Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The music howled through the old speakers like a challenge thrown straight into the world’s face. Furious guitars, a chorus that sounded like fists slamming into the wrong doors. At the center of that controlled chaos, Dante sat on his improvised throne.

Shirtless, his defined body marked by scars that needed no explanation, his boots rested on a desk buried beneath overdue bills, empty cartridges, and a pepperoni pizza reduced to greasy memories. Silver hair fell in unruly strands over sharp, watchful eyes, lazy only in appearance. A red pendant rested against his chest, swaying lightly to the rhythm of the music.

On the wall behind him, a massive sword rested like a silent reminder. The mess wasn’t negligence. It was territory.

The bell above the door chimed.

Dante didn’t move.

— If you’re here to collect, I’m dead. Not literally, unfortunately, — he shouted before taking another bite of pizza.

The door creaked open.

Leon stepped inside.

The smell hit him first: cold grease, old gunpowder, oxidized metal. The office looked like it had been organized by someone who’d lost a bet against gravity. Papers stacked at impossible angles, chairs that had clearly survived fights, a refrigerator that seemed to whisper threats.

Leon moved forward slowly, blue eyes scanning everything with a precise mix of professional curiosity and restrained disgust. He wore functional, heavy clothing in dark tones. A reinforced jacket, worn gloves, boots ready for hostile terrain. Everything about him said he’d been in worse places than this. Still, he didn’t like the feeling that the floor might give way at any moment.

Then his eyes found the sword.

The blade looked as if it had been placed there before the room even existed. Too large, too old, too alive. Leon approached without realizing it, drawn by something logic couldn’t explain.

— Like what you see? — a voice asked behind him, casual as a bored gunshot.

Leon turned.

For a second, he forgot how to breathe.

Dante was exactly like the chaos around him. Too relaxed for someone dangerous. Too dangerous for someone relaxed. Red eyes studied him with clear amusement as he chewed his pizza, a crooked smile on his face.

— Want a slice? Pepperoni fixes almost everything, — Dante said, raising an eyebrow. — Including lingering stares.

Heat rushed to Leon’s face before he could stop it. He looked away and cleared his throat.

— I’m Agent Leon Kenne….

— Stop. Just stop, — Dante cut in, without raising his voice, yet slicing clean through the room. He tilted the pizza as if aiming a weapon he didn’t need. — I don’t know if you remember me, but we’re past introductions… Leon S Kennedy.

Leon hesitated, his step freezing mid-motion. The abrupt interruption caught him off guard. For a moment too brief to admit, he couldn’t tell whether the tension came from the memory… or from Dante and there was also the deeply uncomfortable detail that this conversation was being monitored by Ingrid Hunnigan and her superiors.

Dante noticed. Of course he did.

A crooked smile formed as his gaze lingered a second longer than necessary.

— Funny. — he said with false innocence. — I was wondering if you’d forgotten what happened after we crawled out of Raccoon City alive.

Leon stiffened.

— Drinks. Four walls. Adrenaline screaming through our veins, — Dante continued, leaning forward just enough to be uncomfortable. — Funny how people console each other when they think the world’s ended.

Leon swallowed hard, his face burning despite his discipline.

— I think I might still have the scars. — Dante added, tapping two fingers against his back far too slowly. — Right here. Hell of a night.

Leon turned his face sharply away, already imagining Hunnigan’s calm, merciless voice weaponizing that moment in the future.

He locked the memory away in a mental box and shoved it deep. Straightened his posture, jaw set. Ignoring the smile of someone who knew too much, he stepped forward and placed a reinforced folder on the desk, sliding it past grease stains and spent casings until it stopped beneath Dante’s hand.

— Focus, — Leon said. Professional. Controlled. — Read.

Dante glanced down, then back up.

— O.D.I.N? — he asked, squinting. — What the hell is that?

Leon exhaled slowly.

— Operative Directorate for Interdimensional Neutralization. O.D.I.N for short. — He paused. — We deal with threats that don’t respect boundaries.

Dante flipped through the file, slower now, until a photograph made him stop.

A shattered roadside sign read WELCOME TO CRIMSON HILL, the letters warped and half-erased. Something about it twisted his gut. Memories he preferred not to name. Places that wore familiarity like a trap.

Leon took a breath before continuing.

— The city is in ruins, — he said. — Buildings torn open, streets burned, dried blood soaked into stone. A fog blankets everything, too thick to tell where one block ends and another begins.

He paused.

— The shadows don’t move. It feels like the place remembers what happened… and chose silence.

Dante’s attention sharpened.

— One survivor, — Leon continued. — A Brazilian kid. Sixteen years old. Found in what remained of a residential complex. Critical condition. Lost his left leg violently. Not a blade. Not an explosion. — His voice tightened. — He bled too much. It’s a miracle he’s alive.

Dante’s jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly.

— Burns, fractures, shock, — Leon went on. — Stabilized, barely. Mentally? He’s still there. Talks about echoes in time. Familiar places that aren’t. People shaped wrong in the fog.

He tapped the folder.

— No evacuation. No bodies. Just absence. Like the city was opened up and something reached inside.

Dante looked up.

— And you think it was a cult.

— We know the Order was there, — Leon replied. — Symbols, patterns, ritual markings half-erased by the distortions. We don’t know if they caused it or just knew where to stand when it happened. — His gaze hardened. — At the same time, children are disappearing worldwide. No pattern. No demands. Just gone.

The room felt smaller.

— Temporal anomalies, — Leon continued. — Someone’s abusing time travel hard enough to weaken the barriers between realities. Crimson Hill looks like a leak. A dimensional overlap. — He hesitated. — If this spreads, we could be facing another place condemned to live in fog and guilt.

The name hung in the air.

Dante leaned back, exhaling slowly.

— Still doesn’t explain why you came to me??? — He said. — I punch demons. I don’t fix timelines or shut down cult book clubs.

Leon held his gaze.

— Because something crossed over, — he replied. — Agent Morton couldn’t identify it. Whatever came through didn’t stay confined to the city. And if it’s walking around our world now…

The radio crackled, almost playful.

Dante reached out and shut it off mid-sound.

Leon didn’t notice.

— We don’t need a specialist, — Leon finished quietly. — We need someone who can survive meeting it.

Silence stretched.

Then Dante smiled. Slow. Sharp.

— Next time, — he said, standing up, — lead with the bleeding kid.

Dante

The last thing Dante remembered was the dry sound of the folder hitting the table, the name Crimson Hill echoing like a bad omen, and the crooked grin he wore when he accepted the job. After that, nothing. No portal. No impact. No warning. Just darkness.

When he woke up, the world was mud.

His eyes opened to a pulsing gray blur. Cold rain fell straight onto his face, heavy and relentless. The air was damp, suffocating, thick with the stench of churned earth and decay. Dante tried to move and felt his body sink.

A shallow grave.

He drew a sharp breath, his chest burning, and sat up in a rough jolt. He was naked. Completely. Skin etched with scars now smeared in dark mud, rain tracing every tense line of muscle. The cold bit deep, but that was not what bothered him.

It was the wrong kind of silence.

He dragged himself out of the pit, fingers clawing into soaked soil. When he finally stood, unsteady, he lifted his gaze. A dense forest surrounded him, trees too tall, too close, looming like watchers. Fog crawled between the trunks, swallowing sound and warping distance.

Then he heard a voice.

Low. Shaking.

— I… I thought you were dead.

Dante turned instantly, ice-blue eyes locking onto the sound.

Between the trees, just a few meters away, stood a boy.

Too small for a place like that. Thin, swallowed by oversized, worn clothes as if borrowed from someone else’s life. A coat far too big for his narrow shoulders, sleeves hanging past his hands. Light brown hair fell straight and slightly messy, half-covering eyes that were too large, too alert for a child. There was something about him that felt like constant flight, like someone always on the verge of vanishing.

His feet were caked with mud. His legs marked with fresh scratches. In his hand, an old flashlight, gripped far tighter than necessary.

Dante frowned.

— So, are you just gonna stare,—  he said, voice rough and wary, — or are you gonna explain why I woke up naked in a grave?

The boy took a step back immediately.

— I, I didn’t do that,—  he replied too fast. — I was just… running. From the men in the village. Then I saw you. I thought you were dead.

Dante narrowed his eyes.

— Running, finds a naked corpse buried in the ground, and decides to stick around.—  He tilted his head. — Brave or stupid. Haven’t decided yet.

The boy swallowed hard, clearly measuring every movement of the man in front of him.

— The living can be scarier than the dead,—  the kid said, with a grim edge that, for some reason, Dante found hard to doubt.

Dante let out a humorless half-laugh and wiped mud from his face.

— Great. Promoted from demon hunter to suspicious corpse.—  He glanced around. — Name?

The boy hesitated.

— Lott.

— Just that?

Lott tightened his grip on the flashlight.

— It’s enough.

Dante accepted the answer for now. He didn’t trust the kid. And it was obvious the feeling went both ways.

— Alright, Runaway Kid,—  he said, handing out the nickname without ceremony. — You wouldn’t happen to have seen a federal agent around here? Blond, looks like he analyzes people too much, posture like he was born wearing a tactical jacket.— 

Lott blinked once.

— Which part of ‘I’m running from a bunch of psycho lunatics’ do you not understand?—  he snapped indignantly. — Trust me, if I found a federal agent, I’d be glued to him instead of talking to a naked, suspicious guy in the middle of a forest.— 

Dante sighed, dragging a hand through his wet hair and ignoring the kid’s irony.

— Fantastic. So I’m naked, lost, in a forest that smells like a cemetery, and I lost Captain Straight-Laced.—  He glanced sideways at the boy. — You have any idea where we are?

He gave a short, humorless chuckle, more to himself than to the kid. His voice dropped, almost a murmur, like saying it out loud made it more real.

— Heh… Leon’s tough.—  He ran a hand through his wet hair, staring into the fog between the trees. — He’s walked out of worse places, with uglier things trying to tear his head off. He’ll be fine. He has to be.

A thick silence settled. Then Dante looked back at the boy, the irony still there, but now layered with something sharper underneath.

— Alright, Runaway Kid,—  he said. — You got any idea where the hell we are?

Lott looked away.

— Far from anywhere safe.

That was all he said.

The fog seemed to tighten around them, and Dante had the unmistakable feeling that this mission had started the wrong way. And when things started like that, someone always paid dearly.

He cracked his neck, ignoring the cold.

— Okay, Kid. Let’s cover the basics before something eats us.—  One corner of his mouth lifted. — You find clothes. I try not to die of hypothermia. Fair?

Lott narrowed his eyes, chin lifting in defiance that didn’t match his small frame.

— And why would I help a naked idiot in the middle of the forest?—  he spat, suspicious. — From where I’m standing, I’m better off alone. 

Dante blinked once, surprised. Then he laughed. Low. Amused.

— Feisty. I like it.—  He tilted his head, sizing the boy up. — Simple reason, brat. I’m really good at two things. Keeping people alive… and annoying monsters until they regret existing. You look like you need both.— 

Lott didn’t look impressed. He crossed his arms, expression hard.

— Nice talk.

— Yeah?—  Dante glanced around, picked a crooked tree with a thick trunk and rain-exposed roots. — Then watch.— 

He stepped forward and punched.

It wasn’t flashy. It was clean. Precise. The wood cracked like an old bone. The trunk groaned, split, and the entire tree gave way, crashing down with a heavy thunder that sent birds exploding from the canopy and made the ground shudder.

Silence rushed back too fast.

Lott stood frozen, mouth slightly open, courage swallowed in a knot.

Dante shook his hand, like he was testing his own strength.

— See?—  he said casually. — I might not be dressed, but I can still protect a stubborn little punk.

The boy swallowed hard. Still wary. Still guarded. But something new had crept in. Reluctant conviction.

— Okay…—  he murmured. — Maybe you’re… kind of useful.

He pointed into the fog.

— Before I found you, I saw a house. Abandoned.—  He hesitated. — There might be clothes there. Or something better than… nothing.— 

Dante smirked, cold biting at his skin, danger prowling unseen.

A howl tore through the forest.

Long. Deep. Wrong.

Dante stopped mid-step, the smile dying before it was fully born. Ice-blue eyes lifted toward the dense fog between the trees.

— …okay,—  he muttered. — Now we’re speaking the same language.

He turned to the boy.

— So, Kid,—  he said, far too casual for someone who’d just heard that. — Who… or what… exactly is hunting you?

Lott didn’t answer right away. His jaw tightened, fingers curling inside the torn sleeves. When he spoke, it was low, almost a warning.

— You’re better off not knowing.

Dante raised an eyebrow.

— That’s never an answer with a happy ending.

The boy kept walking, fog swallowing his steps.

— Just don’t believe everything you see… or hear in here,—  he said without looking back. — The fog likes to trick the careless. It learns fast.

Dante took a step after him.

— Hey. What’s that supposed to mean?

Nothing. Lott simply vanished deeper between the trees, too small to look confident, too determined to look innocent.

Dante stood still for a second, the howl still echoing from somewhere logic couldn’t reach. Then he let out a slow, heavy sigh.

— Of course,—  he muttered, rubbing his face. — Always like this.

He started after the boy, every muscle on edge.

— Leon,—  he said quietly, more to himself than to the forest. — Every time I cross paths with you, the damn world drops me into some new nightmare… and you vanish.

The fog closed behind him.

And Dante walked on, already expecting the worst.

Chris 

The metallic snap of the broken lock tore through the silence, echoing down the dark corridor.
Beams of light sliced through the gloom, cutting across suspended dust and moisture-stained walls. The BSAA team advanced in formation ,rifles raised, visors glowing, footsteps steady against the creaking floorboards.

Captain Chris Redfield moved just behind the point man, his breath calm beneath the helmet, every step measured. Piers Nivans shadowed him closely, his rifle angled toward the flanks, eyes scanning every corner.

The apartment felt like a tomb ,air thick with mildew, the iron tang of old blood clinging to the walls. Time had forgotten this place. Wilted poppies littered the floor, their faded petals scattered as if marking a shrine to something long dead. Some were stained ,dark, unnatural.

Chris raised his hand.
— Advance. Standard formation. Remember: priority’s Jill and the missing children.

The team split off, clearing rooms one by one.
Boots thudded softly across warped wood. Torn curtains whispered in the stale air. Symbols ,crude, misshapen ,covered the walls in what looked like congealed blood. Eyes. Circles. Triangles. Backward letters. A language of madness.

One of the agents paused.
— Captain... this looks like some kind of ritual.

Chris didn’t answer.
His attention had already shifted down the corridor ,toward the steady beam of light cutting through the dark.

Leon S. Kennedy stood at the far end, perfectly still. The glow of his flashlight swept slowly across the wall before him, the beam trembling in the dust-choked air. His sidearm was drawn, held low but ready, the steel glinting beneath the muted light.

The worn leather of his jacket creaked as he moved ,a familiar, well-used piece of gear that had seen its share of nightmares. Dark tactical pants, reinforced boots, a thigh holster strapped tight. The man looked like he’d walked straight out of hell and hadn’t yet decided whether he’d come back for good.

His blond hair hung just long enough to fall over one eye, damp with sweat and dirt. The other ,a sharp, ice-blue stare ,was fixed on the wall ahead, cold, analytical, haunted.

Chris slowed his steps as he approached Leon, studying him the way one studies a battlefield after the smoke has cleared. Familiar shapes were still there, the stance, the discipline, the reflexes. But the man inside them felt… wrong. Distant. Like a shadow wearing Leon’s face.

He hadn’t been like this before Crimson Hill.

Chris remembered the briefing. Leon hadn’t gone alone. He’d been sent in with another man, someone whose presence raised questions no report ever answered. Their connection had been obvious even then, something that went beyond professional trust or shared missions. There had been a gravity between them, unspoken but undeniable.

Only Leon came back.

No body was recovered. No remains. No evidence the other man had even died. It was as if Crimson Hill had swallowed him whole and refused to give anything back. Leon never explained. He never tried.

After that, silence settled into him like a second skin. He spoke less. Smiled rarely. His eyes carried a weight that hadn’t been there before, something heavy and exhausted. And the drinking started. Not reckless, not loud. Just steady. Methodical. As if each glass was a small, deliberate attempt to drown something that refused to stay buried.

Chris clenched his jaw.

He’d seen men break before. He’d seen trauma carve people hollow from the inside out. And now he was watching it happen to someone he trusted with his life.

— What’ve you got?—  he asked.

Leon didn’t reply right away. He just lifted the flashlight a little higher. The wall came alive under the light ,a chaotic collage of news clippings, photos, and government files torn from their folders. Strings of red twine crisscrossed the surface, connecting headlines, names, and symbols into a mad web of connections.

The headlines were written in half a dozen languages, but their message was the same ,tragedy, loss, and silence where truth should have been. Chris read them in pieces, his jaw tightening as the scope of it sank in:

“Silent Hill: 1962 Fire Continues to Haunt Town — Toxic Fumes Cause Mass Hallucinations, Mines Still Smoldering”

“Horror at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza: Child Severely Injured, Investors Face Millions in Losses”

“Mass disappearance at Playtime Co. remains unexplained — authorities evacuate after chemical leak.”

“Scientists warn of mutated Cordyceps strains — climate change may accelerate evolution.”

Chris studied the pattern of connections between the articles.
Nearly all the red strings converged on four central names, circled in black marker:

What happened in Crimson Hill ?????

The Connections
Umbrella Corp.

And just below them, a small yellow post-it, dirty and worn with age.

Scrawled on it, in trembling, hurried letters:

‘MOTHER MIRANDA?’

Chris rubbed a hand over his face, exhaling a heavy sigh.

— Jill... what were you digging into? — he muttered, never taking his eyes off the mural.

ORGANIZATION: O.D.I.N – Operative Directorate for Interdimensional Neutralization
CLASSIFICATION: ULTRA CONFIDENTIAL
STATUS: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

FROM: Agent Walter Sullivan
TO: O.D.I.N Directorate
SUBJECT: Post-Mission Addendum – Crimson Hill / Cult Activity Assessment
DATE: ██████████

DIRECTORATE REPORT

Despite the failure of the Crimson Hill operation on ██████████ and the confirmed loss of Agent ██████████ during the incident, O.D.I.N has formally concluded that the phenomenon observed at the site was not spontaneous in origin.

Cross-analysis of recovered symbols, residual energy signatures, and testimonial fragments confirms the direct involvement of the cult known as The Order. Evidence strongly suggests the group is currently being led by ██████████. Their actions indicate the execution, or attempted execution, of a large-scale ritual identified in fragmented records as ██████████, a procedure requiring an undetermined number of human sacrifices to achieve dimensional destabilization.

Due to the extreme lack of concrete data, the destruction of all digital and physical records within Crimson Hill, and the classification of multiple related incidents as Class-S Interdimensional Events, the Directorate acknowledges that the full scope of the ritual’s purpose remains unknown.

However, projections indicate a high probability that the ritual was either interrupted prematurely or partially successful, resulting in uncontrolled dimensional bleed rather than a stable outcome.

In response, and by unanimous decision of the Directorate, Agent ██████████ has been reassigned and deployed to Derceto Manor, Louisiana, a location currently exhibiting anomalous activity consistent with known Order methodologies and pre-ritual staging behaviors.

The operation will be conducted as a joint task force with the BSAA (Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance). Field command will be assumed by Captain Chris Redfield, acting under direct authorization from Director ██████████.

All personnel involved have been briefed under restricted clearance. Any information regarding Crimson Hill, the lost agent, or the suspected ritual remains sealed under Class-S Black Archive Protocol. Unauthorized disclosure will be treated as an existential security breach.

This document serves as the official record of the Directorate’s decision and supersedes all prior operational assumptions regarding Crimson Hill.

Meeting Minutes Recorded By:
Agent Walter Sullivan

END OF REPORT

Chapter Text

Dante

The rain fell in thin, icy threads, mixing with the dense fog that swallowed the forest. The sound of droplets striking dead leaves was almost muffled by Dante’s steady breathing as he walked behind the boy. The hunter seemed indifferent to the cold,yet his ice-blue eyes, always alert, betrayed the discomfort.
The mist slithered like a living thing , dense, restless, and cold , creeping along the ground and coiling around the gnarled trees. Night still clung to the forest, heavy and unyielding, as though time itself had stopped moving. In the distance, shapes wavered between the trunks , silhouettes that, for a fleeting moment, seemed far too human to be tricks of the dark.

As they walked, Dante noticed something that turned his stomach. Hanging from the gnarled branches were dozens of dead crows, strung by strands of straw and swaying in the wind. Their wings spread, their eyes hollow,together they formed a grotesque mosaic, as if someone had decorated the woods for a profane celebration. Like macabre Christmas ornaments,an obscene holiday dedicated to madness and blood.

Ahead, Lott walked with a trembling lantern, the beam cutting the gloom in short, nervous pulses. The boy, thin and hollow-eyed, did not look frightened so much as resigned. The hunter had to wonder what horrors a twelve-year-old had lived through to move through this cold, wet hell with such eerie calm.

Dante followed in silence, the rain blending with the restless rustle of the trees. The fog seemed to watch them; every footfall echoed too loudly, as if the forest had ears. Finally the hunter broke the quiet.

 —Tell me something, kid… do you have any idea why you were taken?— he asked, a hoarse curiosity in his voice.

Dante broke the silence as they walked along the soaked trail.

— So, Kid… how did you end up in this godforsaken place where even Judas lost his boots?

Lott shot him a sideways look, sharp as broken glass.

— Seriously? — he snapped, his voice heavy with exhaustion and anger. — What do you think? That my sister and I got lost on a sightseeing trip and just wandered in here by accident? Of course we were kidnapped. A bunch of lunatics with too much free time and zero morals.

Dante ignored the jab with the calm of someone who had heard worse in hell.

— Funny, — he said. — You hadn’t mentioned a sister before.

The boy froze for half a second. He muttered a curse under his breath in Romanian and kicked a stone off the path.

— Damn it… — he growled, clearly irritated with himself. Then he exhaled, the kind of breath that comes from being too tired to keep lying. — Fine. We were taken together. Me and her. We were traveling with our adoptive father for work.

Dante frowned.
— Work where?

— Silent Hill.

The name hit the air like a gunshot.

Dante stopped instantly, his boots sinking into the mud. He turned slowly toward Lott, ice-blue eyes hardening.

— Shit… — he snarled. — Of all places.

Lott caught the reaction and let out a short, bitter laugh.

— Yeah. That one. The sick city, full of fog and people pretending nothing’s wrong. Fits me, don’t you think?

He fell silent for a moment, then added, anger spilling beneath the sarcasm:

— After that, everything turns into a blur. I know we were separated… and the rest is just hell in slow motion.

Lott hesitated, shoulders tense.

— I… I don’t remember it clearly. Just flashes. A black car. A scary man wearing a red cap. And a very beautiful Asian woman in a red dress. — He swallowed hard. — She… seemed to be in charge.

Dante narrowed his eyes, focused.

— And the rest? — he pressed. — Where did you live before this? Who were your parents?

The boy looked away, jaw locked, as if every word had to be ripped out of him.

The fog around them seemed to thicken, listening.

And Dante continued, his tone sharpening as he walked.

— What happened to your sister?

Lott swallowed, his pace slowing.
— They split us up, — he said at last. — There were other kids too. We were all kept together for a while… then separated.

He hesitated, jaw tightening.

— One of them… one of the captors, I think he felt sorry for me. He unlocked the door and told me to run. Didn’t even look back.

Lott let out a bitter breath.

— So I ran. Straight into the forest. Didn’t know where I was going, just… away. I was looking for help, for anyone.

His eyes flicked toward Dante, uneasy.

— And that’s when I found you. A naked man with silver hair, lying in a hole like he’d fallen out of a nightmare.

As they pushed deeper into the forest, the fog grew thicker, heavier, as if it had learned how to breathe.

It curled between the trees in slow, deliberate waves, blurring distance and depth. Dante’s ice-blue eyes narrowed as shapes began to form where none should exist. Figures between trunks. Half-seen silhouettes that vanished the moment he focused.

One looked like Leon.

Same posture. Same broad shoulders. Same way of standing like the world was about to collapse and he’d still hold the line. Dante’s jaw tightened. He blinked, and the shape dissolved into mist.

Another shadow wore his brother’s face. Younger. Angry. Accusatory.

Then others followed. Old enemies. Creatures he had buried, burned, or ripped apart personally. Faces that should have stayed dead grinning at him through the fog.

The mist wasn’t just hiding things.
It was remembering.

Dante clicked his tongue and forced his gaze forward. If the fog wanted to play therapist, it could do it without his participation.

To distract himself, and because the brat was finally talking, he decided to keep the conversation rolling.

— So let me get this straight, Kid — Dante said casually. — Some nice guy helps you escape a bunch of lunatics, sends you running into a murder forest, and you don’t think for a second that might’ve been a setup?

Lott didn’t even slow down.

— No. — His answer was immediate. Firm. — James wouldn’t do that.

Dante arched a brow.
— James?

— James and his wife. — Lott glanced back briefly. — I’ve known them since I was little. He worked with my dad. Same company.

Dante felt it before the word even landed.

Dante felt a knot tighten in his stomach before the question even left his mouth. A bad feeling, the kind that never got things wrong.

— Your father… — he said slowly. — He worked for Umbrella, didn’t he?

Lott stopped dead in his tracks. He turned around, too surprised to hide it.

— How do you know that?

Dante let out a dry, humorless chuckle, his ice-blue eyes hardening.

— Because nothing good ever came out of that damn company. — His voice dropped, heavy with memories that smelled of smoke and corpses. — I watched entire cities die because of them. Raccoon City was just the beginning.

The silence that followed was thick and suffocating.
And the fog seemed to creep a little closer.

Lott narrowed his eyes, lips pressing into a thin line.

— If we’re asking questions now — he said, voice sharper than before — then it’s my turn.

Dante huffed, a crooked smile tugging at his mouth despite the cold.

— Knock yourself out, kid. I’m basically an open book. Missing a few pages. And the index is on fire.

Lott didn’t smile.

— Are you human?

The question caught Dante off guard. He blinked once, then looked at the boy more carefully.

Lott crossed his arms, glaring up at him.
— Don’t look so surprised. I’m not stupid. Humans don’t punch trees down with their bare hands. And they don’t wander around naked in freezing forests like it’s no big deal.

Dante glanced down at himself, then back at Lott, sighing.

— Fair point.

For a moment, the fog seemed to hold its breath.

— No — Dante said finally, voice lower, stripped of its usual bravado. — I’m not human. Not all the way. Half demon. Half… whatever passed for human where I came from.

Lott’s eyes widened, but fear didn’t take root there. Curiosity did. Calculation.

— Then you can make a pact with me, right?

That stopped Dante cold.

— Excuse me?

Lott spoke faster now, words spilling out like he’d rehearsed them a hundred times.
— I read it in the grimoire my captors used. Demons can’t refuse a deal with a human. Not unless the price isn’t good enough for them.

Dante stared at him, the forest suddenly too quiet.

— Kid — he said slowly — you really shouldn’t believe everything written in creepy books stolen from cultists.

But even as he said it, something inside him stirred.

His blood pulsed.
Not pain. Not hunger.
Recognition.

The words echoed in his mind, sinking into something old and feral.

A deal.

For the briefest moment, the demonic half of him leaned forward, interested.

Dante exhaled through his nose, eyes narrowing as he looked down at the boy.

— Careful, brat — he muttered. — That kind of question has teeth.

Beneath the sarcasm, beneath the warning, a colder thought settled in.

Lott wasn’t telling him everything.

Leon

Leon had entered the mansion alongside Chris’s team, but as the squad spread out, he drifted away on his own, ignoring Joseph Frost’s sharp protests over the comms. His footsteps echoed softly through the dust-choked hallways until he reached a wall smothered in photographs and classified documents. Layers of reports, blurred surveillance shots, and yellowed newspaper clippings covered every inch, forming a chaotic mosaic of secrets long buried by the government.

A cold weight settled in Leon’s chest as he unfolded the single sheet of letterhead he had taken from the wall. It bore the seal of a government agency that shouldn’t even exist on paper. Jill Valentine had somehow obtained intelligence far beyond the reach of any official U.S. service , knowledge locked behind layers of clearance. What chilled him most wasn’t the content of that page… but the question of how she had gotten it.

From the handwritten notes scrawled in the margins, one thing was clear: she believed every outbreak, every disappearance, every massacre was connected ,all threads leading back to a single hidden figure behind the Umbrella Corporation.

Leon muttered under his breath, voice low and thoughtful.

— So that’s what you were chasing, Jill…

He remembered too well what happened after Raccoon City. Jill had started insisting the disaster wasn’t a biohazard accident but a controlled experiment. Without proof, she was discredited, isolated… and then she vanished.

Shortly before her disappearance, she had reached out to Chris, claiming she’d found real evidence. Not long after, reports surfaced ,a cult had begun hunting her. If she’d been right, Leon feared what that shadowed figure’s true goal might be.

Leon tilted his head slightly, his sharp gaze tracing the chaotic web of papers and red threads before him. Something was wrong. The connections were too deliberate, the symmetry too exact ,as if the display had been designed, not assembled. Someone had drawn a pattern within the madness.

Driven by a quiet instinct, Leon took a few steps back, letting the beam of his flashlight sweep across the wall. As the full image came into view, the chaos began to align. The red lines, once random, curved into precise arcs; the photographs and documents merged into the outline of something unmistakable.

A symbol emerged circular, intricate, surrounded by cryptic markings. THE HALO OF THE SUN.

Leon’s heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t just religious iconography ,it was ritualistic, the kind used by cults obsessed with transcending the limits of human existence. This was no coincidence. Every connection on that wall was intentional, as if someone had used the very fabric of truth to create a silent offering.

He lowered the folder in his hand, his voice barely above a whisper.

— Jill… what the hell were you trying to uncover here? 

A voice behind him broke the silence.

— Jill… what were you digging into? 

Leon spun around, hand flying to his pistol. Chris Redfield stood there, the captain’s broad frame casting a long shadow across the wall. Even in the dim light, Leon could make out the strong lines of his face ,dark, disheveled hair, stubble framing his jaw, and eyes that burned with focus beneath the edge of his tactical mask.

— Jesus, Redfield…—  Leon exhaled, lowering his weapon. — You trying to give me a heart attack? 

Chris ignored the jab and stepped closer, his eyes fixed on the symbol revealed by distance.

— She built all of this alone?—  he asked, his tone heavy, disbelieving. — This looks like the work of someone who lost control… or someone who got too close to the truth.

Leon nodded slightly, his gaze never leaving the wall.

— Either way, she was onto something big. If this pattern means what I think it does, Jill wasn’t just chasing corporate corruption ,she was touching something that shouldn’t exist.

Chris’s flashlight swept across the red lines again, highlighting the messy notes that connected them like pulsing veins. His eyes caught a small post-it near the center, a single name scrawled in dark ink: Mother Miranda.

He tore it from the wall, frowning.

— Leon… you know who that is?

Leon’s expression hardened.

— I’ve heard the name before,—  he said slowly. — During an op in Silent Hill. A cult mentioned her ,called her the beginning and the end. The being that shaped flesh and spirit. To them, she was God itself ,the power deciding who ascends and who rots.

Chris studied him, suspicion flickering in his eyes.

— You think Jill was chasing this… entity?

Leon gave a half-shrug, his tone low.

— If she got too close to the truth, maybe they came after her. Or maybe…— He looked Chris dead in the eye ,— She let herself get pulled in.

Chris’s voice dropped to a dangerous growl.

— Watch what you’re implying, Leon. 

Leon offered a faint, tired smirk.

— Just saying… nobody stares into the abyss without it staring back. 

Chris took a hard step forward, his boots cracking against the wood. Before Leon could react, Chris grabbed the front of his tactical vest, slamming him lightly against the paper-covered wall.

— I won’t let you talk about Jill like that!—  he snarled. — She’s saved more lives than you can count.

Leon stayed calm, despite the pressure against his chest.

— Then tell me, Captain…—  he said evenly. — Kids are disappearing all over the world ,including the president’s daughter. And the one thing connecting them all? Jill… and this cult.

Chris’s grip tightened.

— You don’t know what you’re talking about.

He tilted his head, his tone deliberately cruel.

— Or is this like what happened with your friend in Crimson Hill? — he added, a sharp, acid half-smile tugging at his mouth. — Someone you trusted… who didn’t turn out to be what you thought?

For a second, Leon didn’t breathe.

The world seemed to sink into silence, as if submerged underwater. Then the metallic click rang out, far too loud.

Leon raised his weapon in a sharp, instinctive motion, the barrel aimed straight at Chris’s forehead. The distance between them vanished.

— Say her name again — Leon said, his voice low, shaking with restrained fury. — Say it one more time and I swear this won’t end with words.

Chris didn’t step back and the silence between them thickened, broken only by the faint whistle of wind through the corridor. Then Chris’s radio crackled, Piers’s voice cutting through the tension:

— Captain, it’s Piers. We found something… something incredible. You need to see this.

— Understood. We’re on our way. — Chris replied, never taking his eyes off Leon, who stared back at him with a cold expression of pure hatred. Chris’s eyes flicked to the device, jaw tightening, and he slowly pushed Leon’s weapon down by the barrel.

— Later — he said flatly. — We’ve got a lead.

FILE: VOX POPULI – SPECIAL REPORT
AUTHOR: Alyssa Ashcroft

 DATE: 21/12/2025

“When children vanish, a city loses its future.”

A growing wave of child disappearances is spreading across the country, leaving authorities baffled and families desperate. According to police records, at least eleven children between the ages of 4 and 12 have gone missing over the past few weeks, each case occurring in a different city, with no apparent connection between the victims.

Law enforcement officials admit they have no clear profile of how the children are being selected. No ransom notes. No witnesses. No signs of forced entry.

However, one disturbing detail links every case.

At each disappearance site, investigators have found a sequence of numbers, written or marked nearby. No two sequences are identical, but all follow a similar pattern.

In the most recent case, involving the disappearance of the Locane twins, their parents reported finding the numbers:

02121 & 03121

Written near the back entrance of their home.

Authorities have not disclosed what these numbers might represent. Coordinates? Dates? Some form of code? So far, no agency has been able to confirm their meaning.

Despite increased patrols and federal involvement, no suspects have been identified. Surveillance footage has yielded nothing but static, corrupted files, or inexplicable gaps in recording time.

Parents are being urged to keep their children indoors and under supervision at all times.

Still, fear continues to spread faster than any official response.

Eleven children.
No bodies.
No answers.

If this is the work of a single individual or group, one question remains unanswered:

What kind of monster leaves numbers behind… and takes children without a trace?

Chapter Text

Dante

The rain fell in thin, icy threads, blending into the dense fog that swallowed the forest whole. The sound of droplets striking dead leaves was almost drowned out by Dante’s steady breathing as he walked behind the boy. The hunter, naked from the waist down and covered only by a torn piece of cloth he had scavenged from the village ruins, looked indifferent to the cold. His ice-blue eyes, however, always alert, betrayed the discomfort.

The fog moved like a living thing, thick and restless, crawling along the ground and climbing the twisted trees. The world there felt suspended, timeless, as if the forest had forgotten what dawn meant. In the distance, shapes formed and vanished between the trunks, shadows that for brief moments looked far too human to be mere illusions.

As he walked, Dante noticed something that made his stomach twist. Dozens of dead crows hung from the gnarled branches, tied with straw twine, swaying gently in the wind. Their wings spread, hollow eyes staring, forming a grotesque mosaic, as if someone had decorated the woods for a profane celebration. Macabre Christmas ornaments. A holiday devoted to madness and blood.

Up ahead, Lott walked with a trembling flashlight, its beam cutting the darkness in short, unsteady arcs. The boy, thin and hollow-eyed, didn’t look frightened. Just resigned. Dante couldn’t help but wonder what horrors a twelve-year-old would have to endure to act so calm in a cold, wet hell like this.

They moved in silence, rain mingling with the restless whisper of the trees. The fog felt like it was watching them, every footstep echoing too deeply, as if the forest had ears. Finally, Dante broke the silence.

— Tell me something, kid,—  he said, voice rough but curious. — Do you have any idea why you were kidnapped?

Lott hesitated. — I… don’t know. I only remember flashes. A black car. A scary man with a red beret. And a very beautiful Asian woman, wearing a red dress. She looked like… she was in charge. 

— And the rest?—  Dante pressed. — Where did you live before that? Who were your parents?

The boy looked away, the flashlight trembling slightly in his hand. — I came from the United States. My father… worked for a company. An important one. It was called Umbrella Corporation.

Dante stopped walking.

The name thundered through his mind. Umbrella. The same cursed corporation that had nearly erased an entire city in his world. He clenched his teeth, gaze sharpening on the boy.

— Umbrella, huh?—  he muttered, dry with sarcasm. — Don’t tell me your dad worked in Raccoon City.

Lott shook his head quickly. — No… I don’t think so.

Dante stepped closer, ice-blue eyes glinting. — What about the Sheena Islands?—  he asked, his voice now cold and precise.

The boy swallowed hard, staring at the soaked ground. — I don’t know what you’re talking about.—  He quickened his pace, changing the subject as if trying to leave the past behind.

Dante watched him in silence, brow furrowed. The rain hit harder, and the fog seemed to close in around them like a patient predator. The brat was hiding things, and that was bad. Worse, it would probably come back to bite him sooner rather than later.

A bridge appeared ahead. Old wood. Creaking planks. It swayed slightly under the weight of the fog. Below, water rushed dark as ink.

— Nice… we found the Bridge to Terabithia,—  Dante muttered, testing one of the boards with his foot. — Lott, never watch that movie if you don’t want to end up crying alone in your room in the fetal position.— 

Lott ignored him, muttered something about Dante being cringe, and guided him across. On the other side, a structure emerged in the distance. A house. Crooked and isolated, broken windows, moss devouring the roof. The fog wrapped around it like it wanted to swallow it whole.

— There,—  Lott said, pointing with the flashlight. — There should be clothes inside. Maybe weapons. 

Dante raised an eyebrow, his mocking tone returning.

— Great. Maybe I’ll finally stop parading naked through unknown worlds.—  He laughed at himself. — You know, this would be funny if I weren’t freezing and stuck babysitting a kid.

Lott tried to force a smile, but his gaze drifted to the trees as a long, hoarse howl echoed through the forest. Too close. Too wrong.

There was something off about that sound. Too deep. Almost human, like something trying to imitate an animal without fully understanding what it was supposed to be.

The fog stirred in response. Dante lifted his gaze toward the darkness between the canopies, muscles tensing.

He noticed.

— Keep walking, brat,—  he said, his voice lower, colder. — Whatever it is, it’s close.

The walk to the house was silent. Each step on the soaked ground echoed like a distant heartbeat. When they reached the entrance, the boy pushed the door open. It groaned loudly, a sound that felt like it woke the place itself.

Inside, dust, broken furniture, and the stench of rot filled the air. Dante scanned the room.

— And here I thought hell décor had gone out of style,—  he commented, crossing his arms.

Despite the sarcasm, his senses were on full alert. The place wasn’t just old. It breathed wrong. The air tasted metallic, sweet and nauseating, like blood mixed with rust and a perfume that had no business being there.

While the boy moved toward a corner to search, Dante climbed the creaking stairs, which protested under his weight. The upper floor was small and dark, lit only by faint light leaking through cracks in the boards. He found a simple bedroom. A dust-covered bed. Sheets stiff with age. On top of it, a pair of dark pants and old boots.

He dressed quickly, feeling a little less exposed, even if the boots were tight and the seams of the pants threatened to give with every movement.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, something in the corner caught his attention. There was more than dust and neglect there. The air felt heavy, almost reverent. Dante frowned and stepped closer.

A small wooden table stood there, aged and scarred, arranged like an old prayer altar. On it rested a painting made with delicate strokes. A blonde woman with angelic features, adorned with eight wings spread in glory and a glowing halo above her head. Some kind of divinity.

Looking at it sent a strange sensation up Dante’s spine. Not reverence. Disgust. Instinctive contempt. The figure’s smile looked fake, almost mocking, as if it were laughing at anyone foolish enough to worship it.

Dante scowled and turned away.

— Of course,—  he muttered. — The feathered goddess with the radiant smile. I’ve seen this type before. Same look as the people who knock on your door at seven in the morning asking if you’ve accepted the ‘divine light’… on the exact day you’re still trying to remember where you left your liver.

As he turned, something else caught his eye.

An old radio lay discarded on the floor, its casing cracked, yet somehow alive, hissing with a low, unnatural static that crawled under his skin. It made no sense. Radios like that didn’t work here. Yet it was on.

Dante scowled and shut it off, plunging the room into a heavier silence.

— Dante?—  Lott’s voice called from below, tight with nerves.

Dante flinched at the sound and crushed the radio in his grip before he could stop himself, metal folding like wet paper.

The sudden silence rang louder than the static ever had. Shame prickled beneath his skin, chased by a crawling sense of dread.

Whatever had been speaking through that thing hadn’t liked being silenced.

And Dante had the uneasy feeling it now knew he was there.

— D-Dante!—  the boy shouted, breathing hard. — I think I found… something!

Dante frowned. That tone didn’t belong to someone who’d found safety. He descended the creaking stairs slowly, alert, and soon found Lott kneeling near the floor of the main room. The flashlight shook in his hands, casting warped shadows on the walls.

— What is it now, brat?—  Dante asked, arms crossed. — Don’t tell me you found the killer cat.— 

Lott swallowed hard and pointed to a corner where dust had been hastily brushed aside. Beneath a torn rug was a dark wooden hatch with a rusted iron ring.

— There’s… there’s a trapdoor here,—  the boy murmured, eyes fixed on it.

Dante crouched beside him. The wood reeked of metal, mixed with something sweet and sickening. He inhaled slowly, a chill crawling up his spine.

— Hm. Mold, rust… and fresh blood,—  he muttered, narrowing his eyes. — Whatever’s down there isn’t the kind of neighbor who borrows sugar.

He stood and looked at Lott, his tone suddenly serious.

— Stay up here,—  he ordered, voice low and firm. — If I’m not back in ten minutes, run.

Lott swallowed hard, his restless gaze flicking between the trapdoor and Dante.

— And while you’re down there… what exactly are you planning to do?—  he asked, suspicious. — How are you supposed to save my sister if we’re separated?

Dante rolled his eyes, clearly annoyed.

— First, stop being so dramatic, brat. Second, trust me for five minutes. I’ll be back. I always come back.— 

Lott let out a short, bitter laugh.

— What kind of idiot trusts a demon?

His voice trembled when it came again, louder now, forced out like a confession tearing itself free.

— Dante… there’s something I have to tell you.

Dante stilled.

The boy swallowed hard, fingers curling into his sleeves.

— I’m the reason you’re here. I… I summoned you.

The words hit heavier than the fog.

— I stole a page from James’s grimoire,—  Lott rushed on, eyes darting as if the forest itself might be listening. — It talked about calling a powerful demon. A superior one. I thought if I brought something strong enough, I could save her. But I didn’t have enough. Not the right price. Not the right offering. So instead of what I wanted… I got you.

Dante’s jaw tightened.

— What did you sacrifice?

For a moment, Lott couldn’t speak. Pain crossed his face, raw and unfiltered, like he’d bitten down on something sharp inside himself.

— I didn’t know I was paying yet,—  he whispered. — But the rules still applied. I invoked you. Which means… until the deal is fulfilled… I’m your summoner. Your master.

The forest seemed to lean closer.

Heat surged through Dante’s veins, sudden and violent. His demonic blood roared awake, flooding his senses. He caught his reflection in the boy’s eyes and froze.

Gold.

Burning, unmistakable gold spilling from his pupils.

Lott flinched but didn’t step back.

— The pact is simple,—  the boy said, forcing steadiness into his voice. — I’ll give you anything you want. Anything you need. Just protect me. Help me find my sister and get her away from those cult freaks.

The words wrapped around Dante like chains snapping shut.

Power answered power. The contract settled deep, ancient and cruel, threading itself through his bones.

Dante snarled under his breath, fists shaking.

He flexed his fingers, bones cracking softly as the heat coiled tighter in his veins. His jaw set, lips curling just enough to bare his teeth.

— I really need to kill something right now,—  he muttered, voice low and venomous. — So it’d better be a monster down there…

He glanced once at the trapdoor, eyes burning, and added under his breath:

— Because if it’s not, this place is about to get a lot messier.

A different kind of chill ran down his spine as he descended the steps. The half-light swallowed him whole, and the metallic stench grew nearly suffocating. On the floor, irregular circles drawn in blood spread like living fractures.

There was no threat waiting for him. No ambush. No monster lunging from the dark.

The emptiness only made the fury in his chest burn hotter, sharp and restless, demanding release.

— Greatttt !!! —  Dante muttered irritably. — All this buildup and nothing to break.

He needed something to hit, something to bleed, anything to take the edge off the anger clawing at him.

Helping the kid was his choice. Being bound to him by a damn human contract was not, and that realization only fed the fire.

The only unusual thing in the place was a cold, pulsating silver medallion, as if it had its own heart in the middle of a circle of blood. The face of a wolf was carved into the metal, sharp teeth bared, hungry eyes, a wild expression that seemed almost human.

The moment his fingers touched the amulet, sudden heat surged across his skin. It throbbed in response to him, reacting to his presence, as if it recognized something within him… or the danger closing in.

— Sensitive, huh?—  he muttered, lifting the medallion and turning it before his eyes. — Looks like a trouble radar… and lucky me, I love trouble.

Before he could take a closer look at the new accessory now hanging at his neck, the wooden ceiling above him shuddered violently. A dull crash echoed, followed by a rain of dust and splinters that fell over him. Dante instinctively raised an arm to shield his eyes.

The silence that followed was even more suffocating. All he could hear was the dust settling in slow clouds, until a shiver crawled up his spine. Something very large and very heavy had fallen upstairs.

The first thing that crossed his mind was Lott.

— Damn it… the kid!—  he growled, dropping the flashlight onto the table and sprinting for the wooden stairs.

He took the steps two at a time, each creak of the boards tightening his anxiety. When he shoved the hatch open and emerged into the main room, he found it completely trashed. The table shattered, chairs scattered, the kitchen cabinet overturned. One of the wooden walls had been torn apart, opened into an irregular hole, as if something gigantic had smashed straight through it.

Dante moved forward slowly, breathing controlled, every muscle primed to react. His ice-blue eyes swept over every shadow, every corner of the room.

— Lott…?—  he called, his voice steady but heavy with urgency.

Silence. Only the cold wind pouring in through the broken wall, making loose planks groan. Dante kept moving, alert to every detail, every sound. His instincts screamed that he wasn’t alone.

— Kid, if this is some kind of joke…—  he muttered, sliding a hand along the splintered wall.

The silence held, but the tension in the air was thick enough to taste. The house seemed to be holding its breath with him.

Then his eyes caught something, and they flashed. A trail of fresh blood snaked across the ruined floor of the cabin, leading straight to the opening in the wall. He crouched, fingers brushing against the still-wet wood.

— Shit…—  he whispered, teeth clenched.

Without hesitation, he stepped through the hole and out into the forest. Only then did he realize he had spent more time in the basement than he thought. The first pale rays of sunlight cut through the treetops, painting the fog that blanketed the woods in shades of gray.

Dante followed the trail. The blood marks were clear, broken by dragging footprints, as if something had carried Lott away by force. Wet branches lashed against his skin, dew soaking into his improvised clothes, but he didn’t care. He moved in silence, focused, every muscle ready.

Then the terrain opened up, and Dante stopped as he lifted his gaze.

Ahead of him, rising like a shadow against the dawn, stood the colossal outline of a feudal castle. Immense towers. Walls twisted by time. Tall windows that seemed to watch the forest below. A sight as anachronistic as it was unsettling.

Dante narrowed his eyes.

— What the hell is that…?—  he muttered, the words edged with dry mockery, though the unease beneath them was unmistakable.

Leon

Chris moved down the hallway and pushed open a half-closed door. The creak echoed through the silent apartment.

Their boots struck the narrow, ruined corridor in heavy rhythm, the sound muffled by dust and the thick smell of burned wood. The tension was almost physical ,both men advanced without a word, guided only by the small beams of their tactical flashlights. At the far end, a shadow was waiting for them.

Piers Nivans leaned against a doorframe marked by an old crest ,a golden shield engraved with the name Ludwig, its edges blackened with soot and rust. The young soldier’s face was sharp, his expression alert. Sweat darkened his brown hair, which fell slightly over his forehead. He wasn’t wearing his tactical helmet, something that made Chris’s jaw tighten immediately.

— Nivans,—  Chris barked, voice clipped and commanding, — how many times have I told you not to take off your helmet during an op?

Piers raised an eyebrow, almost amused.

— With all due respect, Captain, I needed to breathe. This place feels like a damn tomb.

Chris exhaled heavily ,his reprimand carried more of a father’s frustration than a commander’s anger.

— The last thing I want is to lose one of my team because of carelessness. Understood?— 

— Yes, sir,—  Piers replied, his tone now serious.

Leon ignored the tension between them, brushing past the two and pausing only to glance at the Ludwig crest before crossing the threshold. His flashlight sliced through the dark, revealing the interior of the room.

It was spacious, old, and covered in a thin veil of dust. The walls, once white, were now stained with mold and cracks. Paintings filled nearly every inch ,portraits of a veiled blonde woman draped in golden fabric, depicted like a saint with open wings and a serene gaze. Below her hung canvases of two figures locked in combat: one wreathed in fire, the other in blue flames ,the eternal clash of opposites.

At the center stood a large, ornate bed blanketed in fresh poppy flowers. Among the petals lay a woman’s body ,pale, beautiful, almost untouched. Fresh blood glistened beneath her, and a long black sword pierced clean through her back. The blade’s dark metal caught the faint flicker of firelight.

Chris and Leon exchanged a heavy look.

Piers spoke quietly, his tone controlled.

— The doors and windows were locked. We had to force our way in. She was already like this when we arrived.

Leon crouched slightly, eyes studying the body.

— You run her ID yet? 

— We did,—  Piers replied, shaking his head. — Nothing in BSAA records, nothing in local databases. It’s like she doesn’t exist. Only found this.

He handed Chris a crumpled, blood-stained pamphlet. The faded logo read:

 “Devil May Cry ,Investigation and Hunting Services.”

Chris frowned.

— Devil May Cry…?—  he muttered.

— No record of that agency in our system either,—  Piers added, giving a short, uneasy laugh as he rubbed the back of his neck. — But if I had to guess cause of death, I’d say the massive sword in her chest is a solid lead, Captain.

Leon shot him a sidelong look but said nothing, stepping closer to inspect the weapon. The sword was enormous, nearly as tall as a grown man. Its dark metal seemed to drink in the light around it, veins of faint blue pulsing softly along its surface, as if the blade itself breathed. Jagged edges glimmered irregularly, unsettlingly alive, and the hilt—shaped with winged, claw-like motifs—ended in a stylized cross.

A familiar name surfaced in Leon’s mind before he could stop it.

Dante.

The thought struck like a blade between the ribs. The only person he knew who could wield something like this. The only one who made the impossible look casual. Leon’s jaw tightened, a sharp flicker of pain crossing his expression as he forced the thought down. It couldn’t be. Dante was gone, swallowed by the fog, lost somewhere no one came back from. Dead, vanished… anything but here.

Chris’s eyes narrowed as he studied the weapon, instinctively gauging its weight and balance. This wasn’t any ordinary blade. And Leon knew, deep down, that if Dante truly was lost… then whatever had swung this sword was something far worse.

— What kind of monster could even wield something like this…—  Chris murmured to himself.

Piers gave a tense smirk.

— Probably the same kind who locks the door from the inside and dies surrounded by flowers, Captain. 

Chris shook his head, but the corner of his mouth twitched, nearly forming a smile. For a fleeting second, the tension eased ,though the mystery before them only deepened.

He gave one last glance at the blade before lifting his flashlight. The beam crawled up the cracked wall to the ceiling ,and froze.

There, sprawling above the bed, was a ritual symbol drawn in precise, overlapping circles ,too deliberate to be random. As the light swept over it, poppy petals began drifting down from above, glowing faintly red as they fell. They settled across the woman’s body like burning embers over snow.

Piers let out a low whistle, still staring at the surreal sight.

— I’ve seen a lot of weird crap with the BSAA, Captain… but this takes the prize.

Chris kept his gaze fixed on the sigil, his voice grave.

— Seal off the area,—  he ordered. — And notify Command. Tell them we might be dealing with something outside conventional parameters. I want a perimeter ,nobody in or out without my word.

— Yes, sir.

Piers reached for his radio ,but before he could finish the transmission, a sudden voice crackled through the channel, panicked and out of breath.

Meanwhile, Leon approached the bed, his flashlight gleaming against the black metal. He crouched, analyzing the blade again.

— This weapon…—  he muttered. — It’s heavy ,easily dozens of pounds. The balance is off, almost like it was forged for someone with inhuman strength.

He stood and looked at Chris.

— What kind of monster could even use this? 

Chris exhaled through a dry, ironic grin.

— In our line of work, Leon, monster is a pretty flexible term. We’ve seen things that’d make a priest question his faith.

Leon nodded slowly, eyes still on the sword.

— Maybe so… but this ——  he gestured toward the blade and the motionless body ,— this is beyond anything we’ve faced before, Chris. Way beyond.

Chris didn’t answer immediately. His attention caught movement above ,more poppy petals drifting downward, glowing faintly red as they fell like bloody snow. His flashlight followed their path back up to the ceiling.

The ritual sigil pulsed faintly, its dried blood lines glowing in rhythmic beats. From within its curves, new petals emerged, falling one by one ,as though the symbol itself were bleeding flowers.

Leon stepped back, voice low and tense.

— That’s not natural.

Chris’s face hardened.

— Agreed. This…—  he whispered, — this is far beyond our usual monsters.

Before Leon could respond, Chris’s radio erupted again ,Barry’s gravelly voice bursting through in alarm:

— This is Barry Burton! We’ve got a hostile inside the mansion! Repeat ,visual contact with an unidentified threat! It’s huge and heading straight for us!

Chris and Leon locked eyes, the red glow from the ceiling casting eerie reflections across their faces.

Chris chambered his weapon, his tone shifting back to that of a soldier.

— Here we go again.

Umbrella Corporation – Urban Revitalization Department
Internal Memorandum / Communication to Central HR
Date: 25/09/2001
From: Ark Thompson – Field Operations Coordinator / Silent Hill Project
To: William Afton – Human Resources, Umbrella Headquarters
Subject: Concerns Regarding the Behavior of Employee James Sunderland

Dear Mr. Afton,

I am writing to report a situation that requires the immediate attention of the Human Resources department.

As you are aware, architect James Sunderland has been one of the main personnel responsible for the structural planning sector of the Silent Hill Revitalization Project. James has consistently maintained exemplary performance, demonstrating technical competence, efficient communication, and impeccable professional conduct since the beginning of his employment.

However, in recent weeks, his behavior has become a growing concern among supervisors and other staff members. Following the recent death of his wife, Mary Sunderland, James has shown signs of disorientation, lapses in focus, and increasing social withdrawal.

Several members of the team have reported hearing him speaking to himself both in the break room and in administrative hallways. According to these accounts, James frequently mentions something called the “Ritual of the Holy Assumption,” a term unfamiliar to our team and unrelated to any project directive or official documentation.

Although I typically recommend immediate termination in cases of psychological instability that could compromise operational safety, I do not believe that is the best course of action here. Despite his current condition, James has always been a dedicated and reliable professional. For this reason, I suggest a less severe alternative:

I recommend transferring James Sunderland to another project, preferably one with lower psychological strain, such as the restructuring program on Ashford Island, where the operational workload is significantly lighter and the work environment more controlled.

I must emphasize that this matter has become even more urgent following the recent disappearance of Murphy Pendleton’s son, an incident that has deeply unsettled the entire Silent Hill team. The emotional atmosphere is tense and unstable, and I fear that James’s current condition,if left unaddressed,may exacerbate the overall state of the workforce.

I await HR’s instructions, but I strongly advise that James be transferred as soon as possible to avoid complications for both him and the progress of the project.

Sincerely,
Ark Thompson
Field Operations Coordinator – Silent Hill Project
Umbrella Corporation

Chapter Text

Dante

Lott was alive. Dante knew it with absolute certainty.
Not hope. Not instinct. Law.

The pact still pulsed inside him, a taut thread drawn straight through his chest. Weak. Unstable. Yet unbroken. If the boy had died, the agreement would have collapsed in the same instant. No warning. No ambiguity. The bond would have snapped like a torn nerve, leaving only emptiness where pressure had once existed.

That hadn’t happened.

Demonic deals didn’t function like human contracts. They didn’t require signatures or spoken oaths. They were direct exchanges, sealed at the moment desperation and intent collided. A pact wasn’t promised, it was imposed. It branded the souls involved like a living wound. Purpose sustained it. Failure ended it.

Simple. Cruel. Final.

The problem was Dante.

He wasn’t a full demon, nor a damned creature of hell. He wasn’t human enough to be safe either. Neither Hellborn nor Sinner. He was a hybrid, the son of a human and a high-ranking demonic entity, something that shouldn’t have existed at all. And because of that, he had no real understanding of how his own powers truly worked.

His father’s blood made pacts possible, but unpredictable. When someone formed a contract with him, the bond drove itself deep, barbed and intimate, obeying rules written for complete beings, not for someone like Dante.

That was what fed his anger.

Lott hadn’t just asked for help. He had triggered something he didn’t understand, dragging Dante into a pact that could go catastrophically wrong. And if it did, Dante wouldn’t be the first to pay the price.

Still, he didn’t wish the boy harm.

Because Lott was just a child. Frightened. Desperate. Trapped in a world that even Dante, with all his experience, couldn’t fully comprehend. Expecting a boy to grasp the true weight of a demonic pact was obscene.

That fear, more than anger, was what drove him forward along the narrow forest path, following the trail of blood as it vanished into the thick fog. The mist warped the world into crooked, silent shapes.

An omen.

Nothing good waited beyond it.

When Dante finally pushed past the last line of trees, the world opened into ruin.

The memory lingered like a scar beneath his skin, and the thought of Lott meeting the same fate twisted something ugly in Dante’s gut. That fear, more than anger or self-preservation, was what pushed him forward now.

So he followed the narrow forest path, blood darkening the soil ahead before vanishing into the fog. The mist gathered thick between the trees, warping the world into distorted silhouettes, swallowing distance and sound.

An omen.

Nothing good waited for him.

When Dante crossed the final line of trees, ruin greeted him.

What lay ahead had once been a city. Now it was a carcass, slowly being reclaimed. Cracked streets vanished beneath weeds and roots that tore through asphalt like exposed veins. Buildings sagged into rot and silence, blind windows staring out from walls scarred by damp and time. The fog clung to everything, heavy and suffocating, turning the settlement into something half-remembered, not quite real.

Nature had taken it all without hesitation. Moss devoured doorframes. Vines slithered through shattered glass. Trees grew out of collapsed houses, as if the earth itself had decided to bury what remained of humanity. Nothing moved. No birds. No insects. Only stillness.

Then Dante noticed the stakes.

Wooden posts lined the streets, driven into the ground with grim intent. Animal heads were impaled upon them, severed from their bodies, flesh darkened and drying. Goats. Deer. Empty eyes staring forever into the fog. Some were fresh, blood still staining the wood. Others had rotted down to grinning skulls crowned with decay. Beneath the damp air lingered a faint sweetness, the unmistakable perfume of death.

This wasn’t random destruction.

It was deliberate. Ritualistic.

Dante slowed his pace, unease seeping past his usual bravado.

—Ah, of course… nothing like some cheerful, blood-soaked décor to start the day. Looks like a Netflix adaptation of Raccoon City, just with more gore and fewer budget.— he muttered, the fog offering no answer as it pressed closer.

The fog pressed closer as he advanced, closing behind him like a patient tide. Sound dulled. Depth collapsed. Even his footsteps felt wrong, as if the ground resented being disturbed. Dante had walked through hells loud with screams and fire, but this silence was worse.

Here, the quiet watched him.

He felt it constantly. Attention without form. Eyes without bodies. Beneath it all, an overwhelming loneliness, vast and intentional, as though the city had been emptied solely for him.

A few steps farther down the cracked street, his boot brushed against something soft.

A few steps farther down the cracked street, Dante’s boot brushed against something soft.

A body lay near a rusted streetlight.

Not mutilated. Not torn apart. Simply finished.

The man wore a heavy coat meant for cold weather, jeans soaked dark at the knees. Brown hair clung to his forehead, his face pale, frozen in an expression caught somewhere between exhaustion and quiet acceptance. Around the corpse, red spider lilies bloomed in unsettling abundance, forcing their way through the fractures in the asphalt, coiling around the body like hungry roots. Their thin stems spread down the street, creeping through the city like a slow-moving plague, staining the gray fog with vivid red.

Dante crouched. The smell confirmed what his eyes already knew. Death had passed through here recently.

One of the man’s hands rested on his chest, fingers loosely curled around a folded sheet of paper. Dante took it.

It wasn’t a map.

It was a verse, written in uneven, almost trembling handwriting:

“The Mother watches from the shadows,
and her four children guard the threshold.
But beware the laughing fog,
for within it smiles the true evil.”

A chill ran down Dante’s spine.

He rose slowly, his gaze drifting over the spider lilies as they continued to spread through the fog-choked streets.

— …Well, I’ll give him this much — Dante muttered, staring at the corpse. — Even dead, the guy still had time to write poetry. Guess some people really commit to their hobbies.

He moved on, unease deepening as the city revealed itself around him. Then he saw another body. And another.

They were all the same as the first. Same build. Same worn clothing. The same face, distorted just enough by time and injury to make recognition unstable, but never absent. Some were still fresh, throats torn open, chests ripped apart as if something with claws far too large to belong to any natural creature had passed through. Others were bloated, or reduced to bone, limbs twisted at impossible angles, gnawed down to the limit. Different stages of decay. The same fate.

For a brief, treacherous moment, a name cut through Dante’s mind like a cold blade.

Leon.

The height. The frame. Even the rigid posture, preserved in death.

Dante’s jaw tightened immediately. No. He crushed the thought before it could take root. Leon would not die like this. Not here. Not yet.

He tore his gaze away from the empty faces and moved forward, guided by the trail of red spider lilies that slithered through the fog-choked city, as if deliberately left behind.

Like echoes abandoned.

His jaw remained clenched as he advanced, eyes scanning the streets smothered by mist, now littered with these broken reflections. Whatever hunted here did not kill out of hunger alone. It returned. Again. And again.

A heavy feeling settled in his gut, colder than the fog itself. Somewhere within that thick gray veil, something was watching patiently, something that had already decided Dante might belong among the growing piles of corpses.

The fog grew denser the deeper he went, stitching itself through the streets like a living thing. It coiled around broken railings, seeped through shattered windows, wrapped itself around corpses and flowers alike. Everywhere, nature had sunk in its claws. Cracks in the asphalt overflowed with weeds, and among them bloomed clusters of red spider lilies, their thin petals arching like veins exposed to open air. They spread without order, without mercy. Growing from gutters, thresholds, even from the ribcages of the dead.

The flowers trembled faintly as he passed, brushing against his boots, staining the gray world with violent red.

Dante stopped when a gate emerged from the fog ahead.

It stood intact where nothing else had. A reinforced metal gate blocked the narrow street, its thick bars bent but unbroken, welded plates layered together like a desperate attempt to hold the world back. Yellow-and-black hazard symbols covered its surface, warnings stacked atop one another, peeling and corroded, all screaming danger to anyone still able to read.

A rusted sign hung crookedly from heavy chains:

DO NOT ENTER

Before Dante could give in to the anarchic urge to simply force the gate open, a sound stopped him.

Alongside the static, laughter bled through the noise, metallic and distorted, like an old radio’s grin.

The low, uneven hiss of a powered radio sliced through the silence like a rusted blade, sending a cold shiver up his spine. It made no sense. And yet the sound was there. Insistent. Alive. Dante stiffened, not in surprise, but in a deeper, older fear, the kind that didn’t ask permission or explanation.

He followed its source not by sound, but by the uncomfortable pressure tightening in his chest.

His gaze shifted, and the fog seemed to retreat unwillingly, revealing a suburban house near the edge of a lake. It stood alone, cut off from the rest of the drowned, forgotten neighborhood, its silhouette warped by crawling vines and gutters sagging under the weight of time. Nature had claimed it without hesitation: ivy strangled the walls, roots split the concrete path, and red spider lilies spread thick across the yard and along the shoreline. A single light still burned inside, weak and stubborn, its glow faintly reflected in the lake’s black, motionless water, like a silent warning that something was still breathing there.

It was the only house with its lights on.

That detail tightened something in Dante’s chest.

The place looked abandoned. Peeling paint. A porch warped by moisture. Windows clouded with grime. And yet a dull yellow glow seeped through the curtains, weak but stubborn, like a heartbeat refusing to stop. Red spider lilies crept up the steps and into the cracks of the foundation, spreading as if drawn to the warmth inside.

— Yeah… not comforting at all — Dante muttered.

He approached cautiously, his boots crunching softly over dead leaves and broken flower stems. The lake beside the house was unnaturally still, fog rolling across its surface in slow, deliberate waves. It felt like an eye. Open. Watching.

The door yielded with a reluctant groan.

Inside, the air was heavy and stagnant with abandonment, but not empty. Dust coated the furniture, yet signs of life lingered everywhere, frozen mid-collapse. Family photographs lined the walls. A man in military uniforms appeared stiffly in several of them, posture rigid, gaze severe, medals pinned proudly to his chest. In others, he posed beside a woman and a child, their smiles forced, rehearsed. A small frame on a side table had cracked glass, the image beneath faded but intact.

On the refrigerator, yellowed notes were held in place by old service magnets. Grocery lists. Reminders. A child’s uneven handwriting spelling out a name, crossed out and rewritten more than once. On the counter sat a stack of letters, some opened, some torn, all addressed in the same firm, disciplined script. One envelope bore a surname scribbled in the corner, partially smudged but still legible.

Shepherd.

Dante exhaled slowly.

Military obsession permeated the house like a second atmosphere. Shelves packed with manuals and worn field guides. A wall-mounted display case holding faded insignias, empty where weapons should have been. Camouflage jackets hung neatly by the door, despite everything else rotting around them. Even the furniture seemed arranged with rigid order, as if chaos had only recently broken through.

In a place of prominence, above the fireplace and better lit than anything else in the room, hung a painting that clashed with the rest of the house. A female figure stood at its center as an absolute presence: Mother Miranda. Around her, arranged almost like heraldic symbols, were four animals. A spider with long, tense legs. A bat with wings spread like an omen. A mermaid with hollow eyes rising from dark waters. And a horse made of metal, rigid and unnatural, reflecting the light like a weapon.

Unlike the family photographs, the painting conveyed neither memory nor simple devotion. The central figure did not look human. There was something of a cruel divinity in her, her painted eyes cold and judging, as if she watched not only those who worshipped her, but also those who dared to doubt. Her posture suggested imminent judgment, as though she were a breath away from unleashing a curse upon the unfaithful.

A crawling discomfort ran down Dante’s spine.

This wasn’t decoration.
It was worship.

The red spider lilies had invaded here too.

They pushed up through cracks in the floorboards, blooming beside fallen picture frames and beneath the dining table, their color violently out of place against the dull browns and grays of the house. A few petals rested on the couch, on the stair steps, on an abandoned helmet near the hallway.

Dante’s eyes narrowed.

— This place wasn’t just abandoned — he murmured. — It was left behind.

Then the radio crackled again from upstairs.

And this time, it was clearly calling for his attention.

The light upstairs flickered once, weak and unstable.

And the sensation of being watched returned, stronger now, as if the house itself had noticed his presence.

Dante climbed the stairs slowly, each step answered by a dull creak that echoed far too loudly through the house. The red spider lilies followed him even here, sprouting between the steps, their thin stems brushing against his boots as if reluctant to let him pass. The air grew heavier the higher he went, laden with dust, old memories, and something left unspoken.

At the top of the staircase, only one door spilled light into the hallway.

A single room.

He approached it cautiously, his hand resting not near steel, but instinct. The door was already ajar, swaying faintly, as if the house were breathing. Warm, dim light leaked through the opening, carving a fragile line through the fog that had somehow seeped indoors.

Dante pushed it open.

The room was small, but clearly shared. Two beds stood against opposite walls. One larger and unmade, its sheets darkened by time and neglect. The other smaller, carefully arranged despite the years, a faded blanket pulled tight with childlike care. Between them sat a desk cluttered with notebooks, loose papers, and pencils worn down to stubs.

Bookshelves lined the walls. On the lower shelves were children’s books, once bright, now dulled and warped by moisture. Simple stories. Hand-drawn monsters. Crayon marks pressed too hard into the paper. Higher up, thicker volumes leaned at uneven angles. History. Military tactics. Old school textbooks. A few crumpled journals were stuffed between them, written in a restless, angular hand.

Two lives, frozen mid-growth.

Posters of nude women and rock stars clung to the walls, peeling at the corners. One side of the room bore the marks of adolescence: headphones abandoned on the bed, a jacket tossed carelessly over a chair, notes scrawled in frustration and ambition pinned above the desk. The other side was quieter. Toy soldiers lined up unevenly along the windowsill. A small backpack hung from a hook, its zipper broken, red spider lilies creeping up from the floor beneath it.

Near the adolescent’s bed, Dante spotted an old radio, its casing yellowed with age, the speaker hissing softly with static. He moved toward it, intent on shutting the damn thing off.

But as he closed the distance, Dante’s brow tightened. One more step was all it took for the light from the desk lamp to catch on something near the wall, a brief, sharp glint that didn’t belong to dust or broken glass.

— …No — he murmured.

It was Lott’s backpack.

It hung crooked from the hook, one strap torn clean through, the fabric stiff with dried blood and mud. The boy’s flashlight lay shattered on the floor beneath it, its lens crushed inward, as if something had pressed down with deliberate force rather than careless violence. Dante stared at it for a long second, his jaw tight.

The room seemed to shrink.

He only didn’t tear the place apart with his bare hands because something held him right at the edge of himself. Weak. Flickering. Almost extinguished. Even so, the pact still burned in his blood, a hot, precise pull throbbing deep in his chest. It was the only thing keeping the sharp spike of panic from cracking his usual mask of detached confidence.

Lott was alive.

Not because Dante hoped so.
Not because he wanted it to be true.

But because the contract never lied.

He grabbed the backpack and dumped its contents onto the desk. Supplies spilled out with soft clatters. Bandages. Nearly empty rations. Then something small slid free and came to rest near the desk lamp.

A dog collar.

Worn leather, stained dark with dried blood. An old metal tag dangled from it, scratched and dented, but the name was still readable.

Hewie.

Dante picked it up slowly, turning it between his fingers. His expression darkened.

— A dog collar… — he muttered, his voice low and sour. — Why the hell would the brat be carrying this around?

The collar offered no answers. It just felt wrong in his hand, heavier than it should have been, as if soaked through with memory. Dante stared at it longer than necessary, as though it might start talking, confess something Lott hadn’t.

He exhaled sharply and let it fall back onto the desk.

Then came the map.

The paper crackled like dry bone as he unfolded it. Faded streets. Handwritten notes. Routes crossed out and redrawn in nervous strokes. Whoever had marked it hadn’t done so calmly. At the center of everything, gouged deep into the paper, was a massive X, pressed so hard it nearly tore through.

Right over the unmistakable silhouette of Castle Dimitrescu.

Dante’s lips pressed into a thin line.

— Of course, — he muttered. — Because why wouldn’t it be there?

His hand closed around the last remaining object: a military knife, the blade nicked and worn but well cared for. He twirled it once between his fingers, testing the balance. No thrill. No rush. Just a quiet, simmering anger tightening in his chest.

As he lowered it, something else caught his attention. Jammed at the bottom of the backpack, crumpled and nearly glued in place by dried blood, was a torn sheet of paper. The page was stained, its edges uneven, covered in symbols and words written in an ancient language, crooked and frantic, as if whoever had written them had no time… or no courage. A chill ran along Dante’s fingers as he touched it.

That wasn’t just a note.
It was part of something bigger.
Something that should never have been used by hands so small.

— The kid really knows how to leave a dramatic trail… — he said, though the tension in his jaw betrayed him.

Then….

Click.

Cold metal kissed the back of his skull.

Dante didn’t move.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment and let out a long, tired sigh, the kind reserved for inconveniences that always arrived right on time.

— You know, — he said calmly, his voice flat with irritation, — sneaking up on someone who’s already in a bad mood is a great way to die creatively.

— Shut your damn mouth and explain— the weapon pressed harder against the nape of Dante’s neck, and the voice behind him came out tense and low, heavy with exhaustion and restrained distrust, the kind worn thin by overuse. — Why are you in my family’s house and……

There was a short, heavy pause.

— What the hell happened to the city? — the voice continued, now trembling, as if each word took effort. — Where is my mother… and where is my little brother?

Leon

Chris and Leon exchanged a look, the red glow from the ceiling staining their faces like a warning neither of them wanted to acknowledge.
Leon cocked his gun, slipping back into combat mode, but it was Chris who broke the suffocating silence first. His voice cut through the stagnant air like a battlefield order ,far too firm, too alive for a room that felt so dead.

— Piers, you’re staying. That’s an order. 

Piers didn’t answer immediately. His jaw tightened, the tendons twitching ,a silent betrayal of the storm raging beneath his disciplined posture. He wasn’t just displeased. He was wounded. Being left behind while Chris and Leon stepped into the unknown… it felt like a punishment he didn’t deserve.
His eyes met Chris’s, searching ,maybe pleading ,for him to reconsider. But Chris’s gaze held nothing except a cold, immovable resolve.

— Understood, sir…—  he finally replied, each syllable wound tight like a spring on the verge of snapping.

The frustration in him was so palpable it seemed to breathe alongside him. The way Piers looked at Chris ,as if expecting something more than a simple command ,didn’t go unnoticed. There was tension there, heavy and unspoken, too dense to be dismissed as mere professional conflict.
Chris avoided Piers’s eyes, rigid, almost harshly so.

For a moment, Leon realized this might not be just a military order. Maybe Chris was trying to shield Piers from something he himself knew far too well:
the weight of watching someone die right beside you.

Leon tore his gaze away and focused on checking his pistol. It wasn’t his business, nor the time to unravel whatever lived between the two of them. Whatever its nature, he didn’t want to step into it. He simply tightened his holster and let them settle what could be settled…
Because every instinct in him screamed that things were about to spiral out of control ,fast.

Then a sound split the silence.

Wooooo… wooooo…

A faint echo, distant, impossible to identify in the first few seconds.
There was no evacuation alarm nearby ,yet the tone carried the same hollow dread as a sound Leon hadn’t heard since a night that scarred his body, his mind, and everything he believed in.
The same sound that echoed moments before Raccoon City was erased by a nuclear blast.

Air vanished from his lungs for a heartbeat.

Chris didn’t notice ,too focused on checking his gear ,but from the look on Piers’s face, it was clear the soldier had heard the cursed siren as well.

— You heard it too?—  Piers asked, voice a strained whisper.

Leon only nodded, barely moving his head.
He didn’t want to name that sound.
Didn’t want to drag it back into the light.

E-mail

Assunto: Recovered Journal – Harry Mason / Crimson Hill

To: Agent Billy Coen, O.D.I.N

Agent Coen,

I was hired recently by a woman calling herself Claudia Wolf. I don’t know if that’s her real name. If it is, she wears it like a borrowed coat. My task was simple on paper: locate Harry Mason and his daughter, both currently listed as missing.

It wasn’t simple.

I never found Mason. What I did find was his journal, abandoned in a place that shouldn’t exist anymore, a city calling itself Crimson Hill. The contents are… troubling. Not ramblings. Not fiction. A man documenting things no one should have to witness twice.

Mason references Silent Hill  not as distant nightmares, but as scars that never healed. He writes with the clarity of someone who has seen the truth and knows exactly how fragile reality really is.

Given O.D.I.N’s mandate, I’m forwarding the most relevant excerpts below. I strongly recommend this matter not be treated as a missing persons case.

Recovered Journal – Harry Mason

Date: May 23, 2024

I’m writing this on the road.

Sam is asleep in the back seat, curled against her jacket. She looks peaceful. Too peaceful, considering everything we’ve already survived. We’re not alone anymore. Jill Valentine decided to travel with us. I don’t blame her. After everything she’s seen, I doubt she sleeps much either.

We talked today about New York and London. About 2018 and 2019. About ██████████ and ██████████ and the attempt to change a ██████████ that never should’ve been touched. Jill believes those events didn’t end when the smoke cleared. They left scars. Dimensional ones.She also said she spoke with someone involved in the case and mentioned a prophecy about the world being destroyed by something called the Eclipse of Dimensions, though she couldn’t explain what it is.

I believe her.

If those fractures are ignored, they won’t stay quiet. They’ll fester. Cities like Silent Hill won’t be isolated anomalies anymore. They’ll happen again. Somewhere else. Everywhere.

Date: June 3, 2024

The radio interference is getting worse.

At first I thought it was faulty equipment, but it’s too consistent. Too deliberate. Every scan points back to the same place: Crimson Hill.

Jill doesn’t like it. She keeps warning me about the Order. Says places like this attract them. Sam says Jill’s being paranoid. She insists she wants to go there because a friend of hers is waiting in the city. A boy named Danny.

I don’t like the way she says it. Like she’s repeating something she’s been told.

I should turn back. I know that.

But something is pulling us forward, and I hate that I can’t tell if it’s curiosity… or momentum.

Date: June 19, 2024

Two days ago, Jill discovered that Umbrella had several facilities scattered throughout the city. Despite my protests, she decided to investigate on her own. Since then, I haven’t heard from her, and the worry for her safety keeps me restless. Sam introduced me to a boy from Brazil, a friend’s boyfriend—whose name I couldn’t remember. He seemed arrogant, but he said he was searching for something very old in the city. He wouldn’t give details, only hinted that if it fell into the wrong hands, it could cause serious problems.

Later, when we were alone, he suggested I leave Crimson Hill for my safety and Sam’s. Before I could respond, he was interrupted by his own boyfriend, and the conversation shifted. I’m left with more questions than answers, and a growing sense of urgency.

Date: June 21, 2024

Jill was right.

I put my daughter in danger.

The Order is here. I saw their symbols. Heard them chanting at night. I know now they aren’t just passing through Crimson Hill. They’ve claimed it. But they aren’t in control the way they think they are.

They found me today. Or maybe they’ve known where I was all along.

I overheard one of them speaking about something they’re searching for. An artifact. They called it Roo’s Tears. They believe it’s necessary to begin a ceremony they referred to as “The Descent of the Holy Mother.”

That name alone makes my skin crawl.

I don’t think they truly understand what they’re trying to call. I don’t think the Order is the one pulling the strings here. There’s something else. Someone else. Hidden behind them, whispering, guiding, smiling from the dark while they do the dirty work.

They want to tear open a portal. To invoke something. Or someone.

I won’t stay to see what comes through.

I’m afraid. Not for myself. For Sam. For what happens if we’re too slow, or if I make the wrong choice again.

If anyone finds this, know this: Crimson Hill is not just another town. It’s a doorway. And something on the other side is waiting very patiently.

I’m leaving.

I have to.

That’s the final entry, Agent Coen. The journal ends there. No signs of struggle nearby. No indication of where Mason went next.

I know O.D.I.N is trying to cover up everything that happened in Crimson Hill, but after reading this journal, I have a feeling this isn’t the end—it’s just the beginning.

If I come across any leads or evidence that could help O.D.I.N, I’ll send it your way. I can’t stand those old incompetent fools running the board.

— Booker DeWitt

Chapter Text

Dante

The stranger pressed the gun harder against the back of Dante’s skull, desperate now, repeating the question with a voice loaded with more than just threat.

— Where is my brother?—  he snarled. — What did you do to him?

For a moment, Dante didn’t move.
Not out of fear.

He recognized that tone. That thin wire stretched tight between rage and panic, the sound only someone who had already lost someone to hell could make. Sympathy crept in against his will. Bitter. Unwelcome. Searching for a brother in a place like this was a mistake Dante himself had made more times than he cared to remember.

That was what saved the man.

Dante didn’t turn right away. He spoke instead, voice low and dangerous.

— Lower the gun,—  he said. — If I wanted you dead, this conversation would already be over.

He turned just enough for the other man to catch the cold glint in his eyes.

— I get wanting to find someone here.—  A crooked half-smile surfaced, humorless. — But don’t mistake empathy for weakness.

He moved too fast to follow.

In one fluid motion, Dante twisted aside, knocked the gun’s line away, ripped it from the man’s grip with a dry crack, struck his wrist, wrenched his arm, and slammed him to the floor. Before the stranger could react, Dante was on top of him, the gun aimed at his face, a boot planted firmly in his chest against the creaking floorboards.

The man beneath him looked more exhausted than dangerous. Athletic build, broad shoulders shaped by training, but his body carried too much tension for someone on the offensive. Dark brown hair clung messily to his forehead, streaked with dust and sweat. His face was young, hardened by deep shadows under his eyes and an expression permanently on the edge of collapse. There was something unmistakably military about him. The posture. The controlled breathing even while pinned. Eyes too alert for a civilian.

Dante studied him, blood still simmering in his veins.

— So,—  he said quietly. — Who the hell are you, and why did you think putting a gun to my head was a good idea?

He took a breath.

— I ran to my family’s house thinking I’d find someone. Instead, I found you digging through my little brother’s things. Thought you were another lunatic. Or worse...

He grimaced before adding,

— And no, I don’t work for those Umbrella capitalist pigs. Quite the opposite. If it helps, I ferried an investigator across the river. She was looking for someone named James. Said Crimson Hill had answers.—  His mouth twisted. — Now I think she should’ve left while she could.— 

Dante narrowed his eyes but eased the pressure slightly.

— Wait,—  he said. — You helped someone cross the river. Who was she, and why ?

— A woman,—  Alex replied. — She said her name was Jill. No last name. She wanted to investigate Castle Dimitrescu. Said she needed to find James Sunderland. 

He let out a short, bitter laugh.

— I told her it was a terrible idea. That place doesn’t give people back whole. Just blood and death. She didn’t listen. Had that look. Like her mind was already made up. I just took the boat. 

He looked away briefly.

— After that, I came back here.—  He gestured emptily. — Found the city like this. Dead. Silent.—  A pause. — Except for Mother Miranda's monsters..They are everywhere.

The word hit Dante like a snapped wire.

— Monsters????—  he repeated—Don't you think it's important to talk about the monsters first?

Dante frowned before anything emerged from the fog.

A low, uneven static crawled through the air, like insects inside his skull. It was the old radio in the bedroom that came alive, coughing up static into the silence.

— Great,—  he muttered. — That damn static again.

Alex followed Dante’s gaze toward the old device and made a small, confused face and Alex shook his head slowly.

— You can’t be hearing anything,—  Alex snapped. — That radio’s been dead for years.

Dante opened his mouth to explain when the sound changed.

It didn’t come from the radio.

It came from the walls.

Slow, deliberate scratching along the exterior wood, like claws testing resistance. Then another. Then several, spreading, circling. Something scraped across the roof, dislodging tiles with a sharp crack. The floor groaned under footsteps that didn’t enter. Just paced.

Then came the howls.

Low at first, muffled by the fog, distant enough to blur direction. An uneven chorus rising and falling, answering itself, closing in. The air thickened with the promise of teeth and claws.

Dante’s hand went to his weapon instinctively.

— Don’t move,—  he murmured. — The house just got way too small.

Alex broke first.

Leaning almost casually between the bed and a warped bookshelf was something that absolutely did not belong there.

Long. Too well balanced to be a decorative relic. The grip mimicked the hilt of a sword, but there was no edge, no blade in the way any sane weapon would have one. Instead, a pale metal shaft extended from it, solid and blunt, carved with old geometric etchings that looked ritualistic rather than ornamental. It felt less like steel and more like intent made tangible. Heavy in the right way. Honest about what it was meant to do.

And to put it bluntly…

It was a massive key.

Yes. A key. Enormous, absurd, and unmistakably designed to be swung at something’s skull.

At the end of it dangled a small charm, swaying gently with every tremor of the house. A stylized little shape. Rounded ears. Cheerful silhouette.

Alex stared at it.

— …You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Before he could say anything else, a violent crash detonated somewhere downstairs. The floor shuddered. Dust spilled from the ceiling. Something had torn through a door. Or a wall.

Alex swallowed hard, his tone shifting fast, desperate.

— If… if something happens to me,—  he said, pointing at Dante, — find my brother. Joshua. Promise me. And in the basement… there’s stuff down there. Weapons, supplies, whatever’s left. It might help you… survive this place.

Dante spun the strange weapon once through the air, testing its balance, and shot Alex a crooked look.

— Relax,—  he said, his voice flippant, far too confident for the situation. — I’ll keep you breathing, find your kid brother… and while I’m at it, I’ll go after my own brat too. Oh, and by the way, Alex… you can call me Dante.

The window behind them exploded.

A shape burst through the shattered glass with a wet snarl, landing on all fours on the floor. Its body was humanoid, but warped by excessive muscle, limbs too long, spine arched at a wrong angle. Pale skin stretched tight over bulging veins, patchy with coarse dark fur. The head lifted, revealing an elongated snout, crooked yellowed teeth, saliva dripping as its eyes burned with animal hunger.

The bedroom door gave way a heartbeat later.

More silhouettes piled into the doorway, claws scraping wood, shoulders too broad for the frame, heavy breathing mixed with guttural growls. Some moved upright for a few seconds, almost human, before dropping back down to prowl like beasts, sniffing the air, locking onto prey.

Dante planted his feet, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face.

— Well then.—  He raised the strange weapon, eyes gleaming. — Now we’re talking. Something to kill.

The first gunshot thundered inside the room like bottled lightning.

Alex fired with both hands, arms locked stiff, recoil jolting his shoulders with every shot. One of the monsters took a round to the chest and rolled backward, crushing another against the wall, but it didn’t slow them down. They kept coming, wounded, bleeding, dragging claws across the floor like dull knives.

— Dante!—  Alex shouted. — They won’t stop!

— Then break them,—  Dante replied, already moving.

He lunged before the next creature could leap at Alex. The strike came from low to high. The strange weapon traced a heavy, brutal arc, smashing into the monster’s jaw with a dry crack. It didn’t cut. It crushed. Teeth flew. The skull caved like old pottery, and the body was hurled into a bookshelf, exploding it into splintered wood and books.

Another came from the side.

Dante pivoted, swinging with the weapon’s full weight like a demolition hammer, slamming into the creature’s ribs. The sound was wet. Wrong. The chest collapsed inward, and the monster dropped, choking, trying to breathe with lungs that no longer worked.

— Stay behind me!—  Dante snarled, shoving Alex back with his shoulder as he dodged an attack that tore through the air where his head had been a second earlier.

Claws caught him across the back. His coat split open. Pain flared hot and sharp, but he ignored it. He spun, pinning the creature’s forearm against the wall, bones cracking before the final blow drove its skull straight into the plaster.

The ceiling groaned.

Not metaphorically.

The beams screamed as if something massive were crawling across them. A second later, the ceiling burst inward. Dust, wood, and tiles rained down as more bodies dropped from above, howling, crashing straight onto Dante.

One slammed into his shoulder, throwing him against the bed. Another bit into his leg, teeth sinking deep. Dante shouted, more fury than pain, and smashed the thing’s head into the floor again and again until it stopped moving.

Alex emptied the magazine, every shot lighting the room in chaotic flashes.

— We’re getting out of this!—  he yelled, his voice cracked, desperately optimistic. — We’re gonna see tomorrow, I swear it!

The floor answered before Dante could respond.

There was a deep crack, like the house snapping an ancient bone. The floor gave way beneath Alex’s feet.

— ALEXXXXXXX!!!!!!!!!!!

Leon 

The door shut behind them with a sharp snap, far too loud for such a silent place. The sound echoed down the corridor and died slowly, absorbed by damp walls that seemed to hold more than dust and mold.

Leon moved first.

Ahead, darkness stretched unevenly, broken only by lightning flashing through the tall windows. With each flare, the interior appeared for an instant, then vanished again: ancient carpets soaked through, wooden panels creaking on their own, furniture displaced as if the building had been shaken by something far greater than time. Nothing there felt stable. The sound of rain set the rhythm, constant drops leaking from the cracked ceiling.

He walked slowly. Not out of tactical caution. Out of habit. Every step was measured, restrained, as if moving too fast might bring something to the surface before its time.

Water ran down the walls in thin rivulets, gathering into shallow pools on the floor. Leon’s boots made muffled sounds, almost embarrassed. The air was cold, heavy with a metallic scent mixed with wet wood and ancient mold. A smell that did not belong to that place.

Chris followed a few steps behind. Leon didn’t need to look to know that. Chris’s presence filled the space with a silent, steady weight. Still, there were small interruptions in his rhythm. A slight delay between observing and reacting. Leon recognized it. It was the same delay he felt when certain thoughts tried to surface and he forced them back down.

The corridor felt displaced. Not hostile, just wrong. The walls seemed to stretch subtly, the ceiling rising a few centimeters higher than it should. Wooden floorboards gradually gave way to worn ceramic tiles, marked by dark lines where water insisted on collecting.

Nothing changed all at once. It simply stopped being what it was.

The sound of rain grew louder. Now it came from inside as well. Drops fell from broken light fixtures, running along exposed wires. Wind cut through cracked windows, dragging swollen papers across the floor, documents warped until they became unrecognizable. There was also something else. A macabre sound, like prolonged whispers, dry moans, the voices of the dead he had heard more times than he dared remember, now distorted, as if rising from beneath the surface of water.

Leon slowed his pace.

— Do you hear that? — he asked, his voice low, too controlled.

Chris took a moment longer than usual to answer.

— No, — he said finally. — Keep moving.

Leon obeyed. Not because he agreed, but because moving forward had always been easier than stopping.

The changes became clearer as they advanced. Metal bars replaced old wooden panels. A toppled reception desk appeared on the right, drawers open, papers glued together by water. The floor reflected the surroundings in unstable pools, warping everything that moved.

The lights turned on in sequence.

Not all at once. Old lamps flickering, buzzing, until they stabilized into a cold, bluish tone. A tired light, far too functional for an abandoned mansion.

Leon and Chris holstered their flashlights almost simultaneously.

Chris raised his weapon.

— Who turned that on?

No answer. Only the rain, now closer, more present.

The light revealed the corridor in full. There was no clear rupture, no abrupt transition. And yet, it was no longer a mansion. The space had reorganized itself into something more rigid, more familiar. Aligned doors, some torn from their hinges, others swollen with moisture. Windows barricaded with poorly nailed boards. The dirty floor reflected the two men like a cracked mirror.

The Raccoon City Police Department insinuated itself there.

Leon felt his jaw tighten. He didn’t look away. He didn’t slow down. He simply gripped his weapon harder.

Farther ahead, a row of framed pictures caught his attention.

Aligned like official records. Simple metal frames, coated in rust. Water ran down them, dripping slowly onto the floor.

Leon stepped closer.

Chris stopped a few steps behind.

— This… — he murmured. — I remember the mansion. It wasn’t like this.

Leon didn’t answer. Instead, he wondered whether they were seeing the same thing, then returned his attention to the frames.

To him, the frames were soaked. Thick mold slid down the glass in green streaks. And inside them were faces.

The frames were not simple portraits, but frozen fragments of irreversible decisions.

Each image captured a moment when Leon had been forced to act, even when every part of him wanted to retreat.

Elliot, Marvin, and Luis appeared not as honored memories, but as marks of choices made under extreme pressure.

Krauser, distorted into a monster, represented the voice that always pushed Leon forward, demanding obedience to duty.

Together, the frames formed a corridor of silences, one Leon walked through without looking for too long, as if stopping were dangerous.

And there, too, was Dante’s frame. Something too heavy to belong there. Leon saw him standing, intact, but marked by what was left behind. A void Leon refused to face, forced downward with discipline, buried beneath protocols, missions, and silence. As if ignoring it were enough to keep it under control.

Leon felt his breath hitch for a second. He didn’t raise a hand to his face. He didn’t turn away. He simply stood there, absorbing every detail as if he needed to carve them into himself again.

Chris still saw only gray.

— Chris… — Leon said at last. — This isn’t the mansion.

Chris opened his mouth to respond.

The sound came first.

Thm… thm… thm…

Heavy, irregular footsteps striking soaked wood. A wet drag, as if something enormous struggled to move a body that didn’t belong to it.

When it emerged from the darkness, the light revealed a grotesquely familiar shape.

A corrupted memory of William Birkin’s first form.

The torso was broad and twisted, flesh glistening like soaked fabric. In place of a lab coat, torn police uniforms were sewn directly into its skin, pulled inward by thick, rusted staples. They didn’t look like protection. They looked like desperate attempts to contain something, to keep fragments of a past trapped inside a body that should not exist.

The creature’s face was completely wrapped in those scraps. Sleeves, broken insignias, barely legible numbers. As if someone had bandaged its head with the remains of interrupted lives. Still, the shape of the skull, the displaced jaw, the brutal asymmetry were unmistakable.

The right side was the worst. Muscles bulged outward, pulsing beneath split skin. A massive arm bore the creature’s entire weight, moving with slow, inevitable purpose.

Fragments of the police station were fused into its body. Signs, glass, twisted metal. Not as armor. As memories that could not be torn away.

Above them all, protected by an irregular bony structure, was a single massive red eye. It moved in spasms, dilating, assuming familiar shapes for fractions of a second, faces Leon had lost throughout his life. Each blink was silent and hurt more than any wound.

Chris was the first to raise his gun.

— What the hell…?

Leon didn’t answer.

The creature advanced. The floor trembled beneath its uneven weight. The lights flickered. The water rippled.

Chris fired. The bullets sank into the flesh and vanished as if swallowed.

Leon fired at the eye. The shot ricocheted off the bony plate, tearing away only a scrap of sewn fabric.

The monster roared. Two overlapping voices echoed down the corridor.

— You’re late…
— Again…

Leon felt his chest tighten. He didn’t retreat.

The creature struck the ground. The saturated structure didn’t explode.

It simply gave up.

The floor collapsed beneath Leon’s feet.

Chris lunged forward, reaching out on instinct.

— LEON!

Their fingers never touched.

Leon fell.

Below, there was only water. Deep, silent, swallowing weight, sound, and time. As he sank, the last reflection he saw was that enormous eye slowly moving above him.

Watching.

Chapter Text

Crimson Hill, USA | June 6th, 6:00 a.m.

Crimson Hill still gleamed that morning. The city breathed prosperity: storefronts shimmered under daylight, cars glided along well-kept avenues, and old facades, meticulously restored, displayed wealth without ostentation. Past and present coexisted in harmony, as if nothing could disturb that carefully constructed balance.

At the heart of the city, the church stood serene, its pale stone towers reflecting the sun. The bell had just finished ringing when something changed.

A mist began to seep from the temple’s doors.

It did not come all at once. First, a discreet veil, low to the ground, almost beautiful. Then thicker. Denser. Alive. It spread down the steps, flowed across the central square, infiltrated cafés, shops, and banks, erasing colors and warping sound. Within minutes, Crimson Hill began to vanish from the inside out, like a painting being washed away by rain.

People realized it too late.

Screams tore through the air. Voices calling names, pleas for help, cries cut short. The sound of tragedy rose through the streets and echoed between luxurious buildings now swallowed by oppressive white. The fog advanced toward the outskirts, patient, inevitable.

Above it all, the UTH-66 Blackfoot struggled to escape.

The military helicopter gained altitude with difficulty, its blades tearing through the mist in useless circles. The air felt too heavy, as if the city itself were trying to drag it back down. From above, the screams of the victims could still be heard, distant and diluted, yet far too human to ignore. A chorus of despair rising from a rich, vibrant city that minutes earlier had known no fear.

The pilot forced the controls, trying to flee that invisible epicenter. Below them, Crimson Hill disappeared beneath the fog born from the church, spreading like a sentence.

The UTH-66 Blackfoot shuddered in the air like a wounded animal, and beneath its metallic belly the man in black clung to the landing gear, gripping it with iron resolve. The wind tore at his long black coat, briefly revealing the rigid silhouette of a body built for confrontation. His young face remained far too calm for the situation, light hair whipping against dark sunglasses, as if all of this were merely an irritating inconvenience.

His right arm was not human. The metallic prosthetic, attached to his shoulder like a natural extension, creaked softly as it adjusted its grip. Internal pistons moved with precision, absorbing impact, keeping him anchored where an ordinary man would have fallen.

Inside the helicopter, a man in an old, worn suit struggled to keep his balance. The wrinkled fabric clung to his sweat-soaked body as he pointed a firearm downward through the open door. His eyes were wide, not only from the fear of falling, but from the presence that refused to let go of the helicopter.

— Let go!—  he shouted, his voice breaking. — Look at what’s happening down there! You condemned them all!— 

A shot rang out. The bullet scraped the fuselage.

The man in black lifted his face, fixing him with a cold half-smile.

— Condemned?—  he replied, almost amused. — Crimson Hill needed to wake up. Too much prosperity tends to make people comfortable. Blind.— 

Another shot. Closer.

— You brought this fog!—  the man in the suit yelled. — The church, the whole city… this is your doing!— 

Below them, the screams continued. A constant, muffled sound rising from streets now invisible beneath the encroaching white. The fog advanced like a tide, swallowing entire neighborhoods, erasing a wealthy city that until that morning believed itself safe.

The helicopter climbed a few more meters and then shook violently.

Ahead, Castle Dimitrescu emerged, immense and silent, planted on the island in the middle of the South Platte River like a monument to eternity. The fog did not touch it. Its stone towers cut into the sky like blades.

The impact came without warning.

The Blackfoot slammed into one of the castle’s towers. Metal screamed against stone. Sparks burst through the air. The helicopter lost control and began to spin, disoriented. The man in the suit was thrown against the side, his weapon slipping from his hands.

The man in black felt the force tear him from the landing gear.

For a suspended instant, his body was flung away, spinning through the air. The last image his eyes caught was the helicopter in flames, twisting against the gray sky, beginning its fall toward the condemned city.

Then the fog swallowed him.

Unknown

Cold was the first thing he felt.

A cold that did not come only from the air, but from the ground, the walls, the city itself.

Pain followed soon after.

He woke sprawled in a narrow alley, his body twisted at a wrong angle, as if he had been carelessly thrown there. He tried to move and the world spun, tearing a dry groan from his throat. His head throbbed. When he brought his hand to his forehead, his fingers came back stained with dark, still-warm blood, stark against the ice beginning to form around him.

— Easy… think…—  he murmured to no one, his voice trembling, strange to his own ears. His memories were not confused or scrambled. They simply did not exist. There was no childhood, no faces, not even the comforting idea of a name. An absolute, cruel void, like looking inside himself and finding only fog.

Bracing himself against the wall, he tried to stand. His left leg failed immediately, folding beneath his weight. He nearly fell again, but managed to steady himself with his left arm, breathing hard, his heart racing far too fast for an injured body.

Desperate, he did not wait for help. As he tried again to stand, his left leg gave out and he almost slammed face-first into the wall, barely recovering his balance by leaning on it with his left arm. As if things were not already bad enough, that was when he noticed something else.

His right arm was gone.

The shock did not come as a scream or immediate panic. It arrived late, silent. He stared at the shoulder beneath the torn fabric of his black coat. Where there should have been pain, there was only a clean absence. Healed. Too old to be recent. Too old to ignore.

— This… shouldn’t be like this,—  he whispered. — Should it?

The wind cut through the alley, carrying flecks of ice and a thick, almost aggressive silence. Unlit oriental lanterns swayed above, creaking as if resentful of still existing. That was when he truly began to see where he was.

On one of the walls, a peeling mural drew his attention. A white flower, long petals, painted with excessive care for such a forgotten place. Alstroemeria.

He did not know how he knew that name.

And that disturbed him.

The image felt out of place, almost offensive in that frozen setting, too alive for such a dead world. Looking at it brought a hollow sensation, a strange pressure in his chest, as if something important were always on the verge of being remembered… and never was.

Then logic asserted itself.

If there were no memories, he needed clues.

Wallet. ID. Anything.

He began rummaging through his pockets with desperate urgency, as if his life depended on it. He used only his left hand, fingers stiff with cold, tugging at fabric, ignoring the pain that insisted on tearing through his entire body. His head throbbed. His leg burned. None of it mattered.

He needed something.

Then he felt it.

A rigid object, hidden beneath the inner lining of his coat.

Time seemed to stop.

He pulled it free with almost solemn care, and when he saw it, a smile slipped out before he could stop it. An open, almost childish smile, completely out of place in that abandoned scene.

— Found you…—  he whispered, like someone discovering shelter in the middle of a storm.

The card was there, cold, real, and for the first time since waking in that alley, he felt he was not completely lost.

It was a corporate access badge. Surprisingly intact. The design was modern, cold, almost clinical. Matte black plastic, discreet metallic edges, and at the center, the symbol of Umbrella Corp. There was nothing comforting about it. It was a symbol meant to impose order.

Below the logo, a partially distorted photograph showed a man with a hard expression, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes, light hair slicked back with excessive rigor. The face felt familiar in an uncomfortable way, like staring at a delayed reflection.

Below that, a six-digit number.

231.93-6

A chill ran through him that had nothing to do with the cold.

The name sat just above the magnetic strip, printed with definitive firmness.

Albert Wesker.

He swallowed.

— Albert… Wesker,—  he repeated, testing the sound. — So that’s my name…

Saying it brought something unexpected. Not happiness. Not full relief. But a minimal calm, just enough to keep him standing. Knowing his own name, even without remembering anything else, felt like recovering an essential piece of a broken body.

Once he felt marginally steadier, Wesker decided to leave the alley.

Not out of courage, but because staying there felt worse.

He limped forward, dragging his foot across the uneven pavement, and then the city revealed itself. Or tried to. The fog was dense, milky, swallowing distance and deforming outlines, as if the space ahead had not fully decided what it was. Tall concrete buildings appeared and vanished within the oppressive white, modern frosted-glass facades standing alongside structures with Japanese aesthetics: minimalist lines, dark wood, flat roofs considered with accumulating ice.

Nothing seemed old. And yet, everything felt dead.

Store windows lit by cold lamps displayed motionless mannequins, their silhouettes cut by fog that crept even inside the shops. A thin layer of ice crystals coated plastic arms, faces, empty eyes that seemed to watch him cross the street. The silence was heavy, muffled by the fog, as if the city had been wrapped in dirty cotton.

In exterior planters, between concrete and metal, white alstroemerias stood frozen. Their rigid petals reflected the diffused streetlight glow, too beautiful for that setting, too dead to offer comfort. The fog coiled around them, low and insistent, as if the city itself breathed through that veil.

Wesker advanced a few more meters when something larger imposed itself on the fog.

A billboard.

Its metal structure rose like a rusted skeleton planted in the middle of the avenue, its supports groaning softly in the icy wind. Part of the canvas had torn, flapping irregularly, producing a dry crack that repeated at irritating intervals. Even so, the message remained legible.

White letters contrasted against the dark background, too clean for such an abandoned place. Beneath the phrase, occupying nearly the entire panel, was the city’s mascot.

The Serpent Herato.

The image depicted a stylized snake, long and elegant, coiled in on itself in an almost hypnotic pattern. Its scales were rendered in modern geometric shapes, and its narrow eyes carried a gleam that seemed to watch him, despite being nothing more than weathered paint. The slightly open mouth suggested not a welcome, but a promise. Or a warning.

Wesker stopped before the billboard.

He felt a strange tightness in his chest, something between recognition and revulsion. He did not remember the city. He remembered nothing. And yet, that serpent unsettled him immediately, as if it touched something buried too deep to reach.

— Crimson Hill…—  he murmured, reading the name softly.

Then there, stark against the surrounding darkness, stood a Thai restaurant. A simple sign swayed above the door: Six Corner Café

The lights were on.

Wesker’s heart quickened. For the first time since waking, he felt something like hope. He approached, limping less now, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

The bell above it chimed.

Empty.

Neatly arranged tables, aligned chairs, the cold smell of forgotten food in the air. No staff. No customers. Only the distant sound of static, now almost inaudible, as if it had already served its purpose.

Disappointment arrived quietly.

He sighed and walked to the back of the restaurant, where a large mirror occupied part of the wall. He stopped before it, observing himself carefully, like someone searching for clues in an unfamiliar face.

The reflection showed a young man with firm features, light hair falling slightly out of place. He wore elegant black clothing, too well-fitted for someone injured. Where his right arm should have been, there was only absence, clean and final. A fresh cut on his forehead stood out, already beginning to close, the skin knitting itself together with unsettling speed.

— So this is what I am…—  he murmured, studying himself.

Something, however, felt wrong. A persistent sense of incompleteness. He tilted his head, thoughtful, then smiled faintly, almost amused.

— Something’s missing.

He turned and walked through the dining area to a table near the window. A small metal plaque marked it as number 06. On it, beside an untouched plate of Pad Thai already beginning to freeze, rested a pair of dark sunglasses.

Wesker picked them up.

When he put them on, something clicked into place. Not a memory, but a posture. An immediate comfort, like slipping into a perfectly tailored mask. He returned to the mirror and smiled at his reflection.

— That’s better.—  he said, satisfied. — Much better!!!

Then he saw them, through the mirror’s reflection.

Watching him from the shadows were two small figures emerging from the fog, too still to be real. Their rigid masks caught the faint light: one pale, fixed in an unblinking smile; the other dark, hollow, staring without eyes.

They looked at each other in silence… and laughed, a low sound that did not belong to children’s voices.

The fog surged suddenly, swallowing them whole, leaving Wesker alone with the disturbing certainty that he was not truly alone.

Dante

The crack came from inside the house. It was not the sound of something breaking, but of giving way. As if something down below had finally decided to stop bearing the weight of existing. Alex felt it first, and Dante, too distracted by the battle against the pack, noticed only afterward.

The floor beneath Alex’s feet sank a full handspan, groaning low and long, a lament of old wood. For one unbearable second, everything froze. No gunfire. No growling. The entire room held its breath.

Dante felt the warning crawl up his spine.

— Alex, don’t…………………

The floor simply… opened.

There was no explosion. No violent impact. The planks folded inward like tired flesh, yielding in silence. A hand emerged from the darkness just below, deforming the floor as if it were damp, too soft to resist.

The fingers were thick, long, wrong. Pale skin gleamed under dark veins that pulsed slowly, methodically. They closed around Alex’s torso with cold precision, tightening without haste, as if the outcome were already known.

The air was ripped from his lungs.

The scream came out short, broken, almost swallowed by the house.

— DANTEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The hole widened.

Alex vanished downward in a muffled rain of wood, roots, dust, and red petals, pulled by the darkness as if the floor itself had decided to claim him. For a single instant, Dante saw part of the creature rise with the void: a torso far too large for that space, muscles compressing against beams, the face barely visible, distorted not by fury, but by calm.

Silence, broken only by the crackling of the house dying around them.

Dante stood at the edge of the hole, panting, blood dripping into the void, fingers gripping the weapon hard enough to hurt.

— …Damn it.

Dante did not hesitate.

He ignored the howls, the claws scraping the floor behind him, the hot stench of still-living bodies. He ran and leapt straight into the void.

The fall was short, brutal. He hit the lower floor rolling through debris, the impact vibrating through his bones. He rose in the same motion, already searching. The giant creature was already outside, dragging Alex’s body as if he were a rag doll. It stopped, as though something invisible had pulled its internal reins.

The creature’s neck cracked as it turned, bones grinding beneath hypertrophied muscles, and then the face revealed itself fully.

The snout was too long, drawn into a smile that belonged to no human emotion, serrated teeth exposed even with the mouth almost closed.

Golden eyes burned with ancient fever, large, deep, far too intelligent, reflecting Dante not as prey… but as memory.

The face seemed shaped by speed and hunger, features stretched, a jaw far too powerful for the skull, as if it had been forced to grow beyond what was allowed. Thick black fur sprouted in irregular patches, giving way to torn flesh and bulging veins that pulsed beneath the skin.

The tall, angular ears twitched, catching every ragged breath Dante took from a distance. For an eternal second, the monster merely watched him, motionless, savoring fear in silence.

Shadows appeared along the flanks of the house, first one, then several. Eyes glowing low, hungry. Bodies moving in waves, emerging from the fog like an organized swarm. They did not attack immediately. They surrounded.

They blocked the way.

Deep growls vibrated in the air, claws scraped the ground in unison, like a warning. A living, pulsing wall rose between Dante and the monster carrying Alex.

— Motherfuckers…—  Dante snarled, spinning the weapon in his hand, chest rising and falling too fast. — Come back here! Drop him! Or I swear I—— 

He took one step forward.

The creatures took two.

More appeared behind him, from the sides, from the rubble. There was no opening. No angle. Only teeth, muscle, and the cruel certainty that this was not a fight meant to be won.

Dante clenched his teeth until it hurt.

— ALEX!—  he shouted again, his voice failing for the first time.

Even so, Dante tried.

In the next instant, he charged, ignoring the pain, the blood, the fear grinding in his teeth. He forced his way through using only his fists and the sword-shaped key as a brutal club, crushing snouts, breaking jaws, hurling bodies against walls like sacks of meat. He only wanted to reach the Alpha. Just a few more steps. Just one more blow.

But it was impossible.

The pack closed around him with cruel precision.

They did not attack in chaos, but in order. They moved like a single organism, rotating claws and fangs, locking his arms, biting his legs, using their own weight to drive him back. Every advance was canceled by three bodies slamming into him. Every attempt to escape was sealed by embedded teeth and claws dug deep enough to hold, not kill.

They pinned him like a downed animal, forcing his arms behind him, pressing knees into his back, driving claws into flesh without yet tearing it. Dante fought, snarled, felt something inside him want to rise like lava… but it didn’t. Not now. They only held him there, immobile, punished to watch.

They did not want to take him down.

They wanted to keep him there.

Force him to stay and look…

The Alpha howled.

The howl was not loud. It was low, deep, vibrating through bone like an order too ancient to question. The response came in layers, echoes multiplying through the fog, unseen steps rearranging in the shadows. An obedient army breathing together.

The creatures restraining Dante adjusted their grip, not to hurt more, but to align his face. Claws under his chin. A sharp tug. He was forced to look.

Alex was still trapped in the colossal hand, his body hanging wrong, chest rising and falling in irregular spasms. His eyes opened with effort, glassy, fighting to remain in that world for a few more stolen seconds.

His lips moved.

No clear sound came out. Only air, blood, something too broken to be a word.

Even so, Dante understood.

— …find…—  Alex murmured, the voice felt more than heard. — …my little brother…— 

The tightness in Dante’s chest was immediate, brutal. A knot that did not scream or explode, only sank, heavy, final. He tried to move. Tried to answer. Tried to promise something.

The claws would not allow it.

The creature showed no haste.

The Alpha tilted its head slowly, as if weighing the moment, as if it wanted it to last. Golden fangs appeared as the mouth opened, too long, too curved, glistening wet in the diffuse light of the fog.

Dante felt his body panic before his mind did. Air vanished. Muscles burned as he thrashed against the claws holding him still. A sound tore from his throat, broken, useless, closer to a plea than a scream.

— No… no…—  The word repeated without strength, crushed by fear.

Alex noticed.

His eyes met Dante’s one last time. There was no terror there. Only a calm sadness, almost gentle, like an apology for something he had not chosen. His body relaxed slightly, surrendered.

The Alpha closed its jaws.

There was no spectacle. No fury. Only a dry, final motion, accompanied by a horribly simple crack, like something breaking exactly the way it had always been meant to break.

Dante’s world contracted.

Alex’s body went still in the creature’s hand, suddenly far too light. What made him Alex was no longer there. What remained was only dead weight, hanging without resistance.

Then Dante screamed.

An ugly, animal sound, ripped from a place with no name. The creatures around him reacted by tightening their grip, not to silence him, but to force him to keep looking. To make sure he understood. To ensure that image would never have the chance to fade.

The Alpha remained there for a few more seconds, savoring what it saw.

Its fangs, still stained with blood, spread into a crooked, almost satisfied smile. A dark rivulet slid from its jaw and dripped onto the cracked asphalt, mingling with the earth and roots tearing through the street. Its golden eyes never left Dante, attentive to every spasm, every broken sound escaping his chest. That fed it more than flesh.

It took a step forward.

Then the sound of a church bell rang in the distance.

The sound cut through the fog like an ancient blade, grave and absolute. The entire pack froze. Claws suspended midair. Jaws half open. All heads turned at once, in perfect synchrony, staring toward the direction of the invisible church.

The Alpha growled, low and irritated, a sound of deep frustration. For an instant, it seemed to consider disobeying. Then it yielded.

The Alpha moved away, carrying what remained of Alex with it. This small gesture gathered the pack, and one by one they withdrew, disappearing into the fog like shadows returned to the place they never should have left.

Dante was free, but he did not get up. He lay in the middle of the street overtaken by nature, surrounded by roots, leaves, and red flowers sprouting from the asphalt like open wounds. The world felt too distant to reach.

A single thought hammered his mind, heavy, inevitable: he could not protect anyone.

Not Leon, not Alex, and above all he had failed to protect Lott.

As a final punishment, the image came. The silhouettes of his mother and his twin brother as a child formed in the mist, in the same place the monsters had left. Both watched him in silence, as if reminding him of who he had always been. The weak boy hiding in the closet, listening to the world collapse outside, unable to come out, unable to save those he loved.

Dante cried then, in that moment of fragility. Tears fell slowly, hot, staining the petals of the red spider lily. The flowers did not recoil. They only absorbed the salt and the pain, trembling softly, as if they bloomed better from it. He clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms, but not even pain answered.

His voice came out low, broken, more a whisper than a sound. It was not directed at anyone. Perhaps at himself. Perhaps at something watching from the fog.

— Why…—  He swallowed hard, his throat burning. — Why am I so weak?

Chapter Text

Chris Redfield

The door shut behind them with a sharp snap, far too loud for a place so silent. To Chris, the sound echoed like a mistake. Like a decision that could no longer be undone.

The corridor ahead was drowned in darkness. There was no electricity, no human warmth, only the irregular flash of lightning slicing through the sky outside. With each flare, the interior of the mansion appeared for an instant and vanished again: stained antique carpets, wooden panels creaking on their own, shadows far too long, far too dense, as if they carried weight.

Chris advanced cautiously, but his mind was not fully there.

Piers.

Leaving him behind had been necessary. He knew that. Orders existed for a reason. And yet the thought refused to let go, pressing like a finger into an open wound. If something happened… if he had miscalculated… the fault would be his. Always his.

The wind howled outside, slipping through cracks in the tall windows. It carried a strange scent. It was not mold. Not just old wood.

It was burned.

Chris frowned. The smell scraped against his memory, stirring something he would rather keep buried. Footsteps on old floors. Fire consuming what should never have burned. Screams that never arrived in time.

He shot a quick glance at Leon, walking a few steps ahead. The agent looked tense, too attentive to the walls, to details, like someone searching for something only he could see. Chris didn’t like that. Not here. Not now.

Trust in the field was essential. And yet there was something about Leon that kept him constantly on edge. Maybe it was the poorly disguised grief. Maybe it was the unsettling sense that the man carried too many ghosts to not put the mission at risk.

Chris followed in silence.

The corridor felt… wrong.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the structure began to change. Not abruptly, but like a memory forcing itself over reality. The ceiling seemed higher. The walls wider. The details in the woodwork became far too familiar.

The wind outside carried night sounds. Dry leaves scraping. Branches striking the facade. A distant chorus of insects Chris remembered far too well.

The mansion was… coming back.

A chill ran down his spine.

— Do you hear that? — Leon asked suddenly, his voice low, laced with unease.

Chris hesitated for a moment. Yes, he heard it. The distant cracking. The whisper of wind crossing corridors that should no longer exist.

But he didn’t answer.

— No, — he lied flatly. — Keep moving.

Leon seemed to accept it, though doubt lingered on his face.

A few more steps, and Chris was certain.

The Spencer Mansion was there.

Not as he remembered it, but as something that had survived a fire. Recently burned furniture lingered at the edges of his vision, wood blackened, still exhaling imaginary heat. The smell of smoke was stronger now. Between cracks in the floor and baseboards, small scorched flowers appeared here and there. Proteas. Burned at the tips, yet stubbornly intact.

It made no sense.

Leon stopped for a moment, examining the wall. He muttered something to himself, words Chris couldn’t make out. The gesture caught his attention, but he said nothing. He simply observed, with the quiet suspicion of someone who constantly measured threats.

Then, without warning, the lights came on.

Not modern lights. Not fluorescent.

Old chandeliers along the walls flickered to life, yellowed bulbs blinking before stabilizing, casting a warm glow far too comforting. Exactly as he remembered.

Chris and Leon holstered their flashlights at the same time, the automatic motion of two veterans who knew when a tool was no longer needed.

Chris raised his weapon instinctively.

— Who turned this on? — he asked, his voice tense as he scanned the lit corridor.

No answer.

The light revealed everything with cruel clarity. The corridors were the same. The curves, the columns, the floor pattern. Only now they were scarred by fire. Blackened. Wounded. As if someone had chosen to destroy that place piece by piece.

Chris felt the weight of the past settle on his shoulders.

He knew that corridor.

Deep in his gut, the captain knew the mansion was not merely revealing itself. It was calling to him.

Farther ahead, the warm light revealed a new row of frames aligned along the wall. The frames were charred, the wood cracked by heat, as if they had been ripped hastily from a fire that never fully died. But it was the art within that truly seized his attention.

Chris slowed.

The canvases did not depict landscapes or aristocratic portraits, as they should have. They showed scenes of urban chaos: streets flooded by rain, abandoned cars, human silhouettes staggering between silent sirens. Bodies piled together, mouths open in silent screams, empty eyes staring nowhere.

Raccoon City.

Not as a historical record, but as a nightmare painted by someone who had been there and never truly left.

— This… — Chris murmured, his heart racing. — This wasn’t here before.

He moved along the row, each painting worse than the last, until he stopped before the final one.

The impact was immediate.

There, amid aggressive brushstrokes and burned colors, was him.

Or something wearing his face.

The figure was too large, deformed, exaggerated muscles tearing through its own skin, black veins spreading like roots. The military uniform seemed fused to the flesh, and the eyes, empty, reflected the same blind fury as the monsters he had fought his entire life. It wasn’t a hero. It wasn’t a man.

It was a weapon out of control.

Chris felt his chest tighten, his breath hitch for a moment. The fear that had always followed him, silent and patient, stood there exposed in paint and fire. The fear of losing himself. Of crossing the line and never coming back.

He turned his head, ready to question Leon, to demand an explanation.

But he stopped.

Leon stood a few steps back, frozen before another frame. His shoulders rigid, his gaze distant, as if staring at something Chris could not see. There was a strange tension in his posture, an almost painful focus. It didn’t look like surprise.

It looked like recognition.

Chris frowned.

Did he know? Had Leon been hiding something from the beginning? The sense of distrust returned with force. Maybe that place was showing different things to each of them. Maybe Leon understood more than he let on.

As if he had heard his thoughts, Leon turned slowly.

The look he gave Chris wasn’t frightened. Nor confused.

It was far too calm. Enigmatic.

— This isn’t the mansion anymore, — he said softly, almost respectfully. — It hasn’t been for a while.

The lights flickered above them, and for an instant Chris had the unsettling certainty that the entire corridor had tilted, as if agreeing.

The corridor opened into a wider hall, far too silent to be safe. The yellowed lights flickered one last time before stabilizing, casting long shadows over the darkened wooden floor. Chris took one step forward… then stopped.

Someone was kneeling ahead, back turned to them.

The figure was hunched over a body lying on the floor, its movements slow, mechanical, accompanied by a wet, rhythmic sound that made Chris’s stomach tighten. He didn’t need to see details. The scene itself was wrong enough. Too old. A buried memory rising again.

— Leon… — he murmured, raising his weapon.

The figure stopped.

Very slowly, it began to rise.

When it turned, the impact hit Chris like a dry punch to the chest.

It was him.

Not an imperfect copy. Not a distant reflection. The face was his, aged and hollow, stripped of any human trace. The eyes were dull, showing neither hunger nor rage. Only cold, automatic determination. A duty that never ends.

Chris stepped back instinctively.

— That… that’s not possible.

The creature took a step forward, and something began to change.

The body grew irregularly, as if something inside were forcing space. The right arm stretched, muscles swelling beyond their limit, tearing through the uniform fused to the flesh. The posture grew heavier, more brutal, every movement loaded with unnatural strength. The head tilted wrong, the neck thickening, losing any trace of humanity.

It was no longer just him.

It was what he had always feared becoming.

The floor cracked beneath the creature’s feet as it advanced again. Each step made the air vibrate. The walls began to darken, as if heat were rising from within them. A strong smell of burning wood filled the space, followed by the distant crackle of invisible flames.

Then the screams came.

At first muffled, almost unreal. Then far too clear to ignore.

— Captain…!
— Please, Captain, it’s us, don’t kill us!
— Brother, don’t do this, please!

Familiar voices. Voices he knew better than he wished.

His men.

Piers.

Chris closed his eyes for a brief second, teeth clenched, heart hammering against his ribs. When he opened them, the hall was no longer the same. Curtains burned along the sides, frames caught fire on the walls, and heat warped the air, distorting everything. The creature, him, kept advancing, indifferent to the flames, as if fire were just another battlefield.

— No… — Chris whispered, his voice breaking. — I didn’t leave you.

The monster didn’t respond.

It only raised its deformed arm, and in that gesture there was judgment. Not rage. Not hatred.

Condemnation.

And as the fire grew around him, Chris understood with cruel clarity: this was not an enemy to be defeated.

It was the weight of everything he carried.

The creature lunged.

The impact of the first step made the hall shudder, and Chris reacted on instinct. He and Leon fired at the same time, rhythmic shots, almost rehearsed, like so many times before. The gunfire echoed through the burning space, shattering wood, tearing chunks from the walls, but not from what advanced toward them. The bullets passed through the distorted flesh like memories tearing through a nightmare, leaving no real marks.

— It’s not working! — Leon shouted.

The monster answered only with another advance, faster, heavier. The deformed arm rose, cutting through fire and smoke.

— Run! — Chris ordered, his voice torn by heat and desperation.

But the warning came too late.

The floor beneath Leon’s feet gave way with a sharp crack, weakened by the fire devouring the mansion from within. The wood split like soaked paper, and the world simply vanished beneath him. Chris still reached out, fingers grasping only hot emptiness.

Leon fell.

Below, there was no floor. Only an impossible abyss, made of deep darkness, flames rising like hungry arms, and a thick fog that swallowed everything, erasing sound, shape, and distance. The echo of Leon’s scream was lost within it, fragmented, as if the place itself were devouring him.

Chris didn’t shout Leon’s name again.

The void below had already swallowed sound, light, any possible answer. The corridor felt narrower now, compressed by moisture and the weight of what still advanced.

Flames surrounded Chris on all sides. The corridor held no moisture anymore, only suffocating heat, cracking wood, and thick smoke that burned his lungs. The fire spread quickly, devouring what remained of the structure, painting everything in shades of orange and black.

The creature was still there.

Something inside Chris finally broke.

He screamed, a raw, torn sound, and pulled the trigger without thinking. Shot after shot echoed through the burning corridor, the weapon shaking in his hands as he emptied the magazine into the monster. There was no strategy. No calculation. Only rage. Guilt. Desperation. Each shot was a refusal to accept what had just happened.

The monster roared, the two voices overlapping in a distorted, fractured sound, like metal forced under extreme heat. The massive arm rose to shield itself, flesh crackling, while the eye contracted, retreating a few centimeters into the bony structure, disturbed by the fury charging toward it.

Chris stepped forward with the final shot.

Click.

The dry sound echoed far too loudly.

Silence.

The weapon was empty, and Chris felt strength leave his body.

He dropped to his knees first, then let the rest of his weight follow, sitting on the burning floor, the wood cracking beneath him. The gun slipped from his hand and hit the ground with a useless metallic clatter, sliding a few centimeters before stopping. Heat rose around him, suffocating, as if the place itself wanted to consume him too.

Chris lowered his head, and for a brief, cruel moment, the fire seemed to reflect everything he had lost.

The smoke thickened, burning his eyes. Flames licked the walls and ceiling, making the structure groan in protest. The fire cast broken, distorted shadows, turning the corridor into a pulsing hell.

Chris struggled to breathe.

For a moment, everything became noise and heat.

Then the soldier raised his head, to see if he had managed to kill the damned creature wearing his face. Instead, it burst through the fire in a brutal leap, tearing through the curtain of smoke like a living projectile. The deformed body charged straight at him, the monstrous arm raised, ready to crush him. There was no hesitation in that motion. No judgment.

Only an ending.

Chris didn’t have time to think about what to do. The impact came first.

A sharp gunshot cut through the air.

The bullet struck the creature dead center in the head, tearing fragments of flesh loose and hurling them into the flames. The monster let out a shrill, torn howl, staggered backward, and vanished into the fire, swallowed by the inferno as if hell itself had claimed it.

Chris blinked, trying to focus.

That’s when he saw them.

Piers emerged from the side, advancing steadily despite the heat, rifle still raised, smoke wrapping around his body like a veil. Beside him stood Leon, injured, covered in soot, but standing, his weapon lowered for a second longer than usual.

— Captain, we need to get out of here now, — Piers said, his voice firm and urgent. — This place is going to collapse.

Leon 

Leon came back to consciousness with a metallic taste in his mouth and cold clinging to his skin. He opened his eyes slowly and found the curved ceiling of a concrete tunnel above him, cracked and stained with dark veins of moisture. The lighting was nearly nonexistent, only a diffuse glow reflected by the stagnant water surrounding him. The air was heavy, saturated with mold, rust, and something far too old to identify.

With effort, he sat up. He was in a tunnel system that disturbingly resembled the sewers of Raccoon City. Rusted pipes ran along the walls, some ruptured, spilling constant trickles of water. The sound of dripping echoed without rhythm, spaced drops mixed with the slow slide of water through the narrow corridors. Bent grates blocked side passages, and corroded signs displayed numbers and arrows nearly erased by time.

The stagnant water reflected what little light there was like a filthy mirror. Among the sludge and debris, withered poppies floated lifelessly, dark petals breaking apart at the slightest movement, memories that refused to sink.

Leon blinked several times, trying to organize fragmented thoughts.

Where the hell was he?

There was no sign of the mansion, no trace of its sinister corridors. It was as if the place had swallowed him whole. Memory returned without warning, violent. The creature’s roar, the deformed arm rising, the brutal impact against the ground. Then the concrete giving way beneath his feet, the void opening as he fell. His stomach lurched and he vomited, the acidic taste mixing with metal.

After wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he struggled to his feet, silently thanking any random deity that nothing seemed broken. The relief didn’t last long. A heavier thought took hold.

Chris.

Leon’s stomach tightened as he remembered the last moment before the collapse. He had left him behind. Alone. With that thing.

— No… — he murmured, pressing the radio to his chest with too much force. — Chris, respond. Do you copy?

Only static answered. An aggressive hiss, cut by irregular crackles, like a breath trapped on the other side of the frequency. He tried another channel, adjusted the volume. Nothing.

— Captain… talk to me. Please. — His voice came out lower than he intended. — I’m in the tunnels. I have no idea how I ended up here.

Leon lowered the communicator, irritated, and took a step forward. His foot struck something too solid to be debris. He froze instantly, his body reacting before his mind.

It was a weapon.

A pistol lay partially submerged in the murky tunnel water. The matte black metal bore deep scratches, scars of battles that should no longer exist. The barrel caught distant flashes and returned them in sick reflections. The inscriptions on the side were worn, nearly erased by moisture, but still legible to him.

Ebony.

The air left his lungs.

— No… — the word came out weak, broken.

The water around it carried withered poppy petals, slowly spinning in lazy eddies. This wasn’t just impossible. It was cruel. The weapon belonged to someone Leon had loved in silence, someone he had buried in his memory to keep moving forward. Someone he had sworn was dead, lost forever in the fog. One of Dante’s twin guns.

A dull pain cut through his chest. He crouched with difficulty, fingers trembling as they hovered inches from Ebony. He didn’t touch it. As if contact might destroy the last lie keeping him upright.

Leon closed his eyes for a second, his face tight. If that weapon was here, then the past wasn’t buried.

Before he could steady himself, the world trembled.

It wasn’t an immediate collapse, but a deep shudder, as if something gigantic had moved beneath the tunnels. The water rippled, the poppies spun nervously, fragments of rust fell from the ceiling. Leon’s hand went to the gun by reflex, his body snapping into alert.

— Dante is already dead… but I need to survive. For both of us — he murmured.

He moved forward through the corridors, the dripping marking each step like an irregular metronome. The curved walls were coated in dark slime, veins of moisture slowly trickling down. The water reached his ankles, murky, carrying dissolved trash and withered petals trapped there like he was.

The weight of Dante’s gun wasn’t just in the improvised holster at his belt. It was lodged in his muscles, his bones, his memory. Every step made the metal strike his thigh, an insistent reminder. Ebony had never been light. In Leon’s hands, it felt denser, as if it carried something beyond steel and gunpowder.

He kept his hand away from it. He knew that if he touched it again, he might not be able to let go.

Farther ahead, human shapes floated in the water. Several bodies scattered along the tunnel, some leaning against the walls, others partially submerged. All wore the same gray-green uniform, heavy, stained by water and something older. The Umbrella symbol was still visible on some chests, crooked, worn. They weren’t soldiers or scientists. Just ordinary workers.

Between thick pipes and rusted valves, a simple metal door appeared, bearing a corroded sign: Authorized Personnel Only.

Leon pushed it open carefully. The room beyond was small and low, meant for cleaning and maintenance. A burst pipe in the ceiling spewed water nonstop, turning the floor into a shallow pool. Buckets floated, rags drifted like exhausted bodies, metal lockers stood open, contents scattered.

Among broken brooms and soaked boxes, toys floated in the dark water. Their presence was too strange to ignore, displaced, almost wrong. Plush animals with exaggerated shapes and faded colors drifted slowly, and despite the discomfort, something about them tightened Leon’s chest. They resembled the ones his parents had given him as a child, reminders of a simple, safe time that had no place here. Nostalgia came quietly, bringing warmth and unease in equal measure.

Leon looked away and approached a desk at the back. A simple corkboard still clung to the wall. A single paper was pinned there, partially protected from the water.

It was a note.

David King to Matthew Hallard.

Leon read in silence. The words spoke of termination, of hatred for working for Wesker, of certainty that Jill was telling the truth about missing children and a cult covering everything up. There was no proof, only conviction. At the end, David said he had left a gift. Something more than fear. He confessed, in a few lines, that Matthew had been the only reason he hesitated.

Leon closed his eyes for a moment, jaw clenched. The quiet confirmation that Umbrella was involved in this mission, and very likely in the children’s disappearance, made frustration rise like acid. It wasn’t just anger; it was exhaustion from seeing the same name rot everything it touched. Jill’s mention caught him off guard, a sharp shock in the middle of the chaos. If the past insisted on returning, now it came with too many faces and truths too dangerous to ignore.

He took a deep breath and followed a nearly submerged side access, the long flooded corridor swallowing his footsteps as constant dripping marked the time until another wider tunnel, where rusted walkways and a square opening revealed a second level. All he needed now was a ladder to reach the next floor and find out whether he was still in the mansion.

He had barely begun to search when he saw a child on the other side of the tunnel. Crouched, far too small for that place, rummaging through trash as if searching for something vital. The dark dress clung to her thin body, brown hair hanging heavy over her drawn face. There was an ancient weariness about her.

She pulled a plush toy from the debris. A dog with an exaggerated smile, eyes too large, colors too cheerful for that place.

— Hey… — Leon called gently.

The child stiffened, murmured something in Spanish, pointing toward the darkness behind him. Leon didn’t understand the words, but he understood the fear.

— Easy… I just need help. A ladder… anything to climb up.

The entire tunnel shook. The water rippled, the girl screamed and ran, disappearing into the shadows.

The ground vibrated again, now with deliberate impact. Dead poppy petals floated to the surface, crushed against the walls. The water began to move against the current. From the walls oozed a thick liquid, and the dripping sound mixed with another noise, wet and deep, like flesh being forced through impossible spaces.

Leon’s hand went to Ebony. The cold metal anchored his fingers.

The wall behind him exploded in concrete, rust, and water. Something colossal forced its way through. The creature that emerged was a misshapen mass of flesh and limbs, swollen and irregular, as if forcibly molded from incompatible nightmares. Its bluish body was enormous, supported by legs far too short for the weight they bore. The flesh looked waterlogged, bloated, hanging in heavy folds that dragged through the flooded floor. Parts of it resembled a deformed human; others looked like melted toys, with wrong proportions and joints where none should exist.

The face had no fixed form. The head seemed split in half, opening into thick slabs of flesh that parted like a grotesque, wet, pulsing flower. There were no visible eyes, only closed grooves that contracted nervously, like living scars reacting to the environment. At the center of that opening, inner layers were exposed, revealing circular rows of long, irregular teeth, some broken, others still growing, all bathed in thick saliva that dripped in viscous strands. The tongue was not singular, but multiple fleshy extensions twisting independently, probing the air as if searching for something lost.

When the creature roared, the flesh-flower opened wider, exposing its pulsing interior. The sound wasn’t just rage. It was pain. It was pleading. A muffled lament of something that had never stopped wanting to be accepted.

And then Leon saw what was inside its mouth.

Trapped among teeth and pulsating mass was a partially exposed human body. The bare torso, pale and marked, fused to the creature’s flesh as if being slowly absorbed. The face, twisted by pain and hatred, eyes locked onto Leon with cruel clarity.

It was Dante.

Leon froze. It wasn’t fear or instinct. It was recognition. A blunt impact to the chest, as if the air had been ripped away. Everything else vanished. Only those eyes remained.

— …no — he whispered.

The hand holding Ebony trembled. The weight of the weapon became crushing. The creature advanced, its jaw grinding. The sound it made wasn’t a roar.

It was voices. Three of them. Overlapping, speaking in chorus.

— You left…
— You abandoned us…
— You promised you’d come back…

Dante’s voice was there, far too clear. The others were muffled, far too familiar.

— We called out…
— You heard us…
— And you still turned your back.

The creature drew closer, inevitable. Inside the open mouth, Dante’s face twisted, eyes full of accusation.

— Again, Leon… — the three voices said together. — You always leave… Why do you always abandon us?

Leon gripped Ebony tightly, the metal biting into his palm, as the chorus echoed through the tunnel, driving the guilt ever deeper.

Chapter Text

Dante

Dante pushed open the basement door and stepped into the ravaged garden like a man climbing out of his own grave.

Red flowers swayed around his boots, too vivid beneath the pale daylight, their petals almost pulsing against the gray sky. The fog drifted in thin veils across the garden, illuminated by the muted sun overhead. The guilt that had driven him to his knees minutes earlier had been buried with the silence. In its place, something sharper had taken root.

Determination.

He adjusted his new clothes. Olive tactical pants with side pockets and built in knee pads hugged his legs. Black combat boots with thick soles, already scarred with dried mud. A black short sleeved tactical shirt clung to his shoulders and arms, forearms exposed, muscle clearly defined as if strength were meant to be seen. Reinforced tactical gloves shielded his hands, ready to grip steel or crush bone.

Two magnums rested in crossed chest holsters, cold and promising. On his back, strapped with torn pieces of an old backpack, hung the most improbable weapon in that hellscape, an enormous sword shaped key, heavy, disproportionate, absurd. The angular hilt rose over his shoulder like a symbol that did not belong to that world.

He rolled his shoulders, testing the weight.
— Hm. Not bad. 

The garden lay in ruins. The house behind him, mutilated. The shattered painting of the winged woman revealing the cult’s symbol above the fireplace still burned in his memory. For some reason that frame seemed to mock him for failing to protect Lott, for failing to save Alex, for abandoning Leon.

He stood still for a moment, breathing in air that smelled of wet earth and rust. The wind stirred the flowers at his feet, whispering words he could not hear.

The raw guilt was still there, but compressed. Forged into something keener.

He crushed the empty soup can in one hand and tossed it into the red spider lilies. Then he cracked his neck and flashed an arrogant smile as distant howls rolled through the fog.

— All right. Break’s over.

His eyes, cold and focused, fixed on the shrouded city.
— Rested enough. Time to work.

He stepped into the mist like a man entering enemy territory. Because he was.

The fog parted reluctantly before him. His boots crushed red petals into fresh stains. The giant key swayed against his back, metal striking the magnums in a steady rhythm. Solid. Tangible. Real.

Unlike the city.

A sharp crack above.

He did not need to look to know he was not alone. Shadows moved across crooked rooftops. Claws scraped tile. Harsh breathing cut through the quiet. When he finally raised his eyes, pairs of yellow irises glowed in the haze, motionless and calculating.

Watching.

— You again,—  he muttered, never slowing.

They followed him from above, leaping from house to house with unsettling coordination, as if sharing a single mind. Not attacking. Not yet. Just herding him.

In the distance, beyond warped buildings and skeletal trees, the silhouette of Castle Dimitrescu rose like a black blade through the fog. He needed to get there.

But first…

He glanced toward a reinforced gate bearing the Umbrella symbol. Rusted. Locked. Warning signs creaked in the wind.

DO NOT ENTER.

That kind of warning had never worked on him.

A shiver ran down his spine. Not fear. Instinct. Something was inside. Not just locked away. Guarded.

A low growl rumbled behind him. Another to his left. The circle tightened.

He exhaled and reached for his gun.
— I was going to knock first.

The first creature dropped from a roof in splintering wood and snapping jaws. Dante twisted at the last second. The impact gouged the ground where he had stood. The massive key was already in his hands.

He swung.

Metal met skull with a wet, hollow crack. Bone gave. The body slammed into a pole and collapsed among the red flowers.

That was the signal.

Wolves descended from every side. Roofs shattered. Windows burst. Claws scraped brick.

Yellow eyes everywhere.

Dante drew one magnum. The shot thundered through the street. A creature mid leap was torn from the air. Another lunged from the right. He crushed its arm with the key and kicked it into a wall smothered in flowers.

This was not chaos. They were pushing him. Steering him. Keeping him from the gate.

He reloaded with a sharp motion.
— So that’s it. There’s something back there you don’t want me to see.— 

Then a scream cut through the fog.

— Help! Someone, please!

He stopped. Trap or not, the city lied too often to care. He glanced once at the gate, then toward the desperate voice.

— Great. Here goes the hero complex again.

He ran.

Around the corner, a young girl with disheveled black hair and tear reddened eyes struggled to support an elderly man soaked in blood. Three creatures circled them, low and hungry.

— Well, well. Right on time for dessert.

A shot shattered the nearest skull. The second leapt. Dante caught it by the jaw mid air and twisted until its neck snapped, hurling it into a rotting fence. The third tried to retreat, but the spinning key crushed its ribs and slammed it into the dirt.

Silence.

The girl stared at him, breathing hard. Sixteen at most. Pale skin, straight black hair to her chest, blunt bangs framing her face. A worn orange vest over a white tank top, dark green skirt, sturdy boots caked in mud. There was fear in her eyes, but also stubborn resolve.

— You… you can’t be human,—  she whispered.

— Not the time to be picky,—  Dante replied.

The old man coughed blood. — He smells of hell. Do not trust him. The Mother judges us. We must accept her call.

Dante rolled his eyes and retrieved the key. The man was wrinkled, gray bearded, clutching his bleeding side with trembling hands.

—You can’t even lift your arms without wheezing, but you’ve still got the energy to preach. Face it, old man… you’re only still breathing because neither God nor the Devil wants your soul cluttering up their doorstep.

Before her grandfather could spit out a reply, the girl stepped in front of him, voice shaking but firm.

—There are other survivors, but they’re hiding in Dahlia’s house! She locked the gate! No matter how much I knock, she won’t open it! We’re trapped out here with these… things!

Dante glanced toward the large estate at the end of the street, its iron gates sealed tight, windows dark but intact behind high stone walls.

—Of course,—  he muttered. —The rich locked up in their big house, probably sipping wine while the rest of us audition for the apocalypse outside the fence. Class solidarity at its finest.

The old man snorted despite the blood on his lips.

—You talk too much.— he rasped. —And you sound like a damn communist.

Dante gave him a sideways look.

—Relax, grandpa. I’m an equal-opportunity disappointment.

Dante rolled his shoulders and glanced back at the iron gate.

— Tell you what,—  he said dryly. — We’d better get that thing open before a few more furry friends decide to drop by for round two.

Despite the old man’s irritated protests, Dante bent down, hooked an arm under him, and hauled him upright with effortless strength. The movement was almost casual, like lifting a sack of flour instead of a bleeding body.

—Put me down, you communist demon.—  the old man growled. — What do you think you can do that we haven’t already tried?— 

Dante smirked.

— Climb.

He set the old man gently against the wall, then stepped back, studying the tall iron gate and the moss-covered stone surrounding it. Without another word, he sprinted forward, boot hitting the wall, fingers catching the top edge. In one fluid motion he pulled himself up and over, disappearing to the other side.

A second later there was the scrape of metal, the heavy clank of bolts shifting.

The gate creaked open from within.

Dante stood there with an exaggerated, triumphant grin.

— Turns out,—  he said lightly, — gravity’s optional.

The old man shuffled forward, unimpressed.

— Took you long enough, didn’t it? What were you doing up there, knitting?

Dante rolled his eyes so hard it almost looked like a stretch.

— Unbelievable. —  he muttered, dusting off his gloves. — You get dragged out of a wolf buffet, carried to safety, and you’re still running your mouth. You must be exhausting at family dinners.

He glanced at the granddaughter, then back at the old man with a crooked smirk.

— I’ve met demons with better bedside manners. At least they wait until after they try to kill you to start whining.

They crossed the courtyard in tense silence, boots grinding over gravel and fallen petals. The mansion loomed ahead, all dark wood and shuttered windows, too intact for a world that was falling apart.

Dante didn’t bother knocking gently. His fist hit the heavy wooden door with three solid thuds that echoed through the entry hall.

Locks shifted. Bolts scraped.

The door opened just enough to reveal an older woman with sharp gray eyes and silver hair pulled into a severe bun. She assessed them the way someone inspects produce. Carefully. Critically. Ready to reject.

Beside her stood a teenage boy, maybe sixteen. His clothes were modern, urban, the kind that looked like they belonged under city streetlights, not in a collapsing small town swallowed by fog. Black ripped jeans. Combat boots scuffed at the toes. A faded band T-shirt under a worn leather jacket dotted with mismatched pins. Dark eyeliner framed sharp, watchful eyes. The sides of his head were shaved clean, the longer strip of hair on top pushed back in careless defiance.

He didn’t blink.

— You should be careful with strangers, Grandma,—  he said evenly, chin tilting toward Dante. — That one doesn’t look human.

Dante let his gaze travel slowly from the boots to the eyeliner.

— Funny,—  he replied, voice calm and edged. — I was about to say the same thing.

His smirk deepened slightly.

— With that punk funeral-chic thing you’ve got going on, I’m guessing you get shoved into lockers a lot.

In the distance, a howl split the air.

Leon

Leon didn’t move.

For a moment that stretched longer than it was safe, he simply stood there, staring into the open mouth of the creature. The world around him lost shape, sound, and weight. All that existed were those eyes trapped in pulsing flesh. Dante’s eyes. There was no fury in them. Only something worse. Disappointment. An intimate recognition, as if this were the last place Leon should have been.

The air vibrated with the creature’s damp breathing. Its bluish, deformed hand began to rise, thick fingers spreading at wrong angles, bones cracking beneath soaked skin. It reached for him slowly, certain he would not run this time.

— Leon!

The shout came from above, distant, tearing through the haze like a gunshot. A human voice. Alive. Desperate.

— RUN!!!!!!!!!!

Leon’s body reacted before his mind did. Muscles tightened on instinct, the weight of Ebony pulling his arm back as he pivoted. When the creature suddenly lunged, its warped blue hand slicing through the space where he had stood a second earlier, Leon was already moving.

He ran.

Not by choice. Not out of courage. But because stopping meant being caught. Because staying meant accepting it. His footsteps echoed through the tunnel as the ground trembled behind him, the creature charging with renewed violence, crushing concrete and water beneath its weight, determined not to let him escape again.

The floor shook, not from a single impact but from a series of uneven blows, as if the creature were still learning how to use its own body while advancing. The colossal mass hurled itself forward, dragging flesh, concrete, and metal through the narrow tunnel. Sewer water exploded into filthy waves, slamming debris against the walls. Leon didn’t think. His body moved before thought could catch up.

He ran.

His boots splashed through thick liquid too dark to reflect anything. As he pushed forward, the tunnel seemed to narrow, the ceiling lowering, as if the space itself were compressing around him. The darkness was not just the absence of light. It was dense, heavy, almost tangible, like scentless smoke.

Behind him, the creature moved violently and erratically. It did not run in a straight line. It hurled its own body against the walls, ricocheted, crushed side pipes, advanced in brutal jolts. Limbs bent at impossible angles, relying on brute force rather than coordination. Each impact came with a deep, wet sound, flesh forced through spaces that should not contain it.

Leon rounded a sharp corner and nearly stumbled.

Something floated ahead.

A body.

The police uniform was waterlogged, fabric clinging to pale skin. The badge still hung from the chest, dull, swaying slowly. The face was unrecognizable at first… until Leon saw the name stitched onto the vest.

— …no…—  he murmured, not slowing down.

Another body drifted past. Then another. Some were caught in side grates, arms extended as if still trying to hold on. Colleagues. Men he had shared shifts, hallways, impossible decisions with. Raccoon City had not buried its dead. It had simply pushed them beneath the city, where they continued to drift.

The tunnel darkened further.

The water lost all remaining shine. The air grew thick, suffocating, and a low mist formed along the ground, mixing with the hot vapor from ruptured pipes. The walls faded into shadow, leaving only the oppressive sensation of running inside something alive. Each footstep echoed wrong, delayed, as if the sound were being swallowed.

— Leon…—  the voice came from behind, dragged and false.

It was Dante.

Or something wearing his voice.

— I died there…—  said the figure trapped within the creature’s mass, words blending with the sound of shifting flesh. — Alone. Calling for you. 

Leon clenched his teeth and forced himself forward.

The tunnel opened into a wider gallery, partially collapsed. To the right, a massive gas pipe cut across the space, held up by rusted supports. The tubing was warped, cracked in places, leaking invisible gas that distorted the air around it. The flammable symbol was still visible, painted in faded red.

The creature advanced with a distorted roar.

Its immense weight bent one of the pipe’s supports. Metal screamed under pressure. The tubing sagged a few inches, groaning ominously as the leak intensified, spreading a dry, biting smell through the air.

Leon slipped, bracing a hand against the slick wall, feeling the heat of the creature’s breath at his back.

— You ran…—  the false voice continued, now far too close. — Like always.

Still moving, Leon turned and raised Ebony.

He did not aim at the creature.

He aimed at the pipe.

The shot cracked through the tunnel like caged thunder. The first bullet sparked. The second pierced the warped metal, and the explosion that followed tore through the passage like imprisoned lightning. The creature’s head and front limbs were shredded in a burst of white fire, flesh and steel merging in incandescent chaos. The shockwave hurled Leon to the ground, ripping the air from his lungs as heat sliced through the space.

For a moment, there was only fire.

As the light began to fade, Leon realized with a knot in his stomach that it wasn’t over. What remained of the creature, charred and incomplete, still moved. The mutilated torso dragged itself with impossible effort, claws scraping across melted concrete, pulling back toward the darkness like something unwilling to accept its own end. Within seconds, it vanished, taking with it the last echoes of that voice that sounded like Dante… now broken, fragmented, almost unrecognizable.

Leon stayed on his knees, breathing hard.

His body ached. His lungs burned. But he was alive.

He looked down at Ebony in his hand. The gun still smoked, hot, heavy as a verdict. The metal seemed to anchor him to the present, keeping him from being dragged away with the dead.

— Damn…—  he muttered, anger leaking into his low voice. — Still protecting me… even when I don’t deserve it.

He snapped out of his haze when he heard someone shouting above him.

— Hey!—  the same voice that had told him to run called out. — You got real lucky down there!

Before Leon could react, something heavy dropped beside him with a metallic crash. An industrial ladder landed upright, steady, echoing through the tunnel like an unlikely promise.

Leon didn’t hesitate. He holstered Ebony and started climbing. Each rung made his muscles protest, but the thought of staying below was unbearable. When he emerged onto the upper level of the sewer, he was met with drier air, still tinged with smoke but breathable.

Leaning against the railing stood a tall man, posture far too relaxed for the setting. He wore worn tactical gear, open at the chest, as if danger were just another daily inconvenience. Dark hair fell messily around a face marked by soot and fatigue, yet a crooked smile lingered on his lips, out of place in the inferno below. In his eyes was something familiar: irony sharpened by survival.

— You always walk into places that explode?—  he asked, sizing Leon up. — Because, man… this city already has enough ways to kill someone.

Leon drew a careful breath before answering.

— Who are you?

The man shrugged and extended his hand casually. Leon took it without enthusiasm.

— Carlos Oliveira.—  The smile softened slightly. — Always glad to find another survivor in this winter. Especially one this attractive.

Leon dropped his hand a little too quickly, as if the contact had lasted longer than acceptable. He wiped his palm against his soot-stained pants and turned, already assessing the exits.

— If you’re done talking, we need to move. Fast,—  he said flatly. — The creature’s still alive. It could come back anytime.

Carlos raised an amused eyebrow, watching Leon move like a cornered animal determined not to bleed in public.

— Relax, handsome. Mors won’t regenerate that fast,—  he said with that half-smile that refused to fade. — You’re officially the only person I’ve seen face that thing head-on and walk away.

Leon stopped.

He turned slowly, gaze hard.

— What ????

— Mors,—  Carlos repeated, leaning against the railing as if discussing the weather. — The thing down there. The blue nightmare you just blew up.— 

Leon frowned.

— Who said that’s its name?

Carlos shrugged.

— No one knows for sure. That’s just what people call it. Or called it, when they were still alive.—  He tilted his head, studying Leon. — So, are you married? Or seeing someone?

Leon opened his mouth, indignant.

— You can’t be seri…….

— Before that.—  Carlos cut in, raising a finger. — You still haven’t told me your name.

Silence stretched a second too long.

Leon exhaled, visibly irritated, as if even this were an unacceptable delay.

— Leon,—  he replied without enthusiasm. — Leon Kennedy.

Carlos let out a low whistle.

— Nice name. Fits a guy who just walked through hell and looks ready to punch the next person who breathes wrong.

Leon didn’t respond. He simply started walking again.

Carlos followed easily.

— By the way…—  he exaggerated a sniff. — Man, you smell like burnt crap. No offense.

Leon shot him a glare.

— I don’t have time for jokes.

— Not a joke,—  Carlos said with a crooked laugh. — There’s a place up there. Safe enough. You can shower, change, get some rest.— 

— I’m not resting,—  Leon shot back immediately. — I have a mission to finish.— 

Carlos stepped ahead, now walking backward, facing him shamelessly.

— In Crimson Hill, partner, we’ve got two things in abundance,—  he said, voice low and provocative. — Trouble… and time.

Leon stopped abruptly.

— You said we’re in Crimson Hill?