Two figures materialized at the center of Golden Gate Town, a place once teeming with life, now eerily silent one again. The wind was still, and the stench of death hung in the air like a suffocating shroud.
Asher's eyes darted around in terror. The silence wasn't just unsettling—it was wrong. The absence of sound screamed louder than any battle cry. What lay before him was too familiar. The same death he'd seen at Silver Hill… but worse. Homes reduced to smoldering ash, skeletal remains littered the roads, and the charred remains of mothers clinging to their children blackened the gutters.
An entire town wiped from existence.
Asher swallowed the bile rising in his throat. "This… this is evil."
Beside him, Jeremy stood still, his porcelain-like face unnaturally pale. The grief of losing their friend Ezekiel weighed heavily on him, dark circles bruising his eyes, his lips trembling as he tried to compose himself.
"What's done is done," Jeremy muttered, his voice low but laced with desperation. "We need to move. The longer we stay here, the higher the chances of something horrific happening again. I've already lost Ezekiel—I can't lose you too. I'll go insane."
Jeremy's voice cracked. His pain was raw and exposed, the grief eating into him like acid. Ezekiel's death wasn't just another loss—it was the destruction of the only light that kept him sane in this spiraling nightmare. And yet, what was that pain compared to what Asher had witnessed?
Asher had watched Zeke burn. Flesh melting from bone. Screaming his name. And just like before, Zeke had sacrificed himself—for him.
Again.
And it wasn't even the first time.
"Okay," Asher nodded slowly. "You're right. But we haven't destroyed the Book—the damn thing still exists. As long as it's intact, these nightmares will keep crawling out of Hell."
He glanced around again at the wreckage. "God knows what's next…"
He was tired. So damn tired. Of fighting, running, bleeding. Tired of these monsters clawing their way into their lives like predators in a feeding frenzy. Why couldn't the world just live without devouring itself?
Asher sighed, lost in his thoughts when Jeremy suddenly gripped his hand.
"We're not alone," Jeremy said, his voice shaking. "Look."
They both stared in horror as they noticed the corpses—lined up. Deliberately.
Not just dumped or forgotten. Arranged.
Bodies twisted into grotesque shapes, intestines torn out and draped like garlands over lamp posts, limbs bent and snapped like matchsticks. The victims' eyes were bulging out of their skulls, some still barely attached by sinewy threads of flesh, others completely gouged out, crammed into their own mouths. One child had its mouth sewn shut, eyes wide with a scream forever frozen in time.
Jeremy staggered back, bile rising fast.
"I—I can't—" He broke from Asher's grasp and rushed to the nearest sewage drain, doubling over and vomiting violently, retching for minutes as the horror settled in his gut.
Asher didn't speak. There was nothing to say. Even the air was poisonous.
No signs of life. No survivors. This devastation was spreading faster than anyone had imagined. If no one stepped in—if the government, or some divine force, didn't intervene—humanity itself would be erased.
Suddenly, Jeremy stumbled back, his foot landing on something uneven. He blinked, looked down—and screamed.
It was a foot.
But not a human one. A massive, gnarled abomination. Fleshy, greyish-blue with claws the size of butcher knives. It wasn't just lying there—it was embedded in the ground, as if something immense had walked straight through the town.
"What the hell is this?" Jeremy cried out, voice tight with dread.
He followed the trail with his eyes—it stretched on for miles, cutting through trees and wreckage, leading directly toward Paradise High.
"Asher… come and look."
Asher did. And he froze.
They weren't prepared for this. They weren't ready for any of this. First the Leviathan. Then the dragons. Now this… creature. Whatever it was, it wasn't just a monster. It was something older. Something wrong.
Then came the sound.
A low growl. Wet, guttural, and close.
Asher's blood went cold.
Jeremy looked at him in confusion. "What is it?"
"I… I don't know. But something's coming."
Jeremy moved to grab Asher's hand—when suddenly a claw burst from the ground, wrapping around his ankle like a vice. Jeremy shrieked as it dragged him toward the earth, the soil opening like a hungry mouth to swallow him whole.
"JEREMY!" Asher turned, face contorted with horror.
With a roar of rage, he summoned fire, the blaze so hot it singed the air. He launched it at the claw, and it melted instantly, the flames erupting across the ground and splitting it apart. Jeremy dropped free, gasping and bleeding from the shredded mess that was once his foot.
Asher rushed to him, holding him tightly as he stumbled back, heart pounding.
But the ground didn't stop trembling.
Instead, it began to shift. Something massive was pushing up from below. Cracks split the earth, and from the center of that hellish rift, a figure began to rise.
Its body was broken. Flesh peeled away in strips, exposing bone, muscle, and pus-soaked veins. The scent was unbearable—rotting meat, sulfur, and something unholy. Yet despite the decay, the face slowly began to reform.
Asher's eyes widened.
No. No—it couldn't be.
"Lamia!" he screamed, nearly choking on the name.
Jeremy's eyes went wide with disbelief. "H-How… he died… you saw it!"
But Asher already knew. Deep down, he knew. Lamia wasn't just immortal—he was something else, something darker. He'd never truly died. And now, whatever shared his body—whatever ancient force—was back too.
Asher's breath hitched. They couldn't win this.
They were just two broken boys against something eternal.
Jeremy stumbled backward. His body trembling, he nearly collapsed from the weight of fear.
"W-What are we going to do?" he whispered. "How do you kill something that can't die?"
Lamia stood tall now, bones cracking into place, eyes glowing with otherworldly malice. His voice was a hiss, dripping with venom.
"Why don't we finish this once and for all, babies?" he cooed mockingly, stretching his arms as the wind howled around them.
Suddenly, the Book of Shadows burst from the ground, pages fluttering like wings as it flew directly into Lamia's waiting hand.
He smiled.
A slow, soul-chilling smile that promised pain.
"I'm back, darlings," Lamia purred. "And this time, it's personal."
The air around them turned black—inky and choking—as the sky itself seemed to bleed.