Jelo and Mira stepped into the portal together, but on the other end, Jelo stepped out alone.

The transition was violent this time, much more violent than before. Where the previous portal experience had been disorienting but manageable, this one felt like being thrown through a meat grinder.

Jelo's body twisted and contorted as space folded around him, and when he finally emerged on the other side, he stumbled forward, nearly falling to his knees.

His vision swam for a moment, the world spinning sickeningly around him. He pressed a hand to his forehead, trying to steady himself, trying to make sense of what had just happened. The ground beneath his feet felt wrong, gritty, unstable. The air tasted different. Stale. Heavy.

When his vision finally cleared, Jelo looked around and realized he was in a deserted area, a place that was a complete ruin.

The landscape stretched out before him like something from a nightmare. Crumbling buildings dotted the horizon, their skeletal frames reaching toward a sky that looked wrong, too dark, too red, like the world was perpetually caught in the last moments before sunset.

The ground was cracked and dry, covered in a fine layer of dust that seemed to coat everything. Debris littered the area: twisted metal, broken concrete, remnants of what might have once been a functioning civilization.

Compared to the last portal he'd stepped through during class, this place looked far more desolate. There was no vegetation, no signs of life. Just ruins and silence.

The atmosphere was oppressive, heavy with a sense of abandonment and decay. The sky above wasn't just harsh, it was threatening, swirling with dark clouds that looked like they might open up at any moment but never quite did.

Jelo's heart began to pound as panic immediately gripped him, fueled by three things.

The first was his headache. The throbbing pain that had started before he'd even entered the portal was now worse, much worse. It felt like something was drilling into his skull from the inside, a sharp, relentless pressure that made it hard to think clearly. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to will the pain away, but it only seemed to intensify.

The second was the disappearance of his partner, Mira. He spun around, searching the immediate area, expecting to see her stumbling out of the portal behind him. But there was nothing. No Mira. No portal. Just empty space and ruins.

"Mira?" Jelo called out, his voice echoing strangely in the stillness. "Mira!"

No response.

Where was she? They'd entered the portal together, literally at the same time. So why had he come out alone? Had something gone wrong? Had the portal malfunctioned? Or had they somehow been separated and sent to different locations?

Jelo's mind raced with possibilities, none of them good. What if she'd ended up somewhere even worse than this? What if she was hurt?

He forced himself to stop. Panicking wouldn't help. He needed to think, to figure out what to do next.

The third source of his panic was the unfamiliarity of the place itself. This wasn't where they were supposed to be. He was sure of it now. Whatever portal they'd chosen, it hadn't been the right one.

And now he was stuck in a place that felt as though something dangerous was always on the brink of happening. The air itself seemed charged with menace, like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something terrible to occur.

Jelo swallowed hard, his throat dry. He needed to move. Standing here wouldn't accomplish anything.

He decided to start walking, hoping to search for Mira and maybe run into her along the way. Maybe she'd come through a different part of the portal's exit point. Maybe she was somewhere nearby, also looking for him. It was a slim hope, but it was better than nothing.

At the same time, Jelo knew he had to hunt a Dabba to eat its heart. That was the whole reason they'd come here in the first place. His body needed it, desperately. The headache pounding in his skull was proof of that. If he didn't feed soon, things were going to get worse. Much worse.

All the while, his head ached with a vengeance that made every step feel like a monumental effort.

Jelo chose a direction, north, or at least what he assumed was north based on the position of the sickly red sun in the sky, and started walking. The ground crunched beneath his feet, the sound unnaturally loud in the oppressive silence. Every shadow seemed deeper than it should be, every ruined structure a potential hiding place for something lurking just out of sight.

The desert stretched on endlessly around him. It wasn't like any desert he'd seen before. There was no sand, no dunes. Just cracked earth and rock, broken occasionally by the remnants of whatever civilization had existed here before it had been destroyed.

After walking for what felt like an eternity in the harsh desert, Jelo finally heard something that made him stop in his tracks. Low growls, coming from somewhere to his left. The sound was unmistakable, guttural, animalistic, dangerous.

Jelo's pulse quickened, but this time, it wasn't entirely from fear. He decided it was probably the sound of a Dabba, and silently thanked his luck for running into one so quickly. At least something was going right. If he could take down a Dabba, feed, maybe the headache would subside enough for him to think more clearly.

Maybe then he could figure out how to find Mira and get them both out of this place.

He turned left, moving as quietly as he could toward the source of the growls. His footsteps were careful, measured. The last thing he wanted was to alert the creature before he was ready to engage it.

The growls grew louder as he approached, echoing off the rocks and ruins around him. Jelo crept forward, passing between two large boulders that jutted up from the cracked earth like jagged teeth. The sound was close now, very close.

But as he passed through the rocks, he suddenly noticed that whatever had made the sound was gone.

Jelo froze, his senses going into overdrive. The growling had stopped. Completely. The silence that followed was somehow worse than the noise had been.

Where had it gone?

At the same time, Jelo heard a loud thud behind him, followed by a roaring sound that made his blood run cold.

His body moved on instinct. Jelo spun around, his eyes widening as they locked onto the source of the sound.

A mutated Dabba towered over him, bigger and scarier than any Dabba he had ever seen.

The creature was massive, easily three times the size of a normal Dabba. Its body was grotesque, covered in thick, mottled skin that looked like it had been burned and scarred a thousand times over.

Jagged spines protruded from its back, and its limbs were twisted and elongated, ending in claws that looked capable of tearing through steel. Its eyes, if they could even be called eyes, glowed with a sickly yellow light, filled with rage and hunger.

The Dabba's mouth opened, revealing rows of serrated teeth, and it let out another roar that shook the ground beneath Jelo's feet.

Then it started running toward him.

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