2026-01-16 13:42:47BANG!
The gunshot shattered eardrums, but no head exploded. Cardinal Maelstro squealed like a slaughtered pig, his eyes squeezed shut. Seconds passed. He was still alive. Only a warm, wet sensation seeped through his expensive trousers. He had wet himself. "Open your eyes, old man," Elios's voice was weary but laced with mockery. Trembling, Maelstro opened his eyes. Elios had lowered his pistol, a thin wisp of smoke curling from the barrel. The waitress was free, crawling backward, weeping tears of gratitude for her life being spared. "You... you missed?" Maelstro asked hoarsely. Elios snorted. He pointed at the mahogany wall directly behind Maelstro's left ear. "I never miss." He boasted. Maelstro turned stiffly. On the wall, two inches from his ear, was the shattered carcass of a fist-sized creature. It was a Nightmare larva, a parasite that had just been crawling up the Cardinal's back while he was busy screaming. "That..." Maelstro stammered. "Yep. Phase two larva. I saw its reflection on the silver platter while you were screaming. If that thing stings you, your brain liquefies in two minutes," Elios explained, holstering his pistol. He glanced at the Cardinal's wet trousers. "But it looks like you have other problems." "You... you played me!" Maelstro covered his groin, his face scarlet. "Consider it a warning," Elios turned, his wounded leg leaving a trail of blood on the marble floor. Beneath his perpetually cold expression, he suppressed the pain radiating from his calf up to his head. Every step made his world spin slightly, but he refused to slow down. The pain was nothing new; it was the price of being alive. The main doors burst open. Dozens of personnel in black tactical uniforms stormed in. Sanctum Veritatis - Division IV: Cleanup. They worked fast. Blue aerosol gas was sprayed. Amnestic Gas. The guests' memories would be replaced with a "gas pipe explosion" scenario. A man stepped in from the back ranks. White nano-fiber armor with gold accents, a red cloak, and a cold, handsome face. Kael. Captain of the Paladin Force. Elios's eternal rival since training days. They had once been on the same squad, shared the same training bench, the same battlefield, until a decision was made that they never spoke of again. He stopped in front of Elios, his eyes sweeping over the wound on Elios's leg and the surrounding chaos. "You've made a mess again, Elios," Kael's voice was calm, yet sharp. "Protocol requires silent evacuation. You turned a charity gala into a slaughterhouse." "I saved their lives, Kael," Elios replied, wiping sweat away. "If I'd waited for your slow procedures, Maelstro would be an incubator for a demon." "You nearly killed a Cardinal in public. Pointing a weapon at a high-ranking Church official is a severe violation." "He used civilians as human shields!" Elios snapped, his patience gone. "Where's your Paladin 'code of ethics' on that?" Kael paused, his eyes glancing at Maelstro, who was being evacuated by the medical team. There was a flash of disgust in Kael's blue eyes, but he quickly masked it. "Church law is absolute. We are not judges." "That's the difference between us. I don't need permission to take out the trash." Elios's eyes suddenly caught something over Kael's shoulder. Officers were lifting the body of the soprano singer. A gold wedding ring on the corpse's ring finger glittered in the light. Elios's world stopped. A high-pitched ringing pierced his ears. Flashback. Fire, heat, and Lyra lying beneath the concrete rubble of Sector 4. Her white dress was red. Her hand was outstretched, a simple silver ring on her finger. "Elios... run..." The shadow returned. "Elios!" Kael's shout instantly pulled him back. Elios flinched, his breath catching. His face was deathly pale. Kael stared at him, his brow furrowed. It wasn't anger; it was the expression of someone who had suffered the same loss. "Are you spacing out? You're unstable, Elios." Elios immediately put his mask of sarcasm back on, though his hands were shaking violently. "I was just thinking how ugly the design of this place is. My business here is done." He limped past Kael. "Elios," Kael called softly. "Your leg wound... clean it before it gets infected." Elios didn't answer, giving a fleeting, blank look over his shoulder before continuing out the emergency exit. Two Hours Later. Acid rain poured over the city. Elios climbed the rusted iron stairs to his apartment in District 9. This place was the antithesis of the Sky Deck. The smell of garbage, dim neon, and despair. He reached the door of unit 304. His legs felt heavy; the adrenaline had worn off, replaced by stabbing pain. Tucked into the gap beneath his door was an envelope. A black envelope with a red wax seal: Three Swords Piercing the Sun. The High Priest's Seal. "Bastards," Elios hissed. He entered his dark apartment. The cramped room was a cruel contrast to the object in his hand. The envelope was made of high-quality vellum paper, thick and smooth—it clearly didn't belong in a poor place like this. News from the neighbor's TV was faint. "Gas pipe explosion at the Sky-Deck Tower..." Elios sat on the bathroom floor, holding his breath as he poured alcohol onto the open wound on his calf. The sharp smell stung his nostrils. A sewing needle pierced his skin without anesthetic. One stitch, two stitches, until it was done. Once the wound was crudely bandaged, the unbearable pain kept him conscious. Elios grabbed the envelope, then tore the seal. Inside was a card with gold ink handwriting. 'Come to the Main Cathedral tomorrow at dawn. Alone. We need to talk about Lyra.' The name made Elios's breath catch. For five years, his wife's name had been buried by the Church, erased, called an industrial accident, and now they were bringing it up again. Like an old knife deliberately sharpened anew. Elios crumpled the card, then punched the wall next to him. CRACK! The wall plaster cracked. Fresh blood flowed from his knuckles, mixing with the grime on the wall. The physical pain helped him focus, driving away the image of the corpse at the party. "Fine," Elios growled in the darkness. "You want to play the Lyra card? Let's play." Outside, lightning flashed, illuminating Elios's face—no longer the face of a protector, but the face of a man ready to burn the world down. "You misjudged me!"
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Chapter 10. Message from The Grave
The growl stopped abruptly, replaced by a far more terrifying silence. Not an empty silence, but a predatory one, a stillness that signaled something was preparing to strike. Elios was still kneeling before the blood writing. His trembling hand touched the cold concrete floor. His fingertip traced the letter O of the name his wife had written. The concrete surface felt rough, sticky with blood that had half-dried. Something was left there, not just a stain, but the residual emotion of someone who knew their end was near, yet refused to leave without a trace. “Elios…” Vera’s voice was soft behind him. Her robotic, authoritative tone was gone. She stood about two meters behind Elios, her energy pistol raised, the muzzle slowly sweeping the darkness. The sensors on her visor flickered erratically. “We are not alone,” she continued, more tense. “Motion sensors are detecting air displacement. Get up, quickly.” Elios didn’t answer. His shoulders rose and fell
Chapter 09. Ghost Facility
The light was painful. White, sterile, and cold. Not a light that gave life, but one that stripped everything bare without empathy. Elios squinted as he stepped across the steel threshold. His pupils contracted fiercely, forced to adapt from the absolute darkness of the sewer to the nerve-piercing clinical brightness. For a moment, the world felt flat, like a black-and-white photo dragged into overexposure. His Shotgun lowered half an inch. His finger remained on the trigger guard. Reflexes didn't die just because a room looked clean. Behind him, Vera stopped moving. Not because she feared dirt. The smell of sewage was gone, replaced by the scent of old antiseptic and cold metal. A smell belonging only to hospitals and morgues. “This…” she whispered. Her voice was small, almost lost in the vastness of the room. They stood in a giant hall, three stories high, as wide as an aircraft hangar. The glossy white ceramic floor reflected their shadows cr
Chapter 08. Underground Labyrinth
The smell down here was no longer the scent of ozone, magic, or portal radiation. It was a much more honest smell. The smell of humanity. The odor of waste that had fermented for five years in the darkness, mixed with mud, old blood, and death that was never buried. Elios landed with a wet splash in ankle-deep water. Blackish-green fluid splattered onto his shins. He shook his boots, but the sludge only clung tighter to the soles. Above them, the giant drainage pipe opening, which served as their entrance from the crater wall, now looked small, like an embarrassing pinhole. The light from outside was just a pale dot, almost meaningless. “Welcome to the Sector 4 VIP Lounge,” Elios muttered, switching on the tactical flashlight on his left shoulder. The white light sliced through the darkness, revealing curved brick walls overgrown with greenish bioluminescent fungi. The structure of the old sewer was like the esophagus of a giant creature rotting from the inside.
Chapter 07. Return to Hell
Elios’s 1200 cc Cruiser engine roared harshly, shattering the dead silence at the Sector 4 Border. The sound was unnatural here, like a chainsaw cutting through the cold, toxic air. Ahead of him, the Quarantine Gate stood twenty meters tall. The razor-wire fence was layered with electrified steel armor, while automated guard towers on the left and right immediately locked onto the target. Machine gun barrels rotated, their optical systems aligning the crosshairs precisely on Elios’s head. The indicator lights turned red. But the shots never came. Someone stood right in the middle of the road, blocking the gate barrier. A woman. She wore a tight, pearl-white tactical bodysuit with gold accents, the official uniform of the Sanctum Division Intelligence. Over it, a long black trench coat billowed in the toxic Sector 4 wind. A short, silver-plated pistol was holstered low on her right thigh, more standard equipment than a primary weapon. Her black bob was precisely, geometri
Chapter 06. Shadows of the Past
The sky was not blue. It was red, the red of flayed, burning flesh. Elios stood in the middle of hell. Not a metaphorical hell, but Sector 4, five years ago, on the day the world collapsed and his life died along with it. The air vibrated with heat that melted the asphalt. Skyscrapers collapsed slowly, folding in on themselves like failed concrete origami. The screams of thousands of people merged into a single, ear-splitting high note, an endless symphony of suffering. “Elios! Help me!” That voice. The voice that always came whenever he closed his eyes. Elios ran. His legs felt heavy, as if embedded in boiling tar sludge. He headed toward the ruins of their second-floor apartment, a place that had once been warm, with a pot of lavender on the windowsill. Now, only smoking debris and fire remained. “Lyra!” he screamed, his voice breaking. “Answer me!” He saw the hand. A pale hand jutting out from beneath a giant concrete beam. A simple silver ring encir
Chapter 05. Logical Anomaly
The Trans-Continental train let out a long hiss, its metal screaming as if forced to stop by an invisible hand. Steel wheels screeched wildly before finally locking. Red emergency lights flickered, sweeping over the pale, sweat-streaked faces of the passengers. The car door opened with a violent jolt. Division IV Cleanup Teams entered in unison, black from helmet to boot, weapons raised, their movements fast and mechanical like a swarm of worker ants trained for only one purpose: clean up, eliminate, silence. Elios stepped down last. His leg was dragging, every step pulling pain he no longer cared about. His trousers were torn and wet with blood that was already turning black. His right hand was wrapped in a crude bandage, red stains seeping out, dripping onto the station floor. Several medics tried to approach, but he waved them off. He had to leave. Now. A Paladin Lieutenant blocked his path, his silver armor still clean, his face tense but obedient. "Age
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