Jack_Storm_

BTY

Gates of Hades

The Gates of Hades, an enigmatic portal believed to lead to the realm of the deceased, ultimately serves those who desire their own demise.

Suicide Kid

Teen vigilante. Black bone weapons. Healing factor. They took the last one. Now the underworld thinks Caleb is easy prey. They’re wrong.

Ben Ten: Surge of Extinction

Paraspirit

Branches snapped overhead. Birds shrieked out of the canopy in ragged flocks, startled into the moonlight as the forest trembled. Below them, two blurs ripped through the undergrowth—one a smear of gold, the other a streak of black. Aya stumbled forward like a marionette, her breath ragged, her eyes glassy. Her legs carried her too fast, cutting impossible arcs between the trees. She wasn’t running—she was being run. Around her, a swirl of fire butterflies clung close, weaving into threads of glowing silk. They wrapped along her arms and shoulders like a burning scarf, each burst of light guiding her body just as she faltered, each flicker jerking her posture into parries she didn’t fully understand. Behind her came Chol. Or the thing he had become. His feet hammered into roots with bone-snapping force, yet his body pitched forward too heavy, too fast. A dark robe—slick and alive—snapped and uncoiled from his back and legs, lashing between trees. Sometimes it dragged him forward like a grappling hook, sometimes it slingshot him through the air. The robe struck like a whip, cracking against bark, shearing through leaves, reaching for Aya with clumsy but brutal intent. The butterflies flared whenever the robe struck. One lash came from behind, threading through branches like a spear, but Aya’s body jerked to the side at the last second. Her butterflies flared and condensed into a shield that took the impact, sparks flying as if light and shadow were grinding metal on stone. Chol hissed, stumbling with the recoil. He wasn’t smooth yet—the robe yanked his body where it wanted, his balance constantly breaking, his strikes overshooting like an untrained hand with a blade too sharp. But every time Aya dodged, she lost something—a tear of cloth, a scrape of skin, the sting of branches slashing her arms as she was thrown sideways by her own butterflies. She swayed, gasped, her mind fighting to claw back control of her body. Her eyes blinked half-lidded, as if she was waking from a dream, but her arms kept lifting, parrying, deflecting, striking in bursts of radiant gold. The forest shook as Chol swung forward, his robe anchoring around a tree trunk. It snapped him through the air like a pendulum, and in mid-arc he coiled the robe tight around his legs. With a guttural roar, he propelled himself like a cannonball, both heels aimed at Aya’s chest. Aya’s butterflies surged instinctively, gathering on her left side, compressing into a ball of gold. She hurled it just as Chol’s feet slammed into her diaphragm. BOOM. The impact cracked through the clearing like thunder. Aya flew backward, tumbling through leaves and soil, breath bursting from her lungs. At the same time, Chol’s body was flung sideways by her blast of light, his dark robe flaring and unraveling as he smashed into the roots of a massive cedar. Both of them crashed down hard, sprawled in opposite directions, the forest lit with drifting sparks of fire butterflies and the groan of trees split from the force.

Metallic Rust

Year 2173 They called it the R-Virus. No one could agree on where it began—some swore it was the offspring of a black-budget nanotech program gone rogue; others blamed an old war, the detritus of a weapon whose purpose had been forgotten but whose effect had not. There were those who whispered it was nature’s judgment, a final answer to humanity’s century of choking the skies in iron and plastic. Within months, the R-Virus had rewritten the rules of survival. It was not a disease of the flesh, at least not at first. It preyed on the microscopic prosthetics, implants, and nanite swarms that pulsed invisibly through human bodies—the augmentations people had long taken for granted. The virus corroded them from within, turning sleek alloys into pitted flakes of orange and brown. Augmented limbs locked in place. Cybernetic hearts seized and stopped. But the virus didn’t stop with the machines. It spread to the natural metals in the human body—iron in the blood, trace elements in the bones—turning them brittle, rust-colored, and dead. Those afflicted were said to “rust away,” their bodies slowing, seizing, and finally collapsing into motionless husks. For the animals, the effect was stranger. Instead of corrosion, the R-Virus fused them with silicon-based structures from the technology that once littered every inch of the planet. Muscles wove with glassy fibers. Bones crystallized. Skin became plates of mirrored armor. Their eyes reflected the world like cold, unblinking lenses. Over decades, the survivors evolved into Silicon Beasts—creatures of glass, stone, and steel, as cunning as they were lethal. The surface world was theirs now. Human cities—once luminous with neon arteries and towers of chrome—crumbled into skeletal ruins, picked apart by the new predators. Humanity had no choice but to flee into the depths, carving out subterranean cities and labyrinthine tunnels lined with rust-proof alloys, sealed away from the virus-laden winds above. Generations passed in darkness. Children were born and raised without ever seeing a horizon. Above, the thundering steps of the Beasts became the heartbeat of a world no longer theirs. The surface became a place of myth—whispered about by tunnel fires, dreamed of by fools and outlaws. Now, in the Year 2231, the R-Virus still rides the wind like a ghost, lingering in every breath of open air. But for those few who dare to walk above, it is not the virus they fear most—it is the Silicon Beasts that stalk the ruins.