2026-01-16 13:50:44Elios slowly stood, pretending to stretch. His movements were stiff, his breathing carefully controlled. He walked into the aisle, his body deliberately blocking the exit door. He pressed the door lock button on the wall panel. The indicator light turned red. Locked.
"Attention everyone," Elios's voice was calm, too calm for the minor situation. Several elite passengers turned, their faces half annoyed, half confused. "Ticket check. And I have a feeling your three tickets..." He pointed at the group of businessmen. "...have expired." The leader of the "businessmen" stood. His human face cracked, the skin beginning to peel away to reveal green scales. "Hunter..." his voice grated. "Smell... blood..." GROAARRR! Their disguises exploded. Three eight-foot-tall reptilian demons burst out of their fake human skin, roaring as they tore through the expensive seats. Passengers screamed hysterically. "Get down! Everyone under the seats!" Elios yelled. The demons lunged. The narrow confines of the car turned everything into a brutal close-quarters fight. Elios parried the first demon's claw with another passenger's metal briefcase, then fired his pistol into the creature's abdomen. BANG! BANG! Green blood splattered. But the second demon leaped onto the wall, scuttling quickly, and swung its barbed tail at Elios. WHAM! Elios was thrown back, his spine slamming into the car wall. The air rushed out of his lungs. Something in his chest cracked unnaturally. He coughed, spitting blood. "Damn it..." he muttered hoarsely. "Knockoff Spiderman!" The third, female demon didn't attack Elios. She ran toward the main engine access panel at the end of the car. She ripped the panel off, exposing the humming reactor core. "Shit! I'm not the target!" Elios thought. Elios immediately chased her, but the leader demon blocked his path, its jaws wide open. Elios had no choice. He ran, sliding beneath the leader demon's legs, slashing the creature's thigh with his folding knife, then getting up and sprinting toward the female demon. A small child was crying in the aisle, blocking his line of fire. Elios snatched the child, tossed him into his mother's arms behind a seat, then refocused. The female demon raised her claw, ready to smash the reactor core. Elios grabbed a cloth napkin from an overturned food trolley, stuffed it into a broken brandy bottle, lit it with his Zippo, and threw it. The makeshift Molotov cocktail struck the demon's face. WHOOSH! Fire scorched the demon's face. It shrieked, its attack missing the reactor, but its claw damaged the control panel, setting off a loud alarm. The train shook violently. Elios charged through the flames, slamming the female demon hard against the wall. He pressed the pistol under the creature's chin and, without ceremony... BANG! The demon died. But the problem wasn't over. The reactor panel was damaged. Cables sparked fire. The stabilization system was failing. Indirectly, Elios's job had just expanded, but this time outside his expertise. "Damn it, I'm not a mechanic!" he complained, slightly confused. Elios thought for a few seconds, trying to predict the outcome. "Now or never!" he stated firmly. Elios saw the main short-circuited cable. He had to manually cut the current. He wrapped his hand in his jacket, then pulled the cable forcefully. "Hope this works..." He took a breath, then grabbed the cable. ZAAAP! Electricity surged through his body. Elios screamed in pain, his muscles spasming, the smell of burnt flesh rising from his palm, his nerves feeling ripped apart alive. But he didn't let go until the cable snapped. The engine hum stabilized. Emergency lights came on. Elios slumped to the floor, gasping for breath. His right hand was severely blistered from the electrical shock. But the pain was instantly forgotten; Elios's eyes were fixed on the female demon's corpse next to him. Her clothes were torn, revealing something beneath the scales on her chest. A vest. A high-tech explosive vest. But it wasn't the bomb that froze Elios's blood. It was the logo. In the corner of the vest, faintly printed, was the winged sword logo. Sanctum Veritatis - Armament Division. The Church... putting bombs on demons? Elios clenched his hand hard. Snapping out of his momentary daze, he realized the car door was being breached from outside. Security forces entered. Elios quickly tore off the section of the vest with the logo and hid it in his trembling fist. "Hands up!" Elios slowly raised both hands. His right hand could barely straighten, his fingers shaking wildly, concealing the evidence of the greatest betrayal in his wounded palm. "Relax, guys," he said hoarsely, almost whispering. "All the stowaways... have been dealt with."
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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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