Victor Hale didn't say much after his warning, but the fear in his eyes told the audience everything.
When the camera drifted back to the town line, the dusk looked colder than before, as if the light itself refused to touch Valley Harbor.
A heavy-coated operations officer lifted a megaphone. "Send UGV-1 into SCP-1936-1 for atmospheric and terrain recon."
UGV-1—a squat, tracked drone that looked like a miniature tank—rolled forward. It carried atmospheric sensors, video/audio gear, and a tray of biological samples (including brown house mice) sealed in clear pods. A second drone, UGV-2, idled behind it with a more powerful radio relay, ready to shadow the first.
The machine clanked past the yellow cordon and crossed into the fog-swept boundary the Foundation had labeled SCP-1936-1.
Behind the tape, an assault group finalized checks—six Piranha land vehicles fitted with environmental sniffers and turreted optics. James stood among them in hard armor. He didn't look like a doctor right now. He looked like he belonged on the sharp end.
"UGV-1 entering the anomaly." The tech's voice was steady but tight. "Telemetry live."
Important Event: The first probe enters the boundary.
---
First Pass
The feed stabilized. Flat, empty ground extended in all directions, pale dust swept by a slow, restless breeze. The fog overhead wasn't uniform; it braided itself into thin red and blue filaments, pulsing like veins under skin.
"UGV-1 reports atmosphere is rich in sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and carbon oxides," the technician called out. "Levels are irritating but not lethal for brief exposure. Biological samples show no immediate anomalous reaction."
The officer exhaled. "Noted."
"Visual remains flat and barren from fifteen meters in to about two thousand meters. Beyond two kilometers, radio quality degrades, so UGV-1 will return to the edge."
The drone traced a crescent and rattled back out of the fog. The line of vehicles idled; men and women in armor exchanged glances.
The officer gestured, and two D-class in bright orange coveralls climbed into UGV-2's cargo frame: D-512 and D-513, sealed into Level-A suits and wired with bio-telemetry.
The drone ferried them across the tape.
Important Event: Human subjects cross the boundary for a live exposure test.
At the one-kilometer mark, the officer gave the order nobody wanted to say aloud.
"D-513, remove your protective suit."
They had told him earlier. He still trembled. But he obeyed. The cameras caught his exposed skin—gooseflesh rising as the fog's breath touched him.
"Medical telemetry: no acute adverse reaction," the medic reported after a beat. "Slight respiratory change, comparable to smoke inhalation."
"Anything to report?" the officer asked over comms.
D-512's voice trembled. "Flat. Featureless. Nothing moving. Request permission to return."
"Granted."
When the two orange figures reappeared by the tape—alive, shivering, and wide-eyed—the entire perimeter let out a breath they didn't realize they'd been holding. Even the S.H.I.E.L.D. analysts watching from afar loosened their shoulders—except for Nick Fury. His frown deepened.
"The safer it looks," Fury murmured, "the worse it usually is."
---
Rolling In
Important Event: The armed exploration convoy enters SCP-1936-1.
The six Piranhas rolled forward in file, engines low, optics swiveling. Victor Hale drove lead in one column; James rode shotgun in the second vehicle, his radio pinned high on his vest.
Victor flicked a look over. "You told me your entry request got denied."
James tightened the strap on his plate carrier. "Mike's authority isn't as high as mine."
Victor hissed a laugh that had no humor in it. "You wear armor too well, Doc. You look more like a field op than I do."
James cut a glance through the viewport. The fog had thickened into swaths that rose and fell like tides, visibility dropping to a few dozen meters. Above, the red-and-blue bands tangled and loosened like a slow-motion storm of ribbons.
His radio crackled. "Zz—James, this is Mike. Report your current position—over."
"This is James. Still on plains. No visible structures. No changes since entry."
Another voice kicked in—BravoActual. "We've got an upward slope ahead."
AlphaActual: "Don't see it. Confirm?"
Bravo: "We're already going downhill on our side."
Alpha: "Copy. We see it now. Following you down."
James's brows pulled together. "Same map, different terrain," he muttered. "Local topology's not consistent between columns."
Victor's knuckles whitened on the wheel. "I hate when geometry lies."
James leaned toward the glass. "Eyes up, Vic."
"On it."
---
The Sky Moves
Important Event: Anomalous sky patterns interfere with signals.
The red and blue patterns overhead brightened, twisting into tubes and braids that pulsed in irregular intervals—ten shimmering bands that rippled like living things. Static danced in James's earpiece.
"This is James to all units—do you see the sky?" he called. "Signal interference increasing."
Before anyone could answer, a shadow flickered in the mist off the right fender—humanoid height, wrong in the angles. Victor flinched. "James—did you see that?"
"Steady," James said. "Hold speed. Watch your lane."
The radio filled with a voice that did not belong to anyone on their roster.
"Yhahhlirghfmlatghebumn."
Victor froze. "What—who is that? Is anyone—anyone talking?"
James pressed the transmit. "We're receiving interference—"
The voice cut through again, this time translated through the rattling carrier wave:
"Amen, may all pagans be buried in the abyss."
A pause, then another line, frayed with static and hate:
"I hate him so much—let him die slowly, burning."
Gunfire slammed across the net—da-da-da, distant but sharp. Something shrieked, an electronic scream or a beast with a metal throat. A brief whoomp of pressure, then silence.
Victor's hands shook. "They're engaged—who's attacking?"
James didn't reply. The new voice washed over the squad network again, deeper now, like wind raking a canyon:
"Blargh. I am Ssvlsrr, the Shivering Mist."
The convoy went dead-quiet. Even the engines seemed to hold their breath.
Important Event: A voice inside the anomaly identifies itself as the "Shivering Mist."
Victor whispered, "It's… the mist. It's talking."
The voice bent English around sounds that didn't belong in human mouths, threading unpronounceable syllables between the words:
"I stretch over Valley Harbor. While passing through my veil, your warriors were attacked. Some have died—but a few remain safe… for now."
Across S.H.I.E.L.D. monitors, analysts stared. Natasha Romanoff's eyes narrowed. "The gas cloud has consciousness?"
Nick Fury rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Looks like we all bet on the wrong suspect."
Inside the vehicle, James lowered his head mic toward the speaker. He didn't waste a syllable.
"You're SCP-1936-1. What happened here?"
Static rolled, then the canyon-voice again:
"Evil was called here by a hidden cabal. I sealed the worst of it—bound it—but the town and its people cannot be spared."
Victor inhaled sharply, air catching in his throat. The chat went wild. If that was true, the fog was not the killer. It was the shield.
Tony Stark stared at the feed, stunned. "So the 'bad guy' is actually the airbag. And something else is the crash."
Rhodes folded his arms. "A cult summoned something. The mist locked it down. That matches the… bodies we saw. Ritual burns. Cut patterns."
"But why help us?" Stark asked. "What does the mist want?"
James asked the same thing, but in fewer words. "What are you?"
For a long second, only wind and static.
Then:
"A great battle is near. Victory will shape what remains. When that hour comes, those who can stop this will arrive in time to see what must be seen."
James's gaze sharpened. "Who?"
The mist did not answer him directly.
"Send no more warriors into me," the voice said. "I cannot protect them from the thing that gnaws. When all have gathered before the victor, I will depart, and what I have held back will be yours again. Survive if you can. Yhah."
The channel died. The last crackles of gunfire faded into the thick, breathing hush.
Important Event: The mist warns the Foundation to stop sending people and predicts an imminent deciding battle.
---
The Silence After
Victor swallowed, throat dry. "So… that thing is on our side?"
James didn't answer immediately. The words in his head kept circling: those who can stop this. Someone—or something—was supposed to arrive. The mist spoke like a herald, not a tyrant. It felt less like an anomaly and more like a warden holding a prisoner in place with its own body.
He pressed his hand against the radio, as if feeling the last warmth of the voice through the plastic. "If it's telling the truth," he said at last, "it's the only reason this town isn't worse."
Victor stared at the fogline, knuckles still pale on the wheel. "Worse than floating torsos and bodies fused into walls?"
James kept his eyes forward. "Yes. Worse."
Outside, the sky-ribbons dimmed and brightened, red and blue breathing like paired lungs. Sometimes they flattened, sometimes they curled into loops; each shift tugged the compass a hair off true. The ground still looked flat, but the slope gauges disagreed with the eyes, and two columns reported opposite grades at the same map grid.
Across the perimeter, scientists argued again: send more, send none, send drones only. The Ethics Committee liaison hissed into a secure line. The operations officer stared at the fog like a soldier at an ocean he couldn't cross.
From a fold in the mist, three shapes flickered—maybe men, maybe not—then winked out like embers dunked in water.
James tracked the spot. "Mark that," he told Victor. "Grid Charlie-Four."
"Marked."
"Any heartbeat pings?" James asked the medic on their net.
"Negative. If anyone's there, they're not wearing Foundation bios. Or they're not… reading as human."
Victor didn't ask what that meant. He didn't want to hear the answer spoken aloud.
---
Naming the Protector
Back at the command trailer, a researcher scrolled furiously through a compendium of old Foundation notes about linguistic bleed—times when entities forced human air into shapes it wasn't meant to make. "Ssvlsrr," she said, testing the syllables. "The Shivering Mist. We need a designation."
"Use the site's theology indexes," someone else said. "When an entity wards a summoning instead of causing it, classification flags it as protective interference."
A quiet voice from the back: "There's a name in archaic dossiers from a defunct project—Panglaus. The Supreme Protector invoked when humans were too weak to face older things. Not a god in any pantheon we know; more a title, a role. The first and final wall."
The room stilled.
On the live channel, an operations aide keyed in a tag.
SCP-1936-1 (Provisional Proper Name): Panglaus.
Important Event: The Shivering Mist is identified and named "Panglaus," a protector role in Foundation lore.
---
What Comes Next
James rested the radio on his chest and looked through the glass, past silvery fog and breathing sky. Somewhere ahead, survivors might be holding in the blind spots. Somewhere deeper, the thing "that gnaws" waited, pressed under the mist's weight like a shark under ice.
"Mike," James said on command net, calm and even, "halt advance at current depth. No more personnel into the fog until Panglaus—until the mist—reopens contact or we regain eyes on the missing team."
"Copy," Mike replied. There was relief in his voice that he didn't try to hide. "Holding."
Victor exhaled. "We're calling it Panglaus now?"
"If it's shielding us from something worse," James said, "it's earned a name."
Victor nodded once. The wheel finally loosened in his grip.
On the S.H.I.E.L.D. side, Fury tapped a finger against the desk. "If it's buying time for us, we need to use that time. Track cult traffic. Old property records. Ritual supply chains. If a cabal did this, they left a trail."
Natasha was already typing. "On it."
Inside the fog, the sky-ribbons pulsed once, twice—then slowly dimmed. The radios stayed quiet. The air tasted faintly of match-heads and wet stone.
James listened to the silence and, for the first time since he crossed the tape, felt a strange, thin thread of hope. It didn't come from the Foundation vehicles around him, or the armor on his chest, or even the plan forming in his head. It came from the fact that something—someone—had looked at humanity's tiny campfires and chosen to stand between them and the dark.
Important Event: James orders a halt and re-orients the mission around Panglaus's warning—no further entries until the deciding moment.
Victor followed his gaze. "You think the one who can stop this… the one Panglaus talked about… is coming?"
James didn't blink. "I think Panglaus doesn't waste words."
They sat with that. The camera pulled back, framing the convoy as small, stubborn sparks facing a horizon that breathed. The mist settled like a mantle. The town waited like a held breath.
And somewhere beyond the next fold of fog, the deciding battle gathered itself, quiet and patient as a tide.
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