"Shit, that eye of yours really needs to be gone..." Seyfe muttered under his breath, the words a grim reflection of his situation. His gaze flicked nervously to the baby hidden in the basket behind him. He had to move, now.
The creature's eye pulsed, a sickening, wet blink, before its flesh around the socket began to twitch. It was regenerating. The horror that had been temporarily stunned by the surge of electricity was not dead—not yet. The remnants of the machine parts still twitched and hummed like they had a mind of their own, and the creature was reassembling itself.
Seyfe felt a cold wave of panic crash over him.
The creature was not going down so easily.
As the creature began to twitch and shift, trying to drag itself upright, Seyfe's mind raced. He couldn't let it get back on its feet—not with that damn eye still locked on him, unblinking and malevolent. Its presence, its awareness, was the last thing he needed in this hellscape.
Then, as if driven by instinct, an idea flickered in his mind—simple, raw, but potentially his only hope.
Fill the eyes with sand.
The thought came in a flash. The creature's eyes—those unnerving, pulsating, bloodshot orbs—were its vulnerability. Its senses were tied to them. If he could blind it, maybe, just maybe, he could buy himself enough time to escape, to find a way out of this nightmare.
Seyfe didn't waste a second. His hand shot to the ground, grabbing handfuls of sand with frenzied speed, the coarse grains slipping through his fingers as he desperately tossed them toward the creature's remaining eye.
The sand poured into the creature's eye like an endless tide, filling the socket with each handful, pushing its way into the fleshy, broken orifice.
The creature's reaction was immediate—its many eyes, the ones that hadn't been touched yet, twitched, its head jerking back in a confused, almost panicked motion. Its guttural growls grew louder, more frenzied, as the sand began to clog its senses, its very connection to the world around it.
It blinked, but the sand was already too deep, suffocating the eye, blocking its sight. The creature thrashed, a grotesque convulsion wracking its body as it tried to claw at its own face, but its movements were sluggish, disoriented.
Seyfe didn't stop. His hands trembled from exhaustion, from the weight of the danger still closing in, but he kept shoveling sand. Each grain felt like a second of life, a desperate chance to survive.
The creature's screeches were maddening, high-pitched and full of rage, but the sand continued to pour in. The more its eye became consumed, the more it struggled, its body contorting in ways that shouldn't have been possible, as if it were fighting against its own decaying nature.
For a brief moment, the creature's movements slowed. The once terrifyingly fluid strikes of its limbs became clumsy, disjointed, as though the sand had short-circuited its perception.
Seyfe could feel it—the creature was losing its hold on reality, losing its ability to sense him. He had to act fast, or it would figure out another way to hunt him down.
Seyfe's hands trembled as he shoveled more sand into the creature's eye, each handful feeling like a tiny victory. The screeching became more frantic, the creature's jerking movements growing more disjointed. For a fleeting moment, it seemed like Seyfe had succeeded—its senses were clouded, its movements slowing. But then, as he stepped back, exhausted and trying to catch his breath, something unsettling occurred.
The creature's body stilled.
Its many eyes blinked, twitching as if trying to realign themselves. But then—one of those eyes, the one Seyfe had filled with sand, pulsed unnaturally. It bulged, cracked, and split open, revealing something entirely unexpected: a deep, black, hollow core.
The realization hit him like a stone to the chest.
Only one of those hundreds of eyes was actually its own.
The rest, the countless others that lined its twisted body, were nothing more than hollow, lifeless imitations—mechanical parts, empty shells built to deceive, to confuse. The true essence, the true eye, lay hidden beneath all the layers of broken flesh and metal. And now, as Seyfe watched in growing horror, the creature's remaining eyes flared to life, their empty, cold stares locking onto him.
The real eye had been shielded this whole time, hidden beneath the false ones. And now that it had regained its focus, its true form seemed to awaken once again.
The creature's head jerked upward, its maw opening in a grotesque, wet gasp. The false eyes all blinked in unison, but the true one—a black, depthless void—focused on him with a terrifying intensity. The creature's body trembled, like it had just regained its power, its awareness, its ability to see.
The sand had only delayed it for a moment. It wasn't blind—it was more dangerous than ever.
The creature's roar split the air as it lunged toward Seyfe, its claws slicing through the air with reckless abandon. It was desperate—its body twisting and thrashing like a beast caught in a fevered frenzy, its singular, true eye glaring down at him with unholy hunger. The ground beneath them rumbled as the monster dragged itself forward, its claws scraping violently against the earth.
Seyfe's pulse raced as the creature's claws swiped again, the massive appendages cutting through the air with terrifying speed. Instinctively, Seyfe ducked, feeling the hairs on his neck rise as the claws swished past him, the sheer force of the strike stirring up dust and sand.
But in that moment, something clicked inside him.
His eyes darted across the creature's massive form, watching the way it moved, the way it dragged itself forward using its claws. The creature was powerful, yes, but there was a flaw—a gap in its defense. Its arms, though enormous and menacing, had no flexibility. There was no bending at the elbow, no ability to retract them. It could only swing forward, never back.
Seyfe's gaze sharpened. He understood now. The monster's reach was its greatest asset—but also its greatest weakness. If he could just get past that reach, get inside its swing, he could avoid the worst of its attack and strike back.
Without hesitation, Seyfe pushed forward, diving to the side as the creature's claws tore through the space he had just occupied. He could feel the air rush past him, the monster's limbs swiping dangerously close, but he was already moving. He had to stay within that range, where the creature's long, unyielding claws couldn't follow.
Seyfe moved with a fluidity born of pure survival instinct. He kept low to the ground, avoiding the monster's line of attack, and when the next swing came, he was already inside its arc, right beneath its swiping claws. He rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the creature's other claw as it raked across the ground where he had just been.
The monster screeched, frustrated, its eye narrowing in rage as it tried to turn toward him, its claws swinging again, again, and again. But Seyfe was already on the move, sliding underneath the creature's outstretched arm, close enough now to feel the heat from its decaying flesh.
The creature's body was massive, but its range was severely limited. Seyfe's calculated movements brought him to a spot just behind the creature's claws, where its reach couldn't extend. He was in a perfect position now to attack.
With his body poised, Seyfe's eyes locked onto the creature's true eye, hidden beneath the decaying layers of flesh. The monster's claws still swiped through the air, but Seyfe had already calculated his movements. His heart pounded in his chest, the rhythm syncing with the steady pulse of adrenaline that coursed through him. This was it—his one chance.
The creature's body was massive, but its real eye, the only one that mattered now, was exposed. It pulsed, glistening with malice and hunger, that dark, endless void staring straight through him, as though it could read his every move.
Seyfe's muscles tensed, his breath coming in sharp gasps. The creature's monstrous form blocked out most of the world around him, but for a brief moment, it felt as though time itself had slowed. He couldn't afford to hesitate.
He clenched his fists, his hands raw and covered in blood from the earlier struggle, but there was no time to feel the pain. His fingers dug into the sand, the grit burning his palms as he took his final step.
In a flash, he surged forward, his body moving with all the desperation and fury he could muster. The creature's claws slashed at him, but he didn't flinch. He dove under its strike, landing just below the mass of rotting flesh where the real eye lay.
The creature, realizing too late that he was slipping past its deadly range, howled in frustration, its body convulsing as its claws scraped against the ground in a final, futile attempt to reach him.
But Seyfe was already there.
With a fierce roar of his own, he raised his clenched fist and rammed it into the exposed, darkened eye. His fist made contact with the soft, grotesque mass of the creature's true eye with a sickening squish—the sound of flesh giving way to raw power.
The creature screamed, a horrified, guttural cry as Seyfe's fist buried itself into the soft, jelly-like interior of the eye. The pressure built with each second, the darkness of the eye seeming to push against his hand, but he didn't stop. He forced his fist deeper, twisting and pulling at the tendrils of the eye, refusing to let go.
The creature's body shuddered violently, its remaining false eyes bulging and twitching in agony as the real eye was crushed, obliterated beneath the force of Seyfe's strike.
The screeching grew louder, almost deafening, until with a final, ear-piercing wail, the creature's body spasmed violently. The black void of its true eye erupted, spilling thick, black ichor into the air like a geyser. The once mighty creature collapsed to the ground, its limbs twitching and jerking as the last of its life drained away.