The door hissed open with a sound like breath being stolen from a throat.
Frost rolled out from the chamber's threshold. Not from temperature — but from something older than ice. The containment field rippled like water when Director Vane stepped inside, the magnetic hum pressing against his lungs like invisible hands.
This vault wasn't on the records.
Not even the Council knew everything it held.
But Vane did.
He had built it.
For this day.
When the system began to collapse.
When Berou returned.
The vault's interior was circular, obsidian walls lined with containment coffins — smooth sarcophagi of alloy and bone-glass, each glowing faintly with red glyphs. There were twelve. Eleven sealed.
One cracked open.
Inside it: a withered, eyeless figure suspended in black fluid — tendrils of metal wrapped around its limbs like leeches. Its jaw was missing. Replaced with a steel plate.
Its name was etched in Abyssal Script:
Subject 0 – The Whispering Mouth.
Vane paused before it. The creature didn't move. But the air shifted.
Then, in Vane's mind — came the whisper.
"Hhhhas he returned…?"
Vane didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
The creature laughed. A dry, crawling sound like teeth scraping against stone.
He walked past Subject 0.
To the next.
Subject 3 – Shatterwing.
A creature with no legs. Only arms — eight of them — each ending in blood-dulled blades. Its wings were made from spines. Literally. Its own and others. The surgical scars ran across its chest like a map of hatred.
It was breathing.
Barely.
"They said you were failures," Vane muttered. "But Berou proved them wrong. He was just the first draft."
He moved on.
Subject 6 – Mirrorchild.
This one was suspended in light instead of fluid. A child-shaped being. Genderless. Faceless. But every time Vane looked at it, he saw himself. Or his mother. Or the commander he'd executed a decade ago.
Mirrorchild didn't reflect faces.
It reflected guilt.
And fed on it.
Even now, the containment shell groaned as it reached toward him — not with arms, but memories.
At the final chamber, Vane stopped.
The largest coffin. Coiled in chains.
Subject 12 – Azariel.
The only experiment not derived from Berou's DNA.
This one came before him.
A seraphic entity dredged from the abyssal faultline beneath the HQ. Found — not made. Wings of pure light folded into themselves. No mouth. No eyes.
But it dreamed.
And in its dreams, entire floors had bled.
It had whispered names of people who hadn't yet died.
And then they did.
Berou never knew about it.
He was never meant to.
Azariel was the origin.
And now, the cage began to open.
"The world is falling apart," Vane said softly. "But I won't lose to my creation."
"Berou is not the end. He's the warning."
One by one, lights across the chamber began to blink green.
Authorization codes flooded the mainframe.
All eleven subjects: awakening.
Emergency override beacons disabled.
Backup locks shattered.
The Vault began to shake.
And from inside the coffins — the whispering, the twitching, the screaming — began.
Not of pain.
Of hunger.
Back in the ruins of the Council chamber, Berou stopped.
His breath caught.
The Apostate inside him stirred.
It felt them.
Waking.
And for the first time in years…
It didn't laugh.
It was afraid.