms. The kind residents gave all of us shelter, as they already knew about the disaster. The day, everyone in Overmathered for a rescue mission. We brought small boats to the new coastline and saved as many people as we could from the rooftops. People who were fit and strong could swim. But after a few days, we decided to stop. We couldn't house everyone in Overmore.

  But that wasn't the worst of it.

  Those who had survived the flood, either by climbing to rooftops, ging to something, or being stranded on a newly formed isnd, got no help. You would think that their fellow Catsroans would help evacuate them to the north. But the north had its own problems.

  The rest of the nd—everything not flooded—was left without water aricity." He looked up when he saw Arada notig they didn't uand the word. "A kind of substahat powered all devices in the Old World," he expined. "The same substanside lightning. It wasn't a basiecessity, but it was something people couldn't live without. They for cooking, st food, driving cars, and more. The buildings that made electricity were themselves uer.

  This had far-reag sequences. People used to get their food from 'supermarkets' —massive buildings with shelves full of food—which you could buy with 'money,' a special means to exge things."

  Arada remembered their first night. "I thiayed in a pce like that," she said. "It was along the big road to here. But it was pletely empty."

  "That's where I was going with this," Aplin said. "What do you think people will do when they realize no more new food is ing from there?"

  "They'll just bring it in from another try, right?" Irgos suggested.

  "Catsroes only has one neighb try, and that's Asroes. But the president of that try doesn't care much for us. He suspected something like this might happen for a long time. So, he built a long, thick wall along the border, letting no oo his try."

  Arada covered her mouth. "So, that means..."

  "Exactly. The people of Catsroes were trapped. Surrounded by the sea, and blocked by their only neighbor. Whatever food was avaible was all there eople ransacked entire supermarkets. Within three days, there was nothi. But then it got even worse. More and more violent groups formed, breaking into each other's homes to steal food. They killed each other if they didn't have any. At first, for the thrill. But ter, more for survival."

  Arada shuddered. "Food? You don't mean—"

  "They became ibals. They ate each other, purely because there was nothio eat. But those people usually didn't survive long after that. Eating other humans is extremely uhy."

  A chill fell over the underground room, as if the energy of the disaster returned for a moment.

  "But there were also good people," Aplin tinued. "Like those in Overmore, who tried to rebuild society by fog on growing their own food and other self-suffit practices. But not just there. A year after the disaster, I left Overmore with a group of others. They wao see more of the devastated world, but also to see if there were other people still out there.

  We found a small unity iown, where we also lived off farming and hunting." Arada gave him a disapproving look at the st word. "We got along well; everyone had their own task, and no one articurly unhappy."

  "Then why is no one here now?" Arada asked. But she could already feel the answer looming.

  "The disasters hit us one by one," he said. "The flood was one, but it had all kinds of massive ripple effects. Like more and more of these, um..." He searched for the right words. "Monsters. Demons. Devils. Creatures. The ones with the tentacles."

  Arada and Irgos hey knew what he meant.

  "Most of the time, we just called them monsters, for ck of a better word. Ebrotown was occasionally attacked. They run so fast that they mao capture many of our survivors who were outside."

  Arada and Irgos gnced anxiously at each other.

  "In Overmore, we called them jelly monsters," her brother said. "Because their faces look like the tentacles of a jellyfish. Every time they got too close to our vilge, the horn would sound, and we had to stay indoors. From the windows, we could see them roaming the streets, and they were gone by the same day. Often, people would go missing, ahink it was because of those jelly monsters. But we never actually saw them kill anyone."

  Aplin stroked his beard. "Jelly monsters, huh. Funny heurned back to the boy. "sider yourself lucky, Irgos. You don't want to know what they do to people."

  A shiver ran down Arada's spine. When they didn't ask any more questions, Aplin tinued.

  "They don't have eyes or ears but use their tentacles to smell. And as soon as they catch the st of prey, they run toward it and pierce your body with their tentacles. They suck out anything useful—blood, fat, skin—and use it as food. They survive for years on it."

  Irgos cleared his throat, pale from the horror. "We... we came across a vilge on the way here where the ground was littered with skeletons. I-is that..."

  Aplin nodded. "They only leave the bones behind."

  Arada felt like she was going to be sick. "So, those were..."

  "It might have been a fight over food a long time ago," Aplin said. "But it's more likely it were the monsters—or jelly monsters."

  "So that's why no one's here now?" Irgos asked.

  "Well, that was just the beginning. As the attacks started getting serious, we decided to live underground. We used spaces in the sewer system to hide, and sor panels on rooftops—devices that vert sunlight iricity—provided us with various useful teology from before the flood." He poio the white humming et, the stove, and other devices at the back of the room. "At first, it worked quite well. We could avoid the jelly monsters by staying here during the day and hunting at night."

  "Why at night?" Arada asked.

  "The jelly monsters also have a sort of... biological sor pahe lumps on the back of their heads draw energy from sunlight. It's like human photosyn... I mean, like the leafs of a flower, you could say. That's why they're only active during the day or at dawn or dusk. At night, they sleep."

  "Then why did you want to kill me?" Irgos asked. "When you saw that I'd been hit by one of them."

  Aplin took a long, deep breath. "That's how we lost most of our people," he said. "Those we mao save from a jelly monster were left with their wounds. The wounds would bee ied, no matter what we did. Gradually, the injured would ge. At first, all sorts of green-brown patches would appear on their skin. But after a few days, they'd bee aggressive, shouting and violently attag the rest of us. We had no choice but to kill them." He csped his hands together in an expression of guilt. "Often, those who cared for the wounds also got sick. It was extremely tagious."

  Arada felt heat rising in her face as she looked at her brother.

  Does that mean that...

  "I'm sorry for being so aggressive with you, Irgos," Aplin said to him. "But maybe now you uand why."

  "N-NO," she cried. "I-I don't want h-him to..." She looked deep intos's eyes, then at the red streak on his upper lip. "I-I-"

  "I'm afraid there's nothing that be done, Arada," Aplin said. "The wound wasn't serious, but that doesn't mean anything. The odds he isn't ied are nearly zero. And because it's so tagious, I fear that the same must be true for you and me."

  A poisonous snake coiled around Arada's heart, choking her of all air. She tried to fold her knees up a her head on them, but then remembered her own wound.

  "The good news is: it takes a few days for symptoms to appear, so there's still time to get to Aquinox. You said someohere has the other half of the amulet and knows what's in the vial, and they tell you more about what it's for. Though I have my suspis, because your father already told you that the vial is the only thing that stop him."

  "Him? You mean..." Arada couldn't bring herself to say her father's murderer's name.

  But Aplin kly who she meant and nodded.

  "Culex."