The training yard was still cracked and ugly.

Chloe stood in the middle of it, sleeves rolled up, sweat already beading at her collarbone. A rusted length of rebar floated in front of her, phasing in and out of her hands like it couldn't decide whether to obey physics or not.

She gritted her teeth. Focused. Pushed.

The bar shivered, flickered – and snapped solid mid-phase. It jolted straight through her palm.

"Shit!" Chloe yelped, yanking her hand back. The bar dropped to the ground with a clang.

She stared at her hand. No blood. No hole. Just a deep sting, like her skin had screamed without actually tearing.

"Alright," Victor called from the edge of the yard, where he was leaning against a half-dead tree. "Let's mark that one under 'not quite there yet.'"

Chloe shot him a look. "Thanks, coach."

"Anytime. I charge hourly."

She rolled her eyes and shook out her hand. "I'm trying to phase bigger stuff. Faster. Cleaner. If I can't scale it up under pressure, I'm just... decoration."

Victor stepped into the light, arms crossed. "You're the least decorative person I've ever met."

Chloe arched an eyebrow. "Is that supposed to be flattering?"

"Take it how you want. You're not wrong though. Power's only good if you can scale it when it counts."

She turned toward him, hands on hips. "So how are you pushing limits? You hiding secret upgrades? Extra tail? Third eye?"

Victor gave a mock-offended sniff. "You make it sound gross."

She pointed at him. "Because it is gross. You literally turned into a murder hyena last week."

"Correction – half hyena. Technically chimera. Still had excellent taste in footwear."

Chloe laughed once, then caught herself. "Seriously."

Victor's face shifted – just a little. He stepped forward and cracked his neck with a low pop.

"It's not about rage. It's about… letting go. Trusting that the thing inside you won't eat your face on the way out."

Chloe wrinkled her nose. "Comforting."

Victor flexed his hands. Fur erupted along the backs of them, spreading up to his forearms. His nails blackened into claws. Then, with a grunt of effort, a short, barbed tail unfurled behind him – twitched once, then stilled.

Chloe took half a step back. "Okay. That's new."

"Yeah. I'm calling it the mood whip. Comes out when I'm grumpy."

She folded her arms. "What about wings?"

Victor groaned. "Getting there. Last time I tried, I dislocated a shoulder. Nearly pulled a Mothman mid-air and crash-landed into a building."

Chloe snorted. "Please tell me there's footage."

"Grimm has it. Keeps threatening to release it as a PSA."

The claws retracted. The tail flicked once and vanished with a ripple of muscle. He shook out his arms.

Chloe watched him. "So that's the goal? Go full Kaiju?"

"Nah," Victor said, grabbing a rusted pipe from the bench. "I don't want to become the beast. Just want to make peace with it."

She caught the pipe he tossed her.

Then the alarms wailed.

Shrill. Sharp. Echoing across the mountainside like a scream from the forest itself.

Victor went still. His nose flared once.

Chloe didn't need to ask. The fog was already crawling back, thick and fast – rolling in low across the trees like it had something to hide.

"Let me guess," she said, tossing the pipe aside.

Victor's jaw tightened. "More company."

…………………

Victor stepped into the centre of the yard.

Chloe watched from a cautious distance, hands resting lightly on her hips, feet unconsciously shifting into a ready stance.

"I can push further," Victor said. "Haven't shown you this part."

She tilted her head. "That a threat or a warning?"

He didn't answer.

Instead, he closed his eyes. Took a breath. Then let something deeper rise.

The change wasn't immediate but it was violent.

His arms stretched first, bone and tendon cracking under the strain. Fur spilled across his shoulders in thick streaks, darker than before. His jaw flexed, canines lengthening visibly. Claws punched from his fingertips, not like weapons – like instincts finally given shape.

Then came the tail – longer than before. Less hyena, more nightmare – bone-knotted and serpentine, coiling with a will of its own. It swept against the flagstones like something searching for targets.

And then the wings unfolded.

Not feathered. Not leathery.

They weren't wings meant for beauty or flight. They were extensions of the predator – shoulder blades splitting to reveal hooked limbs draped in muscle, the membrane between them flickering like smoke around razored edges. Built not to soar, but to strike. Like a spider pouncing from shadow.

Chloe took a step back.

Not because she was scared. But because instinct said don't get close.

"Holy shit," she breathed. "You… weren't this fast last week."

Victor opened his eyes. They glowed faintly. Silver-ringed. Too sharp.

"I held it back," he said, voice half-rasp. "This isn't just strength. It's… hunger."

The wings twitched. So did the tail.

He clenched his fists, dragging the transformation inward. Slowly, the fur receded. The claws shrank. Bone reknit. The wings folded and vanished beneath skin with a shudder that left him visibly shaking.

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"I can hold it for a few minutes," he muttered. "Maybe more. After that…"

Chloe didn't move. "You're not afraid of losing control?"

Victor looked at her.

"I'm afraid of liking it too much."

The words lingered.

Then the wind died. All at once. As if the forest itself had stopped breathing. A second later, the siren hit – sharp and surgical, like a needle through glass.

Red light flared along the sanctuary's perimeter. A klaxon wailed, echoing down every hallway and wall.

Chloe's head snapped toward the source. "Perimeter breach?"

Victor didn't answer.

He lifted his head. Inhaled once.

The look on his face said more than words.

"Fog," he said. "And blood."

The wind had died completely. Not a breeze. Not a rustle. Just pressure.

Then, without warning, the forest began to move.

…………………

Alarms howled above them. The compound lights stuttered and flared – red strobes slicing through the rising fog.

Victor and Chloe sprinted toward the main gate. Gravel crunched underfoot, and every step felt like it was moving deeper into something watching.

The fog had returned.

Thicker than before. Not mist – weight. It poured through the tree line like a living thing, dragging silence with it.

Victor skidded to a stop first, crouched low beside a stack of sandbags. Chloe flanked the opposite side, blade already drawn. Her breath steamed in the air, cold despite the summer heat.

Then the forest began to whisper.

Dozens of shapes moved between the trees – low-slung, multi-limbed, necks too long, fingers scraping bark. Their masks glinted white in the pulse of the perimeter lights. Crooked mouths. Rabbit teeth. Blank slits where eyes should've been.

"Yokai," Chloe said, voice tight.

Victor was already half-shifted. His eyes gleamed. "Dozens. Maybe more behind them."

They didn't need to ask if they'd be fighting. The answer was already in the ground beneath them, thrumming with pressure.

But then the air changed.

A shudder.

A low tremor rolled beneath their feet. Stone cracked. Dust shivered off weathered shoulders. The air around them changed – older, heavier.

The katana guardian moved first.

Its joints cracked open like old hinges, moss shedding from its shoulders as it took one slow, deliberate step forward. Then another. The blade it carried shimmered faintly – not steel, not spirit, but something older. The kind of metal that had been prayed over for centuries. It burned cold.

Beside it, the naginata bearer stirred. His posture was regal. His helmet crowned with a carved flame crest. He moved like memory – elegant, fluid, and furious.

Chloe's mouth fell open slightly. "I'm glad they're not just statues."

Victor didn't look away. "An excellent alarm system."

The yokai charged.

They broke from the fog in bursts—crawling, leaping, bounding across the clearing like animals with purpose. No hesitation. No fear.

The guardians stepped forward.

The katana swept once. Clean. A yokai was severed in half at the waist before it hit the steps.

The naginata carved a circle through the air, blade arcing like a falling moon. Three yokai fell—limbs gone, masks shattered, blood sizzling against stone.

More poured in.

They didn't stop.

But neither did the guardians.

Their weapons blurred. Not fast—but absolute. Each strike landed exactly where it needed to, as if they had already fought this battle a hundred times before.

Chloe could only watch. Not frozen. Just humbled.

Victor growled low in his throat. "Let's back them up."

He stepped forward, claws extending.

Chloe twirled her blade once. "Race you."

They moved.

And the battle joined.

…………………

The perimeter monitors flickered.

Victor leaned over the desk, one hand on the control console, the other resting on his thigh like he expected it to sprout claws. Chloe stood behind him, blade still sheathed, breath steady but the kind of steady that came right before a sprint.

The feed stabilized. Every screen showed the same thing.

Yokai.

Dozens in each camera. Twisted forms. Limbs that bent wrong. Masks carved from wood, bone, or just stretched skin. Some crawled on all fours, others stood tall with heads cocked at unnatural angles. They massed just beyond the treeline, hidden partially by fog, but not by fear.

Victor muttered, "Hundreds."

He was wrong. It was more.

Chloe stepped closer to the monitor, squinting. Then stopped.

Her spine straightened.

"They're not alone."

Victor turned his head. "What?"

She pointed — top right corner of one of the feeds. "There."

He zoomed in.

And the dread came quietly.

Mask-children.

Perfectly still. Perfectly spaced.

Lined up along the trees like robed sentries, each wearing the same blank mask – long-nosed, white as porcelain, no eyeholes. No movement. No breath. Just watching.

None of them moved. None of them spoke.

Chloe's fingers tightened around her blade. "They're watching the fight."

Victor bared his teeth. "No. They're waiting."

A beat.

And then it broke.

The yokai didn't scream.

They charged.

Every camera lit up with motion – crawling over each other, bounding through the trees, a flood of bodies and snarls and mask-painted violence. The perimeter alarms screamed again.

Outside, the fog parted like a curtain as the first wave reached the gate.

The stone guardians met them.

Stone met flesh.

Divine grace met chaos.

Victor bolted for the front line, shifting mid-stride. His spine snapped straighter, muscle rippling under skin. Fur burst from his forearms. Claws unfolded with a wet click. Teeth sharpened as his jaw cracked wider than human limits. The half-beast was awake.

Chloe was already moving – silent, lethal. She vaulted a low barricade, body flickering out of phase mid-leap. When she reappeared, it was mid-air above a crouched yokai – its eyes snapping up too late. Her blade came down like a guillotine, crunching through mask and bone. Blood sprayed across the gravel.

The line broke into chaos.

Victor howled – a sound no human vocal cords could shape – and collided with the next yokai shoulder-first. The impact shattered its ribs. Before it could fall, he spun, claws raking its throat open, then whipped around and fired a shotgun burst into the face of another charging beast. Bone and mask disintegrated.

Three more lunged from the left.

Victor ducked under the first, grabbed it by the spine, and hurled it into the others like a battering ram. He didn't wait for the pile to collapse – he was already sprinting again, a blur of claws and gunmetal.

Chloe vanished through the leg of a towering yokai mid-swing, then reappeared behind it – her body flickering like heat haze. She carved upward with brutal precision. The beast dropped, twitching, its severed spine exposed like wet rope.

Another yokai came from her right, jaws wide.

She didn't move.

It passed straight through her, snarling – confused. Chloe's hand, already inside its chest, turned solid with a flash of red light. She clenched. The yokai spasmed violently. Eyes bulged. Then dropped like dead weight as she ripped her arm free.

Chloe exhaled hard. She hadn't meant to go that deep. But it worked.

A third came at her with a flailing chain of limbs, crawling like a centipede made of screaming torsos.

Chloe leapt straight through it, phased, rolled, came up solid, and drove her blade through its base.

Victor roared again. He was deeper now. His form hunched, his tail whipping low across the ground to trip a leaping yokai. He caught it mid-fall, slammed it face-first into the earth, and drove a claw into its spine. It convulsed, then stopped.

More came. Too many.

Chloe skidded to his side, shoulder bleeding, breath fast. "They're not stopping."

Victor didn't answer. Just raised his head to the trees – and snarled.

Because the fog was still thickening.

And the watchers in the masks had not moved.

They simply watched.

Until—

Ping.

A chime from the inner console. Soft. Precise. Wrong.

Victor stopped cold. "The cameras just triggered."

He swiped across the interface. His eyes narrowed.

"Something's inside."

Chloe froze.

"No one got past us."

Victor's head turned toward the sanctuary's main hall. Toward Liz's sealed room.

The mist behind them began creeping through the broken gate.

No sound. No footsteps. Just presence.

Like a hand reaching into the house from somewhere else.

Chloe whispered, "It's already here."

…………………

Inside the pod, Liz floated – unmoving, unconscious. But not still.

Her body glowed faintly beneath the skin. A deeper red now. Richer. Alive. The aura curled around her like smoke caught in liquid, flickering brighter with each pulse of her heart.

The red deepened.

Inside her mind, the world burned.

Molten clouds churned across a sky of obsidian glass. Ash floated in sheets, drifting sideways without wind. The air tasted like iron and old thunder. Ground wasn't ground at all – just a shimmering psychic platform, suspended in a void of screaming silence.

Liz stood in the centre.

Armoured.

Crimson plates laced her form like a second skeleton – psychic plating grown from will alone. She wasn't floating now. She stood tall, breathing hard, cracks spiderwebbing through the red plates across her chest and forearms. Her knuckles bled light.

Across from her, bound in loops of barbed soulwire, the Devourer grinned.

It didn't look like a demon anymore. It was becoming something else – something smarter, meaner. The void inside it pulsed with stolen memories, and its voice was colder now.

"You're tiring," it hissed. "Your fortress cracks."

Liz didn't blink. "You're not getting out."

The thing smirked, its lips a tear in its skin. "I don't need to. Something stronger is coming."

Liz's breath caught.

She looked up.

In the swirling sky above, the clouds twisted into a spiral. Something vast began to take form. Limbs. Dozens. Some chained. Some broken. Mouths – too many – opened without sound. Its presence didn't descend.

It awakened.

And the entire mindscape recoiled around it – like even her dreams were trying to escape.

Liz's voice cracked: "Moloch."

The name tasted like blood and static in her throat.

A distant boom echoed through her skull. Real-world sound, bleeding in from beyond the pod.

The fortress in her mindscape trembled.

Liz clenched her fists. The light surged again – hotter, more alive. Cracks spidered down her armour, then closed, then split again. Her footing buckled as if the void itself were rejecting her will.

She didn't move. She just held.

She stared into the storm and whispered, more to herself than anyone else:

"Then come."

The sky pulsed – like a warning. Like a heartbeat. And something inside her cracked wide open.

Then, black.

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