The beginning of everything

**In the name of God\, let’s begin 🙂**

The sky was completely clear when Reeman stepped out of the store, the heavy plastic bags cutting into her slender fingers. Suddenly... daylight twisted into dusk after she ran into her elderly neighbor, who asked how she was doing. She lifted her head toward the sky—only to see black clouds stretching like convulsing fingers, grazing the rooftops.

*"But... how? The sun was shining just minutes ago..."* she whispered\, feeling a strange chill seep into her bones. Her hands trembled\, and one of the bags slipped. Milk spilled onto the pavement—white against black—like a silent scream.

Then she saw them.

Every passerby had *two shadows*:

- A normal one beneath their feet\,

- And another\, pitch-black\, standing *behind* them\, as if manipulating them.

Reeman began to shiver. Nearby, a small child played with a ball. His innocent laughter sliced through the silence of horror. She tried to scream at him, but her voice trapped itself in her throat. Then...

He **exploded**.

It wasn’t a normal explosion. His tiny body vaporized into a mist of red, like a water balloon bursting under the sun. The black shadow behind him stretched out a grinning mouth—suddenly, grotesquely—before licking the blood from the air with tendrils like soft tongues.

*"This... this is impossible..."*

But the horror didn’t end.

The black clouds began to move, and with every shift:

- An old man melted like wax\,

- A young woman flipped upside down\, her bones snapping inside her\,

- Two playing children fused together as if their bodies had melted and rotted.

She **ran**.

Shopping bags flew behind her. She heard explosions\, screams\, and then... *laughter*? Yes—a mad\, gleeful laughter tangled with the sounds of death.

*"Mom... I want my mom..."*

But the image of her mother in her mind froze her blood more than the carnage around her:

*"If you were a normal child\, I wouldn’t have to punish you like this!"*

*"Look at your brother... why can’t you be like him?"*

She nearly stopped. Death surrounded her... but her body’s instinct to survive pushed her forward.

*"No... I can’t give up. I don’t want to die!"*

Suddenly, the sewer tunnel was in front of her. She slipped inside, her ankle wrenching with pain. Darkness swallowed her.

**Silence.**

She looked back...

The shadows had stopped at the entrance, as if afraid of something inside the tunnel.

*"Am... am I safe here?"*

*"I wish I had brought my pen... At least Fox would’ve been with me—I’d have healed faster."*

She sat sobbing in the dark, her body shaking like an autumn leaf. She fumbled for her phone, but her frozen fingers couldn’t press the numbers.

*"The police... they won’t believe me. They didn’t before—why would they now?"*

Memories stabbed like knives:

- The school security officer laughing when she told him about the shadows she saw behind everyone who died after she saw them.

- Her mother screaming: *"Stop with your shameful lies!"*

- *"You’re a disgrace to this family!"*

- *"You’re utterly insane!"*

Deep in the dark tunnel, her blood mixing with sewer water from her wounds, she thought:

*"I have to get out... I have to go back."*

This is Reeman

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