The lead man in black took a slow step forward.
His face—stern, unreadable—held the kind of gravity that only those who had seen hundreds of deaths could carry without flinching.
He looked directly into Elius's eyes, as though peering past his golden irises and into the very forge of his soul.
"These missions," he said carefully, each word measured like a ticking timebomb, "are not what you expect."
The others behind him exchanged glances.
The second man in black stepped in to continue. "You won't get to pick and choose your opponents. This isn't a fantasy simulation where you get to study your target before striking. These will be randomized, pulled straight from live priority feeds. Anything flagged as emergent—rogue bioweapons, collapsed dimensional breaches, psychic screams heard in dreamspace—we send you there."
His voice lowered, growing sharper with every syllable.
"You might be sent to a frozen city where corpses still whisper."
