The lock clicked open with a reluctant hiss.

Ferron exhaled through his nose as he lifted the lid of the black Institute case. The seal peeled back like dead skin, releasing a faint pulse of soulfield residue that shimmered in the air before vanishing. Inside, nestled in foam lined with spectral mesh, were the remnants of forbidden knowledge.

Not a weapon. Not a cure. Information.

Which made it far more dangerous.

He pulled out the first datapad – cracked, still faintly blinking. The file header stuttered in red: INFERNAL BIO-INTEL: LORD-CLASS DESIGNATES Status: Corrupted Integrity: 43%

"Of course it is," Ferron muttered.

He laid it on the ground, tapping the soulfield reader embedded in the lid. Holograms flickered to life above the crate: static-cloaked images of distorted humanoid forms, labeled with partial names and fragmented classifications.

The first flickered violently – barely a shape, only a silhouette of wings and a halo that bled upside down.

Entity: "Verrine" – Classification: UNKNOWN – Vessel confirmed (China)

Audio log crackled beneath it: "Target vessel appears human. Pressure field suggests divine mockery. All standard containment failed. Advise: total withdrawal."

Ferron tapped again. The image vanished.

The next was worse.

Entity: "Moloch"

The hologram shimmered – then snapped into place with a sickening, low pulse. A silhouette emerged: the outline of a child, limbs too thin, head too still. The eyes were static-blurred pits, but the smile was sharp. Wrong. Like something that had learned the idea of a child and put it on like a costume.

A text fragment hovered beneath it – flickering, smeared with digital static and something redder.

Leviticus 18:21: "And you shall not give any of your offspring to Moloch, and you shall not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD."

Ferron didn't move.

He had seen cursed names before. Old names. Sealed names.

But this one?

This wasn't a warning. It wasn't a prohibition.

It was a scar in the text.

A name so ancient, so profane, that it had forced itself into scripture – not as myth, but as infection. Something that had walked through fire, through covenant, through Eden, and left ash in its wake.

And the voice behind the verse – I am the LORD – didn't sound like protection.

It sounded like fear.

The quote wasn't just scripture. It was ancient field doctrine. A spiritual battlefield memo: If you see this name – run.

He rubbed his temple. This was supposed to be data on Demon Lords. Instead, it was a list of things they didn't understand – and were already losing to.

Another photo tried to render – static again, corrupted, but Ferron glimpsed something. A warped face. Eyes missing. The words "Unknown Incursion – Data Incomplete – Threat Level Redacted" flashed once before the file shut itself down.

"Damn it," Ferron muttered.

"You find something?" came a voice behind him.

He didn't jump. Just closed the lid slightly and turned his head.

Max stood in the barn's doorway, shirt half-buttoned, bandages peeking from beneath his coat. He looked tired. Not the kind that could be solved by sleep but by certainty. And Ferron didn't have much of that left.

"Bits and pieces," Ferron said. "Scraps of a jigsaw puzzle we don't have the border for."

He tapped the pad again.

Entity: "Moloch"

The image that flickered onto the screen was fragmented – almost corrupted. A silhouette of a child, barely discernible. No detail. Just vague outlines. Black hair. Bare feet. A halo that pulsed red like a dying sun.

Max froze.

His breath hitched.

The glow of the screen lit his face, and his knuckles tightened where they gripped his knee.

Ferron noticed. "What is it?"

"I don't know," Max said slowly. His voice had gone rough. "But looking at that thing makes my spine want to crawl out of my back."

Ferron studied the image again.

Max swallowed. "It's like my soul flinched."

A faint sound escaped the datapad – not from its speakers, but from somewhere beneath the image. A stuttering distortion. Like a child laughing. Reversed. Slowed. Max froze.

Ferron didn't touch the device.

The laugh faded into static.

"That wasn't part of the file," he muttered.

Max wiped his palm against his pants without realizing. "It felt like it was inside my ears."

The image shimmered again – the child's silhouette flickered. The halo pulsed once, then froze.

Ferron didn't reply. Just stared at the corrupted childlike outline. Then tapped the screen again – once, twice, as if trying to banish it.

"Whatever that thing is… the Institute didn't want to know more."

"These Lords," he said, "they're not just feeding. Not just killing for fun. Every soul they take, every Contract they make – it's data."

Max frowned. "What kind of data?"

"Blueprints," Ferron said. "They're studying us. How souls fracture. How will bends. How pain reshapes identity."

He gestured at the closed crate.

"Demons don't want chaos. They want order – their version of it. Hell isn't wild. It's structured. Hierarchical. Bureaucratic. This whole Contract system? It's not about power-sharing. It's colonization."

Max's face darkened. "You're saying we're a resource."

"No. Worse," Ferron said. "We're a test environment."

Max walked closer, his voice low. "What's the endgame?"

Ferron hesitated.

Then he tapped once more on the screen.

A final note flickered into view – brief, shaky, left behind by a dead Institute observer.

"They're reporting upward. The Lords aren't top of the chain. There's something above them. Something biblical. Older. But not holy."

Max frowned. "Older than the Lords?"

Ferron didn't answer right away. He tapped the tablet once more. The corrupted silhouette of the child returned, static-riddled and wrong. The red halo pulsed slowly. A warning in every frame.

"They found this passage scrawled in blood beside a summoning circle in northern Syria," Ferron said. "Leviticus 18:21."

He recited it from memory.

"And you shall not give any of your offspring to Moloch, and you shall not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD."

Max exhaled slowly. His throat was dry. "Sounds like a warning."

Ferron's voice dropped. "Sounds like fear."

The tablet screen dimmed, but the dread lingered. Ferron leaned back, eyes distant. "Why would something like that... need us? Why consume souls, sign Contracts, orchestrate a slow apocalypse through whispers and possession? A being like that could just take."

Max stared at the ground. "Unless it's not strong enough yet."

Silence.

Ferron didn't move.

Max's knuckles flexed. "Unless it needs the power we give it. Not for dominance. For something else."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"To open something. Or become something," Ferron said.

Max looked up at him. "You're saying we're fuel."

Ferron nodded once. "Fuel. Maps. Keys. Maybe all of it."

He shut the case. The soulfield flickered out with a tired hiss.

Outside, the wind passed over the scorched rice fields.

Inside, two men sat in silence, surrounded by cracked tools, old ghosts, and the stench of a war already lost – just not yet declared.

…………………

The drone-hum of the Institute's VTOL filled the compartment. Stark white interior. Minimal seating. Soulfield shielding shimmered faintly across the walls like invisible frost. Alpha sat perfectly upright, eyes closed, processing mission data in silence. Omega paced like a caged beast – broad, brutal, his armoured fists flexing every few seconds.

Between them, a sealed mission crate displayed Grimm's insignia. The orders had been delivered digitally and verbally.

Protect Max Jaeger. Secure Elizabeth Jaeger. Prevent Mammon's reclamation.

Omega finally broke the silence. "You ever wonder why Grimm sends us for this crap?"

Alpha opened her eyes. "Because we don't fail."

Omega snorted. "Or because we're the last thing he can afford to lose."

Alpha didn't respond. Instead, she tapped her gauntlet, and Grimm's pre-recorded message replayed – audio only.

"Mammon is not dead. His body dissolved. His essence did not. The Contract anomaly known as Max Jaeger burned away the outer shell, but not the root. Something is anchoring Mammon still – something closer to the girl. Watch her."

Omega sat down, armour creaking. "So, we're playing nursemaid to a ticking nuke."

"No," Alpha said. "We're hunting anyone who tries to light the fuse."

A second audio file triggered – Grimm's voice, lower, harsher:

"The Contract system isn't bending anymore. It's breaking. Max didn't just exploit it—he shattered its spine. His power bypasses every law demonkind was built on. That makes him a threat… and a prize. You're not guarding a man. You're guarding the unravelling of a world too blind to see it's already falling apart."

Omega leaned back, staring at the ceiling. "Hell of a thing to be the firewall."

"We don't need to be the wall," Alpha said. "Just the blade."

Outside the window, the clouds parted. Far below, the fractured spine of rural China stretched across the earth – smoke rising from shattered roads, ruined villages. The echoes of a war no one on the surface understood.

A red warning flashed on their mission panel:

CONTRACTOR PRESENCE DETECTED. SIGNATURE MATCH: CHAMBER THETA. ADVISORY: CONFLICT PROBABLE.

Omega grinned. "Looks like the freakshow's back."

Alpha snapped her helmet shut.

"Then let's remind them why Grimm sent us."

The VTOL dipped low, its engines whining as it carved toward the treeline.

Somewhere ahead, Max Jaeger breathed.

And behind him, war followed.

…………………

The air tasted wrong.

Not sulphur, not blood but memory. Like the place remembered things it wasn't supposed to. Reverb stood in the centre of the ruin, one hand pressed to a jagged slab of altar stone carved with a language that no human priest had ever spoken.

This was where gods came to die.

Behind him, the team moved with military precision – or something worse.

Stonewall stood watch at the broken archway, her heavy armour glinting with faint soulflux residue. She scanned the horizon with slow, deliberate movements, like a war machine carved from bone and conviction.

"He's gone," she said. "Trail ends in heat shadows."

"No," Reverb replied. "Jaeger isn't gone. He's just learning to disappear."

At the edge of the shrine, Crux dragged a bloody fingertip across the altar stone, his voice low, melodic. Preacher-smooth.

"He bled truth through his pores. Even unconscious, his agony praised something bigger."

"Stop bleeding on the map," Splice said flatly from across the chamber. She sat cross-legged before a floating field of soulwire puppets – tiny drones twitching in sync with the nerve-link nodes embedded along her spine.

Crux grinned at her. "You can reformat your tech, child. You can't unwrite scripture."

Splice flicked her wrist – one puppet snapped in half. "I just did."

Across the chamber, Gallows hunched near the shattered threshold of the shrine. His body had halfway shifted – one arm elongated, jointless, the skin like mist and cartilage. He said nothing, but his gaze never left Reverb. Waiting. Listening.

Rewind stepped out of the darkness behind the altar, phasing through the stone like a ripple in water. His face – pale and soft as paper – was unreadable under his adaptive hood.

"They're still nearby," Rewind said. "The soulfield fluctuations… residual. But growing."

"Define growing," Reverb said.

Rewind blinked slowly. "Like a storm cloud. Alive. Expanding."

Reverb nodded, then turned to face them all.

His voice was level. Measured. The tone of someone used to giving orders that turned into deaths.

"We failed," he said.

Silence.

Crux smiled. "Failure's just prelude. Even the Lamb was lost before the resurrection."

Stonewall grunted. "You comparing Max Jaeger to the Son of God now?"

"No," Crux said smoothly. "I'm comparing him to a martyr who forgot how to stay dead."

Splice stood, spooling his puppets back into a crystalline jar. "We need better parameters. He's not human anymore. Not fully."

Reverb turned toward the cracked tablet on the altar. Lines of code flickered across its holographic display – broken geotags, failed combat logs, psychic backlash charts from the last encounter.

"Max isn't the only threat," he said. "The others are shifting too. The healer. The chimera. The twins."

"Low-levels," Stonewall said. "Statistically irrelevant."

"Statistically?" Rewind murmured. "They broke Kimaris."

That brought a pause.

Gallows exhaled. His mist-hand flickered, then settled. "They're breaking roles. Rewriting the board."

Reverb touched the edge of the tablet. His gloved fingers tapped out a new command:

PRIORITY SHIFT – MAX JAEGER: CONTAIN OR ELIMINATE. ADDITIONAL TARGETS: EVALUATE FOR NEUTRALIZATION.

The screen hissed and sealed.

He turned to the team.

"We go again. But not like before. We don't ambush – we predict. We dissect. He is not a man anymore. He's a collapse event in motion."

Splice cocked his head. "Do we deploy containment agents?"

"No," Reverb said. "We bring him down ourselves. Quietly. Thoroughly."

Crux closed his eyes. Whispered something in Latin.

Rewind stepped backward and vanished into nothing.

Gallows smiled.

Stonewall cracked her knuckles. "This time… I vote we bring heavier gloves."

Reverb walked into the dark.

Behind him, five Contractors followed – not loyal to nation or creed, but bound by contract and blood. They answered to the Director. But their demons whispered louder.

They didn't hunt Max Jaeger for what he was.

They hunted him for what he might become.

…………………

The smoke had long since cleared. But the smell remained.

Burnt wood. Soulfire. Blood.

Agent 49 knelt in the centre of what was once a farmhouse and now resembled the cratered aftermath of a surgical airstrike. Stone was blackened. Soil cracked like scorched parchment. There were no bodies. No movement. Just residue.

He touched the ground. Ash crumbled beneath his fingers, and a sliver of black glass pulsed faintly under the surface – scorched soul residue, irradiated with Contract echoes.

"Kimaris," he muttered. "You got sloppy."

The husk was near the well. A melted shape curled inward – ribs splintered like a flower of bone. Whatever soul had once anchored it had been flayed from within. Agent 49 stood slowly, scanning the field with infrared, then spectral.

Nothing.

No heat. No life. No demonic signature.

And yet —

A faint pulse. Residual. Residual. Residual.

His HUD lit up. Kimaris's sigil — distorted, flickering red, like a heartbeat caught mid-failure.

Not erased. Vacated.

Agent 49 exhaled slowly. "No contract shatter. Not devoured. He left."

He crouched again. Examined the shattered dirt near the husk. Two sets of footprints. Human. One heavy — the Chimera. The next staggered. Jaeger.

A data spike embedded in his visor updated with satellite recovery logs. Anomalous heat bloom detected from this location thirty-two hours ago. No formal acknowledgment from Chinese command. No clean-up crew.

That was confirmation enough.

Agent 49 tapped his gauntlet twice, then let his fingers hover. He always paused before speaking aloud – a ritual tic. Like his brain was calculating the cost of every word before unleashing it.

He finally spoke, calm as a scalpel.

"You weren't supposed to survive that, Jaeger."

The wind picked up. Carried ash into the air.

Agent 49 turned his head toward the horizon. East. Toward where Jaeger's signature had last been recorded – briefly – before disappearing again.

He didn't sigh. He didn't frown. He simply recalibrated his internal map and whispered to the empty clearing:

"You're leaving a trail of corpses and empty shells. And I'm not far behind."

He tapped his gauntlet. Activated pursuit protocols. And vanished.

Not in a burst of flame or sound. Just a flicker. A distortion.

A ghost chasing another.

…………………

The lights in the forensics chamber flickered as the third soulwave anomaly loaded.

Agent 49 didn't blink.

The data spread across the holo-surface in geometric precision – heat maps, incident footage, classified autopsy scans. Three overlapping spikes, each cantered on the same identifier:

Jaeger, Max.

Location tags scrolled down the side:

Singapore (Hospital Fire) – Unresolved Event

New South Wales (Farmhouse Incident) – Confirmed Combat Engagement

Hunan Province (Transport Plane Crash) – Field Recovery Failure

He watched the bodycam feed from Australia again.

Frame 2117: A golden explosion lights the sky.

Frame 2118: All telemetry goes black.

He fast-forwarded to the satellite stills recovered after the fact. The land was scorched in an irregular radius. Nearby wildlife had fled the area entirely. One soldier's helmet had been recovered – the metal warped inward, like something had collapsed reality inside it.

No explosives. No radiation.

Just… pressure.

Agent 49 narrowed his eyes.

This wasn't human warfare.

And Max Jaeger was not just a rogue civilian anymore.

He tapped into the incident logs from the Chinese plane crash – what should've been a routine intercept. The telemetry was corrupted there too. Soulfield interference was listed but the line was struck through in red, manually altered after submission.

Why redact something no one had authorized?

The next file was the most disturbing.

Surveillance drone footage – Location: Longyuan Region, China.

A small barn. Low power readings. Nothing special.

Until frame 837.

A flash. Blue fire. And something – he paused it – something that made his gut lurch, just for a second. It wasn't movement. It was the absence of movement — the frame skipped, not due to lag, but to intentional removal.

Someone had erased part of the footage.

Agent 49 stared at the gap in the image.

No heat spike. No detonation. But something had triggered the drone's emergency shutoff protocol.

He leaned back.

Then turned to the AI system.

"Cross-reference all anomalies tied to Jaeger, Max. Plot projected trajectory. Prioritize temporal proximity and data voids."

The interface pulsed, then highlighted a path across three countries.

The anomalies weren't decreasing. They were escalating.

Agent 49 tapped the screen once, then paused before speaking.

"Track him," he said coldly. "No more blind spots."

He stood and turned, leaving the archive chamber behind.

His orders had been simple: Retrieve Max Jaeger. Neutralize resistance. But every time he touched this case… it bled.

And somewhere deep in his gut – in a part of him that wasn't trained – he knew:

This wasn't war.

It was something worse.

General Wang, backlit by the Chengdu skyline, closed the file and turned away from the window.

"Let him track," he said to the aide behind him. "But do not intervene."

The aide hesitated. "What if he catches Jaeger?"

Wang smiled.

"Then we'll see if fire can bleed."

…………………

The wind had shifted again.

It came in low through the shattered barn slats, pushing the stale scent of hay and gunpowder toward the rice fields beyond. A few birds scattered from the trees, but not from fear.

From silence.

The kind that came before violence.

Max sat cross-legged on the floor, a weather-worn canvas map spread between him and Ferron. The chart was crude – hand-drawn routes inked with urgency, escape lines that snaked through mountains, past surveillance zones, skirting what remained of Chinese control in the region.

Ferron tapped a knuckle on one corner. "If we follow this old trade path, we hit the southern river routes. Slip to the coast. Maybe disappear."

Max didn't look up. His fingers hovered over a smudge marked Port – Site Gamma.

"Disappear into what? The ocean? Another fight?"

Ferron's voice was calm. "Into the next step."

Max was silent. He stared at the red 'X' scrawled over the last village they'd passed through. He hadn't forgotten the power of Mammon's presence. The stillness of the air. The scream that never came from Liz's pod, because something had stolen even that.

"She's still moving," he said quietly. "I can feel it. Barely. But it's her."

Ferron looked at him. "Then we move with her. Not behind. Not ahead. With."

Outside, the fields rustled with rising wind.

But Max's mind was elsewhere. Something inside him itched – not fire, not instinct. Something deeper. A sense he hadn't earned but had inherited. From Aamon. From the system he had now bypassed. From whatever still watched him behind the veil of the world.

"They're coming," he muttered.

Ferron's eyes flicked up. "Who?"

Max met his gaze. "All of them."

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