We stood in front of the building. It towered at the edge of the town, desolate and menacing, as though darkness itself were what gave it life. It was a dilapidated, crumbling villa, full of dust and the signs of decay. The once ornate, Gothic structure was now merely a shadow of its former self. Time and nature had tried to reclaim what human hands had once created. The fog lay like a thick shroud around the villa, and every breath we took evoked the suffocating smell of rot that made me nauseous.
The locals whispered that a mad cannibal once lived here, occupying the building until his death. According to the stories, this man cooked food from his own victims and was never caught. The house swallowed him up, just like his victims. Of course, I had always thought of this merely as a ghost story, but now, standing here beside Tomi and Dóri, an inexplicable unease began to creep up my spine.
The tall, lanky silhouettes of the trees standing before the villa leaned toward the house as if they themselves were part of the structure, and their long, bony branches reached toward the dark sky like the arms of the house. The air was oppressively damp, the musty odor of the atmosphere clinging to my throat as though old, moldy fabrics were rubbing against my skin from the inside. It felt as though time itself had remained trapped within the walls of the building. Even the wind barely dared to stir the withered leaves, which rustled loudly beneath our feet as if something were watching us from the dark.
The trees leaned toward the house like silent witnesses wanting to warn us, but we scoffed at their warning. It was as if all of nature were begging us to turn back, but our resolve was stronger. Or perhaps just Tomi’s, because Dóri and I hesitated. Dóri trembled beside me, though she tried to hide her feelings. In the cold air, I could hear her breathing rapidly. I tried to remain calm, but an inexplicable fear lurked within me as well.
“Oh, come on, it’s just an old, dirty house. What are you afraid of, Dóri?” Tomi asked as he stepped forward and pushed the old, creaking door open with his shoulders.
Tomi had always been the kind of person who didn’t believe in superstitions or ghost stories. In his world, everything found a rational explanation. What else could this house be but an abandoned building? Just another place on the outskirts of town that time had devoured.
Dóri didn’t answer, only drew closer to me. I felt her hand tremble as she grabbed my arm, as if hoping to find safety by my side. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure either that coming here was a good idea. There was something in this place that was more than mere crumbling walls.
The door slowly gave way, and a suffocating, moldy odor hit my nose. The musty, damp scent immediately crept beneath my skin, pressing against my chest with the weight of a breath. A sort of primordial dread settled over me, as if the past residing within the walls had grabbed hold of me instantly and refused to let go. As we stepped inside, the floor creaked beneath our feet, and every single step felt as though it were sinking into the dusty, decaying walls.
The interior of the building was even more ruined than we had suspected from the outside. Plaster had peeled from the walls, and scraps of old wallpaper still lingered here and there, as if someone had tried to hide the rot. Old, broken chandeliers hung from the ceiling, now casting only shadows against the walls. Darkness completely engulfed the rooms, illuminating the dust-floating air only with faint light filtering through the cracks.
Every step of ours was swallowed by the dusty floorboards, where our footsteps were only rarely interrupted by the groaning of ancient wooden planks. The floor practically cracked under our weight, as if the house were protesting our presence. As we ventured deeper, I increasingly felt something cold embracing me. It wasn’t the air of the house, but something else. A dense, oppressive feeling that weighed upon my chest and grew stronger with every step. It felt as though something hung in the air—something invisible, yet tangible only to feeling.
Tomi, of course, felt nothing. He had always been the big, brave guy who didn’t believe in anything supernatural. Even now, he moved forward with the same confident stride as if he were in a shopping mall. But I felt it. Something wasn’t right here.
“This… is not a very good idea,” Dóri muttered, drawing closer to me. Her voice was thin, as though her fear had given it a deeper tone. I saw fine wrinkles appear around her eyes as she looked around the dark walls.
“Oh, come on, it’s just an old house,” Tomi repeated, the same nonchalance ringing in his voice. “Look around, why shouldn’t we find out what really happened here?”
As we went further in, we reached an abandoned kitchen. The air here was even thicker, the smell of mold and decay almost suffocating. In the middle of the kitchen stood a long, cracked wooden table upon which a massive, ancient pot gathered dust. Rusty metal pots still hung from the wall as if waiting for someone to use them again. Old stoves and cabinets lined the walls, but everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, as though no one had set foot here in decades.
“Look at this!” Tomi said, laughing as he lifted the lid of the pot resting on the table. The metal lid clanked dully against the rusty table, and a strange, bizarre odor immediately assaulted us.
All three of us rushed over. Inside the pot was some strange mass. I couldn’t decide whether it was old food scraps or something else, but its color was excessively dark, and its scent… rotting and bitter, as though time itself had spoiled it. It was like the smell of death, radiating an out-of-time, suffocating atmosphere.
“Ugh, what could that be?” Dóri asked in disgust, stepping back. I saw her face distort with revulsion. Her eyes narrowed, and her lips trembled as if her nausea were at its peak.
Tomi, however, merely grinned. “Maybe this was the famous cannibal’s feast! I bet neither of you dares to taste it!”
He began to laugh, but I was no longer so calm. The smell somehow churned my stomach, yet at the same time, a strange curiosity awakened within me. As Tomi’s words echoed in my head, I felt something stir inside me. A desire to find out what it might taste like. Suddenly, before I could think it through, I spoke up: “I bet I dare to eat it.”
Dóri froze, and Tomi laughed with satisfaction. “Now that’s what I’m talking about! Go on, András, show them!”
I slowly reached toward the pot and dipped a spoon into the mass. Its texture was strange, slick, and gooey, as though it were made of something never intended as human food. The spoon sank slowly into the thick substance, and the scent changed entirely. It grew deeper, earthier, as if some ancient, forgotten flavor were creeping into my nose.
As I swallowed the first bite, disgust and terror raced through my body. The taste was not human. A sweetish bitterness spread across my mouth, as though it were some deadly mixture, but deep down inside… the taste was inexplicably satisfying. My hunger vanished for a moment, as if some mysterious force had finally quieted the internal storm within me. It was as though this food were something my body had always searched for, yet never found.
Dóri and Tomi stared at me in disgust and began to laugh, but something wasn’t right. I could already feel that something had changed within me. It was as though the food had exerted not merely a physical effect on me, but awakened a deeper, darker power as well.
Something inside me had become different.
That evening, after I went home, an anxious feeling refused to leave me. The abandoned house, the rotting odors, and the taste of the mysterious mass had all embedded themselves into my mind. Try as I might to banish it from my head, the thoughts kept returning. The pot, its smell, that strange, decomposed food. Its scent still seemed to linger in my nose, circulating through my lungs and my blood. Even the air seemed different ever since I had left that cursed place.
I went down to the bathroom to take a shower, but it felt as though the moldy air we had breathed in at the building still clung to my skin. Even the warm water could not wash away that suffocating sensation. As the water poured from the showerhead, I only felt the smell of rot more intensely, as though every drop of water had been filtered through the walls of the house. Standing before the mirror, I stared at myself. Dark circles stretched around my eyes, deeper than ever before. My hair clung limply to my head, my face was pale as if a sick, dying man were looking back at me. I ran my hand over my face, feeling my skin cold and clammy.
I lay in bed, but sleep would not come. Every attempt to calm myself only further strained the feeling inside me. A tense, unusual sensation grew within the inner landscapes of my body. A strange vacuum formed deep in my stomach, as though that strange food had taken something away from me. At first, I thought I was just sick from the bad taste, but I soon realized something else was happening.
The hunger I felt was entirely new. It wasn’t the ordinary, mild hunger that follows dinner, but something born deep from the innermost layers of my being. My stomach growled loudly, almost painfully. The more I tried to ignore it, the stronger it grew. The food I had eaten at home did not appease this hunger. It was as though that mass had awakened something within me that I hadn’t known until now. An ancient, all-consuming desire.
The clock slowly struck midnight when I bolted up from bed. Saliva gathered in my mouth as if I hadn’t eaten in ages. My stomach churned with emptiness, yet at the same time, I felt a strange fullness. Like when someone eats too much yet remains hungry. My body instinctively pulled toward the kitchen, as though food were the only solution.
As I glided through the house, every tiny noise—the ticking of the clock, the humming of the heating—intensified into a veritable throbbing in my head. Every sound was so loud it became almost unbearable. It was as though the noises of the world had grown too intense for me. Reaching the kitchen, the refrigerator hummed softly, and as I opened its door, the cold air struck my face. I opened it and began searching, pulling out everything I could find.
I made a sandwich, then spooned down some yogurt. I opened a can as well and began spooning it, but not a single bite helped. The food tasted flavorless in my mouth, as if I were chewing paper. The flavors had completely vanished, as though the food were no longer meant for human consumption. And the more I ate, the emptier I felt. The food wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. My stomach felt as though it could never be filled.
As my hand trembled with the fork, I suddenly realized a deeper problem. What is happening to me? What is this hunger? My head buzzed, and my heartbeat grew stronger. I glanced up at the darkness beyond the kitchen window. The bushes in the garden behind our house moved in the wind, as though some shadow were slipping across them. The air vibrated, as if the world around me now operated under some new set of laws. My senses were overstrung, every sound, every movement sounding like a veritable roar.
I fled to the living room and collapsed onto the couch as if it offered sanctuary. I held my head in my hands, trying to pull myself together, but a growing pain surged in my stomach, as though some force wanted to devour me from within. The pain wasn’t merely physical; a deeper, spiritual pain accompanied it. A kind of emptiness that no normal food could fill.
And then I caught the scent. At first faint, but growing stronger. A warm, metallic smell that suddenly struck my nose. This wasn’t food. My heartbeat accelerated, and excitement raced through my body. A deep, instinctive desire awoke in me that I hadn’t known before. The smell wouldn’t leave me in peace. Blood. This smell… was blood.
I leaped up and rushed to the window. I peered out into the darkness, but nothing was there. Yet the scent, the thought, refused to leave me. As though my body instinctively knew what it needed. The craving grew deeper, impossible to suppress. What had that house done to me? What had I eaten? Thoughts swirled in my head, and the air grew heavier.
That night I somehow managed to fall asleep, but sleep was a single nightmare. In my dreams I returned to the house, found myself back in the kitchen, and scooped the mass from the pot. But the taste was different now, mixed with blood, and darkness swallowed every bite. I jerked awake, but waking up felt like escaping from one nightmare into another reality of nightmares.
In the morning I felt more tired than the day before. The dark circles under my eyes were deeper, and my skin paler than ever. The hunger, however, immediately awakened within me. It was sharper and more aggressive than before. My first thought was that I needed to eat something right away, but as I walked toward the kitchen, a terrible realization swept over me: nothing had helped that night.
And neither would it now.
My hands trembled, and saliva gathered in my mouth once more, but I no longer craved the food in the fridge. I craved something else. Something darker, deeper. It felt as though my body were trying to take control, as though I were no longer the one making decisions.
During the day I met Tomi and Dóri. I sensed something was wrong the moment I stepped into the café where we had arranged to meet. Their scent… their skin… as though something had grown far more intense within them. As I sat at the table, I felt their heartbeat. Every single movement of theirs was so loud to me I could barely endure it. The rhythm of their pulse drowned out my thoughts, and something inside me answered it.
I tried to pay attention to what they were saying, but every sentence blurred. As though their words had dissolved into background noise. Tomi asked something about the house, but I couldn’t concentrate. The beating of their hearts, the flow of their blood… everything melted into a single, throbbing sound. My throat went dry, my body tense as if about to shatter at any second.
Underneath the table, my hand clenched into a fist without me noticing, tension surging through my fingers as if I wanted to tear something to pieces. The power pulsing beneath my skin seemed to possess a life of its own. Dóri glanced at me, a frightened glint mirrored in her eyes.
“András… are you alright?” she asked cautiously, her voice soft and worried. Her words were sharp, yet they failed to reach me.
I wanted to tell her no, but the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. The growing tension and hunger within me took over more and more, and I felt I could lose self-control at any moment. Standing up from the table, I bolted away.
In the days that followed, the world grew sharper around me. Every color vibrated more strongly, every sound blared. Even my own heartbeat was so loud I could barely bear it. All my senses were hyperactive, and in every single movement lay the temptation to abandon my humanity. Hunger guided me more and more. I no longer knew what was human and what wasn’t. Everything revolved entirely around hunger.
When I was nearly on the verge of losing self-control, Tomi and Dóri came to me again. I knew I had no other choice: we had to return to that house and find out what had happened to me.
We walked back toward the house through the streets, but somehow everything had changed around me. The world was different now, as though a thick fog veiled everything. Every step felt heavier, as though my body protested against returning to that house. Something deep within me refused to cross the threshold of that place again, yet at the same time, my body felt an irresistible desire for us to return. It was as though two forces fought inside me: one pulled, the other pushed.
The air was cool, but I was sweating. I felt my palms grow clammy, and my clothes practically stuck to my body from perspiration. Every breath grew heavier. An oppressive feeling clenched my chest, as though a massive weight pressed down upon it. The hunger had permeated everything by now. With every breath it intensified, as though the atmosphere itself ignited the desire within me that was slowly driving me mad.
Tomi and Dóri walked ahead of me, trying to converse in soft whispers, but I could barely hear what they said. Their voices blurred as if I were underwater, and their words never reached me. I didn’t care. All my attention concentrated on the strange reactions of my body: my legs trembled, my hands clenched into fists, and my mouth tightened again as though some warm mucus clung inside it. I felt I was no longer myself. This thought filled me with deep, marrow-shaking fear.
As if an invisible hand directed every movement of mine, and I were not the one taking steps. I hadn’t chosen to return to the house. Something else was directing me.
Arriving at the house, I paused for a moment. The house stood there just as it had yesterday, but something had changed. The walls seemed to have drawn inward, and the house looked even darker now. The air was thick, suffocating, and a heavy, musty odor drifted around us. A strange vibration hung in the air, as though the house itself were breathing. I felt the cold breath of the air on my skin, making me shiver all the more.
A tiny rustle swept through the air, like a distant whisper or breath. It seemed as though something from the depths of the house were watching us, waiting for us to enter. As though some long-forgotten creature were awakening—one that was hungry and knew it would soon feast again.
“András, is everything okay?” Tomi asked, looking back at me.
It was hard to concentrate on him. As though all my attention had been swallowed by the suffocating sensation within the house. For a moment I considered whether I should answer, but words didn’t come easily. I merely nodded. I didn’t know what I could say. They couldn’t feel what I felt. The hunger tightening in my stomach no longer felt like hunger, but something else—a dark, all-consuming desire that was almost tangible. I no longer had appetite; rather, some deep, animalistic instinct governed every thought.
Tomi pushed open the old creaking door, and we stepped into the dark, dusty foyer. The place was the same as yesterday, but it felt as though the walls had drawn closer to us. As though the building itself were watching us. The air was damp, and a strange, metallic scent circulated in the house. This smell was so familiar, yet I couldn’t place where it came from. There was something blood-scented about it—something that simultaneously repelled and attracted me. This scent churned the turmoil within me all the more, and I felt my pulse accelerate.
“Let’s check that kitchen,” Dóri suggested, though her voice trembled. I heard the fear in it even though she tried to mask it. I was afraid too, but I didn’t know why. My body, however, was no longer afraid; rather, it waited for something to happen.
I followed them, but every step grew harder. My heart hammered at a frantic pace, my hands shook, and my head buzzed to the rhythm of my circulation. Every single step felt as though the inside of the house wanted to swallow us whole. As though the darkness were alive and wanted to devour us.
Crossing the threshold of the kitchen, the air changed. Dust still floated everywhere, but the scent… it was metallic. As though we had stepped into a place soaked in blood. An old butcher shop smelled like this, where pieces of meat hung and the air was filled with the raw, metallic scent of blood. My stomach cramped, but not from disgust. Hunger raged within me, and every step, every scent only reinforced this desire. My body seemed to tense, ready to do something.
My head was filled with images, blood, shreds of flesh. I saw before me sharp teeth sinking into flesh, blood splashing out. I tried to chase these thoughts away, but they refused to vanish. My mind increasingly filled the emptiness with these violent images.
Then I heard a sound. It came from the depths of the kitchen, but seemed to ring directly inside my head. A soft whisper, a footstep… I couldn’t decide whether it was real or my imagination playing tricks on me. Tomi and Dóri didn’t notice; they kept walking as if nothing had happened. They didn’t know what was happening inside me. They still saw only a simple house, but I felt that this place was alive. And it wanted my blood.
The air vibrated around me, the silence broken for a moment as Dóri screamed.
“Look! There’s something here!” she cried, her voice trembling.
One section of the kitchen floor had risen slightly. A narrow opening gaped from beneath the old, rotting planks, as though someone had tried to hide something. Something inside me instantly stirred with excitement. I felt that whatever they found would be important—something that could provide an answer to my hunger. Yet at the same time, I feared what we might discover. The truth is sometimes far worse than uncertainty.
Dóri knelt and carefully lifted the plank. The creak as the rotting wood yielded was like a sigh from the house itself, as though it welcomed us uncovering something from its depths. Tomi and I leaned over beside her, and then we saw what the floor had concealed.
An old, worn journal lay there, heavily damaged by time and moisture. The leather binding had blackened from must and mold, its pages yellowed, its edges frayed. Dóri opened the journal with trembling hands, as if taking possession of some ancient, forbidden knowledge. Her hands shook as she turned the pages, and I only watched as blurred letters revealed themselves before us. The words seemed almost to come alive on the pages as the faint light in the dark room illuminated them.
The words, however, were blurred before me, as though a veil obscured their meaning. I felt my heartbeat grow faster, my hands tremble, and saliva gather in my mouth. I didn’t know why I was reacting this way, but the scent of blood grew increasingly intense in the air. As though the house itself were exuding a metallic, raw odor.
“This is the diary of a madman,” Dóri whispered in a nearly trembling voice. Her eyes scanned the lines with a frightened glint, as though she couldn’t believe what she was reading. “It says the same thing happened to him… the same food, the same hunger…”
As those words reached me, my body trembled. It was as though every single word pushed me closer to the edge of the abyss. The scent of blood, the hunger burning deep within me… every sentence confirmed that this was no longer an innocent prank. Something far darker had happened to me. My stomach tightened, and my throat dried out completely. I felt saliva pool in my mouth, as though some beast were preparing to burst out of me.
The pages of the journal rustled as Dóri continued reading, but the words no longer reached me. All my senses were flooded by the desire for blood. The metallic, sweetish scent of the air surrounded me, and I saw nothing anymore except red. My hands clenched into fists, and something moved beneath my skin, straining like a restless, wild animal. I felt my teeth grow sharper, as though they were no longer my own. A deep, raspy growl began to form in my throat as my body reacted to the hunger.
Dóri looked up at me, her eyes frantically searching my gaze. The journal was still in her hand, but she was no longer reading. She only watched me, as though I were a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake. My body trembled, and my breathing grew faster. My throat grew drier, as though the internal longing had sucked out every drop of moisture from me.
“András… you’re bleeding…” Dóri whispered, her hand shaking as she slowly reached toward me, as if wanting to touch me yet not daring to.
Then I noticed blood leaking from my mouth. My tongue swept across my lip, and I tasted the metallic flavor. My teeth were sharper than before, seeming to have grown. My hands shook, and every part of my body seemed only to await throwing itself upon them. A red fog descended before my eyes, and I could no longer control myself. My body tensed, and bloodlust struck me with such force I couldn’t fight it.
“Go… get out of here!” I tried to shout, but my voice was raspy, distorted, and animalistic. The words were barely understandable. Every nerve ending in me screamed for them to get away from me, but my body refused to obey the desire. Saliva gathered in my mouth again, and I felt there was no turning back.
Dóri recoiled, her hand flying to her mouth. Her eyes widened, fear taking complete control of her. Tomi, however, did not move. He stared at me, his eyes widening in realization. I saw he didn’t understand what was happening, but also that the sight of my body filled him with terror.
“András, what the hell are you doing?” Tomi asked, but I no longer heard his words clearly. As if I were in another world where only a single thing mattered: blood. Every nerve ending was ready, as if my body desired only one thing: to put an end to the hunger.
My body trembled as though I might shatter at any second from the power of hunger. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, my throat dried out, and before my eyes, the red fog took over more and more. The smell of blood, their scent… everything cut so sharply into me that my body tensed with excitement. I knew there was no turning back. I knew only one thing for certain: this hunger would never fade.
I took a step toward them, my foot moving without my willing it. Something in the air seemed to snap. Dóri cried out, stumbled backward, and the journal slipped from her hand as she tried to flee. Tomi caught her at the last second, both paralyzed by shock for an instant. Yet their next movement was instinctive: Tomi grabbed Dóri by the arm and rushed toward the exit. The door stood open, and I heard the evening wind rush in, but the sound of their footsteps grew fainter.
My body tensed, my muscles convulsing in spasms as my body tried to follow them, but something held me back. Something in the house. As though the house itself wouldn’t allow me to follow them. The walls whispered around me, and I felt the internal tension spread through me, yet I was incapable of movement. Something had chained me from within, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.
Slowly I fell back to the center of the dark room. The air grew heavy around me, and the metallic scent became nearly suffocating. Blood still trickled from my mouth, but I felt nothing anymore. The journal lay there on the floor, open, its blurred letters glowing faintly in the dim light, but I could no longer read them. My body was broken, my thoughts scrambled, and only hunger remained.
The hunger that never passes.
Tomi and Dóri stood motionless before me. In their gaze lingered that brand of horror I never wanted to see. They didn’t understand what was happening, and neither did I. Only a single point remained certain: the suffocating hunger, now so deeply embedded within me that I was incapable of suppressing it. My throat dried out, the inside of my mouth burned harshly, as though some acidic, corrosive substance were creeping up my esophagus. The scent of blood ruled my every thought, the sweet, metallic odor creeping up from within as if my senses had intertwined with the wild instincts of my body.
The pages of the journal spilled from Dóri’s hand, floating slowly in the thick, dusty air as if they too had come alive. The tiny dust particles kicked up by every single page danced like faint ghost figures in the darkness. Dóri, however, no longer paid them heed. Terror paralyzed her body, her hands trembling as she stepped backward. Tomi slowly stepped back once, then again. I saw his mouth moving as if wanting to say something, but no sound emerged from his throat. He merely stood there, frozen, as though he too sensed that something inexplicable, something terrible was brewing.
And I merely stood there, helplessly, while my body moved as if under the control of some alien power. The hunger was no longer human. As though something else had come to life within me—something trying to suppress my humanity. The internal temperature of my body burned, heat permeating my every tissue as though a demonic fever pulsed through me. The hunger… grew stronger with every single second. A single bite wouldn’t be enough, a single drop of blood wouldn’t quench that fire raging not only in my stomach but in my bones as well.
“András…” Dóri whispered, tears trembling in her eyes as she slowly reached back as if feelings had turned into physical pain. “What happened to you?”
I wanted to answer. With all my strength I tried to shout, to tell them to run, but my mouth refused to obey. I wanted to open my lips, but only a groan tore from my mouth—a distorted, deep, animalistic sound I didn’t recognize even as my own. The hunger was no longer merely an internal desire; it had taken on a life of its own. Growing stronger every single second, my body, my mind, every cell concentrated increasingly upon that feral instinct to appease it.
Beneath my skin I felt the heat, as though some wild beast were clawing my skin from within. My body pulsed, every heartbeat echoing as a dull thud in my head. And as I looked at Dóri’s trembling hand, the rhythm of her heartbeat practically exploded inside my skull. The world narrowed down; only that soft thumping remained, now the sweetest sound in the world to me.
I didn’t want to hurt them. I tried to suppress that inner voice urging me to act. I felt my muscles strain as if I could leap upon them in a single bound. Every fiber of my body tensed as I tried to restrain myself. But it grew harder and harder. Control slipped from my hands, as though I were no longer the one who could decide.
In a split second everything went dark, and I felt as though hunger had taken on an independent life inside me. As though some ancient, evil force were seizing control. And I was merely a puppet within my own body, one that no longer obeyed my will.
“Go!” I forced through my teeth, but my voice was barely human anymore. It resembled a deep, animalistic growl instead. The words came out laboriously, as though my body didn’t want me to warn them. Saliva pooled in my mouth, and every nerve ending screamed for them to leave me, yet in another part of me I wanted them to stay. So I could appease the hunger.
Tomi and Dóri began to move simultaneously, as though some invisible force had finally broken their paralysis. Dóri frantically snatched up the journal as if the solution lay within it, but dropped it again as the pages scattered across the floor. Pulling herself together, she and Tomi headed for the door. I heard the dull thud of their shoes on the dusty floor, their footsteps seeming to occur in slow motion. As if time had suddenly warped, and every movement, every sound were a long, painful throbbing in my ears.
Yet as they set off, something snapped deep within me. A strong, instinctive urge seized me, as though my body were no longer my own. I growled, and my legs moved toward them almost on their own. I couldn’t restrain myself; my body refused to obey. I felt a red fog descend before my eyes, and I could no longer see them—only the dark shadows trying to flee, paralyzed by fear.
Tomi glanced back, his eyes widening in terror when he saw that only a few steps separated me from him. His instincts were faster than my desires, and at the last second, he shoved Dóri away from the doorway. The movement seemed unnaturally fast, as if fear had driven him beyond his limits. My body’s motion distorted, guided by some ancient, feral power.
Before I could reach them, Tomi slammed the heavy wooden door shut between us, throwing the rusted latch into place with a desperate, clattering echo. I slammed my shoulder against the rotting wood, the impact sending a dull, agonizing shock through my bones, but the door held.
From the other side, muffled and breathless, I heard their frantic footsteps sprinting away down the overgrown path, fading rapidly into the chilling embrace of the autumn fog.
I stood alone in the suffocating darkness of the hallway.
The metallic scent of blood was overpowering now, practically coating the inside of my throat. My chest heaved with a raw, unnatural rhythm, and the terrifying realization washed over me that the hunger wasn’t going to recede. It had only just begun.
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