20 YEARS AGO : YEAR 2056, YONGIN SOUTH KOREA.
After entering farther into the cave, Kevin, Anthony and Maria found the temple, it exhaled, a slow, whispering draft through ancient stone corridors that carried the scent of damp earth and something far older, something metallic that coated the tongue like blood. Anthony Smith's boots echoed against worn granite steps as he descended, his helmet light cutting through the gloom to reveal walls carved with glyphs so precise they looked machine-like, tooled rather than man-made. The edges had been softened by centuries of moisture weeping from the ceiling, but the symbols themselves remained unnaturally sharp, their lines cutting deep into stone that should have crumbled millennia ago.
"Jesus Christ," Kevin Yang's voice crackled through the comms, his own light flickering across the walls. He reached out with a gloved hand but stopped just short of touching the stone. "You seeing this? These patterns, they're not just decorative. They're equations. Complex ones." His finger traced an angular series of interconnected symbols that seemed to shift under the light. "This looks like… geroglyphics."
Maria Rodrigo adjusted her wrist scanner, the blue holographic display casting eerie shadows across her faceplate. "Not just equations," she corrected, her voice hushed with something between awe and dread. "Genetic sequences. Complete chromosomal maps." The scanner chirped urgently as it analyzed deeper. "These aren't theoretical either. They're practical. Applied. Someone was editing DNA here. Rewriting it." She swallowed hard. "And these stains... Anthony, this isn't water damage or mineral deposits. Anthony didn't need the scanner to know what she meant. The dark streaks running down the walls had the viscous quality of old blood, though no blood should have survived this long. "How old?"
Maria's scanner hummed. "At least two thousand years. But the preservation..." She shook her head. "The molecular structure is all wrong. It's like the entire temple was designed to keep everything inside in perfect stasis."
The corridor opened abruptly into a vast, circular chamber that made Anthony's body tremble. The air here was different, thicker, heavier, pressing against his suit like invisible hands. At the center lay a pool of perfectly still black water, its surface so smooth it might have been polished obsidian. The reflection of their helmet lights fractured across it in jagged shards.
As they went down to see what this black pool was, they all saw what floated beneath.
Bodies. Dozens of them. Suspended in the dark water like specimens in stasis . Their skin was pale and decayed, their limbs drifting lazily in unseen currents. Their faces eerily peaceful, mouths slightly open as if caught in mid-sight. Some looked like they might open their eyes at any moment.
" The Yongin Cult, Every cult member that involuntarily took their own life were here all along, 2034 was such a crazy year for cultists at the time. Even though years have passed, the bodies are perfectly preserved." Maria explained.
"Fuck me," Kevin breathed, taking an involuntary step back. His boot splashed in a shallow puddle, sending ripples across the pool's surface that made the bodies sway gently. "They're all here. Exactly as they were."
Maria's scanner beeped sharply. "No decomposition," she murmured. "None at all. The water..." She adjusted the settings frantically. "It's not H2O. The molecular structure is completely alien. It's preserving them at the cellular level." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It's keeping them fresh."
Anthony moved forward without conscious thought, drawn to the pool's edge. His reflection wavered in the black surface, then rippled unnaturally, as if something beneath had stirred.
That was when he saw the figure at the center.
It sat in a fetal position inside the pool, fully submerged yet untouched by time. It was naked, its wings were blacker than the water around it, the feathers were moving with impossible slowness as if caught in some eternal current. The hands resting on its knees were too long, the fingers ended with sharp golden claws, the skin was glowing and the rest of the body, probably tall over 3 meters, didn't quite follow human proportions.
Then, with glacial slowness, it raised its head.
two red eyes opened.
And Anthony's world split apart.
[THE VISION LASTED ONLY 0.1 SECONDS IN THE REAL WORLD, BUT FOR ANTHONY WERE 9 MONTHS OF PURE DESPAIR]
Time shattered.
Anthony stood in a city that was and wasn't Seoul, the sky burning in geometric patterns that hurt to look at. His younger brother Ethan, older than Anthony had ever seen him, standing atop a mountain of corpses, each one wearing Anthony's face, each one staring with hollow, accusing eyes. His brother's mouth stretched too wide, his teeth elongating into needle, thin shards as he laughed, the sound vibrating through Anthony's bones like a tuning fork struck against his spine. Blood dripped from Ethan's lips, not his own, but Anthony's, as if he had been feasting on him in some unseen horror.
Then, the tablets, floating, shifting, their surfaces alive with writhing glyphs that pulsed like veins. They whispered in a voice that wasn't sound but pure, invasive thought:"Whoever—"The word split open, bleeding black ichor that evaporated into smoke, and then…
Fire. The sky cracking open like an eggshell. People melting where they stood, skin sloughing off in wet sheets, their screams not sound but something deeper, something that vibrated in the marrow. And Ethan, watching it all, his eyes now twin pools of liquid crimson, his fingers elongating into golden claws as he carved into his own skull, killing himself.
Then Black.
Then a voice started talking, it was an unknown voice to Anthony, but wrong, metallic, like something trying to mimic human speech:" Who do you think you are to destroy the paths of the new god?." Images flashed , himself with kids, Etaìhan with red eyes, as red as the being and a world burning into ash.
The sound of reality tearing all around him, a shriek that wasn't sound at all but pure vibration, shaking Anthony apart at the molecular level
Then…
Silence.
Anthony screamed, staggering back from the pool. Blood poured from his nose, spattering his visor in crimson streaks. His HUD flashed urgent warnings: NEURAL OVERLOAD. BIOSYSTEM CRITICAL. PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTAMINATION DETECTED.
"Smith!" Kevin grabbed his arm, yanking him away from the water. "What the hell was that? You just… froze for a second, then started screaming!" His voice cracked. "Your nose is bleeding, fuck, your eyes—"
Maria's scanner was shrieking now, its display a mess of impossible readings. "His brain activity.'… it's like he just lived through months of trauma in an instant." She lunged forward, gripping Anthony's helmet. "His vitals are spiking! We need to get him out NOW!" She looked up at the pool, her face pale behind her visor. "It showed him something. That thing in the water, it showed him something."
The figure hadn't moved at all. Its eyes were closed, no breath disturbed the water, no movement betrayed consciousness.
Anthony wiped the blood from his face with a shaking hand. "It's not dead," he rasped, his voice raw like he'd been screaming for hours. "It's in some kind of… hibernation. That was just… a reflex. A defense mechanism."
Maria's eyes widened. "But why did it happen only to you then?"
"I don't know but we are not gonna find out anyways, we have to extract this being from here." Anthony replied.
"You want to go there? After that?" Maria said in a worried tone.
Anthony was already sealing his helmet tighter. "We didn't come this far to leave empty-handed." He activated his suit's full isolation protocols. "I'm going to get this thing out of this pool."
The black water didn't ripple as he stepped in. It swallowed him whole.
It wasn't just liquid, it was something else, something sinister. Thick, syrupy, and unnaturally heavy, it pressed against his suit like a thousand grasping hands, resisting his every movement as if the pool itself did not want to let him go. His helmet lights cut through the gloom, revealing the pale, floating corpses suspended in the depths,their faces eerily preserved, their slack jaws open in silent, eternal screams.
As he descended deeper, the fractured visions from before clawed at the edges of his mind. Blurred, half-formed horrors flickered behind his eyes—Ethan's too wide grin, the city that wasn't Seoul, the corpses wearing his own face, each one sending jagged bolts of pain through his skull. His breath came in ragged gasps, his HUD flashing warnings:
NEURAL STRESS DETECTED. PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTAMINATION CONFIRMED.
But he couldn't stop. Not now.
The winged figure loomed ahead, curled in its fetal position, its black feathers drifting lazily in the stagnant dark. Anthony reached for it, his gloved fingers trembling. The water fought him, clinging to his limbs like tar, but he forced himself forward, inch by agonizing inch, until…
Contact.
His hand closed around the being's wrist.
Cold. Too cold. Like touching the void between stars.
Then…
The vision detonated.
A laboratory. White walls streaked with no stains.
Two young men, strapped to metal tables, their bodies convulsing against leather restraints one with a golden crown of thorns and the other with black obsidian-like chains attached onto his neck and arms . Their screams were deafening in the silence of Anthony's mind.
Then, the transformation of the first man began:
The crown of golden thorns sank deeper, not just piercing, sewing itself into his flesh, the metal threading through his skin like sharp blades until they covered his whole body.
The golden thorns melted into him, searing through flesh like hot nails through wax. His skin bubbled, split, then fused with the metal, until his entire body was a grotesque, twitching statue , yet still alive, still screaming behind a mask of hardening gold.
His veins blackened, cooking in their own blood as the heat spread. His organs boiled inside him, lungs shriveling into lumps of smoldering coal, yet his heart pounded, burst, each beat spraying thick, boiling blood through cracks in his golden prison.
Then convulsions.
His spine jolted, his limbs thrashed, the gold shell splintering as his body refused to die. Ribs snapped like glowing twigs, bones punching through his chest in jagged, golden shards. His jaw unhinged, the lower half ripping free in a spray of half cooked meat and molten metal, his scream now a wet, gurgling hiss.
Something moved inside his back.
A glowing hand, perfect, ruptured through his chest in a geyser of liquefied organs. Fingers slick with blood and golden ichor clawed at the air, then gripped the edges of the wound, ripping his ribcage apart like a rotten door.
Two wings from the back of the being followed ,each one unfolding in a symphony of snapping tendons and sizzling flesh. The back of the long dead golden cocoon split open, his spine uncoiling like a broken chain, vertebrae clattering to the ground as the thing inside dragged itself free in a cascade of blood.
And then it fell into the ground twitching in cold
The being was still him, but not really him, he was taller, flawless, skin like the glowing sun, eyes like two pits of hellfire. Its wings vast, shimmering, dripping with red blood, stretched wide, casting a grotesque shadow over the ruin of its former self.
The cocoon of gold collapsed, a hollowed out husk of melted gold and still twitching meat. His heart, blackened and cracked, gave one final beat before crumbling to ash.
The second witnessing the horror of the transformation , he started to panic and scream, then, his transformation started :
The chains screamed first.
A sound like glaciers giving birth, deep, groaning, the protest of ancient things forced to bend. The obsidian chains thrummed with tension, their serrated edges chewing deeper into his flesh as he pulled. Blood welled thick and black around each barb, boiling where it touched the metal, until the first golden fracture appeared.
A single crack.
Then, the first rip.
His left arm tore free at the elbow with a noise like a wet tree splitting in a storm. The chain didn't break, it exploded, shards of obsidian embedding in the walls as his severed forearm hit the ground with a meaty slap, fingers still twitching. From the stump pulsed not blood, but liquid gold, molten and alive, hissing as it struck stone. The wound sealed instantly, not with scar tissue, but with golden radiance, veins of precious metal threading through the ragged flesh.
The right arm held longer.
Muscle fibers stretched like overcooked meat, popping one by one in a staccato rhythm of wet snaps. The bone splintered but didn't break, jagged edges grinding together as he wrenched, the chain biting through tendons with a sound like a butcher's saw. When it finally gave, the release sent him stumbling forward, his remaining forearm dangling by a thread of gristle before shearing completely, revealing the golden latticework beneath, where bone and sinew had begun to reform into something greater.
Then, the unraveling.
His skin bubbled, then shattered like a porcelain mask struck by a hammer. Great plates of flesh sloughed away, not in tatters, but in geometric fragments, each one edged with luminous gold where it had broken free. Beneath, his body was a living mosaic, muscle and bone interlaced with seams of molten metal, every wound a deliberate stroke of divine repair. His jaw dislocated with a crack that echoed through his skull, teeth elongating into needle sharp fangs .
His ribcage bloomed outward, not with the violence of rupture, but the inevitability of revelation. Each rib fractured along artful fault lines, the bones peeling back like the petals of a grotesque flower, their jagged edges gilded and gleaming. Inside, his organs pulsed, transformed , his heart a lump of burning amber, his lungs filigreed with gold where they had begun to collapse.
His spine arched until it snapped, the sound a gunshot in the suddenly still air. Vertebrae popped free, clattering to the ground like discarded chess pieces as something pushed against the inside of his back, and then his wings tore through.
Not a clean emergence. Not beautiful.
The left wing burst free in a shower of bone and shattered flesh, its surface reflecting not light, but moments of agony, a man burning, a child drowning, a thousand silent screams. The right followed slower, the skin stretching, tearing, finally giving way with a sound like a butcher's activity.
His eyes were last.
They swelled grotesquely, vitreous humor boiling over his cheeks before bursting in twin geysers of liquid fire. Where his pupils had been, twin voids now swirled, each one a white sun, its edges limned with gold, its depths a silent howl of celestial fury.
And then he turned to the other, he knelt, the motion sending gold-veined cracks spiderwebbing through the stone beneath him. His hand, all claws and molten seams, reached out.
The other's fingers twitched in response, bones visible through the tattered remains of skin.
Their touch was fiery.
And then, they saw him.
Their hollow, lidless eyes locked onto Anthony.
And they spoke—
Reality crashed back.
Anthony came to choking, his lungs full of liquid darkness.
He yanked the being free with a sound like a placenta tearing.
The chamber screamed.
Maria's voice: "Smith, MOVE! The whole fucking temple's coming down!"
He didn't need telling twice.
Grabbing the winged abomination, he ran, boots slipping on stone that was now bleeding black ichor.
Kevin was already at the exit, wrestling the containment unit. "RUN ,NOW!"
Anthony was able to yank the winged being to the hands of Kevin, while reaching safety with Maria.
Then…
A glow in the rubble, there was a case, "GIACOBBE." was written on it.
Anthony's body stopped.
Not his choice… Something made him stop.
Maria screamed something profane, He didn't hear her.
His hands were moving on their own, prying open the case like a man possessed.
Inside: Two spheres. One gold. Warm . bright.
One black with golden cracks and vibrating:
Thump.
Thump,thump.
Thump.
A rhythm.
A code.
Anthony's breath caught as his Morse lessons kicked in:
". − . − . . . . . . . − ."
ALIVE.
The black sphere thrummed in his grip, warm as the hand of someone.
Maria: " Anthony, what is inside that box?!"
He didn't answer. Just stuffed both spheres into his case like they were his birthright and ran taking Maria by the hand.
The temple collapsed behind them in a symphony of screaming stone.
The helicopter was waiting for them outside the cave, and waiting for them was Kevin with the winged being inside the glass case.
And the whole ride back, the black sphere pulsed against his hip.
Alive.
The helicopter tore through the jungle's humid updrafts as the last ruins of the temple sank beneath vines and smoke. Inside the vibrating cabin, Anthony Smith sat motionless, his eyes locked on the metal case around his hips. It looked ordinary, unmarked, government issued, the sort of thing used for transporting evidence or viral samples. But inside, cradled in high density foam, floated two objects that had already begun to change the world, quietly and irreversibly.
The containment spheres shimmered in the cases, suspended by magnetic fields. One housed a Golden Crown of Thorns, a delicate tangle of golden thorns. The other held Obsidian Chains, their ink-black links knotted into impossible geometries that shifted when unobserved.
No one else had seen him take them.
Maria had been yelling about containment. Kevin had been panicking, scrambling over falling stones and spitting accusations about seismic instability. At that moment, as the ancient vault collapsed inward and the air crackled with something older than physics, Anthony had made a choice.
He had acted alone.
Now, as the helicopter climbed toward cloud cover, one of the spheres rattled softly in its casing, as though the relic inside were adjusting its position, or perhaps acknowledging something. It wasn't Morse code. It wasn't even sound, really. But Anthony could feel the message vibrate through his case.
"We are not finished".
Two days later, Anthony sat under fluorescent lights in a concrete room at a CIA black site labeled HAVEN-9. Deputy Director Richard Voss circled him like a carrion bird, polished shoes clicking against the polished floor.
"Your neural scans show nine months of trauma packed into a tenth of a second," Voss said without inflection, flipping pages in a thick dossier. "That angel… what exactly did it do to your brain?"
Anthony wiped the slow trickle of blood from his left nostril. "I'm not sure of what I saw, but the only thing I'm sure about is that I'm okay and ready for duty sir."
Voss didn't blink. "You're being reassigned."
He slid a new file across the table. Embossed on the cover was a sleek, modern logo: EVOGENEX. No further explanation was offered. None was needed.
Two weeks passed. The sterile gray walls of the CIA facility were replaced by reinforced glass, chrome walkways, and biometric corridors. Evogenex headquarters in Washington D.C. glowed with silent menace, too perfect, too well-funded, too new. Anthony walked the upper floors with Maria beside him, both of them now elevated to positions far beyond what their prior military or academic credentials could justify. Maria stared out at the city skyline, the golden lights mirrored in the windows.
"They gave us everything," she said, her voice calm but strained. "Private labs, unlimited budget, total independence. They even gave me stock options."
Anthony said nothing.
"All to study the angel," Maria continued.
"To weaponize it," Anthony replied quietly.
Across the lab, Kevin ranted at a group of young researchers, knocking over a tray of instruments. The soundproof glass muted his words but not his rage.
Maria sighed. "I'll handle him."
Once she left, Anthony moved through a series of biometric checkpoints and descended into the executive vault, one of only three rooms in the entire facility with a triple blind vault. There, locked inside carbon shielded containment cases, floated the relics: the Crown flexing subtly, the Chains shifting like black muscle under tension.
He approached them, his breath shallow. The moment he stepped within a meter of the containment units, his nose started to bleed, a vision started:
A woman screamed from the hallway. Monitors flickered. Then the Crown, hovering, golden, silent descended toward Anthony's own forehead in the vision.
He tore free of the hallucination with a gasp. The Chains had moved within their sphere. Their filaments had reached out through the casing, faintly tracing the air toward his skin. For a brief second, he saw the marks on his forearm, veins black and gleaming, curled into ancient runes. There was something inside of him that was surely connected to the relics hidden in his vault.
A knock at the door. Maria's voice: "Anthony? The board's waiting."
He pulled his sleeve down quickly. "Five minutes."
He didn't mention the vision. She wouldn't have understood it.
The relics didn't speak in words anymore. They didn't need to. They remembered, and they shared that memory. Not like a movie or a dream but as destiny. Imprinted. Inevitable.
Three nights later, Kevin intercepted him outside the lab. Drunk again. Angry again. "I saw your neural scans, Smith. Something's inside your head. You didn't just bring the angel back with us , you brought something else back."
Anthony didn't react. "Security to Sublevel 3. Dr. Yang is trespassing again."
As Kevin shouted in protest, two guards emerged from a nearby hallway and dragged him away. Anthony didn't wait to watch. He moved quickly into the cryo stabilized chamber beneath the lab. There, locked within biometric drawers, were samples of Subject Alpha-9's serum, the only living organism to survive the Angel's DNA injection. It was gold-flecked, dense, humming softly with stored potential.
He took one vial. Just one.
And his brain pulsed in acknowledgment.
Later that night, he called for the Ten.A group of people who would help him and Maria turn their children Jacob and Trevor into the saviours of the whole world by giving their children the two relics Anthony found in Yongin.
They all met in a dim, sound sealed bunker far beneath the Earth's surface. Scientists. Intelligence analysts. Theologians. No devices. No notes. Just data and trust, fraying at the edges.
Anthony didn't show them the relics. He showed them the scans.
Brain images. Spinal MRIs. Microscopic footage of tissue regenerated by relic influence. At the cellular level, the structure wasn't just evolving , it was rewriting. Every human trait reframed. Intelligence. Resilience. Emotion. Fear.
Father Ruiz whispered as he crossed himself, staring at a scan of Anthony's brain overlaid with relic glyphs. "They're not symbols. They're instructions."
"They're embedded," Anthony replied. "This wasn't random. This wasn't a chance."
"What do they want?" someone asked.
Anthony looked up, eyes cold. "Not what. Who."
A month later, at the private residence secured by Evogenex and guarded by off-record military assets, Anthony stood over his own children. Jacob and Trevor slept peacefully, their infant hands curled in tiny fists.
Maria stood beside him, while holding two smooth, palm-sized disks, the neural implants. Custom designed. Infused with the filtered DNA from the Angel. Interfaced with relic patterns. Invisible to any scanner on Earth.
She looked down at the implants. Then up at him.
"No," she said. Her voice trembled, but it was louder than anything in the room. "You want to experiment on our children?"
"They're not test subjects," Anthony said.
"They're infants. Anthony, they haven't even spoken their first word, and you want to alter their DNAs?"
"I've seen the future, I've explained EVERYTHING that would happen if I don't do this. These boys, they survive. They don't just live, they will fight to save humanity."
Maria shook her head. "Or they suffer. Or they die. You saw one future, Anthony. That doesn't mean it's right. That doesn't mean we get to choose this for them."
"I'm not choosing," he said quietly. "I'm preparing them."
Her hands were shaking now, tears threatening but held back by fury. "This isn't science. This is a prophecy. You sound like those priests in the temple, talking about fate and sacrifice. But these are our sons."
"I would never hurt them," Anthony said. "I'm trying to make sure nothing else ever can."
Silence fell. Heavy. Unresolved.
Then, finally, Maria closed her eyes and took a trembling breath. "May God strike you down if you are wrong." Her hands shook as she held out the implants. And nodded.
Anthony pressed them gently into the subdermal layer behind the boys' napes. There was no blood. No crying. The children didn't even stir.
But in the vault across the city, the relics pulsed violently , insistent, as if nodding in approval.
Ten years from that day, Evogenex stretches across the globe, quiet campuses hidden beneath megacities, disguised as research parks and biotech facilities. They claim to fight disease, grow food, and prolong life. But beneath the surface, in locked levels that don't appear on any map, something else is being prepared. The CIA and FBI gave them so many resources to create powerful soldiers, Deputy director Voss called them "super-soldiers" .
The soldiers do not wear armor. They do not fly. They look like anyone else. But their bones are unbreakable. Their reflexes are unnatural. Their minds are perfectly synchronized, their speed, durability and strength are as triple as normal human beings.
Only the CIA and the FBI know of their existence. No other nation has the clearance. No other government suspects what Evogenex has become.
Anthony stands once again in the nursery, watching Jacob and Trevor sleep. They are still small. Still human. For now.
In the darkened hallway behind him, sealed in a triple-locked vault, the containment spheres begin to glow.
The Crown flexes. The Chains stir.
And inside his skull, Anthony hears it again.
Soon.
Soon.
Soon.