Damian's POV

"Given by father, taught by mother. Still I don't know how a name truly defines oneself."

—Damian Stark

"Next stretcher!"

The young woman screams it for the sixth—maybe the seventh—time in just a few minutes. Her apron is soaked with blood, stiff in places, slick in others. My legs shake. My hands tremble. The mask over my mouth feels like a cage, trapping the stale heat of my breath until sweat pools at my jawline. Every pore on my body is open, my skin crawls with phantom itches. But I force myself to focus. I must.

"What do we have?"

Theo, the head surgeon, asks in that flat, practiced tone of his. Nothing surprises him anymore. He's twice my age, late forties, all hard lines and sunken eyes.

"Male, late twenties," the nurse barks, voice tight with urgency. "Shrapnel wounds to the abdomen and right thigh. Pulse weak. He's fading fast!"

I squint through my fogging glasses at the blood-slick scalpel in my hand. I change gloves automatically, pulling on new disposable ones, the old pair stained dark with other people's death. My fingers don't obey. My shoulders twitch like marionette strings tangled by a drunken puppeteer. My head pounds, each heartbeat a shrill echo in my skull. Tinnitus screams in my ears.

"Dr. Stark!"

I try to force my right glove on but it slips. I can't concentrate. Not after all that.

My gaze drifts, dazed. Woman. Man. Dead. Their eyes are open, glassy, accusing. Empty of light. Empty of hope.

I lift my hand toward Theo out of pure instinct, but he slaps it away.

"No scalpel!"

I flinch.

Still, I keep staring at the blood on the floor, at their unseeing eyes. My chest heaves, ribs constricting like a vice around my frantic heart. Men. Women. Even children.

I grab onto a nurse rushing past, just to stay upright.

"Stark!"

Another shout. Then a pleading voice cuts through the chaos. It's the man on the stretcher, his pulse a flickering candle.

I squint at him again. The world swims, vision blurred by condensation on my lenses. 1.25 diopters of farsightedness—useless here. Just fog. And behind that fog, their lonely stares.

Yesterday, I played with that kid lying out there in the grass. Gave him sweets. Joked with him and the others. Now he's got a hole in his abdomen. His blood soaking the earth.

Monsters.

I'm not supposed to be here. Not in this fucking tent. I was just a student, not even halfway through med school. No real practical training. And now I'm supposed to keep soldiers alive as they're torn apart like insects by things out of a nightmare.

Not fairy tales. Horror stories.

It is a nightmare.

We're holding the base, but only just. Barrages light up the sky, and even though the line holds, civilians are being hunted like animals.

My eyes flick again to that dead kid in the grass. He died minutes ago. One of many. One of millions in Germany. One in billions around the world.

My hand slips free of the nurse's arm as she runs on. My attention catches on a female soldier sprawled nearby. Blood drenches her uniform. Nurses are cramming gauze into the gaping holes in her flesh, fingers slick and red. She screams, high and broken.

They said there was a conflict. Word spread just after the kid died, after they dragged so many of them into these tents.

Faceless beings. That's what they call them. A couple of them made it through. Full artillery can barely scratch them. What chance does a rifle have?

Sweat salts my face.

Those damn soldiers—the ones we're treating—some of them are doping themselves with the blood of those things. Monsters. Zombies. Slendermen. Orcs. Some of the medics make jokes, but there's no laughter behind their teeth. The government orders them to do it. Inject it. Become it.

I push the thought away as I stagger outside.

"Stark!"

Another shout.

My name. The name given by my father and taught by my mother.

I hope they're okay.

I moved cities to save money. From Hamburg to Mannheim. Cheaper than Heidelberg. My parents wanted me to live near the university. I told them I didn't mind the half-hour commute.

And now I miss them. I truly do.

My blonde hair sticks to my sweaty forehead as I ignore the calls behind me.

Not my name anymore. The name of another doctor.

Schmidt.

Not Stark.

My fingers clench around the metal tent frame. For a moment, I feel its cold solidity anchoring me. Then I let go, and my boots land in a pool of blood that splashes up my trousers.

I vomit.

Bread and watery soup from this morning splash onto the churned mud. My body convulses.

When I wipe my mouth, I see the kid.

He's closer now. Sitting against the grass in an unnatural slump, eyes open to nothing. Other bodies are scattered beside him. Men. Women. All tangled together, as though death couldn't be bothered to keep them apart.

But they aren't too many compared to the other piles of death. My stomach settles for a moment, only to heave again. I retch until nothing remains but sour spit and emptiness. My shoes are slick with filth, caked in blood and bile. I blink too often, trying to clear my vision. My head tilts back as I rip off my glasses and tear away the mask.

I thought I could endure this.

I volunteered. I convinced myself I'd be useful. That I'd of any help.

It's been, what, two weeks? Nearly three since the day everything fell apart, the day we all decided to call the start of the apocalypse. A name so blunt it feels absurd, but no one bothers to argue.

I rub my eyes, pressing my fingertips into my lids until sparks dance behind them. They burn, dry as paper, while the low sun ignites every strand of my sand-blond hair. Dirty. Greasy. I haven't washed in days.

I drag my sleeve over my glasses, wiping the grime away in slow, mechanical strokes. Then I tilt my chin and squint at the sky, teeth bared in something like a snarl—but it's no smile. The sun glares down, blue instead of yellow, bright and pitiless.

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It looks cold. It burns hotter than anything I remember.

Artificial. Like everything else overhead.

Silhouettes of birds drift across the bright vault. At first glance they look serene, even beautiful, as if the world had never ended. But even those shapes are wrong. Their wingspans are monstrous, bigger than any bird should be. Airplanes, more than animals.

The world has changed.

My breath catches, hitching in my chest. My skin crawls with phantom itches. I scan the sky and spot the rifts: massive black holes torn in the firmament. From here they look small—just cracks. But I know those voids are kilometers wide.

I still can't truly accept it. None of us can. It's too big, too wrong. But in the end, I don't have a choice.

My ears ring, the tinnitus slowly fading, leaving only the distant roar of chaos. I let out a slow, shuddering breath.

Then the alarm sounds.

Not the shouted warning of a medic or a soldier. Not the panic of another breach in the line.

The alarm.

Nationwide.

It blares from megaphones bolted to poles, rattling tents, vibrating through my ribs like the end of the world itself. And that's exactly what it is.

I've heard this sound only once before. A test, years ago, back in school. We'd laughed about it then. Made jokes about World War III. Pretended it was nothing.

It wasn't nothing.

Back then was the past. Now is the present.

And the present is an apocalypse.

Out there is death. Not a clean, hot flash from a nuclear bomb. No tidy shadow burned into a wall. No wind to scatter our atoms like ashes.

This is hell.

Those orange giants that rip us apart like insects. Nothing in our arsenal can stop them. Not rifles, not tanks, not even artillery. Only nuclear bombs—if we're willing to burn ourselves to stop them.

I see the fear on every face around me. Mine included.

Heidelberg never even sounded the alarm the first day those things fell on us. No warning. They just came. Either striding from the forest like nightmares, or dropping straight from those holes in the sky.

I've heard about the falling stones—massive plates of rock that crashed down out of nowhere. Crushed houses. Destroyed streets. Even churned the Baltic Sea into a frothing mess. Floods, big and small, sweeping away entire neighborhoods. Internationally, it must be worse.

Phones don't work. Radios are silent. Television is static. All we know is rumor, carried by the people who managed to flee.

The megaphones screech so loudly my teeth ache. Then, suddenly, silence.

It's worse than the sound.

Then comes the screaming.

Soldiers surge past me in a tide of panic and determination. Camouflage uniforms drenched in blood, red and blue alike. Their rifles are the size of their torsos, some still steaming. I see the badge on their chests: black, red, and gold. My country. Germany.

But some of them bear other stains. Drips of green blood.

The High-Blooded.

Those who have injected the monsters' blood. Their veins burn with alien strength. Devil Hunters, some call them. Monsters fighting monsters. Names shift with every district, every slang.

They run in disciplined lines, past me, past the corpses littering the grass.

I stand frozen.

My legs refuse to move.

Someone slams into me, an assistant from my team, and I topple to the ground. He doesn't even look back, just keeps running with the herd.

They leave the wounded behind.

They leave the screaming behind.

I turn, still on my knees, and see the chaos. Nurses and doctors sprint from tent to tent, abandoning patients mid-suture. Civilians wail. Blood spatters canvas walls.

I spot an old man, bandages wrapped tight around his bald head. He tries to crawl to safety, dragging himself from one tent to the next, but the crowd tramples him without even noticing.

And I follow him.

Not by choice.

They trample me too.

Boots strike my ribs. Dig into my spine. Grind my palms into the muck. I am nothing but another obstacle. A wall to be kicked down.

Stark.

My name.

Given by father. Taught by mother.

My family's name. Supposed to mean strong.

I turn my head and meet the old man's eyes.

They're wide with terror.

I see myself in them.

I am not strong. I am weak.

I am the shame that belongs to the dust of this world.

The stampede moves on.

Finally, I can breathe.

My face lies in the mud, bruised, wet, blood mixing with the dirt. My glasses are shattered, shards lost somewhere in the muck or ground into dust under someone's boot. I push myself up with both hands, muscles screaming as I stagger to my feet, but another surge of bodies crashes into me.

I'd thought there weren't so many of us. We were supposed to be isolated here, stationed on this outcrop above the castle—a fallback away from the main population in the old town across the lake and bridge. But they just keep coming. More desperate, terrified people pour in, shoulder to shoulder, knee-deep in chaos.

I try to focus. I'm trained to focus. I'm a doctor—would be a doctor—but none of that matters now.

My eyes find him.

The old man is sprawled face-first in the mud. His cheeks are swollen, smeared with streaks of blood running from his gray hair and dripping onto the old stones beneath us. He tries to move. I watch him tremble as he lifts a veiny, skeletal hand, fingers quivering with pleading hope.

He believes—God help him—that I will save him. That I'll grab him, pull him to safety, carry him down into the bunkers.

It's insane.

Those bunkers weren't even here before 2040. The world nearly burned then. Only because of that brush with annihilation did they bother building these. Without them, our country would be ashes. The world would be ashes. It's already ruined anyway—just a dying star pretending to shine.

Our eyes lock. His gray eyes are clouded but begging. Wrinkles fold deeper as he tries to speak. He can't. Tears cut paths through the mud on his face. He is begging me.

My legs move. One step toward him. I hear his hope in the way he sobs.

"ORANGES!"

Someone screams it—raw, primal, torn from their lungs.

Then the mass surges.

It takes less than two seconds.

I could have grabbed him. Could have lifted him.

But they trample him instead.

His cries vanish under the stampede of boots, ragged breaths, and panicked screams that stretch into the distance.

And I run.

Now I can run. Now that he's gone.

I want to hate myself for this. I want to be the man who stood there and pulled him free, who risked everything in a noble sacrifice. But I'm not. I'm just a student, a doctor—an unarmed man with no training for this.

I want to live.

If I'd moved a moment sooner, if I'd just reacted instead of freezing, maybe I could have taken him with me. But I was afraid. I am afraid.

The fear of dying crawls over my skin, nestles under my ribs, whispers that survival is the only virtue worth having.

I run.

And I hate myself for it.

But I keep running.

Others run with me, just as selfish, just as desperate. A herd of survivors pretending not to see the ones falling underfoot. I feel something give under my boot, a wet crack—an arm, maybe. I don't look down.

I just keep going.

But his face haunts me.

It's my father's face.

I'm running from that, too.

And even while my legs pound and my lungs burn, I remember other things. Home. Family. My mother, humming over a pot in our kitchen, asking if I want another portion of her lumpy but heartfelt stew. My sister hitting me on the arm, grinning with mischief. My father scolding me for missing a grade I should have aced.

I want that back.

I want to sit at that old table and eat an uncaring dinner with them.

I want to live.

Gunshots crack.

I don't even realize how far I've come until the world hardens beneath my feet. Concrete replaces mud. The bunker entrance yawns ahead—angled walls sinking deep into the ground, the blue light of the dying sun dimming under the roof.

The air cools instantly.

I can see vividly for a second, though my glasses are gone, lost somewhere behind me.

I turn back.

And the light disappears.

I blink. Something bizarre crosses my mind—a memory of spaghetti-eis, ice cream shaped like pasta, the cold strawberry sauce.

I'm a fool.

I thought I could be a hero just a few weeks ago. I signed on for medical triage, thinking I'd save lives here at this fallback site. For a while, I did. A few injuries, some deaths, but manageable. We all pretended it was safe.

Now I stand at the bunker threshold thinking about ice cream.

My eyes catch movement overhead.

The sky splits open again.

Another chunk of the heavens breaks free—this one bigger than the last, jagged and dark like a mountain crumbling in slow motion. It accelerates as it falls, cutting off the last of the sun, plunging us into shadow.

I see it just before it hits.

An orange.

Ork, some call them.

Over two meters tall, broad as two men, muscles bulging under scarred hide. He's roaring.

The stone comes down right on his head.

And on the heads of others. Our people. Limbs rip free as the slab strikes, blood and mud spraying.

The soldiers beside me open fire wildly.

Another soldier grabs me by the coat and hurls me deeper into the bunker.

The impact above sends a pressure wave roaring through the entrance.

I'm thrown onto my back, skidding over concrete, ears ringing so hard I'm sure they're bleeding.

I don't hear the gunshots anymore.

I don't hear anything.

Just the thunder of my own heart as the shockwave sucks the air out of my lungs.

Dust chokes me. My eyes water until tears stream into my mouth, turning the grit to mud on my tongue.

I lie there, staring at the bunker ceiling.

I don't move.

I should move.

I should get up and help someone.

But I can't.

I see his face again. The old man in the mud.

He could have been my father. He probably is someone's father.

Because that's what he was, even without a hospital bed, even without a chart.

A wry smile twists my lips.

It's not amusement.

It's self-disgust, raw and poisonous.

I can't hear anything but the blood in my head.

Seconds pass.

Dozens of them.

Finally, someone moves.

A young woman steps in front of the bunker light, casting her shadow over me like the sun did in better times. She's breathing heavily but evenly. She stares down at me, checking if I'm alive, eyes scanning mine with the cold precision of someone who's seen too many corpses today.

She says nothing.

She just turns and walks away.

I cough, spitting out dust. My forehead drips sweat. My ears throb with phantom sound, like the ocean in a seashell.

It hurts.

But I'm alive.

That thought, the only one that makes sense, the only one that cuts through the chaos, settles in my mind.

I live.

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