[Ding! Hidden mission triggered: Fog City Survival]

[Accept?]

[Default: Accepted!]

[Mission: Stay alive with her inside the fog-shrouded city.]

The warning flashed through Nana Toki’s head like a flurry of jagged runes, cold sparks in a winter sky. Panic surged first—hot, tight—then she grabbed Luo Shanshan’s dazed hand and bolted.

“Don’t freeze! Run!”

She hadn’t expected the fog to fall like a sudden night. No chance to brace. No breath to plan.

System: “...”

I gave you more than ten days to prepare. You’re the one who wasted it.

Shut it, trash System.

They burst out before the self-serve crowd boiled over. Nana hauled Luo Shanshan toward the exit, feet drumming like rain on tin.

But.

The street hit them like a thunderclap—noise everywhere. Curses and pleas tangled into a single torn net. It looked like the world’s last hour had arrived, a torn banner over a dying city.

“Host, I advise you to give up. At your current pace, you won’t outrun this.”

The System’s voice scraped inside her skull, listing details like cold rain on stone. “The black fog spreads fast. It’ll blanket the entire city within minutes. Ahead, the main roads are already jammed. Host—”

Shut up.

Irritation crawled under her skin ever since the fog rolled in, a burr caught in cloth. The fog felt wrong, like a nest of snakes she couldn’t see.

She glanced at Luo Shanshan—face snow-pale, eyes lost—then bit down hard, swung them around, and ran toward the deepening fog instead of the crowd. Into the dark, like a diver choosing the lake over the stampede.

Yes, it was madness. She knew. The crowd ahead blocked like a wall of maddened beasts, all claws and fear. Even a god wouldn’t squeeze through.

Shadows heaved black-on-black along the avenue. People pressed together in a chaotic mass, like a herd without herd law. Thin bodies got shoved down, then churned underfoot—meat into mud, screams into static.

The cries braided and dragged on, a torn rope that wouldn’t snap. Blood-scent bloomed from the center of the street, metallic and sharp, like rusted iron in a storm.

The stink and the anguish didn’t cool anyone’s head. Panic burned hotter, a wildfire driven by survival. In moments, some grabbed anything with weight—pipes, stools, broken glass—and smashed their way free.

Luo Shanshan had never seen anything like this. Her face turned paper-white, terror soaking her bones. This didn’t look like the human world. It looked like a gate to hell yawning open.

“Xi… Xixi?”

When her senses finally staggered back, her legs were already running on their own, like a wind-up toy wound too tight.

Fog licked in from the edges of the street, a gray tide rolling up the shore. Visibility shrank to less than twenty meters, the world trimmed into a small, dark room. Screams pricked the air like fine needles, tapping nerves, tapping minds inside the shroud.

The fog was a thin black veil lowering over the city, a funeral cloth pulled slow.

And.

Something in it twisted the world’s pulse. Electrical hum died where the fog draped; every device fell silent, glass-eyed and useless.

On the far side of the road, Nana never slowed. She tugged Luo Shanshan into a commercial tower, the kind with glossy floors and empty echoes.

They ran deeper, toward the fog’s heart. It was quieter here. Only a handful of old folks and kids huddled on the tiles, shaking like autumn leaves, sobbing in thin threads and rough bursts.

“Xi—”

“Shh. Don’t talk.”

Nana pressed a hand over Luo Shanshan’s mouth, voice flat as stone. “Quiet.”

In a power-dead dusk, silence is camouflage. Noise is an invitation.

How long?

She asked the System in her head, like tossing a pebble into a dark well.

Less than five minutes.

The answer came fast, clipped, like a dispatch note under sirens. No time for dithering.

If it were her alone, three minutes felt generous. She could ghost between gaps like smoke. But now, she had Luo Shanshan—a weight tied to an ankle in rising water.

In a first-floor corner, Nana looked at the girl beside her. A liability, small and shaking. Panic etched plainly across her face, fear in every tremor.

Bring her, and survival and death nearly rhyme.

Then leave her. She’s data. When this plane ends, she’s gone. Out of sight, out of mind.

“Xi… Xixi.”

Just as Nana weighed dumping everything and going solo, Luo Shanshan turned toward her. That white face twisted into a smile uglier than crying, brittle as frost.

She squeezed Nana’s hand hard, voice trembling like a plucked string. “Xixi, don’t be scared. I’ll protect you.”

Nana felt the fear juddering through those fingers, a frightened bird caged in bones. Ordinary girl. Soft heart, thin shell. Acting brave in front of her.

Infuriating.

“Your smile’s awful.”

Nana turned away. “It’s gross.”

Five minutes passed in a blink, the second hand in a sprint.

Nana dragged Luo Shanshan into a shop within the tower and dressed her in thick, layered clothes, like wrapping a fledgling against frost.

“Stay in here.”

She shoved Luo Shanshan—and a kitchen cleaver—into a long locker, metal cold as river stones. The door shut with a dull thump. “No coming out without my say. No sound. Got it?”

Inside, Luo Shanshan clutched the cleaver with both hands, knuckles chalk-white, and nodded like a woodpecker afraid of its tree.

“I’m not joking. No matter what you hear outside—voices, footsteps, screams—do not open this door, and do not make a sound. Got it?”

Through the locker seam, Nana stuffed in several packs of compressed biscuits, dry rations like bricks of survival. She repeated herself, words heavy, nailed in place.

“U-understood.”

Curled small in the locker’s belly, Luo Shanshan answered in a squeak. Then she jolted, leaned up to the small window. “What about you, Xixi?”

“Me? I’m hiding in the locker right next to you.”

Nana’s face stayed blank, calm like a lake at dusk.

“But—”

“No but. Shut up.”

Annoyance snapped taut. Nana yanked a yellow talisman paper from her pocket and slapped it over the locker’s little window. The sound popped sharp. Luo Shanshan flinched deeper inside.

“When the fog lifts, I’ll let you out. Before that, be quiet.”

She finished and walked away, footsteps hushed, a shadow slipping deeper into shadow.

Behind the paper veil, Luo Shanshan couldn’t see a thing. She swallowed fear and did as told, breathing small, hugging the cleaver, small animal in a burrow.

“Didn’t expect you to have a scrap of humanity beyond your Host metrics.”

The System drifted with Nana toward the other side of the supermarket, voice low as a whispering draft. “You said she was just a string of data. And here you are, saving her.”

So, on some level, Host is… tsundere.

“Tsundere my—”

Nana’s face darkened like a storm front. If not for this damned hidden mission, I wouldn’t be saving data.

I’m doing it for those karma points.

Yes, yes. You’re always right.

The System hummed along, like a shrug made of sound. Host is doing it for the points.

So please survive the fog now.

Nana ground her teeth. This damned System begged for a beating.

On the other side.

Jiang Xinli, separated from Bei Yuan, crouched alone in a shop, small as a mouse under a shelf. Silence pooled around her, thick as tar.

She wanted to peek out, but the dark pressed in like a closed palm. Her phone showed no signal—just a dead star in her hand.

Why now? Why kill the signal now?

She folded into a corner, clutching the useless phone, eyes burning. Today was supposed to be a date with Bei Yuan—well, a one-sided date—but the fog fell like a curtain mid-scene.

Milk tea half-bought, plans half-lived. Now the date was gone. Bei Yuan, gone. Her breath, snagged.

What now…

She leaned against the wall, cheek to cool concrete, and risked a half-head peek. The world outside lay still as a stopped clock. Goods scattered everywhere—snacks spilled like grain, racks knocked crooked like broken ribs. Blood-scent hung heavy, iron and rot.

It wasn’t truly empty. Bodies lay beyond the shop, people beaten and broken, breath scraping thin as old paper. Conflict had chewed them and spit them out wet.

She’d survived one fog before. Experience hardened her heart. No pity. Save yourself first, or you save no one.

And what if another madwoman like Yu Xi showed up? Where would she even cry?

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh…

A cold wind threaded the shop like ice fingers, raising goosebumps across her skin.

Dread crawled up from her soles to her skull, a chill tide.

Crack, crack… crack… crack-crack…

The sound was bone on bone, clean and wrong. Jiang Xinli craned her half-head out again, curiosity strangling caution.

Outside the shop, the dead rose.

They stood in jerking, unnatural angles, like puppets yanked by strings. Their mouths gaped, low “oooh”s leaking like the moan of old pipes.

Crack… crack… crack-crack…

They tilted their heads back, lips parting wider, a swallow-sound deepening as if the night itself was gulping.

In the dark, Jiang Xinli saw a thin arm—no thicker than bare bone—slowly reach out from inside a gaping mouth. It slid free like something birthing itself through meat.

Then.

Slowly, slowly—head, torso, lower body—

Pff… squelch… hissssss…

With each inch of emerging flesh, jaws stretched beyond any human limit, skin straining, ligaments singing. The crackle of fracturing bone played in waves, a grotesque lullaby for something new.

Wet fluid spattered, not quite blood, not quite anything she’d met before. The stench rose in a brutal rush, sharp and rotten, drowning the street’s iron scent in one foul tide.