One Hour Earlier — In Room 024
Anni's eyes fluttered open slowly.
Her vision was blurry at first, shapes and colours bleeding together. Gradually, the world came into focus—a white ceiling, fluorescent lights, the rhythmic beeping of medical equipment.
Hospital. She was in a hospital.
She tried to move.
Nothing happened.
Her body refused to obey. Paralysis held her completely immobile, leaving her able only to observe her surroundings. Bandages wrapped tightly around her forehead. An oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth. A heart monitor beeped steadily nearby, tracking the rhythm of a life she'd tried to end.
I survived, she realised with crushing disappointment. I'm still alive.
The door opened.
Every nerve in Anni's body screamed with primal, instinctive terror. It was as if she were staring at a monster wearing human skin—something fundamentally wrong disguised as something familiar.
Mayor Hazel Jasper Jones stepped into the room.
He closed the door behind him with a soft click and turned the lock.
His footsteps echoed as he approached her bed—slow, deliberate, savouring every moment. When he reached her bedside, he leaned over and looked directly into her terrified eyes.
Then he reached out and touched her cheek.
His nails scraped across her skin, leaving thin red scratches.
"Oh, my precious," he said, his voice low and menacing despite the endearing words. "How are you feeling?"
"Leave me alone, you monster," Anni whispered, putting every ounce of hatred she possessed into those words.
Mayor Jones's expression didn't change. His hand simply moved from her cheek to her throat.
And squeezed.
Anni couldn't move her arms to fight back. Couldn't push him away. Couldn't do anything but feel his fingers tightening around her windpipe, cutting off her air supply.
This is it. This is how I die. At least it will finally be over.
But in that moment of suffocation, something unexpected happened.
A memory broke through the terror—but not from this life.
She saw herself in a different time, a different place. Guards in ancient armour were dragging her away from someone. A young man who looked remarkably like Joseph was screaming her name, trying to reach her, being held back by multiple soldiers.
His voice echoed across time:
"I don't want to leave you again, my love!"
The memory vanished as quickly as it came, but it left something behind.
A spark.
A reason to fight.
"HELP ME!" Anni screamed with every bit of strength she had left. "SOMEBODY HELP ME!"
In the corridor outside, Johan and Jennifer moved cautiously through the possessed bodies.
The Oneiros sleep spell had affected everyone—patients, nurses, doctors, all collapsed in unnatural slumber. They moved carefully between the sleeping forms, searching for any sign of the threat.
Johan paused beside one of the sleeping men. He gently pried open the man's eyelid to check his condition.
The eye was completely white—no iris, no pupil, just a blank white orb.
"They're possessed by Oneiros," Johan said quietly, his voice tight with seriousness. "All of them."
Jennifer's worry intensified. This was worse than she'd thought. If this many people were already under Oneiro's control—
A muffled sound came from somewhere behind them.
Jennifer's head whipped around, her senses straining. Then she heard it clearly:
"Somebody help me!"
A girl's voice, desperate and terrified.
Room 024.
Jennifer lunged for the door immediately, grabbing the handle.
Locked from the inside.
"Johan! Something's happening in there!"
Johan raised his glass revolver without hesitation and fired three shots at the door lock.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The lock shattered. The door swung open.
They burst into the room.
Mayor Jones stood beside the hospital bed, his hand wrapped around Anni's throat. His other hand was raised, ready to strike her face.
Johan's gun came up instantly, aimed directly at the mayor's head.
Jones looked back, startled. For just a moment, his carefully constructed public mask slipped, revealing something monstrous underneath.
Blood already coated his hands—fresh scratches on Anni's face and throat showed where he'd been torturing her before choking her.
Jennifer's vision went red with fury.
She snapped her fingers. A dagger materialised in her hand—black obsidian crackling with dark lightning. She hurled it with deadly precision.
THUNK.
The blade pierced Jones's wrist and pinned his hand to the wall. He screamed—a high-pitched shriek of pain and indignation that sounded nothing like his usual cultured voice.
Before he could recover, Johan delivered a sharp kick to his face.
Jones crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
"Johan!" Jennifer's voice was trembling as she rushed to Anni's bedside.
They looked down at the girl.
And stopped.
Anni lay unnaturally still. Her body wasn't moving at all—not even the slight rise and fall of breathing. Blood stained the oxygen mask, seeping from her mouth. Fresh scars marred her cheeks and throat. Her eyes were wide open, fixed on the ceiling in a final, desperate expression.
Her mouth was slightly open, frozen in the act of trying to draw one more breath.
"I think this is Anni," Johan said quietly. "Joseph's classmate. The girl he told us about."
Both siblings had witnessed countless deaths in their years of fighting supernatural threats. They'd seen violence, tragedy, and suffering that would break most people.
But something about Anni's young face—the raw desperation frozen in her features, the innocence that death couldn't erase—shattered their usual professional composure.
"We're too late," Johan whispered, his voice heavy with failure.
Jennifer stared at the dead girl, her hands clenching into fists. Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes.
We were right outside. Just seconds away. If we'd been faster—
A roar erupted from the corridor, cutting through her thoughts.
Daniel burst through the doorway, his eyes wild with malicious intent.
"Mesanychta!" He snapped his fingers, and a wave of blue energy washed over the room. "Sleep!"
Johan immediately formed a mana sphere and threw it at Jennifer, creating a protective barrier around her. The sleep spell bounced off him harmlessly—his natural resistance to such magic protecting him completely.
Jennifer staggered as the drowsiness tried to drag her consciousness down. She shook her head violently, fighting it off, and a dagger materialised in her hand.
Daniel was already forming another attack. He snapped his fingers again, creating a blue sphere of swirling energy.
"Dimension-Devin!"
He hurled it at them.
"Jennifer, watch out for his—"
Before Johan could finish his warning, the sphere struck him.
He vanished.
Pulled into Daniel's dimension, which looks like the sky.
"Johan!" Jennifer called his name desperately, but he was gone. Trapped in an unknown realm.
She spun back toward Daniel, raising her dagger defensively.
Then she heard it.
Another roar. Closer. More bestial.
A creature appeared behind the doorway.
It had once been human—Antonio, the other bodyguard. But the Skinwalker transformation was nearly complete now. His body was grotesquely monstrous, with elongated limbs ending in razor-sharp talons, rows of predatory teeth filling a too-wide mouth, sickly green eyes that held no trace of humanity, and a chest torn open to expose white bone beneath shredded muscle and skin.
The monster that had been Antonio lunged at Jennifer with inhuman speed.
Jennifer formed two daggers instantly and blocked his claws.
CLANG.
The impact sent out a shockwave of mana so powerful that every light bulb in the room exploded simultaneously. Darkness engulfed them, lit only by the crackling energy of their weapons.
Jennifer jumped backwards. Her daggers remained floating in midair, controlled by her will alone.
She focused her power, creating a mana sphere surrounded by dozens of sharp, crystalline shards that orbited it like deadly satellites.
Antonio roared, momentarily trapped by the floating crystals that threatened him from every angle.
Jennifer didn't hesitate. She hurled the mana sphere directly into his open mouth.
BOOM.
The explosion should have ended him.
But from the smoke and flames, a clawed hand emerged—
SLASH.
The blow was so powerful it shattered Antonio's own jaw, but his momentum carried him forward. His remaining claws stabbed deep into Jennifer's side, piercing through her suit and into her flesh.
Pain exploded through her body. Blood spread rapidly across her clothing.
Antonio laughed—a wet, gurgling sound through his broken jaw.
"Ha... ha... ha..." Blood and saliva dripped from his ruined mouth. "Now I bring the master two kinds of blood. Yours... and the girl's!"
Jennifer's vision swam. Her knees buckled.
But through the agony, a single thought burned in her mind like an unquenchable fire:
I can't die here.
Who will care for the seven children at home?
Who will protect Joseph?
Who will save this world from monsters like these?
The image of Anni's dead face flashed in her mind—another failure, another innocent life they'd arrived too late to save.
"I CAN'T DIE HERE!"
Jennifer grabbed one of her floating daggers and slashed Antonio's arm with savage force, severing it at the elbow.
A fierce, almost feral smile twisted her lips.
Her eyes changed—becoming something ancient and dangerous.
"Blood River Dimension."
A red orb formed from the blood pouring from Jennifer's wounds.
The sphere pulsed once, twice, growing larger with each beat—feeding on her pain, her rage, her desperate will to survive.
Then it erupted.
Reality shattered like breaking glass.
Antonio found himself standing in a completely different world.
Beneath his feet flowed a river—but not of water. Thick, viscous blood moved in slow currents, unnaturally warm against his transformed legs. The sky above was a deep, oppressive crimson, as if the sun itself were bleeding. No horizon was visible anywhere, just an endless blood river and an endless red sky stretching to infinity.
The Skinwalker's monstrous rage dissolved instantly into pure, primal terror.
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to escape.
The blood beneath his feet began to bubble and churn.
Jennifer rose from the river like a vengeful spirit emerging from the underworld.
Dark, root-like structures had spread across her face, pulsing with black veins. Her eyes were no longer fully human—they held something ancient, something that predated humanity itself, something that remembered when the world was young and savage.
In her hand materialised a sword unlike any mortal weapon. Its blade was deep crimson, as if forged from concentrated blood. Its grip was formed from those same dark roots that covered her skin, writhing and alive.
She looked at Antonio and smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
It was not a human smile.
She slashed once through empty air.
SHING.
The blade cut through space itself. Antonio screamed as half his body fell away, severed cleanly. The wound didn't bleed normally—it simply ceased to exist, as if reality itself had rejected that half of his body
Jennifer looks at the red sky. "I'm back to Blood River," she whispers.
Meanwhile, Johan materialised in an unknown dimension—a vast space resembling an enormous glass sphere, transparent and ethereal, floating in an endless void. The curved walls pulsed with a soft luminescence that cast everything in an otherworldly glow.
"In here, at least nobody will find you, can't help you, Johan Bennet," a voice echoed through the dimension, dripping with confidence and malice.
Suddenly, a blue slash from a glowing sword streaked toward him with lethal intent.
Johan raised his hand instinctively, summoning a mana slash of his own to intercept the attack. The two forces collided in a brilliant explosion of light and shadow. But the moment they connected, Johan realised the problem—he couldn't stop it. The blue light burned through his defence with searing intensity, forcing him to retreat several steps, his hand singed and smoking.
Daniel appeared, floating in mid-air with a glowing golden sword that hummed with divine power. A confident grin spread across his face as he hovered above, clearly believing he held every advantage.
But Johan's eyes narrowed.
In the next instant, Johan reappeared directly behind Daniel—the teleportation so fast it seemed like space itself had bent. A mana ball was already condensing in his palm, swirling with dark energy that made the air around it ripple.
"Wha—" Daniel began, his eyes widening.
The ball detonated.
The explosion was catastrophic. The sheer force of the blast created a massive impact that tore through the dimension itself. Massive cracks spiderwebbed across the glass sphere in all directions, fractures spreading like lightning across a sky. The sound was deafening—a deep, resonant boom that seemed to tear reality apart.
Daniel was hurled across the vast space like a rag doll, his body crashing violently into the curved surface of the glass sphere. The impact created a crater around him, dust and fragments cascading downward.
Johan raised two fingers casually, his expression calm despite the devastation surrounding them.
"Oi! Don't fly so much," Johan said with an arrogant smirk. "Your wings can't handle your ego."
He lowered his two fingers.
Gravity itself responded to his will. Daniel fell from his position, plummeting downward until he crashed hard onto the dimensional surface below, gasping for breath, blood dripping from his mouth.
How does he do all these things? Daniel thought desperately, his mind reeling. He is in my dimension... but he controls it like it's his own.
"Because it is my dimension, Mr. Daniel Williams," Johan replied, his voice cutting through the thought like a perfectly honed blade.
Daniel's eyes widened in shock and horror.
"You can read my mind. But how? This is supposed to be my dimension!" Daniel demanded, his voice cracking with a mixture of fear and confusion.
Daniel looked around frantically. Through the massive cracks spreading across the sphere's surface, he could see another dimension beyond his own—a swirling darkness that pulsed with Johan's overwhelming power, a realm that seemed to contain his. The realisation hit him like a physical blow.
Johan wasn't trapped in Daniel's dimension.
Daniel was trapped in Johan's.
He looked at Johan in surprise and naked fear, understanding the truth: he had walked into a trap, or worse—Johan had somehow pulled him into a space where the young man held absolute dominion.
Daniel stood on shaky legs, his golden sword still gripped tightly in his trembling hand. He attacked with renewed desperation, unleashing multiple mana slashes from his blade. Each slash carried the weight of his panic, brilliant golden light that tore through the air with killing intent.
But Johan moved like the wind itself.
The young man teleported at speeds that defied normal perception, his form blinking from one location to another in rapid succession. No matter where Daniel attacked, Johan was already gone—his presence dissolving into shadow and reappearing elsewhere without warning. It was a dance of predator and prey, and Daniel had become the latter.
Johan's movements were guided by Tilespar—the ancient art of dimensional traversal, the ability to slip between spaces as easily as breathing. Each teleport positioned him exactly where he needed to be, each dodge perfectly calculated.
"Dark Form," Johan commanded, his voice cold and precise.
His black glass revolver materialised in his hand, crackling with dark energy that seemed to absorb light itself. The weapon hummed with barely contained power.
He fired.
Multiple bullets erupted from the gun in rapid succession—six shots in total, each one a concentrated bolt of dark mana. As the bullets streaked through the space, Johan continued teleporting, his form flickering from one side of the dimension to another like a ghost, like a nightmare given form.
The bullets found their marks with perfect accuracy.
Each shot struck Daniel's body, and with each impact, the bodyguard screamed. The bullets tore through flesh and bone, leaving trails of dark energy that burned from the inside out. Daniel's body convulsed with each hit, his golden aura flickering and dimming with every wound.
Finally, Daniel's body collapsed onto the dimensional surface, limp and broken, blood pooling beneath him. His chest heaved with laboured breaths—he was barely conscious, barely alive.
Johan stood over him, his expression cold and impassive.
Then he released his mana in one final, overwhelming surge.
A massive force erupted from his being, a wind-like vortex that tore through the entire dimension. The glass sphere trembled and fractured, cracks spreading until the entire structure began to disintegrate. The dimension itself was shattering, unable to withstand the power of Johan's dominion.
The glass shattered into a million pieces and dissolved into nothing.
Johan materialised back in his own Tilespar dimension—the realm of darkness and shifting shadows that responded to his every thought. His breathing was steady, controlled, despite the intensity of the battle he'd just won.
He extended his senses outward, scanning for any other active dimensions nearby. His consciousness reached across the fabric of reality, searching, probing, mapping the dimensional landscape.
Two miniature dimensions appeared before his awareness like distant stars in a dark sky—one pulsing with dark red energy, the other glowing with brilliant blue.
The red one immediately registered as familiar. Johan frowned in frustration.
"Ah! I told her not to use her dimension," he muttered, recognising Jennifer's signature aura within the crimson realm. "Her mana ball is still active in there..."
He made a mental note to scold his twin for ignoring his instructions. Using a personal dimension drained too much energy, and in a situation like this, every ounce of power mattered.
But then he froze completely.
A horrific aura emanated from the blue dimension—a presence so dark, so wounded, so desperate that it made even Johan's blood run cold. The energy was fractured and unstable, pulsing with the signs of catastrophic combat. His eyes widened as he identified the source.
"This... this is Arthur's dimension," Johan whispered, his voice tight with sudden dread.
He measured the aura pulsing from the miniature dimension, feeling its violent tremors of ongoing battle. The power signature was erratic, failing—Arthur was losing. The realisation sent a spike of urgency through Johan's entire being.
"How much power does it originally hold?" he asked himself, but there was no time for a full answer.
His own dimension melted like water beneath him, the darkness dissolving as he surrendered control and collapsed the space. He materialised back in the normal world with a sharp intake of breath, his feet already moving as reality solidified around him.
He ran toward the corridor at inhuman speed, his footsteps barely making a sound against the tile floor. The hospital hallway blurred around him as he pushed his body to its limits.
And then he saw her.
Jennifer was sprawled on the floor of the corridor, unconscious. Her body lay limp, her breathing shallow but steady. There were minor injuries visible—scratches and burns from her own dimensional battle—but nothing immediately life-threatening.
"Jennifer," Johan breathed, dropping to one knee beside her.
But there was no time for relief. His senses were screaming at him—Arthur's dimensional signature was still active, still fluctuating, still fighting. And somewhere in that blue void, Jevier was tightening his grip.
Johan's jaw clenched with determination. He placed a gentle hand on Jennifer's shoulder, anchoring her consciousness to ensure she would recover safely in the normal world.
Then he stood, his black glass revolver already forming in his hand.
"It is the time to end this…"