The dream always began with his father's hands.
Not the strong, calloused ones that taught Kael to wield a blade, but the ruined ones—his left hand half-consumed by Abyss corruption, fingers twisted into black, petrified stone. In the dream, Kael could still smell the iron-and-ozone stench of his father's Contract burning through its final hours.
"Look at that sky, boy."
And Kael did.
The horizon bled. A vast, swirling maw of bruised purples and liquid gold churned beyond Sector 7's corpse. The edge of the Abyss rippled like a living wound—ugly, endless, beautiful. It was the last thing his father ever loved.
"Why fight for them?" Kael had asked back then, fists clenched, voice hoarse. "They hate us. They use us."
His father's laugh was a dry rasp, worn out by too many battles and not enough victories. "Not for them. For the chance that someone stands here one day... and just calls it sky."
Then—like always—the memory split apart.
Kael jolted awake to the kick of a boot against his cot.
"Rise and shine, princess."
Madam stood over him, silhouette outlined in the dim emergency lights. Her UWN-issue ocular implant whirred as it adjusted focus, the red glow scanning Kael's twitching form. A long scar stretched from her temple to her jaw—a memory carved into her face during the Battle of the Dead Zone, where she'd stood with his father. Where she'd watched him die.
Kael sat up, rubbing his face as his Contract mark pulsed beneath the skin of his forearm—jagged black lines that moved on their own like ink veins. Beside him, his father's machetes rested against the wall. The Nsibidi wards etched into the blades shimmered faintly, reacting to the growing tension outside.
"Shrieker swarm," Madam said, tossing him his combat vest. "East perimeter. Try not to get yourself killed before breakfast."
He barely had time to strap on his machetes before the warning sirens sounded—two low, guttural pulses. The outpost, once a forgotten warehouse, roared to life.
Kael stepped out into the corridor, where the rust-red light panels flickered with age. Soldiers were already mobilizing—some slamming metal shutters over windows, others loading standard-issue anti-creature rifles into vehicle racks. These weren't Blessed; they were enhanced troopers—UWN's last-ditch evolution of human infantry. Most had implants, reinforced limbs, or motion-link helmets. A few were younger than Kael. All of them looked tired.
The air smelled of oil, sweat, and something sweeter—rot. Not human. Something else. Something waiting.
"They're coming through the old drainage tunnels again," Madam said, checking the charge level on her gauntlet. "Ugly bastards are learning."
From across the yard, a scream cut through the fog—sharp, rising, then breaking into a sound that didn't belong in a human throat. Kael's jaw tensed. Shriekers mimicked voices. Laughter. Whispers. Sometimes they copied your own scream before you had time to make it.
One of the techs stumbled past him carrying an arc-lantern, muttering prayers in broken Ibo. Another soldier snapped a magazine into place and muttered, "Not again, not again," under his breath.
Madam turned, staring hard at Kael. Her mechanical fingers gripped his arm, locking down like a brace. "Your father's Contract is killing you slowly. I see it every day. In your stance. Your sleep. Your eyes."
Kael didn't answer. He broke her grip and moved.
The east perimeter was already compromised—metal barriers dented inward, claw marks raking down one of the watchtower ladders. Kael slipped through the broken gap near Supply Depot 3. The fog thickened out here, curling like fingers around his boots.
He found the first Shrieker crouched low, its bone-white limbs slick with old blood. Its body was humanoid in shape but wrong in rhythm—jerking as if dancing to music only it could hear. No eyes. No nose. Just that vertical mouth full of teeth clicking in a pattern that made Kael's molars throb.
He attacked. Machete one—through the chest. Machete two—across the throat. The creature screamed, its voice splitting into echoes that bent air, then fell into a pile of black sludge and popped like a rotten blister.
Kael wiped his blade on his coat, breathing shallow through his scarf. His comms crackled to life.
"Kael, pull back! You're close to the Dead Zone—don't go in alone!"
He smashed the earpiece underfoot.
The Dead Zone stretched out in front of him like a wound that had never scabbed. Ruined streets. Scorched metal. Blood-stained rebar piercing the carcass of a collapsed medical truck. The concrete bled oily rain from cracks that never dried. It was here his father had held the line, delaying a Shrieker wave long enough for a hundred civilians to evacuate. The UWN built a steel memorial where he fell—then forgot it. Rust had chewed through the names.
Kael kept walking.
His scarf, stitched from the hide of a Creeper—a beast with stealth-cloaking abilities—shivered slightly. It sensed something. He whispered the Nsibidi trigger his father had taught him. The glyphs pulsed, and the world dulled. Sound faded. His presence blurred.
Shadow-walking. A temporary cloak—not perfect, but enough.
He counted six more heat signatures ahead, nesting deep in the ruins. And then, something else. Something not on any scanner.
Half-buried beneath a slab of fallen wall was a corpse, face eaten away. The dog tags still clung to the jacket, glinting faintly.
UWN-EXTERMINATION DIVISION. ELIAS V.
Kael froze. The last time he heard that name, it belonged to a boy who used to visit the outpost with his father. Aldric's son.
The Shriekers had left his organs in a spiral—one of their grotesque rituals. Feeding. Art.
Kael's Contract burned under his skin. A whisper unfurled inside his skull—oily, cold, slow.
Again.
It wasn't the Shriekers. It was the Abyss. Watching. Amused.
Kael gripped his machetes tighter. The wind shifted. Somewhere deeper in the Dead Zone, something moved with weight too heavy for any creature his files had listed.
And somewhere beyond even this zone, the Lost Zone festered—where Ground Zero still pulsed and the Hollow dreamed.
But today's war wasn't against the Hollow. Not yet.
It was against the beasts in front of him. And the ghosts in his head.
He pressed forward. Blades drawn. He would walk this cursed ground until his boots gave out. His father had earned no less.
Behind him, Madam's voice shouted from the eastern ridge, her grating tone carrying through the fog like thunder.
"Gods, these things are uglier than your old man's cooking!"
Kael didn't smile.