The air turned venomously still. Not just quiet—dead.
A suffocating pressure leaked from the walls like poisonous fog, thick and ancient, pressing down with unbearable weight. It wasn't just aura—it was despair incarnate.
Every breath the squad took was colder than ice, each inhale a dagger in the lungs.
The walls pulsed red, bleeding with unnatural light, the very space trembling like reality itself was recoiling in fear.
Tina stumbled back, her voice barely escaping her lips. "Wha...what is that...?"
Her hands trembled violently, pupils dilated, soul rattling under the pressure.
Iris narrowed her gaze, body taut, breath shaking—but her voice? Steady. Like instinct.
"...Leo."
She didn't know why the name surfaced—not exactly.
But something about the divine weight of the presence... it felt like him.
Only this wasn't the Leo she knew.
This was something else.
Darker.
Heavier.
Twisted.
Then—
A voice.
It echoed from nowhere and everywhere, slicing through the hallway like a blade of sound.
"Leo...?"
The tone was mocking. Cold. Inhuman.
"He was weak... foolish... and long gone."
Each syllable carried unbearable gravity, the sound itself corrupting the silence with dread. And then—laughter.
Low. Guttural. Monstrous.
It crawled through the corridor like a specter, wrapping around their spines, warping the air with its unnatural rhythm. Reality shuddered.
All eyes snapped to the beast ahead. Hulking. Still.
Then... sliiiick—
Its massive head slid off its shoulders.
No slash. No scream.
Just a clean, sickening fall.
THUD.
The echo shattered the illusion of safety.
Where the monster once stood... now stood a figure cloaked in black. Silent. Motionless.
A hood draped over his head, swallowing light. Only two eyes were visible—twin embers of crimson wrath, glowing like cursed suns.
Alive.
And hungry.
Every ranger froze. Muscles refused to move. The breath caught in their lungs.
Even Marina's barrier collapsed under the weight of that gaze.
The figure's coat drifted lightly in the still air, the edges flickering like smoke soaked in fire.
Each movement whispered devastation.
This wasn't a beast.
This wasn't Leo.
This was something born from both...
...and worse.
Then came his voice.
"I am Jack."
He didn't shout it. He declared it — like prophecy spoken by a god long buried and newly reborn.
And in that single breath, time itself seemed to tighten. The air grew still. The walls of the corridor groaned as if reality was straining to contain what stood before them. That voice wasn't just sound — it was weight.
A statement etched into the marrow of everyone who heard it.
Every soul present — soldier, mage, veteran or novice — felt it deep in their core.
Something far more ancient, far more monstrous than any beast they had ever faced... had returned.
And this time, it wore a name.
A name that now echoed like a curse.
A name that would never again be spoken lightly.
Then, he vanished.
Like dust lost in the breath of fate, Jack's form crumbled—graceful, silent, terrifying.
Not a trace of motion. Not a sound. Just dissolution. Like the universe itself had erased him in reverence... or fear.
All that remained was residue—not of smoke, not of magic, but something deeper.
Dark energy, ancient and wrong, slithered through the air like sentient ash. It clung to their skin. It clung to their memories.
The hallway froze. No footsteps. No whispers. Even the walls refused to echo.
By the time the team returned to the surface, sunlight painted the world in gold... but that gold felt cold, empty. Mocking.
The sun was still there, yes—but it no longer warmed them. Light no longer meant safety.
They moved like survivors, not soldiers—eyes hollow, hands trembling when no one looked.
These weren't rookies. These were seasoned rangers. Battle-hardened. Trained. Conditioned.
But what they saw wasn't battle.
It was revelation.
And Iris... she felt it most.
Her legs nearly collapsed beneath her at HQ's entrance. She leaned hard against the wall, sweat on her skin, heart racing with phantom pain.
Her vision blurred—not from exhaustion, but from the sheer weight of memory.
One line.
One cursed echo burned into her soul:
"You escaped... because I'm not in the mood."
That wasn't mercy.
That was dominance.
And he hadn't even tried.
The memory of his chuckle—low, cold, almost amused—looped in Iris's mind like a broken melody carved into bone. It wasn't a threat.
It was a prophecy.
And it had already begun to unfold.
Two days passed. Two days of silence, heavy and unspoken.
No one dared mention his name. Not out of superstition—out of instinct. Like naming him might call him back.
Finally, in the sterile quiet of the mission hall, the team gathered. Not for answers.
But for confirmation that they hadn't imagined the abyss.
The footage played.
Monsters appeared. Aura flares ignited. Buildings cracked. The chaos—all of it was clear, vivid. But him?
Nothing.
Where Jack should have stood, the footage twisted. Glitched. Whole frames collapsed into static—not corruption... erasure.
Reality itself had rejected his image.
The longer they watched, the more oppressive the silence became.
Cain stood, slow and stiff, like something ancient had just brushed past his soul.
"...The cameras couldn't even register him?" His voice was thin. Small.
A cold ripple moved through the team.
Iris didn't look at them. She only stared into the black screen, her pale reflection barely visible.
Her voice came out in a whisper, heavy with the weight of what they all feared.
"He's not just back..."
"...he's beyond comprehension."
A serene white stillness wrapped the room—too peaceful for a world that had just been scarred.
Books lined the walls like silent watchers, relics hummed faintly with old tech and older magic, but none of it mattered.
Not to Jasmine.
Not now.
She sat unmoving in the center of it all, wrapped in stillness, lost in a gravity that had nothing to do with time.
In her hands, a photo—slightly blurred, shadows too deep, edges soft—but it was him. Jack.
He wasn't smiling. He never really did.
But she remembered that look.
The quiet sadness, the exhaustion he wore like armor. The kind of sorrow only people who'd already died inside could carry.
Her thumb slid across the image, gently tracing the curve of his jaw.
A hundred memories bloomed and burned in an instant—
The way he stayed behind on every mission, quiet but watching everything.
The way he pretended no one noticed.
But she always did.
The room felt colder now.
She whispered, barely audible. "Are you really gone...?"
No one answered.
But something in the air—a shift, a weight, a silence too sharp to be natural—made her eyes lift slightly.
Still, she didn't cry.
She only sat, unmoving.
Because grief this deep doesn't scream.
It bleeds. Quietly. Always.