Chapter 1: The End of a Shift

Chapter 1: The End of a Shift

The city of Aethelburg exhaled its foul, rain-slicked breath against the cruiser’s windshield. Kaelen Vance stared out at the blur of neon and concrete, the drumming of the wipers doing little to soothe the thrumming in his temples. Another twelve-hour shift was bleeding into its final minutes, leaving behind the usual dregs of human misery: a domestic dispute, two junkies trying to shoplift with a stolen credit card, and a fender bender that had devolved into a screaming match. It was Tuesday.

“Just another ten minutes, Kael,” his partner, Lena Petrova, said from the driver's seat. Her voice was a stark contrast to the city's weary groan—young, crisp, and still clinging to a sliver of optimism he’d lost somewhere in the deserts of a foreign war. “Then it’s a hot shower and eight hours of blissful unconsciousness.”

Kael grunted, a sound that served as his primary form of communication. He traced the faint, silvery line of the scar that cut through his left eyebrow. A permanent reminder. He didn’t want a hot shower. He wanted a bottle of cheap whiskey and the kind of silence that drowned out memories.

Lena, bless her rookie heart, took his silence as agreement. She was good, better than most of the seasoned burnouts at the precinct. She was smart, fast, and hadn't yet learned to look away. That’s what worried him. In Aethelburg, looking too closely got you killed, or worse, made you like him.

Just as Lena was about to pull into the precinct parking garage, the radio crackled, spitting static and the weary voice of dispatch.

“Car 13-David, can you respond?”

Kaelen’s jaw tightened. So close. “We’re end of shift, Dispatch,” he thumbed the receiver, his voice gravelly. “Send the night watch.”

There was a hesitant pause. “All night units are tied up with that pile-up on the interstate, Kael. This is… an odd one. Welfare check out on the old Miller farm. Fringes of the county line.”

Lena shot him a questioning look. The Miller farm was a good forty-minute drive, deep into the rural decay that surrounded the city’s urban sprawl.

“What’s the complaint?” Kaelen asked, already knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.

“Elderly male, Jasper Miller. Called 911 in a state of panic. Says… says ‘shadows’ are eating his livestock.” Another pause, the dispatcher’s professional tone fraying at the edges. “He was screaming, Kael. Then the line went dead.”

Shadows. Kaelen squeezed the bridge of his nose. A drunk. A dementia case. A prank. It was always one of the three. But the screaming… the line going dead… that was just enough to snag on the frayed edges of his conscience. He had a code, rusted and bent as it was: you don't leave a call unanswered.

“Fine,” he sighed, the word tasting like defeat. “13-David is en route.”

Lena didn’t complain. She just swung the cruiser around, her knuckles white on the steering wheel as she pushed them back into the flow of traffic, away from the precinct and towards the encroaching darkness of the county.

The drive was quiet. The city lights bled away, replaced by the oppressive black of the countryside. The rain intensified, hammering against the roof in a relentless rhythm. The road narrowed, asphalt cracking into dirt and gravel. It felt like they were driving off the edge of the map.

“Never liked it out here,” Lena murmured, her eyes scanning the dense woods that crowded the roadside. “Too quiet. Feels like something’s watching.”

“Something’s always watching, Petrova,” Kaelen said, his hand resting instinctively on the butt of his sidearm. “Just a question of what.”

They found the Miller farm at the end of a long, muddy lane. A derelict farmhouse stood hunched against the stormy sky, its windows like vacant eyes. A single porch light cast a sickly yellow glow, struggling against the twilight. The gate was hanging off one hinge, swinging mournfully in the wind.

But it was the smell that hit them first.

It wasn't the familiar, earthy scent of a farm. It was the coppery, metallic stench of a slaughterhouse, thick and cloying. Kaelen felt the hairs on his arms stand up. His soldier’s instincts, long dormant, screamed that this was a wrong place.

He killed the siren but left the strobing blue and red lights to slice through the gloom. “Stay in the car,” he ordered Lena.

“Like hell,” she retorted, already unbuckling and grabbing her heavy-duty flashlight. “We’re partners.”

Kaelen didn’t argue. He knew that look. He’d had it once himself. He grabbed his own flashlight, its powerful beam cutting a swathe through the rain. They moved towards the pasture, boots sinking into the mud.

The beam landed on the first one. A sheep. Or what was left of it. The animal was torn open, but not by teeth or claws he recognized. Its bones were twisted at grotesque, impossible angles, as if they’d been snapped like twigs. The fleece was matted with a black, viscous fluid that wasn't just blood. It seemed to… absorb the light.

They found another. And another. A dozen of them, scattered across the field in silent, mangled tableaus. The scene was one of profound, unnatural violence.

“Coyotes don’t do this,” Lena whispered, her voice trembling slightly. “What the hell could do this?”

Kaelen didn’t have an answer. He swept his light across the property, the beam finally landing on the open doors of a large, dark barn. A low, wet, tearing sound echoed from within.

He motioned for Lena to cover him, his Glock now firm in his hand. Every instinct honed in forgotten war zones was screaming at him. This wasn't a welfare check. This was a hunt.

They moved slowly, tactically, the squelch of their boots the only sound besides the rain and that horrible noise from the barn. The smell of blood and something else, something ozonic and alien, grew stronger.

At the threshold of the barn, Kaelen paused, listening. The tearing sound stopped. A heavy, thick silence fell, broken only by a low, guttural clicking. He risked a glance around the doorframe.

His blood ran cold.

In the center of the barn, hunched over the mangled form of a cow, was a thing that defied reality. It was vaguely canine in shape but far too large, its limbs bending at multiple, unnatural joints. Its skin wasn’t fur but a shifting, semi-liquid darkness that seemed to writhe and crawl, like a living oil slick. It had no eyes, no face, just a gaping maw filled with needle-like shards of what looked like obsidian. It was a creature born from a fever dream, a living patch of night that had been given teeth.

The creature’s head snapped up. It hadn’t seen them, Kaelen knew. It had felt them.

It let out a screech that wasn't a sound but a physical pressure, a shriek that vibrated in his bones and made the fillings in his teeth ache. Then it lunged.

It wasn’t fast. It was instantaneous. One moment it was twenty feet away, the next it was on them.

“Lena, back!” Kaelen roared, shoving his partner aside as he opened fire.

Pop-pop-pop!

The 9mm rounds struck the creature’s body. They didn't punch through; they were swallowed by the shifting darkness, the impacts causing ripples on its skin but doing no visible damage.

The thing swiped with a forelimb that ended in three razor-sharp talons. Kaelen threw himself back, the claws tearing through the fabric of his uniform sleeve and slicing a shallow cut into his forearm. Pain, hot and sharp, flared up his arm.

Lena fired too, her shots equally ineffective. The creature ignored her, its faceless head locked onto Kaelen, the one who had drawn first blood. It gathered itself for another impossible lurch.

Time seemed to slow. Kaelen’s training took over. He saw the trajectory, the slight shimmer in the air where it was about to be. He knew more bullets would be useless. It wasn't a thing of flesh and blood.

He dropped his aim from center mass to its gaping maw. As it lunged, he fired his last three rounds directly into the shrieking void.

Two rounds vanished like the others. But the third… the third found something.

There was a sickening, crystalline crunch. The creature’s high-pitched screech faltered, replaced by a sound like grinding glass. The writhing darkness of its body convulsed violently, then began to unravel, dissolving not into blood and viscera but into streams of black smoke and fading motes of light. Within seconds, it was gone. All that remained was the smell of ozone and the deep, chilling silence of the barn.

Kaelen stood panting, his arm burning, the Glock smoking in his hand. Lena stared at the empty space, her face pale with shock.

“Kael… what… what was that?”

He had no answer. He had seen horrors in his life, but nothing like this. Nothing that broke the fundamental rules of the world.

And then, it happened.

A sound, not in his ears but inside his skull. A clear, soft chime.

He blinked, and the world stuttered. A translucent blue screen flickered into existence in front of his eyes, hovering in the air like a hologram from a sci-fi movie he’d never seen. He could see the barn through it, but the words were sharp, undeniable.

[Hostile Anomaly Neutralized]

[First Kill Threshold Achieved]

[Initializing The Nexus Protocol…]

[Welcome, User. Your reality has been updated.]