[T-minus 33 Days Until Dimensional Event Ritual Completion]

The mist had teeth now.

Max moved at a steady pace through the ruined highway, but every step felt heavier — as if the fog itself clung to their boots, trying to drag them backward into the rotting belly of the city.

The others stayed close: Victor stalking just behind him, the Blackthorn twins whisper-quiet to the flanks, Ferron moving rear guard with his kusarigama gleaming faintly in the green haze. Even Dan, normally calm, kept one hand hovering near his weapon at all times.

The road ahead should have been empty – cracked asphalt, toppled signs, collapsed overpasses. But under the green mist, the ruins felt... warped. Tilted. Wrong. As if the laws of distance and direction were slowly dissolving along with everything else.

Max slowed, raising one hand.

The group halted instantly – instincts drilled deep after a hundred battles.

Ahead, through the shifting mist, figures emerged.

Not demons.

Not beasts.

People.

A dozen or more, ragged and stumbling, clothed in the tattered remnants of institute uniforms and civilian coats. Their eyes gleamed wetly in the half-light, too bright, too wide. Their skin – where visible – was blotched with green and black veins spidering outward like mould through damp paper.

At first, they seemed harmless. Lost. Pitiful.

Dan moved before Max could stop him.

He surged forward a few steps, one hand raised – and as he did, his golden aura ignited around him in a sudden flare, like a second sun breaking through the mist. The oppressive weight of the air seemed to lift slightly – the aching in Max's chest easing, the burning along Victor's wounded side dimming.

Hope, warm and sudden, pulsed through the team.

Dan knelt beside the closest survivor – a boy, maybe eighteen, his arms covered in trembling sores – and pressed his hand lightly to the boy's shoulder.

Golden light poured into the boy's ruined flesh.

For a heartbeat, the corruption recoiled.

The green-black veins retreated – retreating as if burned.

The boy gasped – eyes clearing slightly.

It almost worked.

Then the mist thickened again, pressing in like a living thing. The veins on the boy's arms convulsed violently, writhing deeper under his skin. A thin scream tore from his throat as his bones cracked audibly, his body twisting under Dan's hands.

The golden light fractured – sputtering against something older, fouler, more absolute.

Dan staggered back, face pale, his aura dimming.

"I—I can't," he choked. "It's... it's inside them. Deeper than the body. Deep inside the soul."

Max's hand shot out, grabbing Dan by the collar, yanking him back just as the boy convulsed violently – collapsing into a mass of twisted, bubbling flesh.

The others stood frozen for a heartbeat, horror etched into their faces.

The remaining survivors turned their hollow eyes toward the fallen body.

Whispered, almost in unison:

"Praise Lady Verrine."

And shuffled onward into the mist.

Victor swore under his breath. Alyssa tightened her grip on her pistol. Chloe shivered violently but stayed rooted.

Max kept his hand firm on Dan's shoulder, grounding him.

"This place isn't dying," Max said quietly. "It's already dead. It just hasn't realized it yet."

The mist thickened, the road ahead buckling in subtle, nauseating ways – as if space itself was rotting alongside the flesh.

Max tightened his grip on the scorched chain at his belt.

Somewhere ahead, past the fevered survivors and the broken city, something monstrous was waiting.

Something that didn't just want to rule.

It wanted to remake the world into its own decaying image.

And Max realized – cold and certain – that they weren't just fighting for survival anymore.

They were fighting to remember what it meant to be human.

…………………

The survivors melted into the mist, leaving only a silence that wasn't truly silent – a low, vibrating hum deep inside the bones of the earth.

Dan knelt where he had fallen, his hands still faintly glowing gold, but the light was dimmer now. Fading.

Max placed a firm hand on his shoulder – not a command, not a reprimand. Just a reminder.

"Get up," he said.

Dan gritted his teeth and rose, wiping blood from his nose with the back of his hand.

No one spoke as they moved forward.

Not immediately.

The mist thickened in unnatural ways now – congealing along the broken highway like spiderwebs spun from rot and memory. The shattered road itself seemed to twist when they weren't looking directly at it – edges curving in impossible ways, angles bending wrong.

Ferron dropped back beside Max, his weapon resting loosely in one hand.

"This isn't just soulfield corruption anymore," Ferron murmured. "This... this is reality buckling."

Max nodded grimly.

It was the same feeling he'd had inside the worst battlefields – where the boundary between flesh, thought, and nightmare began to blur.

But this was worse. This was slow annihilation disguised as salvation.

Ahead, a battered street sign hung at a crooked angle, barely visible through the murk.

Chloe hesitated beside it, squinting.

The sign read: WELCOME HOME. PRAISE VERRINE.

The letters were carved into the metal – not painted – as if someone had gouged them in with a rusted knife.

Victor spat into the dust.

"Home, my ass," he muttered.

Max's eyes narrowed.

They were moving toward something. Not just by accident. The mist seemed to be funnelling them forward – pushing them toward the heart of this rot.

Dan stumbled slightly, catching himself against a collapsed barrier. His face was still pale, his aura flickering at the edges.

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Alyssa brushed past him, muttering, "Stick close, Goldie."

Dan managed a wan smile – but it didn't reach his eyes.

Max signalled a halt at a crossroads where the road collapsed into a ragged sinkhole.

The team gathered around him, crouched low among the broken stone.

"We can't keep moving blind," Ferron said in a low voice. "This isn't just a corrupted zone anymore. It's a trap."

"Yeah," Max said. "But stopping's worse."

Victor flexed his hands, the faint shimmer of his beast form writhing under his skin.

"You feel that too, right?" he said. "Something's close."

Max nodded.

Not just corruption. Not just rot. Something hunting.

Watching.

He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, breathing deep through the burning mist.

For a moment, he thought he could hear whispers threading through the fog – words he couldn't understand, promises half-formed, broken prayers stitched into the air itself.

Max opened his eyes and gave a short, grim nod.

"We keep moving," he said. "Tight formation. No splitting up. No mercy."

He didn't mean mercy toward the survivors.

He meant mercy toward themselves.

Because whatever waited ahead – it would tear apart anything soft, anything human, anything still clinging to hope.

…………………

They found her sitting in the wreckage of an old tea shop.

The storefront had half-collapsed under the weight of the mist, wood warped and peeling like dead skin. Rusted chairs and cracked porcelain were strewn across the ground, shattered under invisible weight.

And there – in the centre of it all – sat an old woman.

Her hair was snow-white and tangled, her skin blotched with patches of greenish veins, but her smile was warm and welcoming, as if she were simply waiting for old friends to arrive.

She was humming – a soft, tuneless melody that barely rose above the rasp of the mist curling around her ankles.

Max raised a hand, signalling the others to spread out, but not engage.

The woman lifted her head, her pale, glassy eyes lighting up when she saw them. Then he spoke in disturbingly perfect English.

"Oh," she said brightly. "Visitors! It's been so long since anyone new came."

Victor tensed at Max's side, but Max stepped forward carefully, lowering his chain.

"Ma'am," he said, voice calm. "We're travellers. We've heard about... Lady Verrine. Can you tell us what happened here?"

The woman's smile widened – almost childlike in its sincerity.

"Lady Verrine," she whispered, reverent. "Oh, she saved us."

Max said nothing – letting the silence draw her out.

The woman beamed, shifting slightly on her chair.

"There was a sickness," she said. "A bad one. The little ones – they were the first. Coughing. Fever. So many little coffins lined up at the chapel..."

Her voice trailed off for a moment, her smile faltering.

Then she straightened, pride blooming across her wrinkled face.

"But Lady Verrine came. She touched them. She laid her beautiful hands on their heads. And they stood up, laughing. Running. No more coughing. No more tears."

Dan shifted uneasily behind Max. The others stayed frozen – listening.

The woman pressed a hand to her chest.

"Then she healed the rest of us," she said, voice soft and shining. "All our pains, all our sickness. Gone. I could feel my bones mending, my heart growing young again."

Alyssa leaned toward Max and murmured low, "Sounds too good to be true."

Max didn't reply.

The old woman rocked gently on her chair, humming again.

"But..." Max said gently, "then what?"

The woman's brow furrowed faintly – as if trying to remember something just out of reach.

"Things... changed," she admitted, voice dreamy. "We started forgetting little things. Names. Faces. The children wandered sometimes. Got lost. Came back... different."

She smiled again – beatific. Unbothered.

"But Lady Verrine takes care of us. She makes us stronger. Better. She's always with us now."

Her smile grew wider – too wide – splitting across her face in a way that pulled the skin wrong over the bones beneath.

"She's first in our thoughts," she said sweetly. "Always."

Max took a slow step back.

Ferron's fingers tightened around his weapon. Dan's aura flickered, restless. Victor shifted his stance.

The old woman's skin began to ripple – subtly at first. Like something breathing just under the surface.

Max saw it – and knew they were out of time.

"Move," he said, voice like iron.

The woman's smile stayed bright even as her body convulsed.

Her body convulsed once – a sharp, shuddering ripple – and then the changes tore through her.

Her spine cracked audibly, vertebrae snapping one by one like splintered twigs. Her back bowed unnaturally, flesh stretching thin until it split with a sickening wet pop. The skin along her arms and neck blistered, then peeled back in thick, sloughing sheets, revealing muscles that writhed like something separate from bone.

Green-black veins surged outward, not from wounds but from the seams of her splitting skin, thick as vines, pulsing with foul fluid. They lashed into the broken floorboards like roots seeking soil, anchoring her spasming body to the earth.

Her fingers elongated, the nails tearing free and replaced by jagged, translucent claws. Her jaw unhinged with a grotesque click, stretching wider than any human mouth should, teeth warping into uneven shards like broken porcelain.

From deep in her throat came a wet, rattling sound – a gurgling moan twisted into a chorus of many voices. Half-formed words slithered out, stitched together by something that no longer remembered language.

"Praise... Verrine..."

The mist around her thickened, congealing into clotted tendrils that slithered over her ruined body, binding, warping – a cocoon of living rot.

The thing that had once been a grandmother jerked upright, flesh twitching under the invasion of some deeper will, her limbs snapping at sick angles as if unseen hands were puppeteering her from within.

Her eyes – wide, white, and shining – locked onto Max's team with the mindless hunger of something that no longer recognized life.

The mist rushed inward like a living thing.

Victor moved first.

A low, animalistic snarl ripped from his throat – not human, not controlled – as he lunged forward. His hands twisted mid-stride, claws tearing free from his fingertips, black veins bulging under his skin as his half-contained beast-form broke loose.

He didn't hesitate.

He slammed into the creature that had once been a grandmother with bone-crushing force, driving her mutated body backward into the shattered frame of the tea shop. Wood and rotted flesh exploded outward in a wet, splintering crash.

Victor's claws raked deep – tearing through the pulsing green veins anchoring her to the ground. The creature shrieked – a thin, shredding noise that scraped against the inside of their skulls – and twisted violently, lashing at him with snapping vines of flesh and bone.

Victor tore one free with a roar but more sprouted, writhing, hissing.

From behind him, Alpha stepped forward without a word.

Two shots.

Sharp. Surgical.

The first bullet punched through the creature's left shoulder, severing a mass of writhing veins mid-thrash. The second shot drilled into the soft cartilage just beneath her malformed jaw, cracking through the base of her skull with brutal precision.

The shriek cut off instantly.

The thing convulsed once – spasming – then collapsed in a heap of spasming, steaming rot.

Victor stood over the corpse, chest heaving, claws dripping foul, blackened fluid.

Alpha lowered her rifle with mechanical calm, her silver visor glinting coldly in the fractured light.

No words were exchanged.

No congratulations.

Just the grim, efficient aftermath of survival.

Max exhaled slowly, stepping forward – half-chain still faintly hissing against his belt – and surveyed the ruin of what had once been a life.

This wasn't a battle for hearts and minds.

This was triage.

And they were already running out of time.

The team stood still – weapons raised, hearts hammering – waiting for more monsters to rise from the mist.

But there was only stillness.

Only the whisper of the mist curling greedily across the broken stones.

Max finally spoke, voice low.

"Whatever this— Lady Verrine— touched," he said, "she didn't heal it."

He turned, scanning the road ahead.

"She rewrote it."

…………………

The creature's corpse still steamed on the broken ground, tendrils of mist curling lazily from its ruined flesh.

Max gave it one last glance – then turned away.

"Move," he said sharply.

The team fell in without hesitation, boots crunching over shattered stone and congealed blood.

No one spoke.

There was nothing to say.

The mist congealed with every step, swallowing the ruined streets, the crumbled buildings, even the faintest outline of the mountains beyond. It wasn't just weather anymore. It was a force – heavy, deliberate, seeping into lungs and bone and thought.

Chloe coughed once, a thin, choked sound that Victor immediately muffled with a hand over her mouth. They crouched low behind a fractured concrete barrier, breathing shallow.

Max swept the road ahead with his senses – not just sight, but something deeper. His connection to the soulfields, to the wrongness stitched into the air.

Something was wrong.

Worse than before.

He closed his eyes briefly, feeling for it.

There – a flicker.

Not the mist. Not the corrupted survivors.

Something sharper. Colder.

Predatory.

Across the broken street, behind the remains of a toppled cargo truck, a glint of metal caught the corner of Max's eye.

Too clean. Too deliberate.

A scope, half-hidden under a tarp of mist and debris.

Max's hand tightened around the chain at his belt.

"Ferron," he said under his breath.

The exorcist immediately shifted, moving low, silent, following Max's gaze.

He saw it too.

Sniper nest.

Ferron's fingers flicked a silent warning: More than one.

Max scanned the rooftops – saw another glint, farther up, nestled among the crumbled remains of a clocktower.

Alpha tensed behind him – just a subtle shift of stance, but telling.

They were boxed in.

Not demons. Not mutants. Humans.

Max tasted copper in the back of his throat – that old, familiar taste of incoming blood.

He gestured rapidly, the old military signals flowing back into his hands:

Ambush. Two points. Snipers. Close-range units incoming.

Dan's aura flickered again – instinctively trying to expand – but Max shook his head sharply. No. Keep it tight. Keep it hidden.

Victor's beast form rippled under his skin, restrained for now, muscles bunched and ready.

Chloe drew her blade.

Alyssa flexed her fingers in her gauntlets.

Omega tensed, ready to armour-up in a heartbeat.

Max exhaled slow.

This wasn't random. This wasn't scavengers.

Whoever was waiting out there had set this trap carefully. They were being herded toward it.

Max's mind clicked coldly into place.

Military tactics. Precision. Contractor-grade movement.

Only one faction would still be moving this cleanly inside the rotted zones of China.

Chamber Theta.

The CIA's blacksite Contractors.

Back again.

Max's jaw tightened.

Another flicker from the rooftops – movement too fast to be mist.

A signal. An approach.

They didn't know who Max's team was yet. Didn't know who they were hunting. Not since they had levelled up to Category Two.

But it didn't matter.

Blood would spill soon – one way or another.

Max turned his head slightly, voice low enough only the closest could hear:

"Stay tight. On my mark – we hit back."

He rolled his shoulders once, feeling the Hellfire coil hot and hungry under his ribs.

This city wasn't dead yet.

And neither were they.

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