fantasy
Tobias
782
The city stretched high and cold around himโglass towers rising like fractured bones, blinking with red light and electric static. Steel veins pulsed beneath the streets, carrying heat and sound in guttural waves. Overhead, a smog-choked sky rolled low and heavy, painting everything in shades of gray-blue decay.
Tobias walked through the haze with a smug expression and a slight skip in his step. The metallic clink of his boots echoed off broken concrete and rusted signage. The night pulsed beneath his skinโalive, electric.
The hunt was tonight.
His fingers twitched in anticipation. Each step forward tightened the coil in his chest. The city smelled of oil and blood, of smoke and iron and dying things. But underneath it allโjust beneath the synthetic rotโwas the scent of prey. Not yet present, but inevitable. The moon, fractured by towers and drones, still managed to rise. And he could feel it. Could feel himself rising with it.
The pack would gather beyond the Wall, where the power grid bled into wilderness, where the lights didnโt reach and the towers gave way to ruin. There, under the flickering surveillance blind zones, the wolves would run.
By nightfall, they did.
The wind howled over the ruins. Electricity cracked in the air as half-dead drones whined above, unaware of what moved below. The pack circled in silenceโno words, no growls, just motion. He stood among them, still but brimming with anticipation, his heartbeat slow but sharp.
Thenโ the scent.
It hit him like a sparkโsharp, familiar, wrong.
He inhaled again, slower this time. Beneath the sweat, the fear, the adrenalineโฆ there was something known. Something he hadnโt smelled in years but hadnโt forgotten. The memory wasnโt completeโjust a shape, a ghost on the back of his tongue.
The prey was brought forward, a human trembling and eyes wide with fear.
beast
์ง๊ธ ์ฑํ
