"Do it." Brakus didn't wait to see if Haru would move. He turned away, his spine curving as if the very air had gained mass. He walked toward the dark of the timber, his boots dragging through the leaf litter—the heavy, uneven gait of a boy who had seen the world break and realized he couldn't fix it.
"I'm going," he muttered, the words barely catching the light. "I want to check on Brock." He didn't look back. He couldn't.
Haru's world narrowed to the cold, gray weight of the man at his feet. With a strained grunt, he hauled Daniel upright, propping his bare back against the gnarled trunk of an ancient oak. The jagged ridges of the bark bit into Daniel's pale skin, but the dead man offered no complaint. There was something sickening about the way Daniel's head lolled—a loose, heavy movement that only the dead possess.
Haru pulled a length of coarse linen from his pack. He began to wind it around Daniel's chest, lashing him to the tree with a frantic, rhythmic precision. He pulled the last loop so tight the wood groaned, pinning the corpse into a standing mockery of life.
Matthew watched, his jaw set so hard his teeth ached. He looked at the shimmering vial of Zerone-X and then at Haru's stained hands.
"He looks like an animal meant for slaughter, Haru," Matthew said, his voice a jagged whisper. "Are you sure about this? Are you sure it's still him in there?"
Haru didn't look up. He tucked the knot tight, his fingers white-knuckled against the bark. "It's a cage, Matthew. Not for him, but for the riot that's coming."
He finally reached for the needle, his hand trembling just enough to be human. "You know the stakes. If the Zerone-X takes, it'll hit him like a lightning strike. Without these straps, he'll snap his own spine before he even draws a breath. And if it fails..." Haru trailed off, staring at the empty space where a soul used to be. "Then he simply ceases. No body. No grave. Just a hole in the world where Daniel used to stand."
Brakus reached the house, his breath coming in shallow hitches. He told himself he'd find the kid slumped on the sofa or grumbling about being sent home early. He pressed his palm against the front door, the wood cool and indifferent under his touch.
"Brock?" he called out as he stepped inside.
The house didn't answer. It felt hollow, like a lung with the air squeezed out of it. He moved through the entryway into the kitchen. The table was clear. The floor was swept. A single glass of water stood on the counter, the surface of the liquid perfectly still, untouched since the morning.
Brakus walked to the back of the house, his footsteps sounding like gunshots in the vacuum of the hallway. He pushed open the bedroom door. The bed was made, the sheets pulled tight and wrinkle-free. Brock's boots were missing from the rug. His coat wasn't on the hook.
The realization turned Brakus's blood to slush. There were no signs of a fight. No overturned chairs. Just the terrifying, sterile neatness of a life that had been intercepted. Brock hadn't been taken from home; he had never made it to the door.
The silence of the house began to ring in Brakus's ears, a high-pitched, steady whine that drowned out the world.
[Brock]
The ringing in the silence shifted, deepening into a low, mechanical thrum.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Miles away, the sound of boots against concrete replaced the stillness of the house.
Brock's eyes snapped open. The grief hit him before his vision even cleared—a crushing realization that the nightmare hadn't ended with sleep. In the gloom, the steel bars of the cage felt closer, more predatory, as if the room were a throat slowly swallowing him whole. He remembered the road home, the shadows that had moved faster than he could run, and then... this.
Two figures materialized from the shadows beyond the bars.
The first was a man who looked like a fever dream of a fallen star: white hair shocks of static, eyes framed by jagged, runny eyeliner that looked like dried ink. When he smirked, his teeth were needles—sharp and wrong.
Beside him stood a woman draped in black fur, balanced on dark red stilettos that sounded like bone hitting the floor. Orbs of violet energy drifted around her like tiny, captive suns, casting a rhythmic, pulsing glow over her expensive jewels.
"Have you had enough time to weigh our offer?" Her voice didn't just reach his ears; it shimmered in the marrow of his bones, sweet and terrifyingly angelic. "The world is burning, little bird. Our weapon has already begun to tear the sky apart."
The man stepped forward, his movements twitchy and sharp. "You'll have to excuse Eris," he hissed, his voice a jagged contrast to the woman's melody. "She has a flair for the... catastrophic."
He leaned in, his breath smelling of ozone and copper. "We want you and that brother of yours to come home. To finish the work your father abandoned. To see blood like yours wasted in a cage like this..." He spat, the bile sizzling where it hit the concrete. "It revolts me. It's a stain on the very fabric of my spirit!"
With a casual flick of his finger, the air itself curdled. Iron links materialized from nothing—not forged by fire, but birthed from the dark. They lunged like snakes, lashing Brock against the cold back wall of the cell, pinning him until the metal bit deep into his skin.
The chains cinched tight, the iron cold enough to burn. Brock gasped, his lungs struggling against the sudden weight of the metal pinning him to the stone. He looked up at them, his pulse thundering in his throat—a frantic, trapped thing.
"My father… he would never have helped you," Brock spat, his voice trembling despite his defiance.
Eris smiled, a slow, shimmering expression that didn't reach her eyes. She stepped closer to the bars, the floating orbs of energy following her like loyal hounds. "Your father was a man of order, little bird. But order is just a beautiful lie we tell ourselves to keep from screaming."
She gestured toward the ceiling, as if looking through the miles of concrete toward the distant skyline. "Our weapon has already whispered to the city. As we speak, the streets of Ironwell are unraveling. Within those walls, the blood in the veins of the common and the weak is catching fire, just like yours. A grand metropolis full of people with god-like power and absolutely no way to hold the reins."
She let out a soft, melodic laugh that felt like a razor blade against his skin. "Imagine the carnage. A mother who can accidentally burn down her tenement with a thought. A merchant who can shatter a city block because he lost his temper. Pure, unadulterated entropy, contained within the finest city man ever built."
The man with the white hair chuckled, a dry, raspy sound. He adjusted his leather cuff, watching the shadows dance on the walls.
"The Higher-Ups have coined a rather bland name for our little masterpiece: Project Awakening," Eris said, leaning her forehead against the cool steel of the bars. Her eyes glowed with a faint, violet light. "But personally? I call it Operation Goddess of Chaos. Fitting, don't you think? We didn't just break Ironwell, Brock. We turned everyone in it into a monster. And we need you—your specific, royal lineage—to lead the choir in the new age."
Brock's heart gave a violent lurch, nearly drowning out the rattle of the chains. "Royal lineage?" he whispered, the words tasting like ash. "What are you talking about? My father was a—"
"Your father was many things, Brock," Eris interrupted, her voice dropping to a silken, predatory low. She pulled back from the bars, the violet light in her eyes fading into a dark, teasing shimmer. "But we aren't here for a history lesson. Not yet. Secrets are like the Zerone-X that poor fool Haru is so fond of—too much, too soon, and the mind simply... vanishes."
She paused, a look of mock-pity crossing her features. "He actually thought he was hiding from us out there in the dirt. How naive."
She turned, her black fur coat billowing like a shroud. "Eat. Rest. Try not to break your own bones against the walls."
"Wait!" Brock lunged forward, but the chains snapped him back against the stone with a bone-jarring crack. "Tell me!"
Eris didn't look back. Her melodic laughter echoed down the concrete corridor, dancing over the sharp clack-clack of her heels until the silence of the hold swallowed him once more.
[Brakus]
The silence of the house became a roar in Brakus's ears. He didn't wait to look for clues; his instincts, honed by years of playing protector, screamed that every second spent in this empty kitchen was a second Brock drifted further away.
He bolted.
He threw himself back into the night, his lungs burning as he sprinted toward the forest. But as he ran, the trees seemed to shift and lean in ways he didn't recognize. The familiar path twisted like a dying snake under his feet. He felt a strange, magnetic pull at the base of his skull, a dizzying disorientation that made the world spin. He thought he was running toward Haru's clearing, but the air was growing colder, the trees thinner. He was losing his way in his own backyard.
"Haru!" he screamed into the treeline, his voice cracking. "Haru, he's gone! He's—"
A shadow detached itself from the trunk of a massive cedar.
Brakus didn't see the man until it was too late. He tried to pivot, his boots skidding on the damp needles, but he realized with a jolt of horror that he wasn't near the clearing at all. He had been led—pushed by some unseen force—straight into a trap. A gloved hand shot out with the speed of a striking viper, catching Brakus across the chest. The impact hit with the solidity of a falling tree, sending him spiraling into the dirt.
Brakus scrambled back, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gulps. Standing in the center of the path was a silhouette that seemed to drink the moonlight. The man was draped in tactical black, his face hidden behind a sleek, obsidian mask that covered the lower half of his features—sharp, angular, and predatory.
"The doctor is busy," the man said, his voice a muffled grind of gravel against steel. "And you are headed in the wrong direction."
Brakus's hand went to the small knife at his belt. "Where is my brother? What did you do with Brock?"
"The boy is exactly where he was always meant to be," the masked man rasped, stepping forward with a liquid, terrifying grace. "You, however... you were a variable we didn't account for. And variables are meant to be deleted."
Brakus lunged, but the stranger sidestepped the strike with sickening ease. With a clinical twist, the man sent Brakus to his knees. A heavy boot slammed into Brakus's ribs, driven by a strength that wasn't entirely human. The world tilted, the scent of pine and dirt rushing up to meet him as his vision fractured into white sparks.
The man reached for a serrated blade at his thigh, the steel singing as it left the sheath. Brakus watched the blade rise—a silver line meant to end his story.
Then, the world screamed.
A flash of violet-white light erupted behind the masked man. The air didn't just vibrate; it tore. In a blur of motion that defied the eyes, a figure materialized from the void.
Daniel didn't use a weapon. He didn't need one. He moved with a jittery, unnatural speed, his hands finding the man's throat before the stranger could even gasp. There was no struggle—only the sound of iron-hard fingers meeting flesh, and then a wet, sickening snap that echoed through the trees.
Daniel let the body drop. The masked man hit the dirt like a sack of stones, his neck twisted at an impossible angle.
Brakus stared up, his heart stopping. Daniel stood over the corpse, his chest heaving with a rhythmic, violent force. The linen bandages Haru had used to bind him were shredded, hanging off his frame like the remnants of a shroud. But it was his eyes that terrified Brakus. They weren't the eyes of the man he knew. They were twin pools of shimmering, unstable light, burning with the "riot" that had brought him back.
Daniel looked down at his own hands, his fingers twitching with a static charge that scorched the grass beneath his feet. He looked at Brakus, and for a terrifying second, there was no recognition—only the hunger of a storm. Then, the light in his eyes flickered, the violet hue deepening as he regained a fragile hold on himself.
He looked toward the house, then back at the forest. "Brakus," he rasped, the name sounding like it was being dragged through glass. He took a staggering step forward, his hand reaching out. "Where... where is Brock?"
The sound of his name broke something inside Brakus. The adrenaline that had been keeping him upright evaporated, leaving only a jagged, hollow ache. He didn't try to stand. He collapsed further into the dirt, his chest heaving with a sob that tore its way out of his throat before he could stop it.
"Daniel?" Brakus choked out, his vision blurring as hot tears spilled over. He crawled toward the man he thought he'd buried, his hands clutching at Daniel's tattered clothes. "You're here... you're really here. I thought..., I thought you were gone."
He buried his face against Daniel's leg, his fingers digging into the fabric with a desperate, white-knuckled grip. He was shaking, a high-pitched, broken sound escaping him. "They took him, Daniel. I went home and the house was empty. He's gone. Brock is gone and I couldn't... I wasn't there..."
The weight of the last hour—the grief, the fear, the isolation—came crashing down at once. In the shadow of the man brought back from the dead, Brakus finally let himself be small.
A low, wet groan came from the dirt. The masked man, whose neck had been snapped, began to twitch. His body contorted with a sickening, grinding sound as his own "Awakening" triggered—a desperate, biological fail-safe. He began to push himself up, his head lolling at an unnatural angle, his fingers clawing into the earth.
Daniel didn't look down. He didn't even move.
He simply looked at the space the man occupied, his violet eyes narrowing. In an instant, the air around the agent fractured. It didn't look like a physical strike; it looked like the space itself had become a blade. With a faint, crystalline ping, the masked man was instantaneously divided. He didn't just die; he fell apart in perfect, clinical geometric sections, silenced before he could even draw a breath.
Daniel turned his gaze back to the woods as Haru and Matthew burst into the clearing. Haru was pale, clutching a portable comms-unit that was screaming with static and overlapping distress calls.
"Brakus! Daniel!" Haru shouted, though he recoiled slightly at the sight of the diced remains on the path. "We have to move. The radio... it's everywhere. They're calling it Project Awakening. It's a goddamn epidemic."
"What are you talking about?" Brakus asked, Matthew helping him to his shaky feet.
"The city," Haru said, his voice trembling.
"Ironwell is tearing itself open. The reports are insane—people manifesting abilities in the streets, in their homes. Fire, telekinesis, things we don't have names for yet. They have no control. It's total chaos. The authorities have lost the sectors."
Brakus looked at the remains of the masked man, then at Daniel's glowing, alien eyes. "Someone did this. Someone sent him to make sure I didn't get to you."
"Whoever they are, they have the boy," Matthew said, checking his pistol. "And if they're behind this 'Awakening,' they'll be at the center of the storm. The offshore facility near the docks. It's the only place with the power grid to sustain a broadcast this big."
Daniel stepped forward. The violet light in his eyes flared, the grass at his feet curling into black ash. "I can feel him," Daniel said, his voice a low, resonant chime. "It's like a pulse under my skin. A tether."
"Can you get us there?" Brakus asked.
Daniel's eyes turned entirely violet, the world around them beginning to blur and warp as he tapped into the raw, bleeding edge of the Zerone-X. "Hold on. This is going to hurt."
The forest vanished in a blinding flash of white light, leaving only the scent of ozone and the echo of a sob as they plummeted toward a city that was drowning in its own new-found power.
The flash of Daniel's teleportation didn't fade; it bled into the fires of Ironwell.
They materialized on a high maintenance catwalk overlooking the industrial sector, and the sight below was a glimpse into a living hell. The Grand City, once a marvel of steam and iron, was melting. A few blocks away, a residential tower didn't just collapse—it dissolved, the stone turned into a swirling cloud of sand by some terrified child inside.
The air was thick with the scent of copper and ozone. This was the "Awakening"—a billion volts of godhood poured into human vessels made of clay. From their vantage point, they saw the screams of a city being rewritten in real-time.
"We have to move," Daniel's voice cut through the roar, sounding like a bell tolling underwater.
With another jarring pulse of violet light, they vanished, reappearing at the edge of the offshore Black-Site. The area was a graveyard of shipping containers and twisted cranes. The harbor water was boiling, white steam rising in thick curtains where ruptured power lines hissed into the brine. They breached the facility, Daniel melting the security gates into slag by his mere presence.
They tore through the interior with a desperate, clinical speed, shattering doors to holding cells and laboratory wings. But as they reached the heart of the complex, the frantic energy of the search hit a wall of cold, dead silence.
Brakus stood in the center of the main laboratory, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The room was filled with monitors showing scrolling data on Project Awakening, but the central holding pod—the one labeled with their family's crest—was empty. The glass was cool to the touch. No signs of a struggle. No scent of him.
"He's not here," Brakus said, the hope dying in his voice. He turned to Daniel. "You said you could feel him! You said there was a tether!"
Daniel stood in the center of the room, his violet eyes pulsing with a frantic, jagged rhythm. He gripped his head, his fingers sparking against his temples. "He was here," Daniel rasped, his voice cracking with a sudden, sharp pain. "The pulse... it was loud. It was screaming."
He looked around the room, his gaze landing on a series of humming obsidian pillars surrounding the pod. The air around the pillars was shimmering, the light bending in a way that made Brakus's stomach turn.
"Someone is... muffling him," Daniel whispered. The violet light in his eyes began to bleed into a dark, angry red. "There is a veil. A shadow over the tether. They knew I would come. They're playing with the signal."
Haru stepped back from a terminal, his fingers trembling as he reached into his lab coat. He pulled out a crumpled pack and a silver lighter. With a practiced, mechanical flick, he lit a cigarette, the orange cherry glowing bright in the dim, blue light of the lab. He took a long, jagged drag, exhaling a plume of smoke that swirled around the holographic displays.
"They've rerouted the biological signatures," Haru said, the cigarette bobbing between his lips as he spoke. "This facility is a decoy, Brakus. It's a broadcast hub for the Awakening, but the 'Royal' assets? They've been moved off-grid. Someone is using a high-frequency dampener to hide his location from Daniel's senses."
Brakus slammed his fist against the empty pod, the sound echoing through the hollow room like a gunshot in a cathedral. They were standing in the heart of the enemy's fortress, surrounded by the fires of a burning city, and they were still chasing a ghost.
"The signal didn't just fade," Daniel whispered, his voice dropping to a low, terrifying frequency that made the glass shards on the floor vibrate. He turned his gaze toward the dark water of the harbor visible through the breached hull. "It was severed. Purposely."
Haru took another pull of his cigarette, his face ghostly in the reflected light of the error screens. "It's a digital and biological blackout. Whoever is running this isn't just a scientist; they're an architect. They built this place to be found. They wanted us to see the empty cage."
A heavy, suffocating silence settled over the group, punctured only by the distant, rhythmic thud of the city's heart failing. Outside, the orange glow of Ironwell reflected off the boiling harbor, casting long, dancing shadows across the lab. They had come for a rescue, but they had found a graveyard of expectations.
Brakus looked at his own reflection in the polished obsidian of the dampener pillars. He looked ragged and small, but as he looked at Daniel—the man who had crossed the veil of death just to stand beside him—he felt a new, colder kind of strength coil in his gut.
"They think they're the ones watching," Brakus said, his voice steady for the first time since he had found his home empty. He reached down and picked up a discarded data-chip from the console, his knuckles white. "They think they can muffle the blood in our veins and we'll just wander in the dark."
He looked toward the blackened skyline of the Grand City, where the Awakening was turning the night into a kaleidoscope of violet and flame.
"Let them hide him," Brakus murmured, his eyes narrowing as he turned back to the others. "We'll burn the city down until there's nowhere left to hide."
Daniel's eyes flared a deep, abyssal red, acknowledging the vow. Haru flicked a long stalk of ash onto the laboratory floor, his eyes fixed on the burning horizon. Together, they turned away from the empty pod and stepped back into the heat of the dying world.
Somewhere in the dark, the hunt had truly begun.