Rise Of Hades' Hellborn: Trumpets Of The Damned

Ashes In The Ice.

The Paragon Archives weren’t built for comfort.

Beneath the surface of the organization’s demolished headquarters , the subterranean archive resembled a digital tomb—floor after floor of sealed data vaults, blinking terminals, and pressurized, cryo-stabilized containment units. Time didn't flow here; it slept.

Lieutenant Savannah Storm adjusted her thermal jacket as she stepped out of the elevator into Archive Sector 7. With her were Jack Hadley, field ops analyst, and Data-Seer Melissa Morrow, Paragon’s foremost expert in neuro-coded intel. Even underground, Anna held a military bearing like iron forged in war, while her eyes darted like a predator tracking something just beyond sight.

“This is the last known trace Kaelin ever interacted with before his descent into full demonic possession,” she said, her voice echoing off the steel walls. “He left something here. Something we missed.”

“And you think it’s connected to Trumpet Two?” Jack asked, scanning the dimly lit corridor, one hand resting near the stun holster strapped to his thigh.

Melissa answered before she could. “Kaelin was many things. A monster, yes. But a clever one. If he left a trail, it wasn’t by accident.”

The group reached a secured vault labeled RED SIGMA-B. Melissa placed her hand on the biometric scanner. The system paused for several tense seconds.

“Authorization: Data-Seer Melissa Morrow, Tier 6 clearance. Requesting override for time-locked sector.”

A mechanical hum followed, then a hiss as the vault’s door unsealed. Cold air swept out like a breath from a long-dead machine. Lights flickered to life within the chamber, casting sterile beams over countless data rods suspended in cryo-shelves.

Anna stepped forward and retrieved one labeled “K-Project: Nocturne Requiem.”

“This file was sealed,” she said. “Kaelin had full access when he sent that demon through our defenses. No one’s reviewed these logs in nearly a decade.”

Melissa connected the rod to her portable neural rig. As data streamed across the retinal projector, her expression darkened.

“These are Kaelin’s own notes,” she whispered. “Encrypted. Fragmented. But... look.”

She projected a grainy hologram. It showed Kaelin, seated in a dim study. His eyes were sunken but sharp, his voice a coarse rasp.

“If you’re seeing this,” Kaelin said, “then I’ve already fallen beyond your reach. Trumpet One was only a distraction. The real convergence begins at the second gate. I buried the coordinates within what Paragon would never suspect: my personal myth journal. The story of the ice giant.”

Jack blinked. “Ice giant?”

Melissa turned pale. “Wait. That journal—I remember. It was filed under folklore studies. A misdirect. It was believed to be one of his obsessions with Norse myths. No one thought it was tactical.”

“Bring it up,” Anna ordered.

Moments later, Melissa navigated through Paragon’s central folklore archive. She pulled up the journal.

Kaelin had titled it: Jötunn Dreams: The Grave Beneath the Snow.

The entries read like surreal fantasy—tales of a warrior trapped beneath an eternal glacier, a horn echoing through frozen caverns, dark angels whispering of release. But hidden within was a code. Numbers embedded in each story, always three digits at a time, formatted like myths but behaving like coordinates.

“Overlaying all 17 entries,” Jack muttered. “Mapping patterns now...”

A three-dimensional globe materialized, spinning rapidly before slowing to a stop. A point flared red.

“Siberia,” Jack breathed. “Specifically... the Taymyr Peninsula.”

Anna’s eyes narrowed. “The coldest inhabited sector on the planet. No major Paragon operations there. It’s a dead zone.”

“Exactly,” Melissa said grimly. “The perfect place to hide a demonic trumpet.”

Jack rotated the map, enhancing terrain readings. “Wait. There’s more.”

The enhanced scan revealed a fissure hidden beneath layers of ice, almost invisible to satellites. At the base of it: a heat signature. Faint, but consistent.

Anna leaned in. “There shouldn’t be heat in a region that remote. Not unless something is alive. Or burning.”

Melissa tapped into deeper seismic data. “Six weeks ago, a minor quake registered in the same region. It coincided with the night Trumpet One was triggered.”

Jack cursed under his breath. “A chain reaction. It wasn’t just a sound. It was a resonance. The trumpets are connected. A multi-phase ritual.”

Anna looked at the data, brow furrowed. “If Kaelin’s message is real, and Trumpet Two is in that ice… we’re staring at a doomsday clock waiting to chime again.”

Melissa zoomed in on the encrypted notes embedded within the journal. “There’s more… Kaelin wrote about a guardian. ‘A voice frozen in silence, cursed to protect the horn with eternal vigilance.’”

Jack swallowed hard. “You think that’s metaphor, or—?”

“I think,” Anna said grimly, “we’re about to find out.”

She tapped her comm. “Requesting immediate recon team assembly. Prep arctic gear, anti-demonic runes, and seismic gear. I want us wheels-up in six hours.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “You’re leading the op?”

“I’m not trusting anyone else with this. Not after what happened with Myles.”

Melissa nodded. “I’ll go too. We’ll need someone who can translate Kaelin’s madness if it starts bleeding through again.”

As they turned to leave, a shadow moved in the doorway.

It was Director Adam Sandlers 

“I saw the logs,” he said. “If that trumpet’s buried in that ice… don’t engage. Not until we understand what it’s wired to. For all we know, sounding it could bring down the hemisphere.”

Anna met his gaze, unflinching. “We don’t plan to blow it. We plan to bury it deeper.”

“Myles is going with you, just make sure it doesn’t bury you first.”

They exited the archive as silent red warning lights flickered overhead. The air felt heavier, as if even the foundation of Paragon understood what they were about to awaken.

Far above, in the President’s war chamber, the alert flashed across the top of her display:

CODE BLACK TRACE: TRUMPET II POTENTIAL LOCATED. REGION: SIBERIA.

Maverick Maddox stared at the screen.

Kaelin’s face, captured in that final journal video, lingered in her mind.

His eyes hadn’t been afraid. They’d been expectant.

“Kaelin,” she whispered, fingers tracing the rim of her whiskey glass. “What the hell did you bury in the ice?”

Outside the war chamber, the skies above the city darkened, and a cold wind—unnatural and bone-deep—began to whisper through the towers of Paragon. As if something ancient had just stirred.