‎‧₊˚✩ from the void, xoxo‎ ✩˚₊‧

[ LOG 11: TRANSITION TO PRAYER ROOM ]

DATE: 2004-XX-XX

PERSONNEL: Kennedy, L.S. (USSTRATCOM - Special Agent); Lockhart, E. (USSTRATCOM - Special Operative)

LOCATION: St. Sebastian's Home for the Children // Main Sanctuary (Prayer Room)

STATUS: ONGOING

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Relic Integration — [ STATUS: PENDING ]

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Secure Sub-level Access — [ STATUS: PENDING ]

TERTIARY OBJECTIVE: Facility Data Acquisition — [ STATUS: ONGOING ]

NOTE: 

Internal friction noted regarding equipment noise profiles; Agent Kennedy’s preference for high-decibel ballistics remains a tactical variable. —Lockhart, E.

What did I do? —Kennedy, L.S.

As soon as they crossed the threshold of the library, the air changed. The hallways they had once moved through with certainty now felt narrower, as if the building itself was quietly closing ranks the deeper they went. Heavy silence pooled in the corners, and even the pale cracks of moonlight from the windows seemed reluctant to linger.

Eye, ear, and tongue—the three keys. They had all of them now. And somewhere ahead, just beyond reach, waited the door to the depths. But they never would have expected the roadblock to that path to be this severe.

They were everywhere—Sightless, Unhearing and Voiceless. 

They had prowled the halls earlier, sure. But this time it was worse. Full presence. Occupation. And from the sheer amount alone, not even Estelle’s wild environmental improvisations from before could be enough to clear them out. 

“Fucking hell. Something from earlier must’ve flagged them,” Leon muttered. “This hallway’s swamped too.”

“There, as well,” Estelle informed him after peering around another corner. 

“Well, shit,” Leon sighed. “Guess we have to sneak our way around.”

He shifted his weight with practiced ease, one foot braced forward, shoulders angled toward the corridor as he scanned for movement. It was subtle enough that most people wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

But Estelle did.

From afar, anyone would’ve assumed that her gaze was fixed on the surroundings, but it wasn’t. It was on Leon himself. Not on his face, not exactly—though she noted, begrudgingly, that he possessed an objectively unreasonable degree of aesthetic advantage. 

What held her attention however was the way he kept watch: the small shifts of weight, the rough efficiency of his movements, the instinctive adjustments made without instruction. Improvisation in motion. Unrefined. Constant. Effective.

It was… curious.

Very curious.

Curiously invasive.

Only after acknowledging that correction did she force her attention elsewhere, her gaze moving across the corridor in measured increments—angles, intersections, sightlines—cataloguing numbers that refused coherence. There shouldn’t be that many hostiles, even accounting for the two shotgun shells fired earlier in the Girl’s Dormitory.

It was almost as if an unknown dinner bell had been rung to alert the others. But how?

“Copy that,” Estelle replied at last, realizing a beat too late that Leon had been waiting for an answer. He glanced at her.

“You were spacing out again,” he flatly stated. 

“I wasn’t.”

“You absolutely were.”

“No.”

He sighed in response, glancing back at her with a slight worry in his expression.

“…But you’re okay, right?” Leon asked. “No relapses? No flashbacks?”

“I am functional.”

“Alright. Cool.”

He let out a small exhale, head seemingly permanently turned away from her for now. Meanwhile, Estelle glanced at the shotgun on his back. 

That look should have remained a simple observation, but it didn’t. 

They say a soldier’s loadout reveals priority, role, even personality. Estelle had never entertained much value in that idea, given its lack of proper scientific basis, but this time she found herself drifting into it anyway. 

A shotgun was not subtle. It was not precise. It was a tool designed for violent certainty—wide impact, unavoidable consequence, acceptable collateral in exchange for immediate resolution.

Leon Kennedy, however, moved differently—efficient, reactive, annoyingly adaptable. But he was careful in the places that mattered, even when everything else suggested otherwise. The man kept checking on her like she was something that was not supposed to be expendable. And that softness—unrequested, inefficient, persistent—did not belong in the same system as something meant to erase rooms.

That contradiction alone had become a distraction—until a nearby skittering finally snapped her out of it. 

“Keep an eye on that side of the hallway,” Leon murmured. “See anything, give me a tap. I got your back.”

A withering look slid toward him through the visor. It unfortunately did not achieve the intended result of normalizing him. Estelle found herself assessing him again without his permission—or her own. 

Sharp jawline. Light stubble. Thin lips—

No.

Absolutely not.

That line of assessment was unauthorized and required immediate termination. 

Correction protocol engaged. 

“Kennedy.”

His head turned. “What?”

“Humor me for a moment.”

“No.”

“This is a matter of tactical concern.”

“Kinda busy with the ‘not dying’ part right now.”

She ignored him.

“Why is a shotgun part of your loadout?”

Leon paused mid-check toward the corridor. “…Seriously?”

“Like I said, this is a matter of tactical concern.”

He let out a sigh.

“Because it works. It’s a Riot Gun.”

“And its decibel output is an invitation to every hostile in the building.”

Leon peered around the corner. “Yep. That’s a shotgun, alright.”

“A boomstick in a stealth mission is a poor choice.”

“This isn’t a stealth mission.”

“It is now.”

His eyes narrowed as he brought his arm out across her chest, pressing both their backs against the wall as a Voiceless passed by the near corner.

“Can’t the evaluation wait until we’re not about to die?”

“We will die regardless if you continue using that thing.”

“Is that a threat or a complaint?”

“It is a performance review of your equipment choices.”

“All this because of a shotgun?”

“All this because of your judgment.”

Leon sighed sharply. He’d honestly lost track of how this started.

“Look, I’m not the one who fired it, genius. You took it off my back.”

“That is irrelevant to causality.”

“The hell it is.”

“The shotgun was your decision. The discharge was mine. The consequences are mutual.”

Leon finally looked at her with a mildly offended expression.

“…That sounded suspiciously rehearsed.”

“It was not.”

“Y’know what? I think you’re just mad at the situation that you caused.”

Silence. Heavy. Breathing only.

Leon started to turn back to the hallway before Estelle continued.

“…That conclusion is not without merit.”

He stared at her tiredly. She stared back with perfect neutrality.

“So… You admit defeat then?”

“Never.”

‘...Women,’ he sighed in his mind.

Then, a wet scrape echoed across the ceiling above. Both of them went still for a split second before both guns were back up.

“We’re not done—” Leon muttered, tightening his grip around his pistol.

“We are absolutely done,” Estelle insisted.

“We’ll get back to this later.”

“…Fine.”

Tchk-tck-tck… Crr-ack… 

Footsteps. Multiple.

She caught Leon by the wrist, pulling once. Before he could question the contact, she pulled him into the deep shadow of a recessed wall niche. Something passed the corridor ahead—too close for comfort. Leon tensed, his muscles coiling under her hand. Estelle stepped in closer without hesitation, her chest nearly brushing against his tactical vest.

One finger pressed lightly over his mouth.

It wasn't forceful enough to hurt, but just enough to command silence. Her gaze stayed forward, unblinking, watching the shadows dance on the far wall. The BOWs moved past, their searching rasps sounding far too loud in the enclosed space. 

Leon’s eyes flicked toward her, searching the visible half of her face, then back to the corridor. Both of them stood still, holding their breaths. Only when the sound finally faded did her hand loosen, and she withdrew. 

He swallowed, eyes lingering a fraction too long on her back as she took the lead. There was still a faint warmth lingering against his lips where her finger had rested. Before he could make sense of that, Estelle was already moving ahead like nothing had happened.

“Prayer room’s up ahead,” she said quietly. “Stay close.”

She reached for a nearby vase, testing its weight, then shifted a few steps off-axis from the Sightless’ path. He stepped in, taking it from her before she could move.

“I’ll do it. You get the door.”

She nodded.

“On three,” she said.

“One.”

“Two—”

The porcelain shattered against the far wall. The sound snapped through the corridor—and the Sightless turned. Estelle bolted, slipping through the door the moment it opened, Leon right behind her. The door shut as quietly as possible after. 

No hinge creak. No drag. No resistance. Again.

Dust hung in the air, slow and suspended, drifting through narrow shafts of moonlight that spilled through the stained-glass windows flanking the altar. Each step sent the particles shifting, silvering briefly before disappearing back into shadow. Leon entered first, weapon lowered but ready, boots echoing across the stone floor of the sanctuary. He swept the room once, then exhaled.

“…Huh. That went well.”

“Remarkably,” Estelle replied behind him.

Though her tone was composed, her attention was already elsewhere—moving across the architecture, the ruined pews, the collapsed drapery near the nave. 

“That maneuver,” she added, “had approximately a thirty percent probability of success.”

Leon glanced back at her over his shoulder.

“So basically a miracle.”

“Statistically, no.”

He gave a quiet hum. “Feels like one.”

Leon’s gaze drifted toward the front of the sanctuary, where an iron cross hung above the altar in silhouette against fractured panes of colored glass.

The space opened far beyond what either of them had expected from a prayer room.

The ceiling arched high overhead, disappearing into shadow between cracked ribs of stone. Bas-reliefs of angels and saints lined the walls in weather-softened relief, their once-white surfaces buried beneath grime and decades of dust. Torn drapery sagged between the columns. Rows of ruined pews sat uneven across the nave, some overturned, others collapsed beneath their own age.

Estelle stepped past Leon before he could say anything else, drawn toward the stone font positioned near the entrance. Its basin had long since run dry. Time had split the carved marble clean down the middle, leaving a jagged fracture from rim to pedestal. Whatever holy water it had once held had evaporated decades ago, leaving behind only dust and mineral staining.

Something rested inside it.

Metal.

A tandem fall arrester sat in the empty basin, partially obscured beneath a veil of dust. Industrial-grade. Compact but heavy, designed for controlled vertical descent and emergency braking along fixed lifelines. Modern enough to stand out against everything around it.

Estelle reached in carefully and lifted it from the bowl. Dust scattered from the device as it shifted in her hand. The steel casing was worn but intact. Functional. Her gaze narrowed while Leon stepped beside her.

“Another item that doesn’t belong here,” Estelle murmured. “Someone left this here. But for what?”

Leon gave a faint, lopsided shrug.

“No idea. Unless someone was planning to rappel into confession.”

Estelle looked at him. She held the stare long enough that Leon noticed.

“What?”

Her head tilted slightly.

“You have an unusual way of staying calibrated in a red zone, Kennedy.”

“In normal English?”

“Just an observation.”

“...Yeah,” he muttered. “That still sounded like a lab report.”

Estelle ignored that.

“Humor under pressure. Deflection through absurdity. Reduced cortisol response. You remain functionally composed even while surrounded by bio-organic horrors in confined architecture.”

Leon stared at her.

“So what’s the verdict, doc?”

“Optimal coping mechanism.”

“Huh. Good to know.”

A quiet beat passed between them. Moonlight cut across the floor between their boots. Then she asked with uncharacteristic softness, “Is this how you survived Valdelobos?”

Leon stilled. Then, one brow lifted.

“What, you did your homework on me too after that merc cleanup?”

Her silence was the answer. A breath escaped him through his nose. 

“Figures.” 

“Everyone talked about it,” she said. “You’re a bit of a celebrity since Ashley Graham’s return.” 

“Lucky me.”

“But I also reviewed the report after the Amber retrieval.”

“Report, huh.”

“Plural.”

Leon glanced at her. “...Plural?”

“You required multiple appendices.”

Leon blinked while Estelle examined the fall arrester in her hand as if discussing the weather.

“It was quite an extensive read.”

That drew a dry laugh from him before he could stop it. Estelle studied him a second longer, the sound oddly soothing some quieter part of her.

“You still didn’t answer the question, agent.”

Leon’s expression shifted—softening only slightly, enough to lose some of its usual sharpness.

“No,” he said after a beat. “Valdelobos didn’t teach me that.”

Estelle waited.

“Usually I just learn as I go,” he admitted, staring toward the altar instead of her. 

For a moment, she only observed him. Then, quietly, “Good.”

Leon glanced back at her.

“Then you’ll survive this place.”

He was silent for a moment before he gave her a smirk.

“Is this your way of getting soft on me, Lockhart?”

Estelle didn’t even look up from the object in her hand. She placed the fall arrester against his chest before he instinctively took it from her, their fingers brushing.

“It means one less variable to decode,” she said before taking the first step ahead. “But as for ‘softness’… I’ll leave you to decide that for yourself.”

He watched her go longer than necessary—waiting for the usual correction, the clinical dismissal, the clean reset that made her seem incapable of a sliver of sentimentality.

It didn’t come.

She was already back in her usual mode, attention drifting toward the room, the basin, the objective. Controlled focus. For him, the moment didn’t reset as cleanly. His grip tightened on the fall arrester as his gaze lingered on her for a second longer than it should’ve.

“…Cute.”

Estelle turned a fraction. The corner of her lips moved—barely, an almost imperceptible rise—before she corrected it and faced forward again. And just like that, they were back on task, though the moment lingered between them all the same. 

They moved deeper, scanning the room with a scrutinizing gaze. The second anomaly announced itself without motion the moment they stopped in front of the altar.

Three child-sized angel statues stood at the front of the ossification-stricken altar—arranged in a shallow arc, hands extended outward as if offering something unseen.

Each one had cloth bindings. One over the eyes. One over the ears. One over the mouth.

Leon slowed. Estelle stopped a few steps behind him. It didn’t take long for her to know what their purpose was.

Eye. Ear. Tongue.

Three children with open palms.

Leon stared down at the statue, lips pressed into a thin line. “So we just slot them in?”

“Correct.”

“Alright. Let’s get this over with,” he sighed, reaching for his pouch to fish out two of the boxes. 

Leon placed the tongue in the first child's hands. Estelle placed the ears in the second. They both looked at the third—the eye—still in the velvet box between them. Estelle was the one who picked it up, held it for a moment, and placed it in the third child's open palms.

The silence in the prayer room stretched for exactly three seconds.

A deep mechanical groan rolled up through the altar like something buried had finally remembered how to function after neglect. Stone vibrated underfoot, resisting something beneath it that had just come alive again.

Leon’s grip tightened instantly. Estelle didn’t move. Her head tilted slightly, listening.

A second sound joined it—lower, heavier. Steel dragging against steel that hadn’t touched anything in years.

Behind the altar, something responded. Or rather, it tried to. A seam in the stonework shuddered as hidden mechanisms engaged.

A false wall.

It was clearly meant to slide, but it didn’t.

A slow, strained grinding filled the sanctuary as motor systems pushed against whatever blockage was on its tracks. Leon glanced toward the niche with newfound wariness.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

Estelle’s visor angled slightly.

“Yes—if that wall doesn’t open.”

The grinding intensified.

Metal groaned somewhere deep in the walls—loud enough now that it stopped feeling like background noise and started feeling like an announcement. The system didn’t stop. Torque increased. But the jam did not resolve. Instead, the pressure transferred into vibration.

Dust began to fall in thin sheets from the ceiling edges. Then, a sharp mechanical snap echoed through the sanctuary. The false wall lurched a fraction of an inch sideways—just enough to scream against its own track before locking again mid-motion with a violent clang followed by a metallic shriek.

Incomplete.

That realization alone made Leon and Estelle’s blood run cold.

“Well,” Leon swallowed thickly. “Guess that answers that.”

“We need that wall open.”

“No shit, genius. Any ideas?”

Before Estelle could answer, the room answered back instead.

From the sealed confessional booths, from the shadows between the rotting pews, it began. That dry, grinding scrape of stone against stone from multiple sources as they slowly woke up.

A silhouette emerged. Then another. And another. They wore tattered hospital gowns caked in powdered mineral—the same nightmare they had encountered in the library.

Estelle didn’t bother counting, drawing her SMG. Leon thumbed his pistol’s safety off.

The first creature didn’t fully clear the booth before Leon fired. The muzzle flash strobed across the nave, illuminating a gown stiff with mineral dust as the round tore through its shoulder. It spun sideways into the pews.

But it didn’t go down.

It caught itself against the wood with a sickening crack of bone and turned back toward them in jerking, uneven steps, blank eyes locked forward.

Estelle inhaled sharply as red silhouettes flared across her visor.

One vaulted over the pews with horrifying athleticism. Another dropped low. Stone fingers scraped against the floor.

Then it lunged.

Fast—too fast.

It launched itself across the aisle on all fours, jaw unhinging as it launched straight for Leon’s legs.

“Left!” Estelle barked.

Leon pivoted on instinct. His boot slammed into the creature’s jaw a split second before its teeth snapped shut around empty air. Bone cracked under the impact. The thing skidded sideways across the stone, long enough for Estelle to blur past him.

THUP-THUP-THUP.

Three suppressed rounds punched through the ruptured flesh of its throat. Tar-black fluid sprayed across the powdered carpet.

The subject collapsed, twitching.

The rest surged.

One humanoid crashed through a confessional, splintering wood into jagged shards. Another vaulted from the gallery, landing on all fours before springing forward with enough force to crack the floor.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me—!”

Leon ducked. Claws whipped over his head. He fired upward. The shot nicked it in the cheek, a trickle of black tar running down. Estelle intercepted a lunge, catching a creature’s wrist and redirecting its momentum past her shoulder. Before it could retaliate, the barrel of her gun was shoved in its mouth before its head erupted.

But the numbers were too high. Another burst from the pews and slammed into Estelle’s blindside. The impact drove her hard into the stone aisle.

“Lockhart!”

She twisted as jagged teeth snapped inches from her throat. Fingers cinched around her shoulder, the pressure digging into the tactical suit’s plating and sending a flare of pain down her arm. Enough to rattle even her.

Its breath was dry, rotten with mineral dust. It looked too human, yet not quite. Its grip tightened as it hissed. 

“...go…back…”

Leon fired twice into its ribs at point-blank range.

The rounds staggered it. Estelle wrenched free, surging upward with a violent elbow to its jaw before drawing a Harpy blade and driving the curved steel into its neck, the talon tearing through its jugular.

It dropped limp.

No time to breathe. 

Then, the entire room lurched. Dust cascaded from the vaulted ceiling. Every creature froze. Listening.

Shhhhk... THUD-THUD…Shhhhk...THUD-THUD…

THUD. THUD. THUD.

Leon looked toward the far wall where the doors were at. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

The stone wall exploded.

A colossal silhouette forced its way through the collapsing masonry in a spray of dust and fractured marble.

It was taller than a Tyrant-class subject, its frame built from layered mutation rather than uniform augmentation. A torn lab coat hung from its shoulders in strips, half-consumed by time and growth, threaded into the body like it had been absorbed rather than worn. Syringes and broken injector housings jutted from its skin at irregular angles, embedded in calcified tissue. 

It dragged a heavy industrial weapon across the floor—but it wasn’t a weapon in the conventional sense. A steel core ran through it like a spine, wrapped in ossified subjects compacted into a brutalized composite, the remains of prior BOWs hardened into a single mass.

A guttural roar followed and it stepped into the sanctuary light. 

Behind it, the air filled with the frantic sounds of the other three monstrous variants they had encountered in the building.

“Oh, come on!” Leon snapped.

The giant lifted its gargantuan weapon, each step shaking the floor. It had already picked its target—someone that didn’t belong.

“KENNEDY, MOVE!”

Leon threw himself sideways. The massive weapon pulverized the pews where he’d been standing a second earlier, sending a storm of splinters and stone shards. The shockwave hurled him across the aisle, and he landed with a pained groan.

The impact choked the air with fine mineral dust, making Estelle cough and sputter. A Sightless lunged from the white smoke and slammed into her. Its claws hooked into the compression fabric of her suit, jaws snapping at her. The force drove her backward across the nave. The side of her face hit the wall, and a hairline crack formed across her visor.

Leon immediately scrambled up and grabbed the shotgun off his back. 

CHACK-CHACK.

BOOM.

The blast caught the Sightless broadside. Its upper torso detonated in a spray of shattered mineral and black slurry. The force knocked Estelle off balance, and she hit the floor hard. Her vision went briefly blurry—but she shook it off, forcing herself upright and retrieving her SMG nearby.

Meanwhile, the giant advanced, still zeroing on Leon. It wrenched its weapon free, smashing two of the smaller marbled hostiles into chunks of calcified meat in the process.

Leon fired again. The shell blasted chunks from the giant's shoulder. 

It didn't even flinch.

“…Fuck.”

The beast swung downward. Leon rolled. The weapon cratered the stone, rupturing the wall. Fragments flew like shrapnel. More BOWs shrieked as they flooded the room from too many angles.

Leon glared at the giant before his gaze flitted to the jammed niche wall. Without a moment to lose, he bolted straight for the altar. The giant roared and suddenly hurled its massive weapon.

“KENNEDY—!”

The ossified steel whistled through the air like a missile. Leon ducked. The projectile missed him by inches and smashed directly into the niche.

CRASH.

The sanctuary shook. Stone exploded outward, finally revealing a hidden shaft and the dark silhouette of elevator cables. 

For a brief moment, Estelle and Leon’s gazes met, and she gave him a nod.

Estelle pivoted, opening fire in controlled bursts to cover him. The hostiles were frantic now. Desperate. One lunged, its claws raking across Estelle's ribs, tearing through the suit's side-paneling. Heat flashed through her side. She hissed but didn't stop.

Another grabbed her forearm. Its grip was terrifyingly human, fingers locking around muscle to pull her down. Estelle drove the butt of her SMG into its mouth with a brutal crack and fired twice.

It collapsed.

“Lockhart! The cable!” Leon shouted from the edge of the abyss.

She didn’t look back. She ripped a Harpy blade free and hurled it over her shoulder. Leon caught the hilt mid-air.

“And here!” Leon tossed the shotgun toward her. “Blast ‘em dead!”

She caught the heavy weapon one-handed, gave it a begrudging stare, and racked the slide as she turned to the horde.

Leon leaned into the shaft, swinging the blade at the steel cable. 

CLINK. 

A miss.

“Dammit—!”

Behind him, Estelle planted the shotgun into her shoulder. 

BOOM.

A subject lost its head. The recoil hammered her bruised shoulder, and her jaw clenched. An Unhearing lunged from her left, slamming into the shotgun before she could rack the slide. The barrel kicked aside, and the second shot blew a chunk out of a stone pillar instead. 

The creature crashed into her. They hit the floor together. Its teeth snapped close to her throat—dry wheezes flooding her ears as its weight nearly crushed her wounded arm. Estelle gritted her teeth before letting out a yell as she forced it away—just enough for her to grab the shotgun and rack up the slide before aiming the muzzle upward.

BOOM.

It landed directly beneath its jaw. Black fluid rained on her. She kicked the carcass off her, getting back up.

Now, for the hulking monstrosity. 

Estelle fired a shell at it, forcing its attention on her. Its eye—molten gold and red-ringed at the center—locked onto hers. She expected rage. Violence. The same hostility it had shown Leon.

It never came.

Its gaze faltered. A haunted rasp gurgled in its throat.

“…go…”

Estelle froze. 

“Lockhart! Now—!”

She snapped out of it and retreated to Leon in a blur, holstering the weapon just as she reached the edge of the shaft. 

“Hold on to me!” Leon barked. “Center—stay center!”

She slammed into his space, locking her arms around his neck. She turned once more, meeting the giant’s eye as Leon gripped the handles.

The last thing Estelle saw was the giant turning toward the horde before she and Leon dropped.

For three terrifying meters, everything below them vanished into darkness. Wind tore past their ears.

The device engaged a moment later with a grinding stutter—metal screaming through its housing as the cable surged forward and the brake struggled to find purchase.

Leon’s shoulder lurched under the weight of both their bodies. The impact dragged white-hot pain down one side of him, sharp enough to make his vision stutter. His right arm went half-numb at once, and something in the joint pulled wrong—half out, not fully gone. 

“Don’t—move!” he gritted out, teeth bared as the arrester shuddered again.

The descent did not stop.

It dropped in jagged bursts—slipping, biting, slipping again—each correction brutal enough to rattle their teeth. Estelle’s fingers dug into the Kevlar of his vest as another jolt tore through them.

“Hold—on—!”

“Too fast—!”

“I—know—!”

Above them, the shaft exploded with sound. The giant was tearing through the floor, the thundering collapse of masonry chasing them down the dark throat of the elevator shaft. Sparks showered past in bright orange streaks, stinging their faces and vanishing into the dust.

Leon’s breathing turned ragged. His right shoulder felt wrong now—hot, loose, partially seated in its socket. Every time the cable convulsed, pain lanced through it and threatened to drag a sound out of him he didn’t have time to make. 

“Light—” he wheezed. “Lockhart—light!”

She fumbled for her flashlight, the beam swaying wildly before cutting through the dust. The roof of the elevator car rushed up beneath them, a dark, rusted island in the abyss.

“Brace—!”

They hit the maintenance hatch hard enough to buckle the metal. Bolts popped with sharp little detonations as the ceiling gave way beneath their weight, and they crashed through in a tangle of limbs and tactical nylon.

The cabin floor slammed up beneath them.

Then, finally, the noise stopped.

Silence rushed back in, thick and deafening.

Leon lay flat on his back, staring at the hole in the roof. His right shoulder screamed every time he tried to move, and the pain told him with immediate, humiliating clarity that he was injured. He let his eyes close, his chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven pulls in a brief reprieve. 

Beside him, Estelle was a tangled weight against his side, her forehead pressed to the carpet. They remained still, their bodies and minds still in shock. 

They had survived that. 

They shouldn’t have survived that.

A low, pained groan escaped Estelle as she stirred first. She turned her head toward him, dragging herself closer through trembling limbs before forcing herself up onto one elbow. 

“Kennedy…?” Her voice came out small. She swallowed hard and cupped his cheek with one gloved hand, gently turning his face toward hers.

“Leon—”

"Wait," Leon managed, his voice sounding like he’d swallowed sand. "Just... wait."

He stayed there for another long moment, eyes shut, breathing through the nausea. When he finally opened them, the cracked visor was still between them, the fracture webbing across its surface. Her hand retreated from his cheek carefully.

Leon finally managed to sit up, his head swimming. He reached out, his hand hovering in the air for a second—trembling—before he rested it on her better shoulder. He left it there, a heavy, grounding pressure that anchored them both.

“You alright?” Leon grunted at last, his gaze meeting hers. Estelle looked at his hand, then at his shoulder, then back at his face.

“You’re injured and the first thing you ask is after my well-being?”

He let out a tired huff of a laugh.

“Yeah, well. I know what I’m feeling right now. Gotta know yours too.”

This man was impossible.

“...I’m fine, agent. And you?”

"Like shit," Leon replied bluntly, offering a tired, lopsided ghost of a smirk. He stood, legs shaking as they took his weight, and offered her his good hand. As she took it, the contact was no longer the feverish heat of the descent, but the simple, grounding warmth of a partner.

Then, Estelle took a moment to observe their surroundings.

The elevator doors stood permanently open, the mineral overgrowth in the hallway holding the car in place. The air beyond was colder than St. Sebastian’s, heavier with the stale bite of barely recycled ventilation.

But there was no time to waste. They still had a mission to finish.

Leon moved to the wall and braced himself with his good hand, jaw clenched hard enough to show how badly the other shoulder hurt. Estelle caught the motion immediately and stepped closer.

“Don’t.”

He glanced at her. “I wasn’t—”

“Yes, you were.”

That stopped him.

Her fingers found the joint through gear and fabric with clinical precision, checking the angle with minimal movement. Leon’s jaw tightened.

“Yeah, I think I can—”

“No.”

She shifted her stance, bracing his shoulder against her forearm.

“On three,” she said.

Leon blinked once. “Three what—”

“Three.”

SNAP.

“—FUCK!”

He jerked forward with a harsh, strangled sound, then caught himself before the movement could turn into a worse problem. The pain was hot and immediate, but it began to settle almost at once into something more bearable. Estelle kept him steady until his breathing evened out.

Leon glared at her. “You could’ve warned me!”

“I did.”

“You didn’t even count!”

“I did,” she said, completely deadpan. “...At the last second.”

Leon shut his eyes for a second, breath leaving him in a ragged exhale that sounded half like a laugh and half like a curse. His newly-set shoulder throbbed in hot pulses down his arm.

“Are you functional, agent?”

“…Yeah. Mostly.”

That was enough for her.

A faint, reluctant warmth stirred low in Estelle’s chest—unrelated to the heat curling through the ruined chamber or the lingering strain in her muscles. As usual, she ignored it.

“Refrain from aggravating that shoulder.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Estelle turned toward the corridor, but not before glancing back to make sure he was moving.

“Stay close,” she said, quieter now. “There’s a safe place not far from here.”

“Alright. Lead the way, genius.”

[ LOG 12: KINETIC DESCENT ]

DATE: 2004-XX-XX

PERSONNEL: Kennedy, L.S. (USSTRATCOM - Special Agent); Lockhart, E. (USSTRATCOM - Special Operative)

LOCATION: St. Sebastian’s Sub-levels // Research Facility Main Floor

STATUS: EMERGENCY RELOCATION SUCCESSFUL

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Relic Integration — [ STATUS: 100% COMPLETE ]

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Secure Sub-level Access — [ STATUS: SUCCESSFUL ]

TERTIARY OBJECTIVE: Facility Data Acquisition — [ STATUS: ONGOING ]

THREAT ASSESSMENT UPDATE:

Subject G (Giant Variant): Extreme physical strength. Capable of structural demolition. Projectile attack against the altar wall exposed hidden sub-level access shaft.

Subject H (Humanoid Variant): First encounter was at the library. Capable of coordinated assault. Subjects demonstrate high mobility, aggressive close-quarters engagement patterns, and resistance to conventional incapacitation.

PERSONNEL STATUS:

Kennedy, L.S.: Suspected right shoulder dislocation / subluxation, manually reduced in-field; multiple contusions; abrasions to hands and gloves consistent with emergency cable descent trauma; mobility reduced but functional.

Lockhart, E.: Contusions to ribs and side; lacerations to rib/shoulder region; forearm trauma; tactical suit side-panel compromised; HUD eye visor compromised; mobility reduced but functional.

OBSERVATION:

Emergency descent executed using industrial tandem fall arrester recovered from sanctuary site. Device engagement delayed approximately three meters following jump initiation.

CONCLUSION:

Emergency descent parameters exceeded recommended operational thresholds. Repeat inadvisable. 

NOTE:

I am formally revising my stance on the shotgun. —Lockhart, E.

Somebody frame this. I need it on my wall. —Kennedy, L.S.

It remains tactically irresponsible. —Lockhart, E.

There she is. Thought the fall knocked her personality loose. —Kennedy, L.S.

[ LOG 09: CORRIDOR CLEARANCE ] 

DATE: 2004-XX-XX 

PERSONNEL: Kennedy, L.S. (USSTRATCOM - Special Agent); Lockhart, E. (USSTRATCOM - Special Operative)

LOCATION: St. Sebastian's Home for the Children // West Wing Corridor (Transition to Library) 

STATUS: ONGOING

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Anatomical Key Retrieval — [ STATUS: 66% COMPLETE ] 

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Facility Data Acquisition — [ STATUS: ONGOING ] 

OBSERVATION: Operative Lockhart has resumed full tactical capacity following sanctuary stabilization. Agent Kennedy notes operational efficiency has not decreased despite environmental psychological pressure on Operative. 

The hallways of St. Sebastian’s darkened the deeper they ventured. Whatever light lingered outside was gone now, swallowed whole by the onset of evening and the heavy mineral haze coating the windows. Only the narrow beams of their flashlights illuminated the corridor ahead, catching pale veins of calcification spreading through the old structure like overgrown roots.

Estelle remained exactly three steps ahead of him.

Leon had started noticing that distance without meaning to, watching for any sign that she was forcing herself forward instead of actually holding it together like before.

But the air around her was different now. There was no hesitation, no distant look slipping through her composure. Only the same measured certainty she carried in combat—the quiet, dangerous kind of forward motion that never entertained the idea of stopping. 

The uncertainty from the girl’s dormitory had been left behind with the hidden sanctuary. And for the first time since entering this godforsaken place, Leon was relieved.

“You seem better,” Leon pointed out, his voice barely a notch as he kept pace. Estelle glanced at him before returning her attention to the path ahead.

“Define ‘better’.”

“You’re not spacing out halfway,” he shrugged. A beat of heavy silence followed before he finished. “Back there, you were.”

She pursed her lips for a moment but spoke regardless. “My prior lapses are better off not being logged. Save it for the peer review post-operation.”

“Right. The mission,” Leon huffed a quiet, dry breath. “Guess a casual conversation’s gonna compromise your focus?”

“I only entertain such interactions if the mission benefits from it.”

“And this one doesn’t.” 

“Not at the moment, no.”

Leon nodded.

“Alright. Cool. Gotcha.”

That was supposed to be the end of their exchange, but after several beats of silence, Estelle glanced back at Leon.

“...But I do not dislike it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

That made him pause. 

“…Which?”

“Non-mission specific conversations,” Estelle said. “It’s…novel. But not unwelcome.” 

Oh. 

Huh.

Before he could press any further, the distance between them widened again—those same deliberate three steps reasserting themselves like instinct. Leon watched the back of her head in the dim wash of flashlight beams, the faintest hint of a smirk threatening at the corner of his mouth before he buried it beneath a clearing of his throat.

That was dangerous. Too dangerous.

Leon shouldn’t like that nearly as much as he did.

He snapped out of it the moment Estelle’s hand shot up—a silent command to stop.

It was those creatures again from the woods—Sightless and Unhearing.

She pressed herself against the corner of a barely plastered wall, her silhouette dissolving into the dark. Leon followed suit, his pulse quickening as her professional mask locked fully into place.

“Stay low. Hostiles ahead,” Estelle murmured. 

“How many?” 

“A lot further in. With two deaf ones in front.”

“One for each of us, then?”

“Theoretically, yes,” she said without looking at him. “But I have a better solution.”

He raised an eyebrow, protest already bubbling in his throat but she beat him to it. “Wait for my cue.”

Estelle unsheathed one of her modified knives, grappling it to one of the ceiling beams before zipping away. 

“... Of course,” Leon sighed to himself, his fingers tightening around the grip of his handgun. He stayed pinned to the wall, eyes flicking toward the darkness above.

He waited with weary patience, listening for the telltale signs of a struggle. High above, the only indicator of her presence was the faint, rhythmic clink of metal against metal and the unsettling absence of dust falling from the ceiling.

The plan was simple—to Estelle, at least. Agitate the hammer-headed enemies, let them swing their head around to break each other’s armor and then shoot where it counts. 

Would’ve been a breeze…

Thmp-thmp... thmp-thmp...

… if it weren’t for the pair of bloodshot, golden eyes staring intently at her centimeters away from her face.

It was an awkward split second of silence with Estelle staring at the creature like it committed a grave crime against her.

A Voiceless. Squatting on the beam. Hunched like a gargantuan, white toad. 

A miscalculation. An entirely avoidable miscalculation.

She could only sigh inwardly in annoyance at her own lack of scouting.

With an unnerving calmness, she retracted her chain just as the creature’s fist slammed into the beam where her head had been a heartbeat ago. As the Voiceless lunged again, she stepped into its space, wrapped her chain around its neck, and kicked it off the ledge.

Below, Leon was timing the footsteps of the two bio-organic weapons in the hallway. He heard the groan of the metal overhead. He assumed that was the cue, and was ready to pivot and fire when the ceiling quite literally gave way to a nightmare.

CRASH.

Leon nearly jumped out of his skin. 

"What the—Lockhart?!"

A tangled mass of limbs and screaming metal plummeted from the darkness, slamming directly onto one of the Unhearing below. The sheer weight of the fall crushed it into the floorboards with a sickening crunch before the chain snapped taut, jerking the Voiceless back upward. It swayed haplessly, kicking around in an attempt to plant itself back on the ground.

Leon could only stare at the scene, jaw slowly slacking as Estelle landed a second later, hitting the floor with a silent, three-point stance. 

Even with the chaos she had just caused, she looked infuriatingly composed. Before Leon could even fully process the sight, Estelle delivered a powerful kick to the dangling BOW’s torso, swinging it forward like a wrecking ball by its neck. 

Its mineral-dense body smashed into the second deaf creature and hurled it into the far wall. Estelle’s follow-up shots buried themselves into its exposed core before it could rise again. 

“Go for the ones behind,” Estelle commanded, her voice carrying an unsettling amount of nonchalance. “And Leon—watch the interval.”

“The what?”

WHOOSH.

Leon felt the wind of its passing whip against his hair, the jagged, mineralized heel of the creature missing his nose by less than an inch.

“Jesus fuck—!” 

Leon threw himself into a lateral roll as a Sightless lunged at the sound of his voice. The moment he came up, he ducked, dodging the lethal swipe of its claws that barely grazed his skin.

“A little warning next time?!” he yelled before he came up on one knee and fired twice into the creature’s chest plates. 

“I gave you a warning,” Estelle replied before bolting into a sprint to lure the rest. 

As the pendulum swung toward her, she waited until the last possible second, dropping into a deep, flexible bridge. The massive, thrashing BOW soared over her, the tip of its clawed finger snagging a single loose thread on her tactical suit. 

CRACK-CRUNCH.

That’s another one down.

She snapped back upright, her molten eyes fixed on the remaining Sightless.

She stepped into the blind spot of one of them, her gun firing twice—targeting the soft, unarmored joints behind its knees. As it buckled, Estelle grabbed the back of its jagged collar and heaved, throwing the staggering monster directly into the path of her repurposed death trap.

CRACK-THUD.

Madness. Efficient, weaponized madness. 

“Fucking hell. This is gonna kill me,” Leon muttered, though he was already moving in sync with the rhythm. He timed the next swing, dove beneath it, and drove his shoulder into the nearest enemy, sending the blind creature stumbling right into the return path.

CRUNCH.

“Calculated risk,” Estelle said, dodging the incoming swing with a sharp tilt of her head—the creature’s elbow brushing her ear. “You’re still in one piece. Mostly.”

Leon ducked the next pass. “—Barely!”

The Voiceless’ heavy torso grazed his shoulder as he lunged forward to bury his combat knife into the final creature’s pulsing flesh.

The hallway finally settled into a gruesome stillness, the only sound being the rhythmic, dying creak of the chain as the Voiceless slowed to a halt.

Leon stood there for a second, staring at the creature while wiping a smudge of dark ichor off his cheek. His heart hammered against his ribs not from fear, but from the sheer absurdity of the last sixty seconds.

“Optimal. You adapt adequately under pressure,” Estelle said with an appraising hum, much to Leon’s exhausted annoyance.

“Tell me,” Leon panted as he looked at her. “Back then during training, did they teach you how to use a BOW as a demolition device, or—”

Wordlessly, Estelle nonchalantly raised a hand, motioning him to wait. 

“—Lockhart, I swear if you—”

She was already gone.

In one fluid motion, she had zipped up to the beam with her other Harpy blade, unfastened the chain securing the Voiceless, and dropped back down like it was routine maintenance post-combat.

Leon blinked once. Then again. Then exhaled through his nose like he’d just lost an argument with reality itself.

“…Did you just leave the ground mid-conversation?”

“Training focuses on traditional ballistics,” she resumed, inspecting the snagged thread on her suit with a tiny, clinical frown. “Physics is a more reliable tactic.”

A sharp exhale left Leon’s lips.

Right. Of course she’d ignore the question.

“Not if both of us are at risk as well,” he said, crossing his arms.

“You do not lack competence, Kennedy. Your earlier performance is proof.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“It worked as intended.”

“Lockhart, I felt the breeze. It NEARLY gave me a haircut!”

She finally looked up at him, those gold eyes glowing in hidden amusement beneath her visor. There was no smile, but there was a sharp, witty stillness to her gaze that felt like a sliver of teasing.

“You’re welcome for the free trim,” she said curtly.

“...”

“...”

Unbelievable. 

He shook his head, leaning back against the cool stone wall for a brief moment of recovery. He was fairly certain this mission was shortening his life expectancy. Her efficiency, however, was undeniable, and that somehow made it worse on his end.

Meanwhile, Estelle began to check her magazines with a series of sharp, mechanical clicks.

“We have saved fourteen rounds of 9mm ammunition. That is a surplus.”

Leon gave her a look, half disbelief, half assessment.

“You really don't feel it, do you?” he asked.

Estelle tilted her head in response.

“Fear. Or anything close,” Leon continued. “Most people would have at least a slight shake in their hands after a stunt like that.”

She stopped her inspection, looking down at her hands. 

Pale, steady, and utterly still. 

“I do not. Such biological responses are detrimental in field operations.”

Leon exhaled a sharp breath through his nose, his eyes lingering on her gloved fingers.

They didn’t even twitch.

“Detrimental. Of course,” Leon said, his voice dropping an octave as he pushed off the wall. He stood his ground as she approached, refusing to step back despite how aware he’d become of her proximity. “So how do you do it?”

“...Calculations,” she stated simply after a brief pause. “I prefer the certainty of scientific applications.”

“Just so you know, your ‘scientific application’ almost gave me a heart attack,” he countered, though a wry smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “But I guess I can't argue with the results. Fourteen rounds, huh?”

“Fourteen,” she confirmed, her tone final.

She turned toward the massive, iron-bound doors leading to the library. Despite her detachment, there was a gravity to her movements that Leon found himself matching. 

“Next time,” Leon began, “if you’re going to use a BOW as an improvised weapon, at least give me a countdown? Three seconds. Two. Just something to help with the chances of my survival.”

“I will file it under advisement, Kennedy.”

“‘Under advisement.’ Sure. I’ll take it.”

For a fleeting second, the heavy silence of the hallway felt lighter. Leon faced the door, his hand on the handle. “Alright. Door number two.”

Like the main entrance, the doors to the library didn't creak. They swung open with the same well-oiled, eerie compliance as every other door they’ve encountered so far. He gestured toward the dark threshold with practiced courtesy.

The library of St. Sebastian's was a beautiful room.

That was the first problem.

Coffered ceilings disappeared into the dark above, columns traced in the same calcified filigree that had consumed the rest of the facility. Rows of shelving stretched the length of the room, their spines still populated with complete volumes. The reading tables were heavy oak, their surfaces worn smooth by decades of small elbows and homework. High windows, long since opaque with calcification, filtered the outside grey into something almost soft.

The children were sparsely spaced. Seated at tables. Standing between shelves mid-reach. Frozen in small, ordinary acts of learning and play—board games left mid-turn, books held open without a page ever being turned. 

Normal. Peaceful. 

Completely, catastrophically wrong.

Leon and Estelle split their sweep without discussing it, moving in opposite directions through the shelving rows. 

Minutes slipped by beneath the hush of the library. 

Leon’s flashlight skimmed across countless spines of books. Most were indistinguishable, the titles consumed by the same white growth that had claimed everything else. Then, tucked between a textbook and what appeared to have once been a children's atlas, his beam caught something that had absolutely no business being in a library.

A suppressor. Standard threading. Compatible with the SG-09 R. In near-perfect condition, as if it had been placed here recently and with some care. He reached out and picked it up, brushing his thumb along the cylinder as he rotated it once.

An engraving ran along its length.

In silentio, veritas.

Leon’s brow furrowed faintly. He looked to his left.

Three child statues were clustered around a low reading table—two seated, one standing. The standing one had its arm extended, one calcified finger pointing directly at the shelf where the suppressor had been sitting. Its face, frozen in the eternal approximation of childhood delight, was angled toward its companions as if sharing a joke.

Leon stared at it for a long moment. Hard.

Yep. Definitely curated. The designer didn’t even bother to hide it.

Whoever it was, their humor was abysmal.

Meanwhile, Estelle searched the shelves along the library’s rear wall. The longer she searched, the more the shelves seemed to repeat without end. Shelves blurred into shelves. Columns into columns. Even the statues had begun to repeat themselves in ways that irritated something deeply instinctive in the back of her mind. 

Still, she kept moving. She couldn’t afford to overlook even the smallest anomaly. 

Every circuit followed the same four-turn pattern along the library walls. Estelle had lost count of how many rounds it had been, keeping her eyes trained on the shelves.

Shelves, statue. Turn.

Shelves. Turn. Shelves. Turn. Shelves. Turn.

The rhythm of her footsteps never changed. Neither did the distance between the bookcases. The same reading tables. The same children frozen in place beneath layers of mineral bloom. 

But still, nothing.

Estelle slowed slightly near the next corner with an imperceptibly defeated sigh.

One more round. One more round, and she’ll stop if there’s still nothing.

Shelves, statue, shelves—

Estelle froze.

A statue stood in the middle shelf. Not the far corner.

It was like the other marble-like children. Slightly taller than most—older, maybe twelve or thirteen—standing with its face toward the shelving. Its posture suggested browsing, one hand raised as if to pull a volume free. 

But it broke the pattern. That alone was enough. She took a moment, scrutinizing the ossified figure with her flashlight.

A white hospital gown. Front opening. Not the cardigans and uniforms of the other children. 

Trouble.

Estelle adjusted her plans immediately, and she turned away.

…crrr—ack…

Leon was three rows over, completely unaware. Estelle didn't look back, angling her next step surreptitiously, putting herself between whatever that thing was and Leon's position.

…thump-thump-thump…

“Find anything?”

Estelle reached Leon’s row.

“Contact,” she said. “Six o’clock.”

The marbled shape behind her was all Leon registered before it lurched into the open, too fast and too wrong, its limbs jerking like they were being dragged forward by force rather than choice.

He fired the moment Estelle cleared his line of sight.

The rounds punched into its knee joint, snapping it sideways with a wet crunch. It collapsed hard, shrieking through a ruined throat as the leg folded under it. 

For half a second it hit the floor in a scrambling heap of bone and motion, then it clawed itself forward again on one arm, dragging the shattered limb behind it like it had forgotten pain was supposed to matter.

“Oh, what the fuck—”

Leon fired again. Hip this time. The shot tore the remaining leg out from under it completely.

It smashed into the shelf and convulsed there, half-sprawled, half-crawling, fingers gouging at the floor as if it could still force itself closer. That should’ve been the end. It was incapacitated beyond recovery.

But it would not stay down.

Its eyes remained locked on Estelle.

It was crawling. Clawing.

Too fast. Too deliberate.

Wildly.

Desperately.

It launched itself at Estelle with a broken, snapping sound, its now broken arm flinging forward in a last ugly burst of momentum. She caught it mid-swing and drove it down before it could tear free, but the thing still writhed like an animal caught in a trap, jaw working uselessly, eyes flaring wide with a furious, mindless need to keep moving.

It thrashed and squirmed, pools of molten gold with a blood-red ring staring back at her. The muzzle of Leon’s gun was already pointed between its eyes, ready for the kill.

But the horror persisted. 

Not inhumanly—but humanly.

It let out a weak gurgle. Its lips moved, failing once. Then again. Its throat worked violently, forcing sound through broken function.

"…He…lp."

Leon’s finger froze on the trigger. 

CRACK.

One controlled rotation was all it took.

The body went still. A residual twitch ran through its fingers and then nothing. Silence rushed back in, broken only by the slow settling of disturbed dust and Leon’s breathing evening out. 

He kept his weapon trained on the corpse, his chest heaving. 

"Did it just—"

"No," Estelle interrupted in a flat, deadpan line that left no room for argument. "Residual neural activity. Do not assign any meaning to it."

His stare snapped toward her, eyes sharp with something unprocessed. 

"You don't know that," Leon countered, his voice low and tight. "It sounded like—"

"It doesn’t," Estelle cut him off. “They are as good as dead.”

"But—"

"—All of them."

Her words made him still. He let out a shuddered breath, his gaze flitting back to its dulled eyes before looking back at her. 

“…Fuck,” he croaked, finally lowering his gun. His stare lingered on the corpse. Something in his chest tightened and refused to let go.

Estelle released her hold on the subject gently. Her hand hovered for a moment too long before she closed the creature’s eyes.

But it did not help. Nothing did. The thing still looked painfully human beneath its pallor, and that weight remained lodged within their minds.

The moment lingered—unwanted, unfiled, unprocessed.

Estelle slowly rose up, letting her gaze fall on him.

"Death is the only 'help' it was ever going to receive, Leon," she said softly once the silence became bearable again. “Do not hesitate next time. It will only take more if you do.”

His strained gaze met hers, and he offered a small nod before exhaling. He pushed himself back to his feet, sparing the child one final glance before forcing his eyes away.

He had shut it down the only way he knew how.

“The hidden study,” he said. “We need to find it.”

Leon turned to Estelle, brows faintly furrowed. “Did you find anything? Any leads?”

“Nothing,” she admitted, a trace of weariness slipping through the edge of her voice.

“Same here.” He lifted the handgun slightly. “Just this.”

Estelle swore quietly under her breath as she scanned the library again.

Rows. Shelves. Stone.

Still nothing.

“There has to be something in here,” she said, already turning away. “I’ll check the perimeter again—”

Leon caught her lightly by the arm before she could move. Estelle frowned. 

“Kennedy, we’re wasting—”

“No. We’re not doing another lap around this room like idiots.” He released her a second later with a tired exhale. “Just… stay put for a second.”

Reluctantly, Estelle acquiesced.

“Alright,” she said. “Do you have a plan?”

Leon glanced at the new suppressor seated on his weapon, his eyes catching the engraving on the barrel once more.

In silentio, veritas. 

In silence, truth.

He sighed sharply, already halfway to another frustrated groan, when a faint crackle came from a nearby corner. Both their heads snapped toward the sound.

It was where the child had been laid to rest.

Another brittle crack followed, and they saw it clearly this time. The child’s arm twitched once against the floor—not with life, but with rigidity. White spread beneath the exposed skin in thin branching veins, mineral growth racing slowly through the limb like frost spreading across still water. Leon’s stomach dropped as the fingers curled inward with an audible snap, joints locking one by one into unnatural stillness.

Estelle crouched beside the corpse just as another wave of ossification crept along its shoulder and neck. Its arm shifted from the tightening joints before stopping at a rigid angle toward the adjacent shelving.

It was reaching toward something.

And then, they finally saw it: one section of shelving remained untouched by the white mineral bloom. The bookcase’s edges were almost held in place by the calcification overgrowth, a thin layer beginning to jam itself in the gaps.

There was only one way to truly get it open.

Leon raised his weapon and fired. The round cracked into the edge of the bloom, and the surface fractured instantly, flaking off in brittle shards that scattered across the floor. He fired again, widening the break until a recessed indentation emerged beneath it. 

A button, half-buried but intact.

Estelle stepped closer without waiting for instruction, visor tracking the alignment of shelf, bloom boundary, and mechanism. She reached in and pressed it at last.

Click.

The entire bookshelf swung inward.

The smell hit them first: still, sealed and stale. Air untouched for years, trapped behind stone and silence until the room breathed it back into the world.

The entire place had been stripped bare.

The desk was cleared. The shelving along the far wall stood empty, with nothing but dust gathered in the spaces between brackets where documents had once lived. No scattered papers. No abandoned equipment. Nothing left behind in haste. Only absence.

All that remained was a skeleton in tattered clothing.

It sat behind the desk, collapsed gently against the backrest in the posture of someone who had simply stopped waiting. An adult male, based on the bone structure. The ID badge clipped to his breast pocket had faded beyond legibility, the photograph reduced to a pale ghost beneath scratched plastic.

His hands were folded neatly in his lap. Between them rested a small velvet box.

This was it—the final key.

The box came free with almost no resistance as Leon took it, as if it had been waiting a long time to be opened. Inside, preserved in the same amber resin as the ear, was a human eye. And beneath the resin block lies a scrap of parchment. Jagged at both the top and bottom.

Leon extracted it and held it toward the light.

"... Look upon the golden fire with eyes of molten stone, Ignite the sightless vision where the darkness was once known. …"

He read it twice. Then he reached into his tactical vest and produced the other two scraps, laying all three flat on the bare desk in order.

Hush the worldly discord, let the hearing fade away, Echoes of the lost, gone within the iron gray.  Look upon the golden light with eyes of molten stone, Ignite the sightless vision where the darkness was once known.  Offer up the tongue to silence, let the named depart, Surrender every spoken word to still the human heart. 

“Huh. Never thought I’d see a literary attempt as a clue in a BOW facility,” Leon said, skimming through the text once again with a hint of disdain in his eyes. “I hate how they even tried to make it poetic.”

Ritualistic sensory deprivation. That was what this was about—at least on the surface. The intent behind it made Leon’s grip tighten on the paper.

Estelle remained outwardly composed despite the revelation. But beneath the tint of her visor, her mind had already begun dissecting the text.

Hush. Echoes. Look. Ignite. Offer. Surrender.

The sequence settled into place too quickly.

For the briefest instant, something cold coiled low in her chest.

At first glance, it was jargon. A collection of first words from each line. But Estelle knew it wasn’t just a cipher, but a recollection of something that should have never been written down. And the fact that it had finally been unearthed meant it would have to be handled alone.

Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

Compartmentalization.

Stabilize. Continue mission. Eliminate variables later.

“Prayer room next. Let’s go,” she said, turning toward the exit in a clipped tone. Leon blinked at her sudden departure, his train of thought thrown off mid-step. He looked down at the scraps before quickly gathering them back into his vest.

As they exited the library, Estelle’s focus narrowed forward, sealing the room behind them in procedural dismissal.

Whatever had been discovered here would not be left unresolved.

[ LOG 10: INTEL ACQUISITION ] 

DATE: 2004-XX-XX 

PERSONNEL: Kennedy, L.S. (USSTRATCOM - Special Agent); Lockhart, E. (USSTRATCOM - Special Operative)

LOCATION: St. Sebastian's Home for the Children // Hidden Study (West Wing Library) 

STATUS: THIRD RELIC SECURED // CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTATION RETRIEVED 

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Anatomical Key Retrieval — [ STATUS: 100% COMPLETE ] 

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Facility Data Acquisition — [ STATUS: ONGOING ] 

OBSERVATION: Hidden study contained sealed documentation cache and third relic. Workspace had been deliberately sanitized; no additional personnel or signs of recent access. 

NOTE: 

Lockhart’s idea of “better” includes weaponizing the local environment. I hate how effective it is. —Kennedy, L.S.

[ END OF FILE ]