Adam crouched behind a fractured pew, crimson energy pulsing faintly along his skin. The alternate reality of the church seemed to breathe, warping subtly around them, shadows stretching like living fingers. Every heartbeat resonated with tension; the entity was watching, learning, waiting for him to make a mistake. Sanchez remained at the altar, his form partially human, partially shadow, the entity coiling around him like a second skin. His gaze pierced Adam, but there was hesitation now, an internal struggle between his own will and the possession controlling him. That small crack was Adam’s only advantage. Malrick whispered insistently in his mind: > “Strike decisively. End this. Or be consumed.” Adam clenched his fists. Not yet, he thought. I need to know its plan first. --- Adam focused, extending his awareness through the warped space. The shadows around Sanchez seemed to pulse in a pattern, almost like a heartbeat. And then it became clear: the entity wasn’t atta

The morning light was wrong.Adam noticed it the instant his eyes opened — a thin, pearlescent hue that seemed to vibrate softly, as if the color itself wasn’t sure what it wanted to be. His breath hitched. He was lying on the floor of what used to be the church, now pristine again — polished pews, unbroken glass, sunlight pouring through tall windows that should’ve been shattered.For a moment, he thought he had dreamt the entire thing. The rift, Sanchez’s possession, the Whisper — all of it. But the faint metallic taste in his mouth said otherwise.Something had been burned out of him. Something ancient.He rose unsteadily. His reflection in the glass shimmered, like two versions of him overlapping. His eyes flickered red for an instant — then blue, then human again.Malrick’s voice echoed faintly, distant.> “Still here… barely. You tore the veil.”Adam swallowed. “Where are the others?”> “Scattered. The collapse displaced them… but there’s something worse. Look closely.”Adam tur

The night was wrong.Lilith knew it the moment they stepped out of Kaleb’s car.It wasn’t the kind of wrong you could see—it was something you felt.The street stretched too long, the lamplight too dim, the air too still. There was a pulse beneath the quiet, like the world was breathing out of sync.Lilith gripped her jacket tighter, eyes locked on the black spire of the church up ahead. It loomed like a shadow in mid-collapse, its crooked cross slicing through a sky that didn’t seem to move.“Are you sure this is where Adam came?” Kaleb asked, voice barely above a whisper.Lilith nodded. “He doesn’t think when he’s angry. The church is where it all started—it’s where he always runs back to.”Kaleb’s hands fidgeted with his sleeves. “I hate this place. It smells like rust and ghosts.”“Everything smells like ghosts now,” Lilith murmured, half to herself.The gates creaked as they entered. The church doors stood ajar, the brass handles smeared with something dark—mud, or blood, or both

Lilith walked through the ruins of what used to be the church, though “ruins” was too kind a word — it was more like a sketch of it, drawn in ash and unfinished light. The pews floated in and out of existence. The air was gray, not cloudy or smoky but thick, as if she were walking through someone’s half-dream. Beside her, Kaleb moved carefully, his shoes making no sound on the floor that wasn’t entirely there. His breath came out in soft bursts, every exhale visible as a faint wisp of silver mist. “Where are we?” he whispered, though even his whisper felt too loud here. “It looks like… the world stopped halfway through a thought.” Lilith didn’t answer immediately. Her hands trembled — not from fear, but from the way the air itself pressed on her skin, too heavy, too alive. She could feel something pulsing in the walls, the faint rhythm of a heartbeat that wasn’t human. “This isn’t the real world,” she said finally. “It’s… the echo of it. A liminal layer.” Her voice was small, swal

At first, there was nothing.No sound.No air.Just a void that pressed against Adam’s skin like a second body.When he opened his eyes, the world was quiet and wrong again.He wasn’t in the church anymore. He was lying in the middle of a street.But not his street.Buildings shimmered faintly, bending at their edges as if underwater. Streetlights hummed even though it was daylight, their bulbs dripping faint trails of light that evaporated before touching the ground. The air tasted like copper and ozone. The world was… bleeding.He pushed himself up slowly, his limbs heavy, his breath ragged. Every movement echoed twice — a faint delay, like the sound was traveling through another version of himself just a second behind.Malrick was silent.That silence was worse than any whisper.Adam staggered forward, boots crunching on cracked asphalt. The road seemed to stretch farther with each step, like space refused to stay still. The last thing he remembered was the explosion of glass — the