The bunker was dim and still, lit only by the soft hum of the overhead lamps.
Dust floated through the light like drifting stars. Elior sat in the corner, sharpening the edge of a worn dagger. His eyes were half-lidded were focused but somewhere far away. The rhythmic scrape of metal against whetstone rang rapidly in the room.
Across the room, Tom, Vera, and Arlong were busy with their own tasks. Tom was polishing his spearhead, muttering equations under his breath about velocity and rotation.
Vera leaned against the wall, carving symbols into the floor with the tip of his trident. Arlong sat beside him, sketching runic patterns in the sand. It was the kind of quiet that came after chaos. They were calm pretending not to afraid.
Grace was lying on the bed in her room, awake with dizzy visions. The fever from earlier had subsided, but a strange heaviness clung to her mind. The air felt sick to her, pressing against her skin like invisible hands.
Her head began to throb continuously.
She sat up, clutching her temples. The room tilted slightly, as if the ground had moved beneath her.
"Grace?" Rosario looked up from the far table, where he was dismantling a lantern. "You okay?"
She tried to speak but her voice came out cracked, like something pressing on her throat. "It's…. fine…. dizzy."
Elior looked up now, setting the dagger aside. His eyes, dark and sharp, studied her like a question he didn't want the answer to. "Grace, stay still," he said, his tone steady but low.
She nodded weakly and tried to breathe, but the pain in her head deepened. It wasn't just dizziness, it was forced pressure on her mind. Like something was inside her skull, spiking. Her eyes flickered faintly for a second and something like an amber light dimmed.
Tom noticed it first. "Elior.…" His voice was quiet, unsure. "Did you see that?"
Elior was already standing. His chair slid back, scraping against the stone. "Everyone back off."
The others froze. The light around Grace flickered again, brighter this time. Her hands clutched the blanket, her knuckles white. "It hurts…." she whispered, her voice trembling. "It… hurts inside my head."
Then came the hum.
Soft at first, like a faraway bell. Then louder, vibrating through the air, the walls, the ground.
Elior stepped closer, his instincts screaming but his face unreadable. "Grace," he said calmly, crouching near her. "Try to control yourself!"
Her eyes opened and for a second, those weren't her eyes. They were hollow, glowing with thin golden rings spinning faintly inside her pupils. The glow reflected on Elior's face like sunlight on mirror.
Everyone in the room was confused.
Tom whispered, "What is that….?"
Elior didn't answer. His fingers twitched slightly, ready to draw his blade. "Grace," he said again, firmer this time, "what do you see right now?"
Her lips moved, but her voice didn't sound like hers anymore. It layered, one tone human, one deeper, one distorted, one from somewhere beyond matter.
"I see…. A light," she said. "....eyes. Watching.... everywhere."
Grace's eyes illuminated the room, casting eerie circles of gold against the stone walls.
Grace's body jerked forward, her mouth opened but no sound came out. Instead, a deep vibration fleed out through the bunker walls, making dust rain from the ceiling.
Her veins turned black beneath her skin. Her eyes burned with a hollow amber hue. Her voice came out fractured like static.
"Wh—what is.… happening.... to me?"
Her body convulsed, then stilled. And in that moment, she vanished into a blur of shadow and flame.
Elior's eyes widened. "Everyone, back off!"
Rosario dragged Arlong behind a pillar just as the floor cracked. A blast of force erupted where Grace had been standing, flinging Tom across the room. When the dust cleared, what stood in her place was not Grace herself anymore. Her form stretched tall and wraith-like, dripping trails of black smoke that hissed as they touched the ground.
Her face flickered between human and something formless, teeth like shards of glass forming and vanishing.
Rosario whispered, trembling, "Wha—what the hell happened to her!?"
Elior's voice was grim. "She's under the influence of a high-tier being. This is not possession, it is incursion. Something is awakening through her."
The wraith lunged. Elior caught her mid-swipe with his arm guard, the impact sending shockwaves across the floor. He slid backward, boots carving trenches in the sand-layered stone. Grace's distorted scream pierced the bunker, half grief, half rage.
"Tom!" Elior shouted, parrying another claw strike that split the air. "Bring me sand. Now!"
Tom staggered to his feet, blood dripping from his forehead. "Sand? Why?"
"Do as I say, hurry!"
Tom sprinted out of the room, lungs burning. Behind him, the sounds of destruction was metal breaking apart. Elior grunting under the weight of each hit. He wasn't attacking but only deflecting, blocking, tanking her attacks.
Elior slammed his knee into the ground, summoning a circular ward that shimmered faintly before shattering under the wraith's next blow.
"She's breaking through…!" Rosario shouted.
"I know!" Elior's voice remained calm but strained. "Just hold the line!"
The wraith spun midair, her form blurring into tendrils. Elior raised his blade, slicing through the mist but it reformed behind him instantly. A claw slashed his shoulder, sparks of black light bursting out like magma.
Then Tom returned panting and holding a handful of desert's sand. "Got it!"
Elior ducked another strike, rolled back, and shouted, "Tom, hold her still! Just five seconds!"
Tom froze. "Five seconds? Rely on me."
"Five seconds!"
Tom gritted his teeth. He ran straight toward her, his Face flickering faintly beneath his skin. He spins a wooden branch and slammed it into the ground which broke but bended the air around them.
Rotational energy flared, an invisible barrier spun, trapping Grace's movements. Her limbs strained against it, shrieking like metal against metal.
"One!"
Tom's breath came ragged.
"Two!"
The barrier wavered.
"Three!"
Her claws ripped through the rotation field.
"Four!"
And least,
"FIVE!"
Elior threw the sand forward and chanted in an ancient tongue where his voice fully changed for moment and recalling everywhere like a forgotten god's speech.
"Aes ledh yomo? Vot Ja Tomo, Janta; dehbo ed djork."
The words increased the weight through the medium, ripping it apart. The sand glowed bright green, swirling around the wraith like fireflies before exploding into a luminous mist. Grace's form convulsed, the black aura tearing apart in streaks of smoke.
A wave of crushing pressure burst outward enough to distort the air itself.
Elior stood firm, his cloak whipping violently behind him as he pressed forward, chanting again under his breath.
Then, the sound stopped.
The light dimmed.
Grace collapsed back to her human form returning, breathing shallowly, eyes closed.
Tom stumbled toward her, catching her before she hit the floor. "She's.… Alright now?"
Elior nodded, exhaling deeply, sweat glistening down his jaw. "By the praise of Our God," he said quietly. "Yes."
The night was turning darker and darker.
A sound like a cathedral collapsing under the weight of a thunderclap destroyed the silence. Dust cascaded from the ceilings. The weak light of bulbs flickered.
Yellow, then white, then everything black, repeat.
Tom laid Grace on her bed gently, tucked the quilt around her shoulders. She was breathing slowly and peacefully. He exhaled once, the way one might after waking from a dream that almost killed them. But before he could turn away, a deep boom pierced across his tympanic membrane. The walls were shaking in agitation of something.
Arlong burst into the room His face was nervous. "What was that?"
Tom didn't answer. His eyes darted toward the narrow window. Red light bled through the cracks in the curtains very thick, unnatural red, like the sky was wet in blood after battle of some Gods.
They ran out.
In the corridor, Rosario was gripping a half-fixed wire like a weapon, his teeth clenched, pupils dilated. Vera stood beside Elior near the main gate, his trident glinting faintly in the light of the burning sky.
The temperature outside the bunker was unnaturally warmer. It pressed on their lungs. The desert beyond stretched endlessly, but it wasn't the same desert anymore. It quivered, distorted, shifting shapes like water under some invisible gravity.
Elior stared at it for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
Then, very quietly, he said,
"….It's here."
The others turned toward him.
"What's here?" Rosario asked, voice shaking slightly.
Elior's eyes didn't leave the horizon. "Thay thing...." he murmured.
The survivors inside pressed their faces to the window, whispering, their silhouettes trembling in the dim light. Arlong's breath grew uneven. He looked at Tom.
"Thing….?"
"Go inside," Elior commanded sharply. His voice left no room for questions. "Alert everyone. Don't peek outside, no matter what happens."
Arlong hesitated. "Elior."
"Go."
Arlong nodded and ran, slamming the bunker door behind him.
The four remaining men, Elior, Tom, Rosario and Vera stood in silence, the atmosphere was vibrating around them.
The moon hung broken in the dark crimson sky. Its shattered fragments drifted like dying embers, glowing faintly as if remembering what light used to mean. The desert wind howled, low and mournful, carrying with it the echoes of something vast moving far above them.
Then, Rosario whispered, "Do you feel that?"
The ground was shaking with no rhythm, not with steps, but with the expansion of existence itself convulsing. The sand rippled outward in concentric waves.
Vera narrowed his eyes. "Something is warping the horizon…."
They Saw It.
It hadn't descended fully yet. It simply was there, as if it had always been and their minds had only just realized it.
A being of incomprehensible scale, so colossal it made mountains seem like an ant beneath its form. Its body was not flesh or matter but geometry itself unraveling mysteries from each corner of it. The planes folding into each other, impossible to fix in sight. Cubes rotated through spheres that weren't spheres, patterns stretched in dimensions their eyes could not process. Its body colour was darker than void, numerous fangs around its body with each having disgusting tentacles wrapped with innards.
Where its head should have been, there were eyes. Not circula, cubic, each one rotating slowly, layers within layers, reflecting not light but thoughts. When they turned, they didn't look at the world—they looked through it, as if peeling the skin off reality like banana.
The space shook warping sound into static. The crimson sky rippled like water struck by a hammer.
Rosario fell to his knees, clutching his ears. "It's not.… it's not making any sound," he muttered. "I can hear it inside my each cell."
Tom tried to speak, but words refused to form. His lungs didn't obey. It felt like something vast and ancient was reading his soul like an open book flipping pages too quickly for him to scream.
Vera's hand trembled on his trident. His eyes were wide, tears running down without him realizing. "That thing.… that thing.... how can something like that .... exist.…"
Elior stood still, his shadow trembling behind him like something alive. His gaze lifted to the horizon. The air distorted around him, the golden markings of his Face flickering faintly under his skin.
"….An Overseer," he whispered.
The being shifted, its structure was changing every second, each movements reshaping into new dimensions. The world seemed to be exaggerated, as if gravity itself tried to escape it in frighten.
Tom clutched his head. "I.... I can't even move properly.... No, I can't defeat that thing.... None...."
Indeed, it was. The stars themselves wobbled, as if hung by invisible strings that the creature had plucked.
In that moment, the fragile illusion called reality tore just enough to show its seams.
What they saw was not a god, nor a beast, but a truth older than fear itself.
The Overseers ruled the stars but now.… this is the time to rule the silence between them!