Graves

Phillip Graves was a man who once prided himself on control. Command, discipline, precision—these were the pillars of his existence. But that was before the mission, before everything he knew was consumed by the endless, spiraling abyss of madness.

The retrieval op had seemed routine. Get in, secure the artifact, get out. Shadow Company had done this a hundred times before. There was no room for hesitation, no space for doubt. Yet the moment they touched down on that godforsaken island, Graves felt something shift—like the air itself was watching them. Still, they pushed forward. They always did.

The artifact was supposed to be their prize: a small, jagged stone, its surface veined with pulsing light that seemed to move with some dark, unseen heartbeat. When Graves had laid eyes on it, he’d felt an immediate pull, something deep and wrong. But orders were orders.

That was the moment everything began to unravel.

He could still hear the screams of his men. The first to fall was Davis. One minute, the medic was muttering about strange shapes moving in the shadows, the next he was on his knees, hands clawing at his eyes, shrieking in terror. “They’re watching… They’re everywhere!” Graves hadn’t understood. Not until Davis’s body twisted, contorting in impossible ways, bones snapping like dry twigs. The jungle seemed to swallow him whole, leaving nothing but silence in its wake.

That was just the beginning.

Graves’ grip tightened on his rifle as the memories hit him in sharp, flashing waves. The screams of his soldiers echoed endlessly in his skull, a cacophony of pain that never let him rest. Davis. McCoy. Lewis. One by one, they were torn apart by forces he couldn’t comprehend. He’d watched their bodies warp into grotesque mockeries of life—eyes where there should be none, mouths where there had once been flesh. Some of them had begged for help, their voices twisted and broken, calling out to him through blood-soaked gurgles.

“Commander… please…!”

And he had done nothing.

Even now, as he staggered through the clearing, the visions flashed before his eyes—faces he had once led into battle, faces that now haunted his every step, twisted and mutilated by the darkness. Graves could feel their accusing stares, their silent screams clawing at his soul. His team was gone. Because of him.

The rage that had simmered beneath his skin finally ignited. His teeth clenched, and his eyes narrowed into burning embers of hatred. He could feel it—inside him, the coldness that slithered through his veins like poison. He hated it, hated what it had done to him, what it had turned him into.

But even more than that, he hated the fact that he couldn’t stop it.

'They lied to us.' Graves’ thoughts were jagged, bitter, laced with wrath. The people who had sent him and his men here knew more than they let on. They had to. The artifact… it wasn’t just some piece of ancient technology. It was alive, a part of something far older, far darker. And it had taken everything from him.

He was going to destroy it. Or die trying.

Graves forced himself forward, his breath coming in ragged bursts. His vision blurred at the edges, but he shook it off, too angry, too desperate to stop. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw their faces, heard their voices, felt their deaths. The dreams were endless, and so was his fury.

Then, in the clearing ahead, a figure emerged—real, solid, human. At first, he thought it was another hallucination, another cruel joke played by whatever had taken ahold of him. But no, this one was different. They moved human, not the aimless drifting of a mind lost to the darkness like him.

Graves tensed, lifting his rifle, his muscles coiled like springs, ready to strike. “Get out of here,” he spat, his voice hoarse and ragged, dripping with barely contained rage. His eyes burned with a desperate fury, the weight of every death, every failure hanging off his shoulders like chains.

Graves narrowed his eyes, his breath coming in sharp, shallow bursts as he watched them. There was something different about them, something that cut through the fog of his madness.

He took a half-step back, his fingers tightening around the rifle's grip. “I said, get out!” he roared, the sound more desperate than angry now. He could feel the darkness writhing inside him, pulling at his mind, he was already lost.

Graves thought they were going for a weapon. He braced himself, a wild, manic smile tugging at his lips. Maybe this was it. Maybe he could end it all, right here.

But what they pulled out wasn’t a weapon. It was a notebook, worn and battered, its pages filled with strange symbols and notes scrawled in a hurried hand.

He recognized some of the symbols, the same ones that had been burned into his mind, the same ones he saw in his dreams. The realization hit him like a punch to the gut, and he staggered back, his eyes wide, heart hammering in his chest.

“What… what is this?” he whispered, his voice barely more than a rasp. He looked up at them, his eyes wild. “You… you know what this is. You know how to stop it.”

Graves felt something like hope stir in his chest, a fragile, flickering thing that he hadn’t felt in what seemed like an eternity. He took a shaky step forward, lowering his rifle. The anger and desperation that had fueled him for so long twisted into something else: a raw, desperate need for answers.

“You have to help me,” he said, his voice trembling with the weight of everything he’d lost. “I have to fix this. I can’t—” His words broke off. “I can’t let it end like this.”

If there was a way to end this nightmare, he would follow them to the very ends of the earth.

And maybe, just maybe, he could finally silence the screams that haunted his every moment.