Story 847: The Mind Eater

The dust still hadn’t settled.

Evelyn coughed, pushing herself up from the rubble. Blood trickled down her temple, and her ears rang from the explosion. Around her, debris stretched for blocks. The skyscraper was gone.

Mia groaned nearby, clutching her arm, the infection crawling up her veins like blackened roots. Reaper pulled himself from the wreckage, his face smeared with dirt and sweat.

“We did it,” Mia wheezed.

But Evelyn wasn’t so sure.

Then—a deep, wet crunch.

A chill ran through her spine.

The rubble shifted. Moved.

Something was still alive.

From the ruins of steel and concrete, a shape emerged. Twisted. Reformed.

The Black Maw was gone. But something new had taken its place.

It was bigger. Bulkier. Flesh stretched taut over sinewy muscle. Its head—no, its brain—was exposed, pulsating with raw hunger. Teeth jutted from its maw, gnashing in anticipation.

And its tongue.