Predators often acted at night, using shadows to conceal themselves and staying downwind to hide their scent. Anyone with wilderness survival experience knew to build a fire at night. Not only because wild animals feared flames, but because firelight could drive away the darkness and expose the beasts' movements. Black Bolt Blackagar Boltagon lay prone on the ground, a steel rebar rod piercing his abdomen. Blood dripped downward before flowing along the slope into irrelevant shadows.
He drew breath with difficulty, his head tilted as he fixed the corner of his eye on the dark corners beyond the emergency lights' reach—his wheezing and the smell of blood seemed to have drawn creatures that had never seen light. Pairs of eyes kept emerging from the shadows, reflecting the light like feline eyes. Those predators gradually drew closer, like a pack of hyenas closing in on a wounded animal on the plains. These creatures might once have been Inhumans, or alien beings captured by the Inhumans, but over a thousand years and amid the industrial pollution of the lower decks, they had completely lost both their culture and original forms—Black Bolt's vision gradually blurred. Cold spread across his skin, his breathing was painfully loud, and pink bloody froth continued to bubble from the wound in his chest.
Black Bolt barely let out a phlegmy roar laden with blood froth. The sound wave, accompanied by white mist spilling from his mouth and nose, barely drove away the timid, bizarre creatures nearby. His vitality was formidable; an ordinary person could never have lasted this long with such injuries. He struggled a few times, but could not free himself from the rebar that had impaled him. Like prey caught in a trap, he could only keep bleeding as he waited for death to approach. Even