“Something’s going on out there.” Marcus paced around where he was for a brief moment.

  “What’s wrong? What did you hear?” Elvin asked.

  “Something abnormal.” Marcus rushed over to the altar and took two talismans out of the pouch, leaving all the rest to his father: “Stay here. I’ll go check it out. There should be a dle uhe kit sink, light it up.”

  “Wait!” Before his father could stop him, Marcus already opened up the front door and slid out, log the door behind him.

  Some kind of dark fog was lingering in the space outside, so much so that Marcus could barely see the sky and the mooiced a familiar, slightly salty smell as well, along with the humid air.

  A human shaped shadow stood in a small distan front of him. Hunched baarrow shoulders, right arm missing the entire forearm, and both legs were missing several big ks of flesh, revealing some of the bones. It was fag the door, appearing to be either unmoving, and banging its head against the door. But, either because it did not it, or the force of its motion was too light, he did not hear anything from the shadow’s as.

  Marcus lightened and shortened his steps. The shadow did not notice him, and was still standing in front of the door to his neighbor’s door, bumping his head against the door. With a smaller distance, he could see that the shadow’s actually did not really make tact with the door, but stopped at a very small distance every time. And within this distance, Marcus made out what the shadow looked like - an old man, in ragged clothes, missing a shoe and had a pstic bracelet on his right ankle. Marcus raised his eyebrows while looking at this old man’s ankle, for it was standing but on its toes, even though it had only three and a half toes left.

  No - the shadow was indeed making tact with the door - just not with its “flesh”. There was a visible yer of dark fog trated around the top of the shadow’s head and its shoulders. And everytime the shadow bumped its head against the door, what made tact was the body of fog on its head, not the humanly looking part of its head.

  With his Qi trated oips of his right index and middle fingers, and with one paper talisman tucked between them, Marcus stomped the ground with his left foot and shot at the shadow like a onball. His right hand thrusting forward, like a glowing sword.

  The shadow turo Marcus and roared. Dark smoke came out of its mouth and two eye sockets with yellow and green slime inside. Marcus did not fret, as the tips of his fingers struck right at the back of the shadow.

  Marcus pushed his Qi one more time to protect himself from the dark fog, while keeping his eyes and fingers locked onto the space behind the shadow.

  The fog was cold a, Marcus’ clothes became moldy, rotten and even crumbled with each sed of prolonged tact. He was worried, but did not hesitate as he kept thrusting his fingers forward.

  Another human-shaped shadow made of dark energy maed a out a loud screech. The folded talisman lit up, as the sensation of poking into something solid but slightly spongy substance registered with Marcus. He pushed his Qi harder, bsting it into the body of the shadow in full force.

  The shadow on the old man’s back screamed again. The fmes from Marcus’ Qi and the talisman exploded the upper part of its body. As a final attempt at struggling and fighting back, the shadow trolled the old man’s broken right arm and aimed it at Marcus. Anush of dark fog as thick as mercury shot at Marcus. At the same time, more fmes burst out from under his left chest under his shirt. The explosion of energy bsted right back at the dark fog, iing the bck substance like a thick stream of gunpowder.

  “Boom!” The explosion threw Marcus back, but not by any amount of force he could not handle. He adjusted his posture in the air and rolled on the ground. His Qi trated around his leg again, ready for another luack - the two talismans had been expended, yet the shadow should be in no position to fight or harm him either.

  The shadow on the old man’s back twitched and screamed, as it tried to reassemble its torn body and quell the fme chewing through its shoulder. Marcus fixed his eyes on the shadow on the old man’s back, as well as the old man. Right now, the old man’s body was in a state of straasis - his extremities were still, but his fingers, exposed toes and lips were all shaking at a fast pace, and all at the same rate. He was no loanding on his toes, but floating in low air. His forehead was against the door.

  After pting for but one moment, Marcus breathed in and cursed with almost all of his might: “FUCK YOU! YOU FILTH!” While the sound was still eg in the empty corridor, disrupting the flow of the dark fog for a brief moment, he unched himself at the shadow made of dark fog.

  His right arm swung across the spa front of him, releasing a bright e cw mark at the dark shadow while his left retreated bad ready to strike.

  The shadow turned into a puff of dark smoke and shot up towards the ceiling, with only a small portion of its tail grazed by the cw mark, turning into ashes in an instant. It tried to turn and fly to the open air, but just in time to be stopped by a flying on - a long baton of sorts, covered in strips of paper.

  The dark smoke exploded into a flurry of hundreds ht fiery sparks. Ashes fell and roamed the air. The chilling aura dissipated. But barely a moment passed before it was repced by another, as a ky metal shot from the open space behind Marcus and ed around the body of the old man.