The world dissolved around Erick—the cold floor, the oppressive office lights—replaced by a cold emptiness. He felt himself falling, his body weightless, yet somehow being hurled downward by an overwhelming force.

The descent grew faster, the pull stronger, until it felt as though he was being torn apart limb by limb. He could no longer tell if he was screaming or silent as time blurred into nothingness: seconds, hours, days? It didn’t matter. Time had lost all meaning. Then, in the distance, a faint glow appeared, piercing through the blackness like a needle through cloth.

As he hurtled toward it, the glow grew brighter, revealing ten towering figures standing in perfect formation. They radiated an otherworldly light, their silhouettes sharp and imposing against the endless void.

The figures did not move. They did not speak. They simply existed, their silent presence filling the emptiness.

Their light illuminated nothing but Erick, as though the darkness itself recoiled from their radiance. Despite their faceless forms, he felt their gaze—ten pairs of unseen eyes boring into him, peeling into his skin to judge his soul.

His fall slowed, the crushing pull easing as he drifted closer to the figures. The light surrounding them pulsed in a slow, steady rhythm, like the beating of a colossal heart.

Erick felt the weight of their presence pressing down on him, a reminder of his own... insignificance. Yet, within their gaze, something stirred inside him.

Suddenly, the figures began to fade, their light dimming until only their silhouettes remained. Then, one by one, they vanished, leaving him alone in the suffocating black. The silence that followed was crushing. Then, as if to remind him of his helplessness, the void surged around him again, the pull reversing. He was thrust upward, propelled by a force far greater than his own.

The darkness tore away, fragments scattering like ash.

Erick awoke with a violent gasp, his chest and skull wracked with a stabbing pain. He heaved for breath, his lungs burning as though he’d been suffocating underwater for hours.

The scene around him was a grotesque nightmare, almost too much for his spinning mind to process. The stench hit him first: a rancid blend of putrefaction and iron, thick enough to coat his throat. He gagged, bile rising and vomiting into the slick red pool beneath him.

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Blood!

It was blood that seeped into his trembling hands, thick and viscous. He could feel it clinging to his skin, soaking into what he was wearing.

Erick’s eyes darted around the ground as his vision swam, and the terror in his chest only deepened.the blood wasn’t alone .

Around him,the remains of bodies lay strewn across the ground broken and lifeless. A hand,pale and limp protruded from a pile of rubble nearby it’s fingers still curled as they had been clawing at the earth in their final moments

A small, charred corpse lay a few feet away from him, its features unrecognizable beneath the soot and dried blood.Erick’s heart clenched as he realized it was small—too small

The more Erick’s eyes adjusted to his surroundings,the more he saw faces twisted in agony, bodies torn apart and scorch marks that stretched across like scars, he was surrounded by death.

The sound of heavy, deliberate footsteps broke through his haze, each thud growing louder and closer. Erick turned his head weakly toward the noise. His vision swam, but the figure coming toward him was unmistakable: a towering creature clad in black, fog-shrouded armor. The dim light revealed a scarred, grotesque face that vaguely resembled a human—yet not quite. His features were twisted, as if he was abandoned halfway through creation.

The creature strode forward, reaching down to grab Erick by the arm. Its grip was vise-like; it lifted him with little effort, forcing him onto his toes. Erick’s breath hitched, terror filling his veins.

“Mortem!” the scarred man barked, his voice sounding more like a guttural growl. “This one’s alive. Come inspect him, lest he end up like the others.”

A deep grunt of acknowledgment rumbled from the shadows behind Erick.

Fear surged in his chest as he strained over his shoulder, desperate to see this new threat.

A massive shape emerged from the shadows, its shadow swallowing what little light remained. Erick’s stomach dropped as the figure came into view: a hulking, monstrous abomination that dwarfed even the scarred man.

Mortem wasn’t a human. He wasn’t even a corrupted version of one, like what Erick thought the scarred man was—an amalgamation of flesh and bone.

Mortem seized Erick from the scarred man with unsettling delicacy, as though he were handling a newborn. Suspended in the creature’s monstrous grip, Erick could only take in the horror before him.

Mortem’s six-fingered hands were pale and mostly fleshless, the bone gleaming unnaturally under the dim light. His segmented arms looked like they had been stitched together from pieces of different skin, each patch varying from ash-gray to deep, rotting purple. His head was grotesque, a fusion of skull and flesh with sunken, hollowed eyes and a grotesquely large square jaw.

“Do not fear,” Mortem rasped, his voice like metal scraping over stone. “Mortem make you better. Mortem not let you end up like others.”

His lips curled back, revealing jagged, blackened, bloodstained teeth in what might have been a smile or perhaps even a sneer.

Erick’s stomach churned as he didn’t even dare to imagine what Mortem had in store for him.