The earth cracked beneath his bare feet as Joonas lunged—a blur of red-streaked motion and bone-snapping force.
Glass met steel with a shriek.
Both kopis crashed against the twin katanas, sparks flying as the black-armored guard was hurled backward, his boots carving grooves in the blood-slick concrete.
Before he could steady himself—
Joonas was already there.
The kopis came down like guillotines—but the guard pivoted just in time. The blades missed by inches, cleaving deep into the asphalt. The ground cracked, dust and debris spitting upward from the impact.
Joonas looked up from the broken earth.
Grinning.
That same inhuman grin he'd worn since the moment he arrived.
He lunged again.
The guard raised his weapon just in time, catching the slash against the flat of his blade. Sparks flew.
But Joonas didn't pause. He twisted with the recoil, pivoting low.
The guard struck back—a clean horizontal cut meant to catch him off-balance.
Joonas bent backward beneath it, spine arching impossibly deep, then snapped upright and drove his elbow at the guard's throat.
The guard swerved. Fast.
Joonas followed—heel whipping around in a brutal kick.
The guard ducked and retaliated with a jab.
But Joonas was already gone, sidestepping with a lazy sway—like a drunk dancer tracing invisible lines in the air.
Then—
He closed the distance again.
Fast. Too fast.
The kopis came down in a savage arc—meant to kill, not wound.
The guard caught it between crossed forearms, teeth gritted as glass scraped metal.
Joonas leapt back, skidding slightly—resetting the tempo for another lunge.
But the guard followed instantly—refusing to give him a breath.
A piercing thrust from his left katana shot forward, aimed straight for Joonas' heart.
But Joonas shifted—
A subtle pivot. The blade skimmed past his ribs.
The guard smirked.
That's what he wanted.
With a savage twist, he brought his right katana in low—a sweeping arc aimed to cleave Joonas in half.
But Joonas moved.
He leapt—
Spinning mid-air, body wreathed in the cold night mist, his black robe flaring like wings.
The katana sliced only wind.
But Joonas didn't land.
A platform of shimmering glass bloomed beneath his feet—formed mid-air, conjured from nothing.
He stood there, suspended above the battlefield.
And while still airborne, he hurled both kopis—
Twin flashes of glass, spinning like living shards toward the guard.
The guard raised his blades, deflecting the projectiles with a cry of glass-on-steel—
But too late, he saw it.
A hand.
Joonas dropped from the glass like a hawk.
He grabbed the guard's face mid-fall—fingers splayed across the helmet—
And used all his falling momentum to drive the man straight into the ground.
It was like watching someone get slammed by a meteor.
The guard's head hit first.
The concrete cracked beneath him, a spiderweb of fractures rippling out.
His visor split with a sharp snap, breath locking in his throat.
His body went rigid—ears ringing, pain throbbing behind his eyes.
Above him, Joonas stood like a predator—grinning, panting softly, blood dripping from his chin.
He raised one hand.
Whssshk.
A kopis flew into Joonas' hand—summoned like a loyal pet.
The guard's vision still swam, but instinct took over.
He struck upward, driving both feet into Joonas' ribs with everything he had.
The hit landed—hard.
Joonas staggered a step, breath catching in his throat.
The guard rolled to his feet, chest heaving.
His blades came up—trembling only slightly.
Across from him, Joonas tilted his head.
His body was slick with sweat and gore. Mist curled at his feet.
He didn't advance.
Just stood there, grinning—
Like a clown at a funeral.
The guard gritted his teeth and shook his head, trying to shrug off the vertigo—
Then lunged.
But halfway there… he froze.
His eyes widened.
A cough tore from his throat—
And with it… blood.
He looked down.
Six blades.
Jagged, translucent kopis of pure glass had pierced him from behind—
Bursting through his torso, jutting from his chest like moonlit fangs.
His katanas slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground.
His knees buckled.
He collapsed—vision swimming, the world tilting sideways.
Heat drained from his limbs.
And everything began to fade.
Then he heard footsteps.
They came at a measured pace—unhurried, deliberate.
And beneath them… humming. A low, tuneless melody that sent a chill crawling up his spine.
Then Joonas knelt beside him.
The guard turned his head—
And what he saw…
Shouldn't have been human.
Joonas' eyes were wide, and they didn't blink. Not once. Just stared—fixed, empty, too still to be human.
A large tattoo twisted along his blood-slick ribs, its black lines seeming to crawl beneath the skin.
His face was wet with blood, as if he'd been smiling through it.
That smile hadn't moved. It stretched too far, held in place like something broken.
Fear clamped down on the guard's chest like an iron claw.
He wanted to crawl. To beg.
But his body refused to obey.
Then he saw Joonas rise—slowly—and lift his foot.
'Why?'
He was already dying. Couldn't move anymore. Couldn't fight.
So why…
'Why doesn't he just go away?'
The thought echoed in his skull—just before Joonas brought his heel down like a hammer.
CRACK.
The skull gave way instantly—splintering like glass beneath a boot. Blood and brain matter sprayed across the concrete in a grotesque arc. The guard twitched once. Gurgled.
Then—
Silence.
Joonas stood still, face upturned, breathing deep—as if savoring the scent of blood and ruin.
"I'm pissed," he said, voice low and guttural. "So pissed."
Then he began to walk—slow, deliberate steps toward the facility.
His kopis blades drifted behind him in a lazy orbit, like satellites drawn to a dying star.
He kept humming. A soft, haunting tune.
A lullaby from hell.
It helped. Helped keep the rage from eating him alive.
Like the reaper coming home, whispering to himself so he didn't burn the world down.
***
Inside the facility…
——
Annie stood in the restroom, hands submerged under cold water that had long since numbed her skin. Her pale fingers scrubbed over each other mechanically—over and over, as if friction alone could remove the blood she hadn't spilled directly, but had signed off on. Her sleeves were rolled back, the white robe pristine, clinical—too clean to reflect the filth she felt buried under.
Her name tag gleamed under the harsh fluorescent light: Dr. Annie Larke.
She stared down at the sink basin, watching the water swirl down the drain like some silent judgment.
She had been washing her hands for nearly a minute. Not because they were dirty—but because her conscience was. Because she was still trying to believe she hadn't become the kind of person who dissected children for research.
When she took this job, it had been under the illusion of progress. Innovation. Advancement in energy stabilization and the study of Vira biology.
No one had told her the "subjects" would be children.
No one had told her what failure meant.
She wanted to leave. God, she wanted to.
But she couldn't.
She couldn't tell anyone. Couldn't even try.
Because the moment the thought of escape crept in, the quiet threats from her superiors came rushing back—subtle glances, veiled comments.
And then there were the disappearances. Colleagues who had "taken time off."
There were no resignation letters. No goodbyes. Just silence.
And then—nothing.
Annie exhaled slowly. Tried to keep it together.
A new batch of subjects had arrived. As usual, all of them had been experimented on. Except one.
She bit her lip. Maybe this one would finally yield results. The others had either died… or turned into monsters.
She was still lost in her thoughts when she heard a sharp crack.
She froze.
Her eyes lifted toward the mirror.
A jagged hairline fracture ran down the center of the glass—splitting her reflection in two.
"…Huh?"
She turned off the tap.
Water dripped from her fingertips as she stood still, straining to hear something. A tremor? A power surge? But there was nothing—only the low hum of fluorescent lighting.
Then, another—crack.
This time, it came from her glasses.
She blinked and took them off quickly. One lens had split clean through. No pressure. No impact. Just a single, unnatural fracture, like the glass itself had recoiled from something.
And then... she felt it.
An oppressive weight. Not on her shoulders—but in the air. The walls seemed to inch closer. The atmosphere thickened like molasses. The sterile scent of bleach gave way to something fouler—like rust and wet bone.
Her stomach dropped. Dread slithered in like a parasite.
Something was wrong.
She rushed out of the restroom.
The hallway greeted her with strobing lights. A headache of white, then darkness. White. Then darkness again. The flickering painted the corridor in fits and spasms, like reality couldn't decide if it wanted to stay solid.
Staff members were beginning to gather—doctors, researchers, orderlies—all murmuring and glancing around in confusion.
Then, the air itself seemed to scream.
Every surveillance monitor burst at once—glass spraying into nearby desks and onto the sterile floors like shrapnel. Sparks leapt from the walls. Wires fell like snakes from the ceiling tiles. Panic swept through the workers like fire through dry grass.
The ceiling bulbs began to explode—one after the other, like some hellish countdown.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Each burst light sent flashes of white-hot debris raining down, some embedding into flesh.
"Get down!" someone shouted—but the command dissolved in the rising chaos.
The alarms kicked in a moment later, too late to help. The shrill blare that followed was distorted—wrong, like the siren itself had been corrupted, dragged through the throat of something alive and screaming.
Emergency shutters slammed over some of the hallway doors—others jammed halfway down, jittering uselessly.
Then someone screamed from the far end of the corridor.
Not a frightened yelp. A death cry.
The scream at the far end of the corridor was cut short.
Not by silence.
But by a wet, crunching noise—like something soft being crushed beneath a metal boot.
Annie's breath caught. Her ears rang. Not from the alarms, but from that sound.
Someone beside her—a junior researcher—tried to run. He barely made it two steps before something pierced him. A sliver of glass, moving too fast to see, zipped through the side of his head.
He dropped like a puppet with its strings severed, blood leaking from his temple in perfect, rhythmic pulses. His ID badge spun across the floor with a plastic rattle.
Panic turned to frenzy.
Someone vomited. Another screamed and clawed at the walls, trying to force open one of the jammed security doors. The lights continued to strobe—painting the hallway in violent flashes of red and white.
Then the humming started.
It was soft at first—melodic, almost childish.
Each note was wrong in a way Annie couldn't describe—like it didn't come from a throat, but from glass vibrating in meat.
She turned.
At the far end of the hall, walking slowly, barefoot and soaked in blood, came the source.
Joonas.
A man who looked less like a human and more like something dragged from the pit of hell.
He was humming.
And it felt like the walls bled behind him—as if the facility itself recoiled from his presence.
'What… what is that—no, this isn't happening, that's not a person, not human, so why is it here?'
Her heart began to pound wildly.
Then—
A nearby researcher raised a pistol and fired.
Joonas didn't stop.
The bullet stopped mid-air. Caught by a shard of hovering glass.
It spun for a second. Then zipped back—straight through the shooter's eye.
The humming continued.
Annie stumbled backward, hyperventilating. Her vision pulsed. Her throat burned. She tried to run but her legs wouldn't cooperate—they trembled under her like soaked wires.
'Move. Please—move.'
She tried again. Nothing.
'Why can't I run?'
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Then—another scream.
A woman this time. Just a few meters ahead.
She collapsed to her knees, sobbing.
Joonas glided toward her, arms loose at his sides, glass petals spiraling around him in slow, deliberate orbits.
Almost graceful. Almost calm.
The woman tried to beg.
He tilted his head—studying her like a puzzle.
Then, without a word, he plunged a finger through the soft underside of her jaw—up into her skull.
Her body convulsed.
Joonas lifted her by the head, smiling as she twitched.
Then dropped her like garbage.
The smell hit Annie next—not just blood, but bile and burned tissue.
The Vira-reactive glass in the ceiling had begun to grow, warping the vents and light fixtures, twisting metal into curved, spiked formations. The facility itself was being turned inside out—reshaped by Joonas' presence.
He was no longer just killing people.
He was rewriting the laws of this place.
The hallway twisted behind him—glass stretching unnaturally, like mirrors warping under heat. Footsteps echoed in places no one stood. Reflections appeared without mirrors.
Her legs finally moved.
It wasn't strength that returned—just raw survival.
She stumbled back, one shaking step at a time, barely aware of her body as it obeyed the only instinct left: flee.
Annie backed into a stairwell.
Joonas didn't seem to notice her—yet.
He turned instead to another guard who'd rallied, this one clad in heavy gear and holding a blade that hummed with Vira charge.
The guard charged.
Joonas let him come.
Then raised a hand—and the floor ruptured.
A forest of glass spears erupted from the tiles, impaling the man from fifteen angles mid-lunge. His body hung suspended, twitching.
Joonas reached forward and snapped the man's neck with a gentle tilt of his finger.
Meanwhile, Annie fled down the stairwell—barely breathing. Her heart pounded like a war drum in her ears.
The humming followed her.
The glass along the walls vibrated in time with it. Each note seemed to grow limbs—curling down like talons or tendrils.
She stumbled onto the lower floor—into the hallway leading to the elevator descending into the underground restricted area.
But before she could reach it—
the lights above flickered. Then died.
Darkness swallowed everything.
Until—a faint glow emerged.
A single glass shard hovered ahead, glowing faintly with a pale blue core.
It began to spin. Slowly.
Annie froze, eyes locking onto the shard.
Then—
it shot forward.
Straight at her head.