In the flickering cold blue light of her monitors, Dr. Xenon's face was a mask of cold calculation. Her eyes narrowed, reflecting the jagged, rusted silhouette of the Eradicator Mark 3 as it tore through the battlefield. A snarl curled her lip, revealing a row of clenched teeth.
"Hm, not only they stole my project-X, they also stole my Eradicator Mark 3," she hissed into the empty lab. "Typical GDA."
Back on the scorched earth of the battlefield, the air was thick with grey ash and the metallic scent of blood. John and his crew took a momentary, ragged breath amidst the rubble. A sharp, brilliant blue glow caught John's eye, tucked beneath a jagged shard of rock like a fallen star.
John knelt, his breath hitching as he wiped away the dust to reveal the Frost Shard.
The shard began to vibrate violently, humming with a frequency so high it cracked the ground beneath it. Just as the relic prepared to rocket away like a stray bullet, John lunges, catching it in his bare hand. "Not today..."
John's eyes snapped wide. A layer of jagged ice immediately began to creep up his fingers, turning his flesh a deadly, frozen blue as the relic's power bit into his skin. He looked over his shoulder, his voice a strained yell toward General Leah: "Hey, here!"
Leah turned, her confusion instantly replaced by pure shock as she saw the glowing relic in his hand. She sprinted toward him, her boots kicking up dust as she barked orders at the nearest squad. "Medic, heal John! We need a prison for this shard, now!"
8 HOURS LATER
The sounds of the ongoing war were muffled outside the command tent, reduced to a low, rhythmic thudding. John sat on a supply crate, his arm wrapped in thick, specialized thermal bandages while a medic worked feverishly on the frostbite. General Leah pushed through the tent flap, her expression grim and unreadable.
"How did you find that piece of shard?" she asked, her voice low.
John looked up, his face still pale from the ordeal. "On the ground. Maybe Tenebris Marcam can't secure it properly."
Suddenly, a high-pitched warping sound—like the tearing of heavy silk—ripped through the air. Leah was out of the tent in a second, John right on her heels. They dived behind a stack of supply crates, holding their breath as a swirling, corrupted hole tore open in the center of the camp.
Out of the rift stepped The Heretic, a high-ranking servant of the Vile Wretched. He held a strange, clicking teleportation device in one hand and a heavy, leather-bound book in the other. He glanced around the human camp with a look of cold, aristocratic indifference. "Hm."
Leah caught John's eye. They didn't need words; they had the same desperate plan. As the Heretic activated the device to return, they both leaped from the shadows. They collided with the servant just as the rift collapsed, dragging all three of them into the suffocating mouth of the void.
They fell. It wasn't through air, but through a purple-hued dimension where gravity felt like a heavy, sickening pressure. They crashed through the roof of an ancient, jagged temple, hitting the stone floor with a bone-jarring thud.
John and Leah scrambled to their feet, drawing their weapons even as their heads spun. The Heretic stood unfazed, smoothing his robes. With a sharp, rhythmic snap of his fingers, his book glowed with dark energy and elongated, morphing into a lethal, bladed staff.
The Heretic loomed over them, a terrifying figure in his heavy, dark robes. His hood was lined with deep purple cuffs, and two jagged spikes protruded from each shoulder like the horns of a demon. His staff was topped with a circular frame holding a complex array of diamond-shaped shards; inside the circle, the purple mark of the Calamity floated, pulsing with raw, ancient power.
Purple lightning crackled along the staff's length, casting long, dancing shadows across the Heretic's pale grey skin. His purple eyes glowed with a nightmare light from the shaded upper half of his face, and his belt—marked with the unblinking eye of the Calamity—seemed to watch their every move.