Cotard's syndrome! I guessed it, but I didn't want to admit it. I've been in a simir mind before. In the mind of a psychopath!

  The world exploded into a pile of slime and rot. I found myself in a pce where reality bends and tears apart, forming an inhuman fabric of horror. The ndscape in front of me was alive, like a massive organ whose rhythm beats in unison with cracks tearing through space. Like I was being inside an endless giant. The sour smell of decomposition and sweet, as if sugar mixed with blood were melting in the air. This pce wasn't just as decent pces should be - it breathed and stirred according to its own ws.

  Animal eyes bored into me from the inhabitants of this amalgam animal hell. Predatory teeth, intertwined paws, distorted muzzles - all this merged into monstrous creatures that hissed and writhed in the pulsating darkness. Blood flowed through their bodies, as if life itself were tearing through their pores, creating bloody rivulets. They mingled with the inner flesh, like old moisture that had not dried out over decades, but had only continued to grow in the shade.

  Some of these creatures were moving along the walls. Their cws dug into the soft meat of the world. Their every step was a guttural, vicious rustle, and the air rang as they rubbed against the biomass, merging into a single vile biome. And I was a part of it all.

  Before I knew it, a wave of bck wings covered me. Crows with dog heads. They twitched and leapt with broken paws and wings. Every movement, every leap was unnatural, unbearable to the eyes.

  I pulled out my revolvers without thinking and started shooting. Bullets exploded in their bodies, destroying bones and feathers, but they still continued to jump like possessed, squeaking their paws on the disgusting, wet ground.

  Suddenly, a crow-headed dog jumped out from under my feet, its legs also broken. I pushed it away with my foot and ran without turning around. In front of me appeared the body of a skinny raccoon with a rabid fox head with a huge mouth stretched to the back of its head that looked like it wanted to swallow the whole meaty world. Its gaze pierced through me, its body twitching like a toy tossed in a corner.

  I rushed past, but the world didn't stop moving in its nightmarish dynamism. The bridge I found myself on wasn't just any bridge. It was made of veins and hung over an abyss, pulling me into its dark depths. I sped up, hearing everything around me begin to tear as the destruction raced toward me.

  I lurched forward. The white fabric beneath my feet grew weaker and more estic. At times, it felt like the bridge had disappeared beneath me and I had fallen. My legs were almost unstable at the st few steps towards the end of the bridge. I jumped, managing to grab the edge. As soon as I nded in this pce, a string of the bridge burst behind me and the abyss cimed its harvest.

  I stood in this tower of meat and gristle, feeling its living walls moving around me. The darkness shrank, and every rustle in the corner seemed a harbinger of a new threat. I breathed heavily, trying to guess what awaited me around the next corner, but I wasn't ready.

  Teeth gnashing, spping the ground as if someone had just crawled out of the water. Something was coming. I instinctively drew my revolvers, but before I could prepare myself, the creature slipped out of the shadows.

  It was huge. The size of a bear, but damn it, it wasn't a bear. It was a nightmare assembled from torn up bad ideas. It was crawling, and its paws were bending in all directions except natural ones. And they moved with a dey, as if its skeleton stepped first and then the bones caught up with the meat. Its head was the upturned head of a cat, gssy eyes staring at me with deep displeasure, with a fury no human could understand. Aside from gnashing its teeth, did not open - it was coming apart like an old seam, and a wheeze like dripping grease oozed from inside.

  I fired, the bullet sinking into the flesh as if he were made of mud. Just then, betedly, a wound opened in that spot. It was as flexible as reality itself, and the bullets dissolved into its body, their new home from this creeping nightmare.

  I took a step back. It didn't lose speed. One of its paws swept into the air, and I felt everything around me shrink. I managed to jump aside, barely dodging a blow that could have sent me into eternity.

  But it didn't slow down. Its eyes were full of hatred. I fired again, aiming for the neck, but this beast was too fast. At that moment, its paw pierced the air and struck me in the chest with a terrible ctter. I felt a gss crack, but despite the pain I did not fall. I recoiled, clutching my revolvers to my chest. The smoke from them wrapped around me like clouds around a mountaintop. This creaking creature was coming toward me.

  I fired countless more shots. This time the bullets were accurate. I smmed them into its legs, and the creature tangled miserably in its limbs. But I didn't give it time. In one swift movement, I leaped to its back, pressed the barrel of Zakhar into its spine, and fired. The creature exploded into pieces, clots of meat and blood slurping into the air. It's hellish outside, a light bloody rain.

  I stood over the mess as it settled into decay, becoming part of this pce as if it had never existed apart from it. The st shards of the creature fall wetly to the ground. But I knew one thing: I had won. I had survived. I lived, just like the world.

  But something was keeping me in suspense. If Henry had consciously killed his father, there would be people here. The guilt of killing one's own kind, especially patricide, is far greater than killing our lesser brethren. And here it's just twisted, mangled animal bodies.

  I sighed, feeling my lungs fill with a vile stench. It made sense to leave this nightmare behind. I took a step, and the world shuddered as if it sensed my intention. A moment ter, I realized: this mind wouldn't let me go. I could break free by force. But after the butler went a little insane because of me... No. Repeating that with a boy was not my style. Even with such a sick bastard.

  I had to find a way out. By the rules of this pce. I went forward, walking along the twisting ground. A passage opened right in front of me, dark, pulsing, contracting coherently like the giant esophagus of this mad organism.

  Beyond the passage, a byrinth awaited me. Walls of flesh, mold, and rot piled upward, lost in the darkness. Their texture was alive: their skin shuddered at the slightest touch, in pces it was covered in fur, in some pces it was smooth as a snake's, in other pces it trembled like muscles twisted outward. Eyes followed me, blinking, watching. Cws twitched occasionally, as if trying to grab air. Somewhere beneath the thin yer of flesh I could see hearts beating, redundant, unnecessary, but still working.

  I went through this maze, step by step, each movement making it harder and harder for me to breathe. There was no logic here, no human forms. I searched for a way out, but instead found myself falling into dead ends of fleshy mass again and again. I stopped for a moment, giving myself a break. This pce of flesh and meat, was filling me to the brim. The throbbing of the walls, the rustles, the moans that merged into one overall cacophony.

  I pulled out Danil, clutched it in my hand, and took aim at the nearest wall. The bullets exploded in the flesh, leaving deep holes from which bck liquid immediately began to flow, hissing and eating away at everything around it. But the walls didn't stop. They shrank, curved and hunched like a whole beast ready to respond to an attack. I pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced the meat again.

  Desperate as Jonah in the belly of a whale, if he had guns, I fired without stopping. My movements became faster than my thoughts. I was tearing up the world, the bullets ripped holes in the flesh, the bck slurry sizzled. I kept firing. Bones cracked, meat tore. Closer, farther, fire and pain. I could hear the bones bursting, like hopes, the living structures being torn apart. But here, at the end of the corridor, I saw a white void.

  It beckoned to me, promising that I was about to get out. This was no ordinary exit. It was pure emptiness. Pure nothingness. A pce where there is no flesh, where reality does not exist. I stepped into it. And as soon as I crossed the threshold, everything disappeared. In the blink of an eye, I slipped out like light from the night and into the real world.