Darkness.That was the first thing I felt.Not pain—no, pain would have been a mercy. This was something deeper. Something that made pain seem like a distant echo. My body lay shattered in the ash of the Citadel, my lungs filled with embers, my blood evaporating into the scorched air. The world grew cold around me, but inside—inside, there was fire.I was supposed to die. Not as a hero. Not even as a soldier. Just another mission gone wrong. Another ghost swallowed by the Paragon files. I had served them, bled for them, obeyed without question. And still, when the end came, there were no medals, no eulogies. Only betrayal.Gregory Sandlers' voice still rang in my mind. "I need you dead."I thought that would be it. The silence. The end. Oblivion.But the void did not take me. Something else did.I remember the moment the air shifted. The ashen earth split beneath me, veins of obsidian tearing open like old wounds. And th

The alarms blared through Paragon like war drums.Lieutenant Anna was the first to the command deck. Surveillance feeds flooded the holoscreens, broadcasting chaos erupting across Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Fires roared across rooftops. Power lines danced like live serpents. The skyline shimmered with a sulfurous haze, as three distinct figures carved a path of destruction through traffic and concrete."Feed stabilized," Melissa called out, fingers flying across the data console. "Visual confirmed. Demonic trio inbound."The Alpha Team gathered quickly. The footage zoomed in.Sorran—a towering demon of blackened steel and flame, swept a claw through a delivery van like paper. Infernox trailed behind, his bull-like horns wreathed in shifting fire, laughing as he melted a row of cars with a single wave. Floating above it all was Nixx—formless and shimmering, its silhouette warping like smoke trying to remember how to be human.Jack slamme

The mirror world pulsed with a dim, ominous glow, refracting Myles’ reflection in every direction. It was like being trapped in an infinite gallery of fractured selves. Some looked older. Some looked broken. Some sneered with rage, while others looked hollow. Each of them reflected a version of his pain. The Requiem trembled in his grip, not from fear, but from the sheer force of energy surging through it—or maybe from the void gnawing at the edge of his focus. Something felt off. The world around him was breathing—alive, conscious, and angry.From the warped corridors of shimmering glass, Nixx emerged like a ghost of vengeance. The shadow entity's form had changed since their last battle. He looked denser now, as if every ounce of shadow was reinforced with hatred. His arms morphed mid-stride, elongating into twin blades etched with abyssal runes that pulsed with dark violet energy. Each step he took left behind trails of residual magic, flickering briefly before fading into the glas