Although it looked like he was simply asking a question, everyone in that office — hell, even the walls — knew better. Dr. Voss wasn't requesting anything. He was daring them. Tell me who I work for… or else.
The woman shifted her weight, arms crossed over her chest, staring at him like he was something unpleasant stuck to her boot. Cold, clinical, and disgusted.
"Humans will never know their place," she said, voice flat, words cutting through the sterile air like a scalpel.
Dr. Voss only smiled, calm and smug, like a man who thought he'd played the winning hand before the cards even hit the table. That grin, that reckless little twitch at the corner of his mouth, said everything. He knew exactly how important he was now. How deep he was buried into their plans. A tumor they couldn't excise without killing the host.
The other figure — the man, colder in a quieter way — finally spoke. His voice was low, nearly a whisper, but it carried weight like a slow knife.
"You work for the Dark Pantheon."
The words hit like a rifle crack.
Dr. Voss's eyebrows jerked upward. His mouth parted — not in fear, not yet, but the first draft of it.
"The enemies of all other Pantheons?" he asked, stunned, voice falling just short of a whisper.
The two operatives didn't bother confirming. They just rolled their eyes in perfect, almost synchronized, boredom. Yes, genius. Their silence said it louder than words ever could.
Oh, my. If that wasn't exciting!
And suddenly... the pieces clicked.
Why they needed something to overpower the Champions. Why failure wasn't an option. Why the experiments had been greenlit with infinite resources, infinite bodies, infinite secrecy.
They weren't just building weapons.
They were building extinction.
The man reached into his coat and pulled out a thin tablet, sliding it across the polished black desk with a fingertip.
"Tell me," he said smoothly, "if it's possible to enhance your projects using this."
Dr. Voss picked it up, still dazed, and the screen lit up in his hands.
His eyes scanned the description, the genetic data, the history — or what little myth remained of such a creature.
The longer he read, the tighter his throat became.
Ether-based consumption lifeform.
Evolution through devouring.
Indiscriminate magic absorption.
Potential for god-killing mutations if matured.
The pen in his other hand clattered to the floor without him realizing it. He stood up so fast the chair nearly toppled backwards. His heart thumped once, twice, slow and heavy in his ears.
"It's not just possible," Dr. Voss said, voice trembling under the enormity of it, "it's inevitable. If I integrate this…" He dragged a hand through his hair, pacing a sharp circle behind the desk.
"We could devour gods. Strip them. Absorb their powers. Break the laws of reality, evolve beyond the Ether barriers themselves."
The two agents smiled like cats who'd already eaten the canary and were just waiting for the next one to waddle past.
The doctor's eyes widened again, suddenly frantic.
"Do you have it?" he demanded.
The woman smirked first.
The man followed — a slow, sinister grin that said everything Voss needed to know.
God help him, he laughed like a madman.
Because he knew right then —
The world was fucked.
And he was about to help write its obituary.
The two agents stayed there a second longer, like they were savoring the chill in the air, the hum of endless, forbidden potential vibrating through the walls. Dr. Voss didn't move, didn't even breathe too loudly—he knew better than to irritate creatures operating so many levels above his own little ambition.
The man—no name, no history—glanced once more toward the Begin Gem pulsing at the heart of the lab. Then at the capsules lined like future gravestones around them. Then finally at Voss himself.
But everything was understood.
The portal crackled open behind them, the same sickening smear through reality they'd used to arrive. Without another word, the two walked toward it—graceful, casual, like gods stepping between realms.
Voss watched them disappear into the swirling maw, that electric distortion swallowing them whole.
And in their wake... the lab almost seemed to exhale.
The glass trembled. The lights buzzed uncertainly. Even the very air tasted different, like whatever was pretending to be normal had been peeled back for a moment—and now the skin was trying to crawl back over the bone.
Voss swallowed hard, adjusted his lab coat, and stared after them like a man who just shook hands with fate and still wasn't sure if he should be proud or scared shitless.
Because it wasn't the duo that truly terrified him.
It was what came after them.
The whispers about the High Council—the monsters behind the monsters.
He thought of the rumors:
The hall was colossal, carved not from stone, but from the bones of something ancient—something even the gods had long forgotten. The darkness wasn't absence here; it was a living thing, thick enough to breathe, heavy enough to crush.
And at the center of it all, they stood.
No names spoken aloud.
They didn't need them.
To look at them was to feel the weight of inevitability press against your soul like a blade at your throat.
The first stood tall, a juggernaut in cracked cybernetic armor. Heavy boots like executioner's hammers, molten metal tattoos crawling lazily across his flesh, whispering a language older than war itself. He was still as death, but you could feel the battles he carried inside him—wars he had ended with a glance, civilizations he had buried with a nod.
The second was worse.
No face. No true body. Just a hollow mockery of flesh held together by a cracked mask, from which whispers leaked into the stale air like invisible knives. He didn't stand still—he bled madness, a slow, corrupting pulse that bent the space around him as if existence itself feared touching him too long.
The third was a monster barely contained.
Chains coiled around a hunched, massive form, each broken cuff clinking like the ticking of a bomb that refused to detonate. His horns scraped the high arch of the blackened ceiling, psychic rage rolling off his body in slow, suffocating waves. Even bound, even silent, he was the storm you couldn't outrun.
The fourth was the most dangerous.
Golden hair catching the faintest scraps of dying light, robes flowing like poisoned silk. His smile—serene, beautiful, monstrous—was the kind that made kings kneel and saints curse the sky. The air around him rotted with unseen decay, hope wilting like spoiled fruit under a false sun.
They didn't need to speak to be heard.
The hall itself seemed to tremble under the weight of what they were.
They were the end of things.
They were what nightmares had nightmares about.
And tonight, they were awake.