The night was a suffocating shroud of darkness, thick with a choking mist that curled and writhed like serpents. The men were transported and found themselves along the banks of the Kasanaan, its ghastly dark glow casting eerie, flickering shadows that danced among the twisted, skeletal trees.
Chris stood at the edge of this cursed place, no longer the man he once was, but a vessel of supernatural wrath and unyielding vengeance. His eyes burned with an unholy fire, veins glowing beneath his deathly pale skin, and ghostly chains appeared around his arms like living serpents, whispering curses and the anguished cries of the souls he commanded.
Before him, the humans cowered in abject terror. Their faces were drained of color, eyes wide and unblinking, reflecting a primal fear that twisted their features into grotesque masks of despair. They had expected death to be swift, but Chris had devised a far more exquisite and horrifying fate for them. He was no mere executioner; he was a tormentor.
With a sudden, brutal motion, Chris unleashed the spectral chains. They cracked through the air like whips, slashing into flesh and bone with sickening wet snaps. One man's arm was shredded open, muscle and sinew torn apart, tendons exposed and twitching grotesquely. Blood—thick, dark, and viscous—gushed freely, pooling around the victim's feet and staining the earth like spilled ink. Yet death did not come. The chains held him suspended, a cruel marionette caught between life and oblivion.
Chris's voice was a low, guttural growl, dripping with malice as he hissed, "Even if you beg for death's sweet release, it will not come for you! You will live... and suffer." The chains constricted mercilessly, crushing ribs with sickening cracks that echoed through the night. The men's screams tore the silence apart, raw and desperate, but Chris's eyes were cold and unyielding. He pulled the chains tighter, grinding broken bones against one another, eliciting a wet, grinding sound that made the others gag in horror.
One by one, Chris claimed his prey. He dragged their mutilated, bleeding bodies into the shadows, binding them to the gnarled trees. Limbs dangled at unnatural angles, blood pooling in grotesque puddles beneath them. Faces were frozen in eternal agony, eyes bulging with unspeakable horror, mouths stretched in silent screams that no longer carried sound.
Chris's hands flickered with ghostly flames—cold fire that licked at exposed flesh without consuming it. This spectral flame seared nerves and shattered sanity, a torment far worse than any mortal burn. He traced the edges of fresh wounds with cruel precision, each touch sending waves of unbearable pain rippling through his victims. Their bodies twitched and convulsed, trapped in an unending nightmare where death was a distant mercy forever denied.
With every savage blow, every wrenching tear of flesh and crushing snap of bone, Chris's form seemed to warp and twist before Bustamante's eyes. The faint flicker of humanity that once lingered in his gaze was swiftly consumed by a growing darkness—a sinister force that clawed its way from deep within his soul.
His skin, once pale but undeniably human, began to shift. It darkened to an ashen gray, mottled with veins that pulsed with an unholy green light, like the very essence of the river's cursed depths flowing beneath his skin. His hands, once shaped like a man's, stretched and thickened, fingers elongating into cruel talons that gleamed with spectral fire. The ghostly chains coiled tighter, seeming to fuse with his flesh, their whispers growing louder, more insistent.
His eyes—oh, those eyes—burned brighter, glowing like twin coals of hellfire, casting an eerie light that illuminated the twisted ecstasy etched across his face. His jaw lengthened, teeth sharpening into jagged fangs that glinted wickedly with each cruel smile. A low, guttural growl rumbled from deep within his throat, a sound not quite human, echoing with the torment of countless souls trapped aboard his cursed barge.
With each strike, his visage grew more demonic. Horn-like ridges erupted from his brow, shadowed and jagged, twisting upward like the branches of the gnarled trees surrounding us. His hair writhed as if alive, strands shifting and flickering like dark smoke caught in a restless wind. The air around him thickened, charged with a malevolent energy that made Bustamante's skin crawl and his heart pound in frantic terror.
He was no longer the man who had once captained a vessel; he was something far worse. And as his monstrous form loomed over them, tearing at their flesh with those cruel talons, Bustamante realized the true horror: The humans were not merely a victim of a man's wrath, but prey to a demon.
Cecilia and the others finally arrived at the place where they heard cries of agony thunder through the night. "No! Captain, please stop!" Cecilia thought to herself.
Inside the warehouse, one of the henchmen managed to pull out his gun, aimed it at Chris, and fired. Outside, the stillness around Martinez was shattered suddenly by the sharp crack of gunshots echoing through the air—an all-too-familiar sound that tore through the veil between past and present.
His corporeal form trembled as an unbearable wave of pain surged through his mind. Clutching his head with quivering hands, he dropped to his knees, knees sinking into the cold, cracked earth as if the weight of his memories physically pressed him down. The world around him dissolved, replaced by the hellscape of Normandy.
He was there again, amidst the chaos of D-Day. The air was thick with smoke and the acrid stench of gunpowder and burning flesh. Around him, men screamed and fell, bodies torn apart by explosions that shook the ground and rattled his very soul. The relentless thunder of artillery and the staccato crack of rifles filled his ears, drowning out all else.
Martinez's eyes—ghostly and hollow—watched in helpless horror as comrades were ripped apart, limbs flung like ragdolls into the mud. The screams of the dying echoed inside his mind, a cacophony of agony and despair that refused to fade. He felt the searing pain of shrapnel tearing through his own flesh, the sickening crunch of bone breaking beneath him.
Then, the memory sharpened into unbearable clarity: the moment he died. A searing blast, the world exploding into fire and blood. He had screamed then—an agonized, guttural sound that tore from deep within his chest as he ran blindly, desperate to escape the carnage that had claimed him. But there was no escape. Death had found him, and the agony of that final moment burned eternally in his soul.
"Martinez, what is happening? Are you okay?" Murillo shook the helmsman, "Come on, snap out of it!" She yelled.
"I'm back there again!" Martinez shouted, his eyes staring blankly into the distance, "I'm there again! I'm there again!" Suddenly, he ran in the opposite direction, screaming in terror.
"Chief, Wally, go after him, make sure he is alright," Cecilia instinctively told the two. "I'll take care of the captain!" she assured them.
"But the captain, what about the captain?" She protested, making it crystal clear her priority was Chris.
"Just go! I can manage here, just help Martinez," Cecilia pleaded. Murillo and Wally glanced at each other and followed Martinez.
Cecilia's footsteps faltered as she crept through the thickening fog, the distant glow of ghostly flames casting twisted shadows across the blood-soaked ground. Ahead, the night was alive with horrifying sounds—agonized screams, the sickening snap of bones, and a guttural growl that chilled her to the core.
Chris stood amidst the carnage, no longer the man she knew. His skin was ashen and mottled with glowing veins, jagged horns curled from his brow, and his eyes burned like hellfire. His clawed hands tore mercilessly at the bound victims, their faces frozen in eternal terror. The air around him pulsed with malevolent energy, and the very ground seemed to recoil beneath his monstrous presence.
Fear gripped Cecilia's heart, cold and suffocating, yet beneath that terror, a fierce flame of courage ignited. She could not—would not—let the man she learned to respect be lost to this darkness.
Steeling herself, she stepped forward into the nightmare, voice trembling but resolute. "Chris... please, come back to me."