For Carla, the delivery driver, the real world had not returned. It had been replaced by a sick echo of itself. The sky could be blue, sirens could carry a familiar urgency, and cars could move—but it was all a lie. A thin layer of normalcy painted over an abyss. She lived in her small apartment like a prisoner in her own life. The curtains remained drawn, blocking out daylight that felt too bright, too false. Silence was her enemy; the sound of a door closing in the hallway made her flinch, the distant growl of a truck engine made her hold her breath.
Sleep was a luxury she no longer possessed. When she closed her eyes, she didn't see darkness. She saw purple. She saw the way shadows stretched longer, hungrier. She saw the arachnid creature at the lobby's glass door, its many red eyes fixed on her, promising a swift and unthinkable death. And she saw the man with the axe.
In her nightmares, he was an ambiguous figure. Not the hero who saved her. Not the villain who drew the danger in. He was simply the epicenter. A gravitational pole around which chaos orbited. She remembered the moment he stepped into the street—and how the air seemed to change. How the focus of the monsters' fury, once scattered, contracted and locked onto him, like iron filings snapping toward a powerful magnet.
She was reliving that moment for the tenth time, sitting on the edge of her bed, untouched coffee going cold beside her, when the doorbell rang. The sharp, electronic sound tore a small scream from her throat. Her heart spiked. She wasn't expecting anyone.
She crept to the door and peered through the peephole. Two men. Dark suits. Expressionless faces. Not salesmen. Not neighbors. Officials. She could smell authority on them, even through the door.
"Miss Carla Vargas?" a calm voice said from the other side. "We're with the Department of Oneiric Activities. We'd like to ask you a few questions. It's about 26th Street."
The mention of the street made her recoil, as if the word itself were toxic. But she knew she had no choice. Refusing them wasn't an option. They weren't the kind of people who accepted no. With trembling hands, she opened the door.
Hours later, she found herself in a place that only deepened her sense of unreality. A "soft room" deep within DAO headquarters. The walls were a neutral beige. The chairs were comfortable, but their ergonomics were too calculated to be truly relaxing. There were no windows. It was a box designed to appear harmless—which made it even more threatening.
Agent Barros sat across from her. He was polite, his voice calm, but his eyes… his eyes were those of a hunter. They saw everything. Analyzed everything.
"Thank you for coming, Carla," he said. "I know this is difficult. We just need you to tell us what you saw. From your perspective. Every detail you remember matters."
And she told him. Her voice was a thread—fragile, brittle. She described the sky changing, the silence, the panic. She described taking shelter in the lobby with the elderly couple. She described the fear, the sense of waiting for the end.
"And then… he appeared," she said.
"Him?" Barros asked, though he already knew.
"The big man. With the axe. He didn't look scared like we were. He looked… irritated. Like all of it was an inconvenience to him."
She described the conversation, his words about the sick space, about the smell of panic. Words that, at the time, had sounded like the ramblings of a strange man—but now, in hindsight, sounded like the analysis of a specialist.
"And then the slaughter started across the street," she continued, her eyes unfocusing, returning to the toy store. "The family… the father, the mother, the little girl…" She swallowed hard, the memory choking her. "The creatures broke in. And the girl screamed."
Carla paused, her body trembling with the memory of that sound.
"That scream… it changed something in him. In the man with the axe. He was watching us—I know he was. Hesitating. But when the girl screamed, he stopped hesitating. He went… calm. A terrible calm. He told us to lock the door and went outside."
Barros leaned forward. "What happened when he went out?"
Carla shook her head, trying to organize the chaos in her mind. "That's when it got strange. The creatures were everywhere. A frenzy. Attacking everything. But when he stepped into the middle of the street, they… stopped."
"Stopped?" Barros repeated, his voice neutral, but the intensity in his eyes deepened.
"Yes. They were tearing into that poor man—the father. But when the man with the axe stepped out, they lifted their heads. All of them. At the same time. Like they'd heard a command."
She looked at Barros, eyes wide with the strangeness of the memory. "Agent, it wasn't like they'd seen new prey. It was different. It was like… like dogs stopping their chase of rabbits because a wolf just stepped out of the woods. The air changed. The hunt changed."
Barros remained silent, letting her process. Her words were confirming the theory Thorne had built from the simulation data. The "target-marking" event.
"Thank you, Carla. That's very helpful," Barros said at last. "There's one more thing. We need you to formally confirm the man's identity. Just for the record."
He led her out of the soft room and down a corridor to a wall of dark glass. An observation room. "He's in a training session. Just take a look and confirm if it's the same man."
Carla approached the glass reluctantly. The room beyond was vast and gray.
The Gym.
At its center, beneath cold lights, stood him.
Artur.
But it wasn't the same man.
The man she had seen in the lobby had been big, yes—but out of place. A man of the forest lost in the city. This man… was different. He was in motion. The DAO-gray jumpsuit was soaked with sweat, clinging to a body that looked carved from stone and wire. He moved with brutal fluidity, an economy of motion that was both hypnotic and terrifying. He held the axe—but not like a lumberjack. He held it like a surgeon holds a scalpel.
He was fighting holographic targets that flickered into existence around him. With every movement, the axe traced arcs of lethal precision, "cutting" through projections of light at a speed that did not seem human. He wasn't a man defending himself.
He was a killing machine practicing its craft.
Carla staggered back, her hand flying to her mouth. That wasn't the man who had saved the girl.
That was the reason the girl had needed saving.
The fear she had felt on 26th Street returned—but now with terrible clarity. It wasn't fear of the monsters.
It was fear of him.
Recognition.
The instinctive certainty of prey finally understanding the nature of the predator.
"Is it him?" Barros asked softly beside her.
Carla couldn't look away from the figure moving with deadly grace beyond the glass. The memory of the horde turning in unison, the shift in the air, the sudden and absolute focus… it all clicked into place.
"It's him," she whispered, her voice trembling, her face pale. She turned to Barros, her eyes filled not with gratitude, but with a primal dread.
"The things… they weren't coming after us. They weren't just hunting."
She pointed with a shaking finger at Artur.
"They were responding."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"They were coming for him."
Carla's statement hung in the air, cold and heavy as a gravestone. For her, it was the articulation of trauma. For Barros, it was final confirmation. Theory had become fact. Simulation had become reality.
Artur wasn't just a monster hunter.
He was the bait.
A beacon of reality in an ocean of chaos, inevitably drawing the things that fed on light.
Wherever he went—
hell would follow.