The silence after the first scream didn't last.
I made my decision—I had to find the others. My peers. My classmates. Familiar faces in this foreign land of chaos. Even if I didn't know them all well, they were still my people. We had come here together. And somehow, I couldn't just abandon them.
The hallways once pristine and echoing with the shuffles of tourists now resonated with shrieks of terror, the clang of steel, and the sound of glass shattering underfoot. I moved through the wreckage of toppled benches and shattered displays, crunching ancient fragments under my sneakers, the air thick with dust and something coppery. Blood, maybe.
I turned a corner—too sharp, too fast—and nearly tripped over a body.
A man. His back carved open, red painting the marble like ink spilled on paper. His eyes were still open, wide, glassy. I gagged, stumbling back, nearly slipping.
A blur of motion.
From the shadow of a cracked pillar, an obsidian-armored knight emerged. The same kind I had seen earlier. It didn't hesitate. It raised its sword high and swung it for my neck.
Instinct took over.
I ducked, the blade slicing through air just inches above my head. I fell hard onto my back, scrambling like a kicked crab, palms scraping on the floor. The knight advanced, cold and unfeeling, steps deliberate.
Then someone fell between us.
A girl. Brown hair. A tourist badge still clipped to her shirt. She must've tripped from a hallway I hadn't noticed. Her eyes locked onto mine.
"Please... help me," she whispered, eyes wide in terror.
I didn't move.
I couldn't.
The knight didn't hesitate. Its blade came down. Once. Twice.
The screams didn't last long.
I don't remember how long I sat there. My body had backed itself into a wall, legs limp, mouth dry. My heartbeat drowned out everything else. She died right in front of me. Because of me. Because she was there and I wasn't.
It could've been me.
It should've been me.
But it wasn't.
I ran.
Room after room blurred into chaos—fountains of fire from broken displays, remnants of history twisted into death traps. A hanging chariot crushed a man below it. A long-forgotten lion statue snarled and lunged at a boy, dragging him behind a pedestal. Red runes glowed on every creature, every reanimated relic. They pulsed like heartbeats, rhythmic and wrong.
My stomach turned again and again, until bile finally rose. I emptied it beside a shattered model of an ancient village. The smell didn't help. I dry-heaved and wiped my mouth with my sleeve, guilt sitting heavier than nausea.
I passed through a room of broken armor, then into the extinct animal section. That's when I saw them.
A group of students. My classmates.
They were backed into a corner, swinging makeshift weapons—sticks, metal poles, anything they could grab—against creatures that should've never moved again. A saber-toothed cat, jaw unhinged and eyes glowing red, lunged at them, its paws skidding on the marble.
I froze. My body trembled. The girl's voice echoed in my mind—Please... help me.
Was I supposed to do something now? Could I? What if I became like her? Just another body. Just another smear on the floor.
Then, from the far side of the room, a roar.
Not from the beasts. But a man.
A security guard—broad-shouldered and fearless—charged in with a sword that looked like it belonged in the display rather than his hands. He swung at the nearest creature with skill that didn't belong to a museum worker. He yelled, rallying the students.
Watching him... watching someone do something—it snapped me out of it.
My fingers curled into fists. My legs stopped shaking. If someone could stand in the face of monsters and act...
Then maybe, so could I.
I grabbed a jagged metal pole from the floor. It wasn't much. But it was something.
And for once, I moved toward the danger.