They… seemed to have heard me.
One by one, they fell silent. No more screaming. No more attacking. The room was left with nothing but ragged breathing, and the soft drip, drip of blood hitting the floor.
They looked at me, looked at the brute of a captain, looked at each other, and then at the mess they'd created, and the corpses of their own comrades.
The shock of being dragged back from "hell" into the real world stamped itself across every face in a terror too large for words.
Their eyes were hollow, as if their souls had just been yanked out of some indescribable nightmare and slammed back into reality, still warm with the tearing.
Captain Kairen was the first to move.
He lowered his gaze and stared at his own hands as if he'd never seen them before, veins bulging from overexertion, smeared with blood and grime. Then he slowly released his grip on my shoulder, like he'd just realized he'd been clutching a red-hot brand.
He took a step back, stumbled, and nearly tripped over a twisted body on the floor.
It was one of his own men. The trooper had pried open his own chest armor with a combat knife and driven the blade straight through his heart.
Kairen's eyes stayed on that corpse for a full five seconds. His throat bobbed violently. His lips moved, but no sound came out. The expression on his face was more terrifying than when he'd been grabbing me and roaring earlier, by an order of magnitude. It was the dead quiet of faith, cognition, and an entire worldview collapsing in a single instant.
Then he snapped his head up, and those bloodshot eyes locked onto me again.
But this time there was no madness, no accusation. In its place was something I couldn't understand at all, a look mixed from raw fear, reverent disbelief, and even… a trace of pleading.
"You…" he finally spoke, his voice rasped raw, like sandpaper. "You… didn't see… anything?"
The way he looked at me made my skin crawl. I instinctively backed up half a step, wary.
"See what?" I shot back. "I saw you people losing your minds like you were high. Smashing walls, stabbing yourselves. What the hell were you doing?"
My tone was sharp, half from lingering terror, half because the absurdity of all this had blasted straight through the limits of my rationality.
"Losing our minds…" Kairen repeated, tasting the words. A smile tugged at his face, uglier than crying. He scanned the room, looking at the survivors, who were just as stunned and vacant as he was.
"Yeah… losing our minds…" he murmured.
Then, as if he'd forced himself into a decision, he turned back to me. His voice still trembled, but his logic became strangely clear.
"No. We weren't losing our minds." He spoke slowly, each word forced out through clenched teeth. "Before you shouted… we were fighting daemons."
I froze, thinking he still hadn't come back to reality.
"What daemons?" I frowned. "Where the hell would daemons come from?"
"You were exposed to something," I added, grasping for the most scientific explanation I had. "Gas. Hallucinogens. You were seeing things."
"It wasn't a hallucination." Kairen's voice spiked, then immediately dropped again, as though he was afraid of disturbing something. He stabbed a finger toward the intact iron door. "Just now. Just now. A creature, three meters tall, dripping magma and sulfur, tore that door open with its claws. It charged in. Behind it came countless smaller daemons, screaming, waving burning claws and knives!"
I looked where he pointed.
The heavy steel door stood there perfectly fine. Not a scratch. And outside, the cultists' futile pounding had stopped entirely. The green indicator on the access panel glowed peacefully, as if mocking his description.
"The door… it's fine," I said quietly, feeling my brain begin to slip a gear.
Kairen's body jolted. He stared at the door, the confusion in his eyes deepening.
"That's impossible. I saw it…"
He continued, breathless, like he was trying to convince me, or more likely trying to convince himself.
"Then, the witch. He raised his staff, and the whole room erupted in blood-red witchfire! It was everywhere. On the walls. On the ceiling. The flames scorched our armor, so hot our souls were screaming. Look. Look!"
He pointed at the walls. He pointed at the ceiling.
I tilted my head up. Under harsh, pale lighting, there was only cold metal plating and piping. No fire. No soot. Not even a heat stain.
"Sir, calm down," I tried, as gently as I could manage. "There's really nothing here. The walls are clean. Nothing's burning."
"Nothing… burning?" Kairen's expression turned even stranger. He reached out, cautiously, and touched the wall beside him.
The icy cold made him recoil as if he'd been shocked.
"Not hot…" he whispered, staring at his own hand. "Why… why isn't it hot anymore?"
The color drained from his face in an instant.
"I understand now…" he breathed, as if a crucial piece had snapped into place.
But his fear didn't lessen. It multiplied.
The way he looked at me was like I was something even more incomprehensible, even more terrifying, than the "three-meter daemon" he'd described.
"It's you," he said in a voice that barely carried. "The problem… is you."
Me: "?"
What did I do? Who did I offend? How was this suddenly my fault?
"Just now…" he lowered his voice to a near-whisper, like he was confessing a forbidden secret. "That daemon that tore open the door. It roared and charged, and with one swipe it smashed Hans… smashed Hans's upper body to pieces…"
He pointed toward a corpse in the corner, a man who looked like he'd been hammered into the wall by something huge and blunt, half his torso turned into pulp.
From my perspective, it looked more like someone had slammed himself into a wall in a frenzy and died for it.
"We opened fire. Las-bolts and rounds tore into it, sulfur reeking everywhere, chunks of flesh flying. But the smaller daemons, they… they were already flooding in like a tide!"
Kairen's breathing quickened. Sweat rolled down his temple.
"I saw one of them leap toward you. I thought, it's over, the civilian's dead. But… but that daemon, it was like a shadow without substance. It went straight through your body. Through you."
He stared at me like he was trying to bore a hole into me with his eyes.
"It didn't attack you. No. It's like… it couldn't see you at all. All of them. All the daemons ignored you. They ran around you, screaming, attacking us, but they completely overlooked you. You were like… like air."
I listened, stunned.
This was madness layered on madness. A sci-fi set suddenly switching to supernatural horror. Daemons phasing through people.
I looked down at myself.
I was fine. Not a scratch.
"Then I felt it," Kairen continued. His eyes grew brighter, and more afraid. "That witchfire that was burning our souls… it wasn't as hot anymore. Not as unbearable."
"I was clawed by a daemon. My arm was torn open to the bone. Black, poisonous blood was spilling out. I couldn't even move the limb. But after I saw them pass through you, the wound on my arm… it started healing. By itself."
He yanked open the armor plate on his arm and pulled up the sleeve beneath.
There was a vicious tear in the fabric, soaked around the edges with dark red stains. But the skin underneath showed only a long, shallow cut.
I remembered it. He'd scraped himself earlier, dodging an "enemy," and raked his arm against exposed rebar. This level of injury wasn't serious. Not for a hard man like him. Honestly, not even for me. It wasn't even close to "can't move the arm." It wasn't a broken bone.
"This… this can't be…" one of the surviving troopers groaned as he saw it, disbelief turning his voice thin.
He immediately began checking himself. Then more sharp inhales sounded around the room, one after another, spreading like ripples.
They were realizing it too.
Injuries that had supposedly been "fatal" were recovering at a visible pace.
Except for the lunatic who'd tried to gut himself. He was still being treated by his comrades, and I had no idea whether he'd live.
I was completely lost.
This had gone beyond anything I could process. Was I not only able to snap them out of hallucinations, but also… heal them?
No. That didn't sound right.
A different possibility slammed into me.
What if their "wounds" had been part of the hallucination from the very beginning? The same way "witchfire" had been. They hadn't been injured, they'd only felt injured. They'd only felt poisoned. And once they stopped believing it, that sensation vanished too.
Yes. That had to be it.
No miraculous healing. Just the mind releasing its grip.
While I was desperately trying to explain everything with the sad scraps of knowledge I had, a suspect suddenly surfaced in my thoughts.
(End of Chapter)
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