[T-minus 34 Days Until Dimensional Event Ritual Completion]

The SANDGARDEN wasn't a facility.

It was a grave they hadn't finished digging.

Agent 714 moved deeper into the corridors, rifle slung low, boots barely whispering against the cracked, dust-filmed floor. The walls trembled sometimes – not visibly, but at the edge of sensation, like the entire complex was breathing with a chest full of broken ribs.

Above her, sleek pylons bled soulfield energy into the air in long, humming cables. The light was wrong here. Not darkness, not light – something in between. Something that didn't respect either.

Her orders were clear: Secure. Observe. Report. If necessary... contain.

But none of the standard protocols fit what she found.

She swept her gaze across the next chamber – a cavernous rotunda hollowed into the earth, walls slashed with half-burnt runes. Reinforced steel doors stood twisted open like something had clawed them apart from the inside.

No bodies. No alarms. Just that same pulsing thrum in the marrow of her bones.

Agent 714 touched the fragment of a data tablet she had salvaged at the entrance — half-melted, but one word still burned into the cracked screen:

Containment: Jaeger.

Her mouth was a grim line.

Three weeks ago, she hadn't even known the name.

Now it haunted the empty corridors. Elizabeth Jaeger. Asset? Prisoner? Catalyst?

Nothing in the corrupted files was consistent.

One report described her as comatose. Another listed her as "Class-Ω Instability Event: Dormant." Yet another simply listed a single phrase, scrawled in manual override:

If it wakes, the world will drown.

Agent 714 didn't believe in fairy tales. But walking deeper into SANDGARDEN, she realized— This wasn't a fairy tale.

It was a siege.

And the walls were cracking.

She stepped through the next gate – and froze.

The air beyond wasn't air anymore.

It tasted wrong – sweet, cloying, like rot wrapped in honey. The ground shifted underfoot, slick with a film that shimmered between states of solid and liquid.

Something ancient and hungry saturated the walls, the ceiling, the very bones of the place.

The Chinese military had built this bunker. But it no longer belonged to them.

It didn't belong to anyone human at all.

Soul residue clung to the steel like spiderwebs spun from ash.

Symbols – some military, some older, wrong – coiled along the floor in broken spirals, flickering with a sickly green light.

A message, Agent 714 thought grimly. Not for her. For something that already lived here.

Her hands itched to ready her weapon, but she forced herself to stay loose. Guns were useless against wars fought in the soul.

She passed what must have once been a checkpoint – shattered blast doors, an overturned APC, its wheels melted into the ground. Bullet holes riddled the walls, but no bloodstains remained. No human remains either.

Whatever breached this place didn't leave bodies behind.

Just echoes. And a sense of wrongness so thick it felt like pressure on her skull.

Above the checkpoint, a crude message had been scrawled into the metal with something that wasn't paint:

"Faith Fails Here."

The walls sweated a thin, green mist. Steel beams curled like bone spines. Lights flickered like warning beacons. Her rifle felt too small – too fragile – against a place that no longer obeyed reason.

The air thickened, clogging her throat.

Wrong. Not toxic – worse.

Alive.

She passed checkpoints where corpses had fused into the walls. Doorways that led nowhere. Containment cells with glass melted into weeping shapes, their contents long escaped.

Above it all, the soulfields thrummed like a dying organ – no longer containing anything. Only broadcasting hunger.

She pressed on, boots crunching over glass and bone fragments, heart pounding against ribs that felt too tight.

Step by step.

Because retreat was death too.

Ahead, the corridor widened into a deeper chamber.

She heard it before she saw it: the slow pulse of something breathing behind cracked containment pods.

And in the centre— The girl.

The thing they had locked down here.

Elizabeth Jaeger.

And the world bent around her, waiting to wake.

She retreated into the shadows, falling back into old instincts: Recon. Survive. Report.

For the first time in years, she felt small again.

Like a soldier staring into a storm she could neither outshoot nor outrun.

Her hand brushed the small recorder clipped inside her jacket. Without thinking, she thumbed it on. Her voice was steady, but low:

"Agent 714. Confirming Subject Jaeger containment... Site status: compromised. Facility overrun by external influences, possible demonic parasitization. Subject status: active. Not hostile... yet."

She hesitated – then added:

"Recommend immediate containment lockdown. Immediate. Repeat – this is no longer a secure site. Hostile metaphysical forces entrenched."

She clicked the recorder off.

Turned.

And vanished back into the misted tunnels, boots silent, breathing shallow.

And for the first time, Agent 714 wasn't sure if she had arrived too soon – or far, far too late.

…………………

The road had cracked into pieces long before they arrived.

Max led the group single file down what had once been a narrow rural highway – now little more than a broken scar winding through the mist-choked hills south of Chengdu.

Trees leaned at unnatural angles.

Telephone wires sagged overhead like nooses straining against invisible weight.

Somewhere beyond the treeline, something cried once – a sound like a newborn wailing inside a well – and then fell silent.

The fog thickened.

Max raised a hand.

The others halted instantly.

Victor's beast-form flickered at the edges – breath steaming from wide nostrils. Chloe crouched low, one hand ghosting her dagger. Alyssa shifted her stance subtly, body tensing like a spring. Dan's staff hummed faintly against his shoulder, golden aura tightening into a hard coil.

They felt it too.

Pressure. Wrongness. Not just a demon. Something worse.

Ferron moved beside Max, whispering under his breath:

"Soul warping. Recent."

Max nodded once.

Whatever had broken this road – it hadn't finished its work yet.

Ahead, the fog rippled.

A shape stumbled into view — and for a heartbeat, Max's gut twisted.

It had once been human.

Tattered clothes. Bare feet scraping the asphalt. Face slack, eyes hollow – black pits like ink dripping upward into the sky.

Max clenched his fists, soulfire whispering against his palms.

"Hostile?" Alyssa asked tightly.

The figure twitched — and then its jaw split sideways, unhinging like rotten leather, revealing a mouth full of spined tongues that shrieked at frequencies that made the air vibrate.

Answer enough.

"Victor," Max barked.

Victor surged forward, a black comet in the mist – claws flashing.

But as he closed the distance—

The thing convulsed.

Its torso ripped open like wet paper, birthing two more twisted forms from inside — spindly, skeletal horrors stitched from fused vertebrae and gasping ribs. They hit the ground running – shrieking, snapping, faster than any husk Max had ever seen.

New breed.

"Scatter!" Max shouted.

Dan swung his staff wide, releasing a shockwave of golden pressure that knocked the first creature into the shattered guardrail. Chloe blinked left – and reappeared behind one of the newborn horrors, dagger flashing across the back of its exposed neck.

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Alyssa roared, densifying mid-run, her gravity-hardened fist crashing down on the second newborn with the force of a wrecking ball – pulping it into the concrete with a sickening crack.

Victor slammed into the original host – ripping and tearing – but it didn't fall. Its skin healed around his claws, writhing like a bag full of worms.

Max cursed.

Ferron shouted, "Soulfield! It's anchored to something – cut the connection!"

Max surged forward, soulfire roaring awake across his arms.

The original host lunged – faster than it should have – tongues lashing out.

Max caught them mid-air, burning through flesh and corruption alike, but the creature didn't die. It laughed – a wet, rattling gurgle – and slammed a warped limb toward Chloe.

"NO!"

Max snapped a hand forward – soulfire erupting into a chain of searing flame – catching the limb mid-swing and ripping it clean off. Chloe blinked instinctively away, gasping, but safe.

Dan flared again – his aura hardening into a shield dome around Alyssa and Victor as they regrouped.

"Core's buried deep!" Ferron shouted. "Beneath the flesh!"

Max gritted his teeth.

A memory flashed – Ferron's lessons on demons evolving.

If the corruption was this deep, it wasn't just parasitism anymore. It was spawning.

"Drive it down!" Max barked.

They moved without hesitation.

Victor tackled the creature low, slamming it back toward the ground. Alyssa sprinted forward, gravity condensing around her fists until the asphalt cracked under each step.

Chloe blinked onto a broken car chassis, dagger raised.

Max planted himself centre – arms wide – pulling on the core of his soul.

He felt the echoes. The stubborn, burning tether to Liz. The promise he couldn't afford to break.

Not here. Not now.

Souls rose behind him – spectres of old comrades, of fallen allies, fuelling the fire.

He clenched both fists – and the soulfire detonated outward.

A pulse – a shockwave – not enough to kill the creature directly... But enough to expose it.

The host's chest split open – not flesh, not bone but a writhing mass of blackened, fetid soulstuff woven into a crude heart.

"NOW!" Max roared.

Chloe's dagger found the opening first – piercing deep.

Alyssa's densified punch followed – caving the thing's chest like a collapsing star.

Dan's golden light surged through the wound – burning the tether at its root.

Victor tore the spine free.

The creature spasmed once— twice— then crumbled into rotted dust, the mist swallowing it whole.

Silence.

No breathing but their own. No movement but the slow settling of ash.

Max stood in the centre of the ruined road, soulfire crackling low across his skin, breathing hard.

Ferron approached, grim-faced.

"That," Ferron said, voice tight, "wasn't a demon."

Max wiped blood – some his, some not – from his mouth.

"It was something worse."

He looked at the others – battered but standing, bloodied but stronger.

Then ahead – into the thickening mist toward Chengdu.

The road was mutating.

The world was mutating.

And if they didn't move faster – they wouldn't be fighting demons anymore.

They'd be fighting the aftermath of whatever was about to unleashed.

Max straightened slowly.

"Pack up," he said, voice iron. "Double pace. No more safe camps."

Alyssa groaned softly under her breath.

Chloe muttered, "This is double?"

Dan smiled – just barely – and helped her to her feet.

Victor cracked his neck and bared his teeth.

"Good," he muttered. "I was getting bored."

And together – bruised, burning, unbroken – they pressed deeper into the mist.

Toward the storm waiting to devour the world.

…………………

The halls twisted deeper underground, abandoned corridors narrowing into skeletal ribcages of exposed metal and broken light.

Agent 714 moved carefully now – not charging, not hunting but listening.

Something was wrong with the silence.

It wasn't empty.

It was watching.

She pressed a hand to the concrete wall. It was damp but not from water. The surface pulsed faintly under her palm, like skin stretched too thin over a dying heart.

Soulfields, she realized.

But broken.

Corrupted.

Every instinct screamed at her to retreat. To call extraction. To burn this place down and salt the earth.

But she couldn't.

Not yet.

Not until she understood what she was standing on.

Step by step, she pushed forward – past slumped corpses still fused into the walls. Past doorways that led nowhere. Past the faint, pulsing glow of containment cells that now only held rot.

Finally, she reached a chamber deeper than the others – a wide hexagonal room, ringed with broken pylons. Bloodstains slicked the floor in black spirals. In the centre, a single containment pod remained intact.

Barely.

The glass was cracked but not shattered. A flickering halo of ruined soulfield circuitry hovered around it, trying and failing to regenerate its protective wards.

Inside the pod—

Agent 714 froze.

It was a girl.

Young. Maybe sixteen. Hair matted against her cheeks, body curled in a foetal position. Tubes jammed into her spine. Runes branded along her arms.

For a moment, Agent 714 just stood there.

Not a monster. Not a weapon.

A kid.

Broken. Beautiful. Terrifying.

She looked barely older than the conscripts she'd trained once – but the pressure rolling off her was older than anything human.

Elizabeth Jaeger.

And around her – not visible to the eye, but unmistakable to the gut – the pressure of something enormous.

Something ancient.

Something trying to wake.

Agent 714 stepped closer despite herself. Her weapon dipped slightly, muscles tense.

The girl's lips moved.

Not a word.

A name.

Almost a prayer.

"...Dad..."

Agent 714 inhaled sharply.

She didn't know why. Didn't know what it meant.

But for the first time in all her years of deployments, all her battles, all her kills—

—she was afraid of what saving this girl might unleash.

Or worse: What failing her might set free.

Behind her, the soulfields shivered.

A soft, almost tender whisper curled up from the cracks in the earth:

"Soon."

Agent 714 turned sharply – weapon raised.

Nothing there.

Just the mist thickening.

Just the city beyond, rotting quietly toward its own funeral.

…………………

The road to Chengdu twisted through the wreckage of forgotten towns.

But Max knew the moment they crossed the unseen threshold.

It wasn't just the crumbling buildings, the long-abandoned cars, the dust layering everything like a tomb.

It was the mist.

Sickly green. Almost yellow at the edges. Clinging to the earth like something alive, threading through the cracks in the asphalt, coiling through shattered windows.

It smelled faintly of copper and sweet rot – like a battlefield left to rot under a broken sun.

Ferron pulled his coat tighter across his chest.

"This isn't normal," he said, voice clipped.

"No shit," Victor muttered. His beast-form prickled under his skin – Max could feel it, barely contained.

Dan shifted uncomfortably, the golden pulse around him flickering with tension. His staff tapped against the asphalt with each step, a steady heartbeat Max clung to.

Even Alpha and Omega – who rarely showed any emotion at all – were tense.

Alpha moved more cautiously, scanning every rooftop, every window.

Omega sniffed the air once, nostrils flaring, and muttered under his breath:

"Corruption. Fresh."

Chloe coughed, covering her mouth. "It feels wrong. Like... the air's thick."

Alyssa wiped her palm against her jacket – not sweat, but a faint, greasy film the mist left behind. Her face twisted into a snarl.

"Whatever this is, I'm punching it first chance I get."

Max said nothing.

He just tightened his grip on the leather-wrapped hilt of his chain – what little remained of it – and pressed forward.

They crested a ridge and saw the first real village.

And stopped.

Because it wasn't a village anymore.

The buildings still stood – barely. Warped, sagging under their own weight like wax melting in slow motion. Windows blinked open and shut like mouths gasping for air.

Shapes moved inside.

Too slow. Too broken.

People – or what had been people – staggered through the streets. Their skin was grey-green, sloughing off in sheets. Some had arms fused to their sides; others dragged twisted limbs behind them. Eyes filmed over, mouths moving soundlessly, speaking to things that weren't there.

Children skipped in slow circles, laughing voicelessly but their hands were stitched together, forming chains of fused flesh.

At the centre of town, a crude altar had been erected – bones lashed together with sinew, forming a spiral rising toward the bloated sky.

Something writhed at the top of it – a mass of tendrils and bone, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Dan staggered back a step, his aura flaring instinctively.

Chloe pressed a hand to her mouth, eyes wide, body flickering dangerously close to phasing.

Victor growled low – a sound not entirely human.

Ferron muttered something under his breath – an old word, too old for human tongues.

Only Alpha and Omega remained still.

Barely.

Even Omega's grin had vanished, replaced by something harder, colder.

Max took one step forward.

The mist parted around him – as if the road itself recognized the predator walking it.

"We don't stop here," he said, voice low, dangerous.

"We pass through."

Ferron hesitated. "They're still alive, Jaeger. Twisted... but alive."

Max's fists clenched.

He knew.

He hated it.

But he also saw the truth – in the way the villagers' auras flickered, broken and sickly, feeding the mist rather than resisting it.

They were already lost.

Every step they stayed here was another step toward becoming them.

Alyssa's voice was tight. "You're saying we leave them."

Max nodded once.

"They're not people anymore."

Chloe swallowed hard, her eyes burning, but she nodded.

Dan gripped his staff tighter, jaw clenching.

Victor exhaled through gritted teeth, muscles tight under his skin.

Leaving them felt like betrayal. But staying would be suicide.

And so, silently, they moved forward – skirting the village, slipping through the edges of nightmare.

Behind them, the altar pulsed.

The mist thickened.

And far, far ahead – somewhere deep in the diseased heart of Chengdu – something ancient smiled.

And waited.

…………………

Agent 714 backed away from the containment pod, retreating into the deeper veins of SANDGARDEN.

She needed answers. Needed to know who had built this cage – and what had dared to believe it could hold the thing inside.

Walls sweated thin, green mist. Steel beams warped into shapes that looked less like architecture and more like bone spines. Lights flickered above her, no longer mechanical – pulsing with the slow, sick rhythm of a dying heart.

For the first time in a long time, she felt the tight curl of unease slip past her armour. This wasn't reconnaissance anymore – it was trespassing through something's feeding ground.

Then she saw him.

A soldier stood ahead in the corridor – or what was left of one. His uniform hung in tatters. His face was wrong – jaw too wide, teeth too many, muscles writhing under the skin like rats trapped in a sack.

He turned.

And smiled.

The grin kept spreading, tearing his cheeks open, exposing rows of new teeth pushing out from the gums.

Agent 714 raised her rifle instantly, heart hammering.

"Contractor?" she barked.

The thing's mouth twisted. Something between a laugh and a death rattle.

"Not anymore," it rasped.

The transformation hit like a landslide.

Bones cracked outward, tearing through skin. Black chitin spiderwebbed across the chest. Arms snapped into double-jointed lengths ending in barbed claws. Legs thickened, twisted backward at the knees.

The man's torso split – peeled – revealing a spine plated in sickly green crystal. His head melted down into the body, replaced by a ring of lidless, vertical eyes blinking independently.

Agent 714 had seen men die.

She had seen monsters made by bombs and guns and bad governments.

She had never seen this.

She fired.

Controlled bursts stitched across the mass – throat, head, chest.

The demon jerked under the impact – wounds erupting in viscous black streams – and then healed before the brass even hit the floor.

It lunged.

Agent 714 dropped to one knee, pivoted, drove her boot into the inside of its leg – a kill move on any normal human.

The limb snapped sideways, like breaking a crab's claw.

It didn't even slow down.

A talon slashed across her vest – tearing through ballistic weave like wet paper. Only the last-second twist of her body saved her from being eviscerated outright.

Pain exploded along her ribs.

Move.

She pivoted back, emptying another mag into its left eye cluster.

One eye popped. The others blinked – and new ones sprouted like tumours.

Agent 714 switched to her backup – a collapsible sword snapped from her belt in a silver arc. She drove the blade into the demon's shoulder joint – severing part of the limb.

The arm grew back even as she ripped the blade free.

The demon slammed her against the wall with the casual brutality of a bear mauling a rag doll.

Her shoulder dislocated with a sickening pop.

She screamed – but bit it off halfway.

Pain is warning. Not defeat.

She twisted, drew a magnetic mine from her belt, slapped it to the demon's side, and kicked herself backward.

The mine detonated with a blinding concussive blast.

For a second – just a second – the corridor was empty of sound.

She hit the floor hard, coughing blood.

The smoke cleared.

The demon was still standing.

Its left side was shredded open – ribs exposed, spine cracked – but the green mist poured into the wounds, knitting flesh back together with obscene, liquid speed.

Agent 714 scrambled back, firing one-handed, vision swimming.

It charged.

She ducked low – rolled beneath its strike – drew a combat knife and slashed upward into the seam between armour plates at its knee.

The blade snagged. It screamed – an awful, bubbling noise but the sound only drove it into a frenzy.

It caught her.

A swipe across her stomach – armour ripped away – blood sprayed across the ruined floor.

She fell.

Hard.

The world tilted.

No. Not here. Not yet.

The demon loomed – saliva dripping from a forest of teeth – claws raised.

Agent 714 forced her body up – pure will – and grabbed the nearest object: a length of rebar from the wreckage.

As the demon lunged, she hurled the rebar like a spear.

It punched through one of its vertical eyes – all the way through the skull.

It reared back, shrieking, convulsing blindly.

She ran.

Staggered, bleeding from half a dozen wounds, she ran.

Ahead – a collapsed service rig, half-sunken into the floor.

She dove for it – teeth gritted against the scream from her broken ribs – and slapped the emergency override.

The rusted hydraulics shuddered.

The rig toppled.

Metal shrieked.

The rig slammed down onto the demon mid-charge, crushing it under several tons of twisted steel.

The ground shook.

Silence.

For a moment, all she could hear was her own breathing – wet, ragged, broken.

I'm still alive.

She crawled.

Hand over hand.

Blood leaving a trail behind her.

She didn't dare look back. Didn't dare hope it was dead.

It wasn't.

She knew it.

The thing below the rig twitched, spasming, already trying to pull free.

Agent 714 collapsed behind a shattered generator bank, clutching a field dressing to her side.

Everything hurt.

Her hands were shaking.

For the first time in years – maybe her entire life – she tasted real fear.

Not tactical risk.

Not battlefield odds.

Terror.

Because this wasn't a fight she could win.

Not alone.

In the cold dark of SANDGARDEN, Agent 714 finally understood.

This was a different kind of war.

One that she couldn't win alone.

She slumped against the broken generator.

Her compass – her orders, her faith in war – shattered.

Only one hope remained.

And she hated that it wasn't herself.

It was Max Jaeger.

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