Chapter 2
A crisp Italian suit framed an impeccably groomed silhouette, the mirrored shades obscuring any hint of his expression as he regarded us dispassionately. An air of aristocratic menace hung around him like a cloak.
"Do you foolish boys even comprehend the ramifications of what you've stumbled into?" He spoke calmly, each precisely-enunciated word ringing out like the tread of iron boots. "The empire you've blundered into dismantling with your pathetic amateur-hour investigation?"
My mouth worked uselessly as a crushing gravity of dread and absolute certainty washed over me. This man – no, this entity – was no mere crime boss or mob underboss, despite the imperious bravado. We had kicked the beehive, all right…and landed right at the feet of the queen bee itself.
Yoon-seo let out a piteous moan, her eyelids fluttering. Tae-jun stirred beside me, his hands balling into fists as if ready to throw down with this unassailable fig towering above us. But the aura of supreme confidence, of absolute power radiating off this man was so dense it seemed to leach the fight right out of our bruised bodies.
As he turned on his Oxfords with a contemptuous sniff, he paused for the faintest moment – just long enough to let the following words drip out like liquid poison:
"I'd highly suggest the three of you indulge your youthful naivete and let this silly fascination die. Before we're forced to conclude your persistence has… lethal consequences."
With that, darkness enveloped me once more as a cloth sack was cinched over my head. The last thing I sensed was a pair of mammoth hands seizing me roughly, their grip ruthlessly unyielding as the wind was knocked out of me…
As my senses slowly rematerialized, I became aware of a swaying, jostling motion all around me. My shoulders and arms burned from being suspended at an awkward angle, the coarse fabric sack still cinched tightly over my head.
I could make out muffled voices, gruff and authoritative tones barking indistinct orders. The unmistakable aroma of stale cigarette smoke and body odor hung thick in the enclosed space wherever we were.
Then another sound cut through the background noise – a pitiful whimpering nearby. My heart seized as I recognized Yoon-seo's muted sobs of fear and pain. White-hot rage lashed through me, shoving aside the woozy disorientation as I strained against my restraints.
"Don't you dare touch her, you bastards!" I hollered, voice cracking with desperation. "If you so much as lay another finger on—"
The words caught In my throat as an explosive force slammed into my midsection, violently expelling what little air I'd managed to suck in. As I doubled over, retching and gasping for breath, a chorus of derisive laughter echoed all around.
"Can it, kid," one of the jeering voices growled, the barrel of what felt like a rifle jabbing contemptuously into my exposed ribs. "You're not exactly in a position to be throwing around demands."
"Leave him alone!" Tae-jun snarled from somewhere nearby, anger and fury dripping from his tone despite his disheveled state. "When I get outta these ropes, you inbred fucks are gonna be kissing pavement so hard—"
An abrupt, sickening crunch cut him off, followed by a guttural yelp of anguished surprise. I felt a surge of nauseous fear, not wanting to even imagine what fresh brutality was being inflicted on my best friend.
Yoon-seo's terrified sobbing intensified momentarily before trialing off into sullen, hopeless whimpers that sliced me to my core more laceratingly than any tormentor's fists or tools.
An Indeterminable stretch of time passed in that endless, swaying purgatory. The sadistic voices continued ringing out sporadically, taunting and brutalizing us with no discernible pattern or purpose beyond sheer cruelty.
I didn't have a choice. Not really.
Those sadistic fucks would've kept torturing Tae-jun and Yoon-seo without mercy until their minds shattered into a million pieces. Payback for us sticking our noses way too far into their shadowy world.
But in that fever-dream delirium of pain and dread, I caught a fleeting glimpse of opportunity amidst the chaos. One of the burlier goons restraining Tae-jun was just a hair too slow in adjusting his grip when my battered friend twisted like a snake. That split-second lapse was all it took for Tae-jun's chains to go sail-lax for a split second.
Adrenaline flooded my body as kill order ribeyes kicked in - slamming my rock-hard skull back into the sadist looming over me. Felt his nose shatter in a torrent of hot blood just as my elbow detonated the floating rib of the guy beside him.
Those few blazing seconds of pure adrenaline fury opened up the smallest window...but it would have to be enough.
"Get the hell out of here!" I snarled through a mouthful of blood, driving my elbow into the solar plexus of the nearest thug restraining me.
His wheezing grunt was sweet revenge, but short-lived as two more brutes seized me in their python grips. I thrashed like a madman, clawing and biting as they slammed me against the dank concrete wall hard enough to rattle my molars.
From the corners of my swiftly swelling eyes, I saw Tae-jun rip free and seize one of the guards in a furious grapple. My heart stuttered as Yoon-seo bolted for the sliver of moonlight slanting through the cracked open doorway ahead - our one desperate shot at salvation.
Had to give those stubborn assholes one final push...
"Don't you dare waste this!" I roared, icy desperation gripping my guts as I saw a goon raising his baton to drop Yoon-seo in her tracks. "I'll tear these fuckers apart myself if I have to! Now RUN!"
My voice cracked like sputtering flames on the last syllable as a hammering blow dropped me to my knees...
A fountain of crimson spewed from my lips, splattering the lacquered dress shoes of the man himself as he stepped through the haze of smoke and chaos.
The man dressed in Brioni radiated smug satisfaction, seemingly untouchable even as the confined space degenerated into a swirling vortex of grunts and bone-crunching impacts around us.
"A bold gesture," he mused in that obscenely crisp, urbane accent. "But ultimately futile. You should've abandoned this fool's errand when I gave you the chance, boy."
White-hot hatrd flared through my shredded body, bellowing like a furnace stoked by the impotent wrath of seeing my friends disappear through that doorway. Everyone I cared about was beyond my reach now, left to face the ramifications of our transgressions alone.
"You're...a dead man," I gurgled out, tasting more of my own blood as a hyena-like chorus of laughter echoed all around us.
Fingers clamped around my jaw with vise-like force, jerking my head up as the placid features swam in my tunneling vision.
"No, son. I am but an inert vessel for infinitely more archaic and consumptive forces than you can fathom."
Those clinical, shark-like eyes practically glowed with zealous fever, like a zealot glimpsing the face of his profane god for the first time. I wanted to spit defiance, to tear those unblinking eyes out with my bare hands...but could only watch numbly as an unseen force seemed to coalesce around us.
The shadows encircling the chamber writhed and contorted as if alive, wisps of inky black smoke trailing from the sleek Italian loafers. Paralyzed by a gnawing sense of fear, I felt reality itself shudder and warp as impossible streaks of crimson lightning all around.
The man restraining me were now recoiling in abject terror, their bravado melting away like wax under a blowtorch as reality itself ceased to play by any rational rules. I tried to scream, to give voice to the existential panic surging up from my brain...
...but then the vortex swallowed us. At least, that's what I think happened before the torrent of alien energies crashed over me, feeling like the universe itself warping a hole in the fabric of the world and shoving me through.
I tumbled through a kaleidoscope of searing light and shrieking dimensionality, cauterizing my senses until all that existed was the sensation of simultaneously burning and freezing as I hurtled inwards towards…
"What in the world is going on?"
Then, with a blinding supernova that turned reality inside out, my terminal velocity screeched to a halt. The vacuum sealed itself, leaving me crumpled and wheezing on a patch of alien loam, tasting blood and alien spices on the air.
As the maelstrom collapsed in on itself like a cosmic whirlpool, a single figure remained in its place – me, a young man blinking in utter confusion.
I looked around wildly at the assembled priests and scowling, armored figures, my heart pounding with anxiety and shock. "Wh-What the hell is going on here? Where am I?"
My vision swam in and out as shapes and indistinct cacophony swirled around me like a fever dream. Hollow-boned figures backlit by flickering torchlight, whether priest or executioner I couldn't tell. Their chanting rose and fell in eerie synchronicity as flickers of azure radiance licked along their ornate staves.
As the high priestess slowly lowered her staff, a look of stunned reverence spread across her features.
"The prophecies were true…" she breathed, falling to her knees. "You are the hero come to stand against the darkness, summoned across reality itself. You are our last hope, our last stand against the demon lord's reign…"
I could only gape in disbelief and rising dread, her words washing over me with the force of a cosmic tidal wave. In that moment, I could taste the baleful ashes of extinction carried in on those noxious winds from the distance.
My disoriented mind could scarcely process the priestess's proclamation.
My chapped lips drew back in a feral snarl as power I didn't understand coursed like lightning through my meridians. Whatever is happening had reconfigured my very being, it had also hardwired a singular directive that resonated from the cosmos itself:
Resist the darkness…or be rendered to cosmic mulch alongside everyone and everything in Aetheria.