2026-03-05 19:24:17Two kilometers felt like two thousand light years when you climbed them with a scorched shoulder and burning lungs.
The forest on the hillside began to thin out, replaced by outcrops of sharp black granite. The wind howled fiercely up here, but strangely, it wasn't cold. The wind felt dry, full of static, and smelled of ozone the exact same smell as when a high-voltage cable snaps.
Finnian dragged Elena behind a large boulder, hiding from the sweep of the transmission tower’s spotlight revolving above their heads.
"Look at that," Finnian whispered, pointing to the base of the old iron tower.
What they saw shattered Elena's scientific theories into pieces.
The Cold War communication tower didn't stand on empty ground. Its steel legs had been forcibly driven into a far older ancient structure: a monolithic Stone Circle carved with runes that glowed with a faint violet light.
"The site of The Aethelgard," Elena murmured, her eyes widening in disbelief behind her cracked glasses. "Thorne didn't build a tower here. He piled his technology on top of an ancient seal. He's trying to use this tower as a 'crowbar' to pry open the inter-dimensional door."
Around the site, a platoon of Iron Fang technicians was busy. They were running thick cables from generators to the monolith stones. They looked panicked. Their computer monitors were flickering wildly.
"Sir! Energy readings are off the charts!" a technician screamed at his field officer. "Theta waves are unstable! If we increase the voltage, reality in this area could collapse!"
"Just crank it up! That's the Colonel's order!" snapped the officer, though his own hand trembled as he gripped his pistol.
Finnian felt the Gauntlet on his left hand vibrating violently. The green fluid inside the glass tubes hissed and bubbled, reacting to the proximity of the site. It felt hot, like a giant magnet was pulling at the bones of his iron hand.
"Finn," Elena gripped Finnian's arm. "The sky..."
Finnian looked up.
The night was gone. The sky above Greyfenwood was no longer black and starry. The sky was torn.
Clouds swirled to form a giant vortex right above the tower. The color of the clouds shifted into a sickly neon purple. Small lightning bolts flashed silently. This wasn't a weather storm; this was a reality storm.
The air around them became heavy, suffocating. The taste of metal filled Finnian's mouth. He looked at his own hand and gasped. His fingers seemed to... glitch. Like an image on a broken TV, his right hand ghosted, flickering in and out of existence in milliseconds.
"We are on the border," Finnian's voice was tense. "The veil between my world and the other side is thinning."
WOOOOM...
A deafening low hum emanated from the monolith stones. The Iron Fang technicians screamed, covering their ears. The glass screens of their laptops shattered simultaneously.
And then, they came.
Not from the forest. Not from the sky. But from the shadows.
Under the bright glare of the floodlights, the shadows of objects, shadows of trees, shadows of generators, even the shadows of the soldiers themselves, began to behave strangely.
The shadows stopped mimicking their owners.
They writhed. Elongated. Stood up.
A tree shadow on the ground suddenly 'peeled' itself off the earth, rising to become a pitch-black two-dimensional humanoid figure, without eyes, without a mouth, just a living silhouette of The Void.
"What the hell is that?!" screamed an Iron Fang soldier. He aimed his plasma rifle at his own shadow that was standing before him.
ZAPPP!
The soldier fired. The blue plasma bullet passed right through the shadow's chest and hit the stone wall behind it. No effect. You cannot kill nothingness.
The shadow crept forward with stuttering movements, like low-frame-rate animation.
"Fall back! Form a perimeter!" The officer shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the loud sound of tearing fabric in the air.
Dozens of shadow creatures The Dimensional Creepers emerged from the cracks in the monolithic rocks. They crawled out like cockroaches from a fractured wall of reality.
"Don't shoot!" Elena whispered in horror, her grip on Finnian's arm tightening. "They have no physical mass. They are entities of entropy. Pure energy!"
One of the shadow creatures leaped onto a technician cowering near a server.
"Get away from me!" The technician swung a wrench at the creature. The wrench passed through the body, but when the metal came into contact with the pitch-black shadow body...
The wrench aged.
In seconds, the shiny chromium metal turned brown, rusted, and then crumbled into iron dust in the technician's hand.
Instant entropy. Acceleration of time.
"Don't let them touch you!" Finnian shouted, his instincts screaming danger. He knew what these were. These were the "Dimension Crossers" his father warned about in the recording. Creatures that devoured matter.
The technician was too late. The shadow creature's hand grasped the technician's face.
"Hel—"
His voice cut off. There was no blood. No scream of pain.
The technician's body began to flicker. His skin turned gray, wrinkled, then desiccated. His flesh peeled away like cigarette ash. In three seconds, the young man turned into a skeleton of dust that collapsed onto the floor, his clothes disintegrating into nothing.
Only his metal identity tag fell to the ground with a clink.
Pure horror washed over the Iron Fang troops. They stopped shooting, backing away in primal fear. They were trained to fight rebels, to fight tanks, even to fight mutants. But no one trained them to fight the concept of rotting time.
"This is insane..." Finnian gripped the handle of his knife, but realized the steel blade would turn to dust if it touched that thing.
But then, the Gauntlet on his left hand lit up.
Not the usual green. The color shifted to Blinding White.
One of the shadow creatures turned its head toward Finnian's hiding spot. It had no eyes, but Finnian knew he was being stared at. The creature was attracted to the Verdant Core energy in Finnian's arm. Life Energy was the favorite food of Death Energy.
"Finn! It sees us!" Elena shrieked.
The shadow creature darted toward them, floating through the massive rock they were hiding behind.
"Stay back, Elena!"
Finnian leaped out, his left fist raised.
"You want my energy, huh? Come get it!"
As the shadow lunged, Finnian didn't dodge. He punched the void.
KABOOM!
A collision occurred between Life Energy (Core) and Void Energy (Shadow). Not a fire explosion, but a reality shockwave. The air around Finnian's fist cracked like window glass.
The shadow creature screamed, a sound like a high radio frequency shattering eardrums, before its body unraveled into black smoke and was sucked into nothingness.
Finnian was thrown backward, his back hitting the dirt. His Gauntlet smoked, the metal glowing white-hot.
The Iron Fang troops in the tower area saw him now. But this time, their rifles weren't aimed at him. They were looking at the only person who had just successfully killed that nightmare.
The previously arrogant Iron Fang Commanding Officer stared at Finnian with a deathly pale face. He lowered his weapon.
Around them, hundreds of other shadows began creeping down from the purple sky. Surrounding them all. Finnian, Elena, and an Iron Fang platoon were trapped in the middle of a vicious circle.
Finnian stood up, brushing dust off his shoulder, then stared at the enemy commander.
"You guys have a lot of bullets," Finnian said flatly, pointing at the approaching shadow monsters. "And I have hands that can touch them."
The commander swallowed hard, looking at his men turned to dust, then looking at Finnian.
"What do you want, O'Connell?" the officer's voice trembled.
"A truce," Finnian replied, rolling his mechanical shoulder which clicked audibly. He smiled a crooked, mad wolf grin. "Until we butcher these ghosts... no one dies but them."
The sky above them rumbled, and for the first time that night, mortal enemies stood shoulder to shoulder, united by the fear of something far older than human war.
***
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Chapter 175: The Beginning of Darkness
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Chapter 174: Forbidden Obsession
The Imperial Palace of Verdantia was slowly choking to death. The vibrant, bioluminescent green vines that had once pulsed with infinite magical energy, illuminating the grand obsidian corridors like glowing emerald veins, were turning into brittle, blackened husks. The polished walls cracked and groaned as the thick roots within them violently shriveled. A foul, suffocating stench of ancient decay hung heavy in the stagnant, freezing air of the mountain fortress. Deep within the isolated northern wing, Finnian OConnell stood before the colossal glass vat in the center of the ruined medical laboratory. He did not sleep. He did not eat. For weeks, the King of the Forest had worked in absolute, manic isolation. His physical body was a horrifying reflection of the dying city around him. The dark, impenetrable ironwood of his skin had turned a sickly, ashen gray, peeling and flaking away like dead bark. His once broad and powerful shoulders were hunched, burdened by the crushing, invis
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The Imperial Palace of Verdantia was a towering monument to absolute silence.Finnian OConnell walked through the colossal, obsidian-paved entrance hall, his heavy, biomechanical footsteps echoing like the slow, rhythmic tolling of a death bell. The magnificent ironwood doors had been left wide open. The glowing green vines that usually illuminated the grand pillars had completely withered, turning a sickly, brittle gray. The ambient magic of the city was dying because the heart of its King was entirely dead.He did not look up at the vaulted ceilings. He did not look at the empty pedestals where his Praetorian Guards used to stand. The sprawling, invincible army he had mutated to conquer the world had vanished into the mist, following the only true prince of the forest. Finnian was utterly alone.As he approached the base of the grand staircase leading to the throne room, a single, trembling figure stepped out from the shadows. It was a low-ranking sentry, a young man who had been t
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