Darkness didn't come all at once.
Danny's last thought wasn't pain—it was confusion. The pressure vanished, his body falling away like a discarded coat, and suddenly he was falling inward.
Something pulled.
Not his flesh.
Him.
His awareness was dragged through a narrow, screaming tunnel of sensation, every regret scraping against him like barbed wire. Voices overlapped—his own memories echoing back, distorted, twisted, judged.
Then—
He landed.
Danny stood on nothing.
Before him stretched a vast continent formed entirely of colossal roots, thicker than skyscrapers, knotting and spiraling into the distance like veins of a dead god. They rose upward, converging into a titanic tree whose crown vanished into black fog, its silhouette blurred and wrong, as if reality itself refused to focus on it.
From the canopy came the sound.
Chains.
Heavy. Endless.
They rattled and groaned as they swayed from unseen branches above. Danny followed them with his eyes—and his breath hitched.
He was hanging from one.
No—
Bound by one.
A single transcendent chain had been forced through his back, wrapped around his organs, and torn out through his chest before twisting around his hands behind him, then coiling around his body several times.
It held him in place, ensuring his gaze was fixed on the massive contract hovering before him—etched in glowing script, its burning syllables hotter than the links themselves, piercing through his soul rather than his body.
Beside him, dozens—hundreds—of others hung the same way. Some screamed. Some wept. Some stared blankly, already hollowed out.
The tree pulsed.
With every pulse, the chains tightened.
A presence loomed behind the words—not spoken, but understood, pressed directly into his being:
Would you give up everything to escape eternal torment?
Danny tried to scream.
But the roots beneath him began to move—and something vast, amused, and impossibly patient watched from within the fog.
…
Bellmori City — Outskirts7:00 A.M., April 5th, 1987
Shake. Shake.
Pff… pff—ffffff.
The rattle of spray cans filled the outside of Red Flags Auto Shop as ghoulish figures in full jester attire laughed, spraying HAHAHAHA across the lot of fully repaired vehicles.
They crouched to tag doors or wandered into the factory, dragging dead bodies and loading them into marked cars. These were imps created above the hierarchy—the decapitated and torso imps elevated into something more.
"Are these things…" Missy's gaze drifted toward the imperial imps as they shoved over twenty bodies into seven cars, then climbed into the driver and passenger seats."…trusted to drive?"
"I know they might not look it, but they're stable enough to know when to hit the accelerator or brake," Qiren murmured from the passenger seat of a black 1973 M-rolet Nova, while a female imp played with the windshield wipers.
It laughed, flicking on the indicators and honking the horn.
"Hehehe," it giggled, like a child who had found its favorite toy.
"See~," Qiren mused, pulling the female imp closer and fixing his theater mask onto her face, hiding the three bullet holes in her forehead.
"I'm sure you're eager to drive. Aren't you, girl~?"
She nodded and climbed back into the driver's seat. She smiled beneath the mask—
But slowly, that smile began to fade.
Her hands tightened around the wheel.
Would you give up everything to escape eternal torment?
The words flickered into her mind.
Chains.
A tree.
Miasma.
Then everything reversed—tires, shouting, running, gunfire.
A gun pointed at her.
She died.
"Ahh!" Annabeth screamed.
She fumbled with the door, jerking it open, trying to run.
Qiren drew his gun the instant one foot touched the ground.
Bang!
The shot tore through the back of her skull. He smirked, already turning away.
"They can be a handful once they get their consciousness back," he said casually."Though nothing can't be fixed with a revolver."
Missy sat in the driver's seat of her own truck, her expression unreadable. They had parked beside each other after Qiren's first batch of imps were born—and after Swift and Michael joined the fight.
He had reanimated the dead somehow. Not all of them—but of the thirty-six mechanics present, fourteen had been resurrected as imps. Sixteen, counting Swift and Michael.
The number could rise to thirty-one if the fifteen C.C. heads were included. But she didn't know how many of those were doppelgängers—or how many were fragments of him, like his later imps.
"There," Qiren said as the imp he shot stood back up. Its movements were groggy, unfocused. He spun his gun once.
"Feeling better now? Let's switch seats. Driving seems a little too stimulating for you."
He opened the passenger door and stepped out.
The car's body was customized like the others—splashes of laughter painted across the frame. In the back seat lay weapons collected from the vault.
Originally, he'd left them in a pickup truck. But when the imps began showing off the cars inside the auto shop, this one caught his eye.
So he abandoned the truck, redistributed some firearms to half the imps riding shotgun, and tossed the rest into the back of his new ride.
He slid a hand along the roof—
Then paused.
An engine growled in the distance.
Down a dirt forest path came the first vehicle he'd ever ridden in this world.
In the driver's seat, the half-bodied imps Michael and Swift worked in tandem—one torso using its hands on the pedals while the other steadied the body they were transporting.
"I was probably right to send them to fetch Mix's corpse," Qiren muttered. "I may be desensitized to death, but driving with a carcass baking in the back seat for hours might be a bit much."
He chuckled softly.
"Maybe if I ate the soul of a mafia disposal boy, I'd be unfazed. I got this numb from eating gangsters—picked up their habits, their memories… even their personal weapon skills."
The imp he'd reassigned snapped out of her daze and obeyed, sliding into the passenger seat as Qiren took the wheel.
Time passed.
Under his orders, the imps retrieved the drugs left behind, covered the corpses with tarps, dismantled the cameras, tagged the warehouse interior with MAD JESTER, and firebombed the boss's office, the weapons vault, and several unrepaired vehicles.
Why?
Reputation.
He needed his actions to look human—to mask the supernatural. And what better cover than a violent new gang clawing its way upward?
"The smoke will alert the authorities soon," Qiren said, starting the engine. "Let's move."
"Aye aye," Missy replied softly as she started her truck.
One by one, the vehicles followed, forming a serpent-like line down the road.
Qiren flicked on the radio.
As he cycled through channels, a small screen rose from the dashboard—a reminder of how advanced this world's technology was, fitting a television into such an old car.
"Good morning, Bellmori City. Today's forecast shows clear skies from eight a.m. onward—skkk—Good morning, Greendew—Good morning, New York. I'm sorry to say… but today we've lost someone dear."
The screen showed a photograph of a man in his thirties, smiling in a police uniform.
"NYPD Corporal John Dollo—a beloved local hero, known for his unrelenting bravery during the Mills Bank hostage takeover…"