The rain had started.
It came in a slow whisper, soaking the crumbling roads and dripping through the broken skeletal shell of buildings.
Under a half-collapsed fuel station, a small fire flickered. Its light danced across concrete, casting long shadows that shook with every gust.
A man sat beside it, wrapped in a weathered coat, his gaze fixed on the flames. Not for warmth. He was watching. Waiting.
This was Colonel Stryker.
Once a figure of power. Once a name that brought panic to mutants and men alike. Now, he sat in silence, his face drawn and lined, every scar a reminder of wars fought and losses made. But his eyes — sharp, calculating — betrayed nothing of fatigue.
He rose slowly, sliding from the flicker of firelight. The rifle at his side, old, rusted, but still functional, it awaited his grasp.
He peered down the ruined street, mind calibrated sharply to the night's sounds: the drip of water, the rust of leaves, the distant rumble of weather.
Then he saw it.
A figure, outlined in mist. Standing still. Unblinking.
Alien. Yet purposeful.
He swallowed memories of past hunts, past betrayals, the blood he had spilt in the name of "cleansing." He steadied his breath. His hands were steady. His heart hardened by decades of battle did not flutter.
That silhouette did not move. It watched.
Stryker raised the rifle just enough to steady it against his shoulder, eyes narrowing. The rain hissed against metal. Distant thunder answered.
He whispered a name to the dark. A name he thought had been buried:
"The Demon Lord."
Without another thought, he pivoted away and melted into the ruins.
He did not chase.
But he would watch.
Because in every legend, the hunter waits.
And the Demon Lord had just announced his return.
Location: Perimeter Zone Epsilon, 2km from Bolvar Site Theta
Time:300 hours
The night vision flickered softly as boots touched down in wet moss.
Five shadows moved like one silent, deliberate, each dressed in adaptive gear that blurred their outlines in the trees. Their visors scanned for thermal signatures. HUD overlays ticked quietly in their vision. Biometrics normal. Air toxicity levels minimal. Psychic distortion: elevated.
They were ghosts in a world that no longer welcomed humans.
"Command, this is Recon Team Orion. Ground contact made. Beginning sweep." Captain Rael whispered into the comm, his voice barely audible under the static hum of the rain. His gloved hand signaled the squad to fan out.
They were elite, born of the last war, forged by shadows. Handpicked from what remained of the old world's covert task forces. Experts in mutant suppression, deep-void incursions, and classified containment.
But even they felt the weight here.
Theta wasn't just another black site.
It was a grave.
And something had crawled out of it.
Rael advanced slowly through the mist. The forest here was wounded — trees twisted at the roots, soil burned and cracked as if something had pulsed beneath it. He moved past a scorched animal corpse — still smoldering. No signs of struggle. No predator tracks.
Just decay.
"No electromagnetic emissions. No tech residue," whispered Corporal Vess through the link. "Whatever was here didn't use gear."
Rael frowned. That was the third anomaly.
The team crested a ridge. Below them, in a half-collapsed basin, lay the ruins of the lab.
A ragged concrete slab half-swallowed by the earth. The door torn open. Metal warped. Not blown out, but peeled back. Like something inside had simply decided to leave.
Rael gave the signal.
They moved like liquid shadows down the slope rifles raised, safeties off, eyes on every angle.
They found the pods first.
Broken. Smashed from within. Some still dripped with fluid. Inside them, distorted bodies of half-human, half-forgotten rotted under dim red lights.
"Mutant test chambers," said Vess, her voice tight. "What's left of them."
Rael nodded but didn't stop.
He followed the trail: footprints, smeared blood, scattered papers. The security node had been ripped from the wall. One of the corpses nearby had no head.
They reached the main chamber.
Then… they found the table.
Empty now. Wires snapped. Tools strewn across the floor.
Rael knelt by a wall-mounted file unit. It had been ransacked but one document remained, crumpled beneath a scalpel.
He pulled it free and scanned the degraded paper.
Subject Recovery Initiated. Genetic Fragmentation 67% Complete.
Host Material: Original. Viability confirmed.
Activation Protocol pending upon psychic impulse response.
Rael stared at the last line.
Psychic impulse. Host material. Original.
They hadn't just resurrected something. They rebuilt it. Reassembled it from scraps.
Vess's voice crackled through the comms again, now tight with alarm.
"Captain. You need to see this."
Rael followed her voice into the adjacent corridor — what had once been a sealed vault.
The bodies inside weren't mutants.
They were guards.
Veterans. Augmented. Equipped with kill switches and neural blockers.
Their throats had been burned from the inside. Like something had reached through them and pulled the air out of their lungs.
One of them had managed to etch something into the steel wall before death. A single word.
Death.
Rael stepped back.
This wasn't a failed experiment.
This was a monster.
He turned to the squad, voice low and steady.
"We're not equipped to engage. Relay full recall. Code Black."
But before the message could reach Command, the comms died.
Not with a scream. Not with interference.
Just gone like the air had been sucked from the signal itself.
A static hum settled over the vault.
And somewhere, deeper in the woods beyond the site…
A single, sharp exhale echoed — like breath drawn for the first time in centuries.
The silence was wrong.
It pressed in from all sides like water rushing into a sinking ship.
Captain Rael spun on his heel, scanning the corridor. "Squad, formation Delta. We're pulling out. Now."
No reply.
He tapped his comm once. Twice.
Nothing but static.
"Fall in!" he barked.
Three squadmates appeared from the shadows, weapons drawn, visors glowing faintly in the dark. One was missing.
"Where's Cole?"
No one answered.
A sound echoed — soft, wet, deliberate.
They turned.
At the end of the hallway, a faint trail of red led into the shadows.
Rael stepped forward, raising his rifle. The lights along the hallway flickered once — then every one of them died, plunging the corridor into total darkness.
"Thermals!"
Their visors flared to life, bathing the world in shifting heat signatures.
But they saw… nothing.
The hallway was cold.
Empty.
Too empty.
Something was bleeding, and yet there was no heat.
Vess muttered, "It's like it's... feeding off energy."
Then they heard it.
A low hum. Not from machinery. Not from comms.
From inside their own ears.
Their vision blurred. For half a second, Rael saw double — a shadow standing right behind them, though no one had moved.
He didn't question it.
"Move! Now!"
They ran.
Out of the vault, into the main chamber, boots slamming against the cold floor. One of them a scout named Pyres lagged behind for half a breath.
And then he was gone.
No scream. No gunfire. Just... missing.
Rael didn't stop.
The exit ramp was up ahead — the breach they'd entered through. Light filtered through the trees above. Dawn was coming.
He vaulted through first, crashing into the open air, mud and moss slick beneath his boots. Two others followed.
Not Vess.
He turned back.
"Vess!"
Nothing.
Just the sound of dripping water… and faint breathing that wasn't his.
A shape stepped just into view at the edge of the facility's maw a tall, inhumanly composed, as if molded from something that remembered flesh but no longer needed it.
A voice didn't speak — but he felt it.
A presence brushing against his thoughts.
You do not belong here.
Rael opened fire.
The shots passed through mist.
And the shape vanished.
The wind whispered through the trees.
He stood at the edge of a crumbled overlook, eyes fixed on the horizon.
The facility was behind him now — broken, emptied.
But not quiet.
He had felt the ripples. Minds brushing the edges of his awareness. Curious. Cautious. Armed. Brave, in a desperate, short-sighted way.
The soldiers had come searching for something they didn't understand.
They found it.
They were not the first to try. And they would not be the last.
All For One turned his palm over, observing the way his skin shimmered faintly now — not entirely flesh, not entirely construct. Powers stirred beneath the surface, layered, newly absorbed, unmastered... but awakening.
He flexed his fingers. The air quivered.
He had tasted strength once more not just in ability.