Still, tray in wings, he turned from the hearth to the door, took a first step — and screamed.
A swarm of monstrous arachnids spilled from the ceiling, grotesque limbs unravelling as they lunged toward him.
Instinct seized him. He staggered back and threw up his wings. The tray slammed into his chest. Bowls overturned. Scalding stew poured down his front, soaking into his clothes, burning straight through to his skin. His back hit the left iron pot, a sickening hiss of flesh against metal. White-hot agony erupted through him, a shockwave of pain. Yu reeled and his left wing jerked against the burning surface, which was the only thing that kept him from falling backwards into the flames. The heavy iron pot wobbled and tipped, sloshing a wave of boiling broth over its rim.
Pain.
Blinding, raw, senseless pain.
The liquid soaked into his feathers, scalding deep into his skin. The stench of burning flesh exploded into the air. Yu shoved forward to escape —
And for the briefest of seconds, he saw himself. Not from within. From across the kitchen. Stumbling. Falling, his voice tearing from his throat as he crashed to the ground. He barely heard the scream before he was the one screaming again, before he collapsed onto the floor.
Above him, they loomed. Twisting, writhing limbs. Pincers. Hulking, multi-limbed forms descending —
Yu choked on terror. Panic, as intense as all the pain, forced him to look. But there were no monsters, no beasts, no arachnids. Nothing. Nothing but a painting, a massive canvas mounted above the cabinets.
A battlefield drowned in horror. Humanoid figures, clawing and twisting, their forms devoured beneath a horde of grotesque, many-limbed creatures — grand, distorted arachnids. The brushstrokes were too vivid, too excruciatingly lifelike. In his half-starved haze, they had seemed to spill from the wall.
Yu writhed on the floor, gasping, choking on pain.
The monsters were not real. They had never moved.
But for a moment, they had.
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