Inside S.H.I.E.L.D., agents looked at one another, unsure what to say. The briefing room lights felt too bright. The monitors felt too quiet.
Natasha Romanoff finally spoke, her voice low. "To be honest, I still find it hard to believe…" She meant SCP-1936-1 helping humans—and that strange promise that someone could end the disaster. S.H.I.E.L.D. had seen safe tools and controlled anomalies before: Telekill alloy forged into blades, SCP-408 Illusion Butterflies following orders, even Iris (SCP-105) working with MTF Alpha-9, 'Last Hope.' Those were useful, yes, but they were passive, or persuaded.
This was different. SCP-1936-1 acted on its own. It warned James. It blocked further entries. It acted like a guardian. It felt… personal.
Nick Fury folded his arms. He appreciated help, but he cared even more about the one who could end it. Who was that? And how soon would they arrive?
Far away, in Kamar-Taj, masters exchanged uncertain glances. Even the Ancient One looked thoughtful. "An anomaly that appears only to protect humans," she murmured. "Unbelievable… and yet here we are." Most anomalies she had encountered were either malicious predators or cosmic powers that could break a world with a thought. Compared to them, 1936-1 seemed like an angel.
---
In the convoy, Victor Hale broke the silence in the cab. "So… do we keep going?"
James didn't answer right away. He peered ahead through the glass, then said, "We're here."
Important Event: The convoy fully breaches the fog and reaches Valley Harbor's interior.
The fog peeled back like a curtain—and the town revealed its true face.
What had looked like a quaint European village from outside was gone. In its place stood buildings made of meat. Streets were carpeted with limbs and wet organs piled like refuse. Flies swarmed like rain. Yellow fat clung to walls. Black blood streaked every surface. The air stank of rot and iron.
Victor gagged hard and leaned out of the window. "—ugh!" He wasn't alone. Across the Marvel world, viewers recoiled, hands over mouths.
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the control room turned away. Two were hurried from the hall to throw up in the corridor. Even Natasha went pale. "So… this is Valley Harbor?" she whispered.
Nick Fury's brow tightened. He had hoped, with 1936-1 helping, the scene inside might be less terrible. He was wrong. The help clearly served a different purpose: not to heal this place, but to stop it from spreading.
He thought of flesh and hunger and ritual—words that locked together like a trap. A name rose in his mind: Yaldabaoth, the God of Flesh and Chaos. If this was flesh-shaping on a town-wide scale, that pointed at one thing: Sarkicism.
Important Event: Fury connects the carnage to Sarkicism and Yaldabaoth.
Victor wiped his mouth, shaking. "This is insane," he muttered.
James handed him a bottle. Victor rinsed again and again, then yanked his mask up to cut the stench. "Do we go in?"
James studied him. "Can you hold it together?"
Victor straightened his back. "Don't underestimate me."
"Then stay close," James said. "We move."
They stepped into the slaughterhouse streets. Every step tore at sticky fat and slick plasma, boots peeling up with a sick hiss. James brought his weapon close and switched on his helmet camera. They took a corner into a small house at the southeast edge.
The "house" had no right to be called that. Hooks of bone hung like light fixtures. Meaty walls pulsed faintly, as if trying to breathe. Victor stumbled, whispered a curse, and looked away from a heap of teeth growing like barnacles from a table.
James moved methodically. On a windowsill, the only object without blood: a child's notebook.
He flipped it open and read quietly.
> Dear Diary
Today Mr. Sticky's arm came out of the closet instead of the window. It was longer than before. It felt like smoke when I touched it and hurt my hand.
I told Mr. Sticky I didn't want his unknown food. He got mad. He said it was important for hatching larvae. I was so hungry I ate a little. It was green and squirmy.
I don't like Mr. Sticky very much.
The live chat shivered. This wasn't a tantrum; it was a ritualized grooming of a child for Sarkic purposes.
Natasha's face tightened. "Unknown food for larvae… brainwashing by slow steps." Fury's voice was flat. "Or the kid was born into it."
James slid the diary into his pack. "This town has been under Sarkic control for a long time."
Victor swore. "I've seen one of their sites," he said quietly. "I still smell it sometimes in my sleep."
A small annotation flashed on the live overlay:
> Sarkicism: a belief system built on the teachings of Grand Karcist Ion. Common practices include ritual cannibalism, human sacrifice, self-modification/strengthening, thaumaturgy, and dimensional manipulation.
Kamar-Taj watched in silence. The Ancient One remembered James's briefing on SCP-3396: "A new era arrived when Grand Karcist Ion overcame the Creator Yaldabaoth. After a thousand years of battle, Ion devoured the holy flesh." If that memory was correct, then Ion wasn't a rumor. He was real—and he had once defeated Yaldabaoth.
Which meant this horror might be more than a cult run wild. It might be the edge of a divine conflict. A Supreme God opposing another. A rematch staged in a human town.
Important Event: The narrative points to Ion vs. Yaldabaoth—a supreme clash behind the town's disaster.
James and Victor headed back out. On the way, James paused at a wall where words had been gouged into gristle.
I'm sorry I couldn't save you.
— Panglaus
Victor touched the carving with a gloved finger. "Panglaus," he said softly. "The mist."
James nodded. 1936-1 had been here, leaving apologies stitched into organs and scrawled in public spaces. It felt like a sentinel that arrived too late to stop the first blow—but in time to hold the line.
They moved southwest, weaving through wet alleys where the ground rose and fell in wrong ways. At a broken storefront, James found a memo under a jar of spoiled fruit.
> The canned fruit is almost gone. But I guess that's the least of my worries.
Tonight the screaming got worse. It sounded human at first—maybe Lilly from next door—then it didn't sound human at all.
I thought something tried the door. It was Reverend Hawshore passing the window again, howling—so loud only the devil could understand.
I looked by mistake. He has a lot of space inside.
We have to leave. The big ones are almost here. I can hear them breathing outside.
I am the Voice and the Voice is me.
Victor swallowed. "A lot of space inside… not human anymore," he said. "Reverend—Sarkic priest."
James folded the memo away. "We need more than notes," he said. "We need eyes."
They crossed to a collapsed gas station at the edge of town. Cameras were bolted under a buckled canopy. The housing was cracked, but the memory card was intact.
Victor's voice brightened. "Still powered?"
James tested a portable reader. The screen blinked, and a filename populated: CAM-EAST-LOOP-2139.
Important Event: Recovering a working camera with recorded video.
He plugged the card in. The live audience leaned forward as the picture sharpened—grainy night vision spilling across the monitor.
It began simple. A road. A row of houses. Fog like a moving wall.
Then the fog parted, as if pushed aside by a hand too large to see.
A shape stepped onto the road—tall, thin, and wrong. It wore no clear skin, only bands of muscle and stringy tendon, as if it had never learned to be a man. Its chest opened and closed like a door swinging on meat hinges. From its ribs hung hooks with offerings that twitched on their own.
Behind it came something bigger, visible only in bends of light—like a heat mirage that made the world tilt. The camera gain struggled, snowing the image with static. A low hum rolled through the speakers, so deep it shook the cart.
Victor whispered, "What… is that?"
The first figure raised its arms. The rib-hooks jingled. The air thickened. A thin chant threaded through the hum, half-heard, half-felt, shaping syllables a throat shouldn't shape.
The road itself bulged. Meat grew from asphalt as if the town was a garden bed. A spine pushed up through tar. Maggots poured like white rain and burned into green when they hit the ground. A cross of bone formed in the center of the street, and hearts—too many hearts—began to beat inside it.
A wind tore down the lane. But it wasn't wind. It was mist, moving like a wall, red-blue bands bright as sunrise. It hit the street and held—a shimmering barrier. The hearts inside the bone-cross stuttered and went still.
Important Event: Panglaus (the Shivering Mist) visibly intervenes on the footage to suppress a growing ritual.
On the far edge of the frame, something stirred behind the mirage. The picture warped, lines bending like wet reed. A hand—if it could be called a hand—pressed against the fog from the other side. It was too large. Too many fingers. It left a print of teeth in the air.
Victor shut his eyes for a second. "That's not human scale," he said. "That's not even our geometry."
The chanting man tried again. He carved into his own stomach and lifted loops of intestine high like a banner. The bone-cross shuddered, trying to beat again.
The mist thickened. The red and blue twined to violet, and the sound became a phrase—not in any language most people knew, but the reader picked one line clean, a signature through static:
"I bind the door."
The bone-cross collapsed into dust. The hearts burst like rotten fruit. The chanting man screamed a word that burned the audio into hard white:
"YALDABAOTH!"
The mirage behind the mist flexed like a beast dragging against chains. The whole frame bowed inward. The image froze.
The log jumped forward three minutes.
Now the street was empty—no priest, no cross, only a line burned into the asphalt like a seal. The fog held its line. The mirage had pulled back, but the pressure remained, like a depth you could feel in your bones.
Victor let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "So the cult called to Yaldabaoth," he said, voice hoarse, "and Panglaus slammed the door."
James rewound ten seconds, slowed the frame, and paused at the moment the priest screamed the name. The face was a mask of joy and agony. In the gaps where eyes should be, there was only space.
He straightened. "This isn't just a nest," he said. "It's a summoning ground. They tried to thin the barrier—to let something larger lean through."
Victor rubbed his neck. "And Panglaus keeps holding it."
Back at S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury tapped the table. "Two conclusions," he said. "First: 1936-1 is actively suppressing Yaldabaoth's entry. Second: the cult still has operators inside the town. If they keep feeding the ritual, this will never stop."
Natasha nodded tightly. "Then who is the one the mist said could end it?"
Kamar-Taj answered in whispers none of them could hear. The Ancient One watched the paused image—mist hard as crystal, a shape like a god grinding its teeth on the other side—and she remembered the oldest war: Grand Karcist Ion vs. Yaldabaoth. A thousand years of struggle. A victory bought with devouring. If Ion was real, if he still moved in the world…
Important Event: The story frames the looming clash as Ion vs. Yaldabaoth—a supreme confrontation echoing ancient victory.
James ejected the card and slid it into a protected pouch. "We have proof," he said. "Panglaus is the warden. Yaldabaoth is at the door. The cult is the hand on the latch."
Victor glanced at the street. Somewhere in the distance, a low breathing pressed against the air like surf. "So what do we do?"
James tightened his sling and looked into the fog, where the ribbons pulsed like veins. "We buy time. We find the cult's anchor points. We break their chains."
The radio crackled—brief static, then nothing. For a heartbeat, Victor thought the mist might speak again. It didn't. Perhaps the warden was done talking, now that it had shown them.
James turned back to the ruined station. "There may be other cameras," he said. "More angles. More proof."
They pushed through the littered lot, past a toppled ice chest and a pump split open like a ribcage. James pried another cam free and checked its housing. Inside, another tiny card sat waiting, a single green LED blinking like a heartbeat.
He slotted it into the reader. The screen flickered. A new label appeared:
CAM-SOUTH-DOCKS-0017.
Time stamp: 00:17. The darkest hour before dawn.
The picture resolved, and the audience leaned in again—only to go still in their seats.
-------------------------------------------
Visit our Patreon for more:
Get membership in patreon to read more chapters
Extra chapters available in patreon
patreon.com/Dragonscribe31
----------------------------------------------------- .