Disclaimer:
The following chapter contains disturbing experimental visuals, including inhumane acts on children, body horror, and violent executions.
These elements are written to evoke emotional weight and expose the cruelty hidden beneath perfection—not for shock, but for truth.
Proceed if you are ready to face the darkest depths of this world.
The deeper he walked, the quieter the world became.
Not a silence born of peace. No, this was the kind that screamed. The kind that crept into the bones and whispered in the marrow. Phantom's boots thudded against cold metal stairs, each step slower than the last. Not out of hesitation—but out of restraint.
The air was sterile at first. Like any high-level facility—polished, controlled, artificial.
Then came the smell.
Faint at first. Metallic. Old. Like rusted coins soaked in stagnant water.
Another level down—it grew stronger. The tang got heavier. Wet iron, soaked bandages, dried rot.
By the time he reached the final stairwell, it hit him like a wall.
Blood.
Thick. Fresh. Old. Layered. Years of it, smeared into the walls, soaked into the concrete. It reeked of butchered innocence. The kind of stench that no ventilation system could ever cleanse.
The light flickered. Once. Twice. Then stayed dim—like even it was afraid of what lay below.
Phantom reached the last steel door. His hand hovered above the biometric pad for a moment.
Then pressed.
The lock clicked open with a soft hiss.
And hell greeted him.
Not the kind written in holy books.
The kind only humans were capable of building.
The room stretched into a surgical cathedral. Cold. Quiet. White floors turned red. Not with paint. With life drained too early. Beds lined the walls—each one strapped, each one occupied. Children. Some asleep. Some awake. None alive in spirit.
The first boy he saw had tubes sticking out of his neck—pulsing with unstable mana. Crystal formations jutted out from his skull, fracturing his skin. His eyes were open. Unblinking. Dead inside.
A girl next to him had wings—twisted, malformed, half-plucked. Bone stabbed through torn feathers. She was whispering something to herself. Not words. Just… sounds.
One bed over, a child had no face. Just a steel mask drilled into flesh, eyes replaced with cameras. His heartbeat was the only thing proving he was still human.
They weren't all in beds.
Some were locked in cages.
Some… weren't locked at all.
A chimera-child with spider limbs curled in a corner, gnawing on her own arm. Another had serpentine eyes, flicking his tongue out as if tasting fear in the air.
And then came the real monsters.
The children who were turned into weapons.
Strapped into simulation pods, exposed to endless war footage. Blood rituals tattooed into their skin. Neurochips in their heads. Pulse-dampeners welded into their chests.
Their breathing was… uniform. Too uniform.
Like machines pretending to be children.
Phantom walked past a glass tube—inside floated a girl, naked, with demonic runes carved into every inch of her skin. She wasn't moving. But her shadow was.
Further in, one boy floated mid-air, eyes black, mouth dripping whispers in a tongue no child should know. His shadow split into three. Each one grinning.
Phantom didn't flinch.
He couldn't.
He didn't have the right to look away.
This… was what they hid under their sterile perfection.
This was the core of Aspen.
Not just science. Sin.
He stopped beside a child strapped to an operating table.
The boy had only one arm. One eye. But his lips curved into the faintest smile.
"Are you… here to save us?" he asked.
His voice cracked like old glass.
Phantom looked at him for a long moment.
That smile shattered something inside him. Something he'd welded shut long ago.
"No," Phantom said softly. "I'm here to destroy them."
The boy blinked once.
Then smiled again—this time, for real.
"Good."
Phantom's hands clenched. His gloves creaked.
In his mind, there was no screaming.
Only stillness.
Only rage, refined into something colder than death.
In that moment—he didn't feel like a man anymore.
He felt like judgement wearing skin.
He walked deeper.
The hallway narrowed. The crimson lights flickered in slow rhythm, casting long shadows across his path. Blood followed the tiles like a trail—leading to a single sealed vault door at the end.
Phantom reached it. There was no lock. No scanner. Just a psychic seal—meant to be opened only by those who bore the signature of guilt.
He placed his hand on the center.
It opened without resistance.
Because he had seen enough to bear that guilt.
The room inside was massive. A chamber hidden beneath the world's most "perfect" company. No windows. No escape.
Only monsters.
Not the kind locked in cages.
But the ones who put them there.
Doctors. Scientists. Business suits. Mages in surgical robes. Even soldiers with the Aspen crest, smoking cigars like nothing was wrong.
There were twenty-three of them.
Laughing. Chatting. Reviewing footage of tortured children on floating screens.
He stepped inside.
No one noticed.
Not until the first man's throat split open—clean, silent.
The blood hadn't even hit the floor before the second fell. A dagger right through the eye.
Then chaos.
"INTRUD—"
He never finished.
Phantom moved like a ghost dipped in shadows. His daggers hovered around him, orbiting like hungry wolves, sharp with psychic precision.
They didn't fly.
They danced.
One sliced a man's arms clean off before pinning him to the wall by the jaw. Another curved around a corner mid-air, sliced through a spine, and came back to his side.
He didn't blink.
He didn't breathe hard.
He just judged.
Every kill was slow. Measured. Personal.
One woman begged. "I was just following orders—!"
He sliced her vocal cords first. Then whispered, "And now your soul follows pain."
Some tried to fight back. Spells, bullets, artifacts.
Didn't matter.
He was too fast. Too quiet. Too angry.
Within a minute, only one man was left. Crawling. Leaving a trail of blood as he dragged his broken body toward a locked terminal.
Phantom stopped him with a dagger through the calf.
"You turned children into weapons."
The man coughed blood. "W-we were making heroes…"
Phantom knelt beside him.
"We don't make heroes in cages."
He shoved a dagger into the man's heart—slowly.
The man choked once. Then died.
Silence returned.
Only blood remained.
Phantom stood in the center of the chamber. Crimson pools reflected the ceiling. His cloak fluttered, soaked in sin. The daggers hovered around him, gleaming.
He looked up.
"…It's done."
Then he felt it.
A pulse behind him. Not magic. Killing intent. Raw. Focused. Ancient.
His instincts screamed.
He turned—faster than sound.
And there they were.
Three bullets.
Inches from his face.
Frozen in mid-air.