Thomas was floating above a stone island with a crater in the middle. Surrounding it were many shattered smaller islands, and surrounding that was a sea that was still, until a line like barrier which surrounded the islands delineated calm to raging tempest. A storm surrounded the island, and the island itself was in the middle of that storm. The eye of the thing.

Even then sun did not shine upon the stone. Rain did not touch its shores. There was only a sky of concrete gray. A monocloud that spat dim gloom onto the rocks and the shore.

There, among one of the many scorched craters inside the great middle crater were a motley crew of skinny people. They had leathers made from dried scale-skin, fish it seemed with bodies that could easily envelope a person, and they stood round the crater with stone knives at the ready. They were saying something, but Thomas couldn’t hear. It was overshadowed by the great surge of a mechanical -- computerized voice that boomed in his ear.

[Warp opening -- ERROR]

[Spell -- UKNOWN -- Cast]

Their leader, obvious by a glance at with the raised clawed hands and domineering position, gave a speech that was static to Thomas’ ears. He spoke with conviction, full of bluster and and strength, before finally plunging the claws into his own chest.

[RITUAL INITIATED]

[SACRIFICE NEEDED]

[SACRIFICE NEEDED]

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[...]

“They claim they hold heroes?!” The scream of the leader was finally audible.

“They hold horrors!” the rest shouted. The leader's chest gushed a potent green onto the ground and began to swirl, spiral, round and round the crater as it gave off whifs of purple-pink steam.

The stone knife-equipped peoples, skinny and gaunt with eyes that looked haunted even from Thomas sky-ward view, slit their wrists and out of them pooled even more of the green goo that served as blood. It pooled and pooled, more than what could be considered normal for a body to hold -- and so they were drained and became husks that filled the crater. Hundreds, all dead, to initiate something that Thomas was only beginning to piece together.

[HErO -- HERo -- HERO Su-- HERO SUMMONED]

[UNKNOWN]

[Sacrificial Overload -- Accepted]

[LET CRY THE HEART AND BEAT AMONG THE STARS]

[PREPARE FOR WAR]

Then it was silent. The people were dead, their corpses, themselves, turning to the purple-pink smoke that began to swirl around the pool of glowing green before settling like steam upon a lake. It was calm. It was like the land was mourning. The dark shadows lengthened. Their fingers touched the horizon. The gray of the monocloud deepened, as if the warden that was the sky was disappointed.

Then the cloud split, and from it fell half a Jeep and a screaming Thomas that landed in the pool, dissolving and screaming both, plumes of air coming out in great and murky bubbles as the flesh and the goo commingled and ate away at his body.

But from the vision-Thomas’ own sight, something drifted into view. One of the papers, a post-it note, that trailed the half-a-Jeep. One that stated:

“Neon Killer:

“Victims found with no witnesses to their placement. Security cameras all cut thirty seconds before they show. No leads -- how did they get there?”