2026-01-16 14:00:14The 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 with an unnatural rhythm, his breathing heavy, choked by the emotion pressing from within. “She was waiting for me, Vera,” he whispered hoarsely. His voice sounded like glass being slowly scraped. “She wrote this while enduring the pain. She wrote this so I would know who was responsible.” “I understand, but we must—” “Quiet.” The word fell heavily. Elios slowly stood up. He didn't turn around. His eyes were fixed on the dark corner of the room, where the pair of yellow eyes had briefly glowed seconds ago. “Did you hear that, Demon?” he said to the empty space. His voice was low, controlled, but lethal. “Do you see the writing on the floor? That was my wife. And whoever made her bleed here… I will pay them back in full. Including you, who is just watching.” SWIIISH! The air was sharply split beside his head. Elios’s killer reflexes worked faster than his mind. His neck tilted a fraction of a second to the right. CRACK! An invisible claw slammed into the concrete pillar behind him. Three deep gashes were clearly imprinted, each nearly five centimeters deep. Concrete fragments fell to the floor. If Elios had been a second late, his head would have been severed from his neck. “Nine o’clock position!” Vera yelled, panicked. “Target invisible! Stealth Camouflage!” Her energy pistol fired. A blue laser beam cut the air, hitting the darkness. But nothing was there. The shot only passed through empty space. “Useless,” Elios said coldly, unmoving. “It’s in the Shadow Realm. Its physical form only appears when it attacks.” His rage sharpened his mind. He reached into his tactical belt and pulled out a gray tube grenade. “Cover your nose.” Without waiting for an answer, Elios pulled the pin with his teeth and threw it not toward the enemy, but right at his own feet. POOOOF! Thick white smoke exploded and immediately spread, engulfing them within a five-meter radius. The room turned into a sea of fog. “Cough! What are you doing?!” Vera choked, her voice distorted. “We’re blind!” “We’ve been blind all along,” Elios replied calmly. He stood still in the center of the smoke. His Shotgun raised, his body relaxed but ready. His eyes followed the movement of the smoke, unnatural patterns, small swirls split by something moving. “But now…” he continued softly, “…it can’t hide.” Silence. Then the smoke on their left side split. There was an empty silhouette moving quickly—not a shadow, but a void cutting through the smoke particles, like a ghost running through the fog. “Got you.” BLAM! The Shotgun roared. The close-range blast shook the room. A shrill shriek was heard, not the sound of an ordinary living creature. Purple blood spurted, spreading in the air, staining the white smoke into a terrifying abstraction. The figure staggered. Its stealth cloak was broken. Its true form flickered, like a corrupted television broadcast. A Hunter-Demon. Nearly two meters tall. Its body was thin and dry, its skin like scorched wood. Its arms were too long, with bone blades growing from its elbows. Its face was flat, without a nose or ears, only four yellow eyes burning with hatred. “I see you!” Vera yelled, aiming. But the demon was faster. Although its shoulder was shattered, it leaped onto the wall, crawling on all fours, then lunged at Vera from above like a living projectile. “Vera! Duck!” Too late. The demon’s body slammed into Vera, knocking her hard to the floor. The bone blade on its elbow swung straight toward Vera’s neck. CLANG! It wasn't Vera's neck that was torn. Elios blocked the attack. The Shotgun barrel pressed against the demon’s arm. Iron met bone. Sparks flew between them. Elios’s face was only inches from the monster’s. The stench of foul breath, carrion, and sulfur hit his face. “You smell just like them,” Elios hissed, staring directly into the four yellow eyes. “The smell of a traitor.” With a savage yell, Elios kicked the demon’s stomach. The creature’s body was thrown backward, hitting the floor. The Shotgun was empty. Elios discarded it without hesitation and drew the two Kukris from his back. “Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s dance.” The demon roared and tried to vanish again. But Elios moved faster. He scooped up the floor dust—dust mixed with Lyra’s blood, which contained residual Essence—and threw it into the demon’s face. The particles stuck to the demon’s eyes, forcing it to remain in the physical world. SLASH! The first slash severed the right arm. CRUNCH! The second slash hit the knee, breaking the leg. The demon fell to its knees with a fractured moan. “This is for Sector 4!” Elios spun, slashing its back. “This is for the train!” One more slash struck, enough to bring it down completely. The demon crawled backward, groaning in terror. For the first time, the Hunter became the Hunted. Elios stepped on the creature’s chest, pinning it to the floor. “And this…” his knife lifted high. “…is for my wife!” STAB! The knife plunged into the black heart. Elios twisted it. Pulled it down. Slicing the creature’s chest open. The demon convulsed, then went still. Elios raised his knife again, then stopped. The creature's chest was motionless. Rage still roared in his head, but his body knew: it was over. “Elios.” Vera’s voice was close. “You won,” she said, not commanding. “Don’t get lost here.” Elios’s hand trembled. He looked at his knife. Purple blood coated his fingers, running down to his wrist and dripping onto the ground. For a moment he felt sick, not at the demon’s blood, but at himself. He dropped the kukris. METAL clanged on the floor. Silence descended again, heavy and wet. And far beyond the walls of the complex, an alarm began to wail, slowly, then louder and louder.
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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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