– LUNA HELEN

  After Erick and I were assigned a room, I went straight to the bathroom. I had no idea how filthy I was until I saw my reflection. There was dried blood all over my body—on both my clothes and my skin. It was hard to believe that none of it was mine… but someone else’s.

  Even after scrubbing myself several times, I still felt as if the blood was there, stuck to me, covering everything. As if it had somehow seeped into me.

  After my parents died, I thought nothing else could ever shake me like that.

  How foolish I was.

  When I finished, I put on the clothes provided by the facility and went back to the room. Erick was sitting on the edge of the bed. His face was worn, his shoulders heavy. It was as if something invisible were crushing him from the inside.

  I sat beside him. This time, there were no words. No sentence could ease the weight of what we had been through. So we just stayed there, side by side, breathing at the same rhythm, trapped in silence.

  After a while, he stood up and went to the other bed. I simply let myself fall backward, sinking into the soft mattress. My body gave up right then and there.

  I passed out instantly.

  I woke up eighteen hours later to the sound of the doorbell. Erick was at the door talking to someone—it was Dr. Helena. She said she needed to speak with us and examine us as well. We agreed to meet her in two hours, at her laboratory.

  As soon as she left, the two of us practically attacked the refrigerator. We were starving. I couldn’t stand those tasteless synthetic meals Mr. Davis had given us anymore.

  But there… there was real food. Sweets, meat, fruit. I ate a bit of everything until my stomach finally felt satisfied.

  After that, we sat down to talk. I asked something that had been stuck in my throat since the day everything happened:how Erick was feeling… and how much he remembered.

  — ERICK HELEN

  I knew this moment would come.

  I took a deep breath before I started talking. I explained to Luna how I truly felt after I woke up that day: the whispers in my head, the absurd sensation that my body was no longer mine. As if something were taking possession of me from the inside, twisting my thoughts, manipulating my emotions.

  The more I panicked, the more it dominated me. It was like sinking into an emotional swamp. I fought against my own mind… and lost.

  It was only after you—Luna—put me to sleep that I realized.

  That thing fedon my deepest feelings.

  So I tried to do the opposite. I shut myself off. I disconnected. I became cold and apathetic. Not because I wanted to, but because it was the only way to slow its influence.

  It was like building a fortress inside myself, while something kept pounding on the outside, trying to get in.

  And even so… sometimes I feel like there’s still a door open.

  — I see… and when Saklas did that to you?

  — I can’t really explain it. When the golden threads came into contact with me, I felt it… I saw things I still don’t understand: conflicts, deaths, red and gold mixing together.

  I felt—and I still feel—that conflict inside me, one crashing against the other, using my body as a battlefield.

  But in the middle of all that, I awakened.

  I just don’t feel like everything is under control yet.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  — LUNA HELEN

  I stayed there, watching my brother—my little brother—go through things I could never have imagined. I felt powerless, insignificant. How could we, as humans, deal with this? How could I, as the older sister, allow myself to fail in the face of unimaginable forces…?

  And once again, I didn’t know what to say. I just hugged him, murmuring words that even I doubted.

  — Don’t worry… everything will be okay.

  I tried to smile, but I didn’t have the strength to put on that mask. Not in front of him. Not in front of my brother.

  We didn’t cry. We didn’t scream. There was only silence between us…Until that silence was broken once more, as if the world wouldn’t allow mere humans to have a moment just for themselves.

  It was time to meet Dr. Helen.

  – DR. HELENA RHOADS

  The siblings had just arrived. After examining Mr. Davis’s platoon—hardened men who could barely hold their own gaze—it was their turn. And, to be honest, they were the two I most wanted to see.I needed to gather as much data as possible before finally facing the specimen… now called Saklas.

  They were tense—and the boy, especially, seemed withdrawn. It was only the second time he had seen me, but I already knew him well. He was one of those we had to place in a coma. And now there he was, standing, lucid… and apparently healthy.According to soldier and drone records, everyone who had awakened from the coma had suffered some form of mutation or degradation.So how? How was he like this?What was this boy hiding inside himself?

  There were still several people in comas—fortunately unaffected by the system failure. And the girl… how many incidents had she already witnessed and survived? I truly didn’t know whether that was luck or a curse.

  I began the physical examination. The boy was, surprisingly, fine. The girl, on the other hand… had injuries scattered across her body. Cuts on her neck, scratches on her legs, and exhaustion written all over her face. After assessing them, I prescribed some medication to aid their recovery. I also collected blood samples from both of them—I needed to know if there was anything different about them.

  Then I asked them to tell me what had happened.

  The girl began. Her story was a mosaic of poorly stitched lies. The drone beside me analyzed heart rate, body language, and hormonal levels. Everything screamed “lies.”

  The boy, on the other hand, seemed genuinely confused, as if he wasn’t sure of what he was saying. He said he woke up injured and needed his sister to push him in a wheelchair. He claimed they heard an elevator malfunction, fell to the fourth floor, and found Saklas there—naked and disoriented. Then they supposedly followed him until they found another elevator.The story was full of holes.

  Then it was my turn to speak. And I wanted to test something.

  — Since you met Saklas, you must have many questions. I do too. Perhaps you know more about him than I do. I’ll tell you what I know. Weeks before the meteors fell on Earth… something had already fallen here. A man. Tall, dark-skinned… his entire body covered in black tattoos.

  — We found him in a massive crater in Monte Santo. He was unconscious, lying at the center of a pool formed by a golden liquid—the same one I later decided to call the aureate compound.There were countless open wounds on his back, and that substance was flowing from them.He seemed more dead than alive. We tried everything to wake him, but nothing worked. In fact, we could barely study him.

  He was… different.His anatomy, his skin, his cellular composition—nothing matched what we know as human life. No scan worked. No exam, no thermal reading, nothing.The only thing that responded to our tests was what we suspected to be his blood: the aureate compound.

  And that’s when we realized… it was a living reactor. Pure, concentrated fuel, with an absurd energetic capacity.

  We began extracting certain quantities from the wounds on his back and, from that, developed the power armours. You must have seen the prototype with Mr. Júlios.

  I obtained some classified recordings from Sector 4, so I have a general idea… but I don’t know the details of what really happened there.Could you help me with that?

  As I spoke, I watched the siblings’ expressions.They weren’t just surprised—they seemed to be connecting dots only they knew. That made me even more curious.

  They nodded and began to recount everything that had happened.

  When they mentioned Mr. Júlios’s loss of control, I felt my chest tighten. Guilt still ate at me, but I suppressed any sign of it.I needed to stay focused.

  But then… when they described what the specimen did… my entire body went cold.

  He had extracorporeal control over his own blood.He could manipulate it at a distance, as an extension of his will.Our entire project—our research, our infrastructure—could collapse if he ever decided to turn against us. And more importantly:

  If he could do that… what other abilities did he possess?

  I kept listening as they went on.Another thing deeply disturbed me: why did he bite the girl’s neck?Was it feeding? Instinct? Or something entirely different?

  And then the girl mentioned something that made my blood run cold: the feeling that the corruption inside her had diminished.

  That… made sense.The aureate compound—or whatever runs through that being’s veins—seemed to interact directly with the mist and with those contaminated by it.

  I needed more answers.I needed to understand what, exactly, that being represented.

  And the more they spoke… the more I feared we were dealing with something far greater than we had imagined.

  Perhaps he could be even more dangerous than the Crimson Mist… a conscious being, wielding such power...