The sky didn't change color.
It didn't split open with lightning or fire.
It simply stopped behaving like a sky.
Clouds froze mid-drift, locked in place as if painted. Wind died instantly. Sound followed, smothered so completely that Mark could hear his own heartbeat like a drum inside his skull.
The mercenaries reacted faster than fear.
Weapons came up. Formations snapped into place. Every one of them faced outward—not at the forest, but at the air itself.
Mark felt it before he saw it.
A pressure so absolute it bent thought.
His knees buckled.
Not from weakness.
From instinct.
Something older than fear slammed into him, forcing his body to recognize a hierarchy it had never been taught.
The air folded.
Not tore. Not cracked.
Folded—like reality itself making room.
Light descended.
Not blinding.
Judging.
The figure emerged slowly, deliberately, as if time itself had been ordered to slow down in its presence.
Humanoid.
Tall.
Perfect in a way that felt artificial.
Four sets of wings unfurled behind it—layered, vast, each feather edged with a faint, impossible glow. They did not flap. They didn't need to.
The ground beneath the angel's feet did not break.
It submitted.
Mark couldn't breathe.
Every instinct screamed at him to lower his head, to expose his throat, to make himself small.
He fought it.
Barely.
Around him, mercenaries froze mid-motion. One dropped his rifle without realizing it. Another tried to raise his weapon again and failed—his muscles refusing commands that suddenly felt irrelevant.
The angel didn't look at them.
It looked through them.
Its gaze swept the island, and where it passed, the mutated forest recoiled. Beasts fled in blind panic, tearing through undergrowth, desperate to put distance between themselves and something they knew they could not survive.
The angel spoke.
Its voice didn't travel through air.
It appeared inside the skull.
> "Integrity breach confirmed."
Mark's vision blurred. Blood trickled from his nose. He wiped it away without looking, eyes locked on the figure above.
The angel's head tilted slightly.
Not curiosity.
Calculation.
> "Anchor instability detected."
The ground shuddered—not violently, but deeply, like the island itself was being weighed and found wanting.
Something screamed.
Not on the island.
Behind it.
Beyond it.
A hunger so vast it bent the Veil inward, clawing at the sealed boundary.
The island itself was a anchor to The Veil, but the Angel fixed it. By separating the from the island.
Now the Veil didnt require Island as an anchor to stand in the human world, cause now the there is no reason for the veil to stand in the human world anymore.
Meanwhile
Mark gasped.
For a heartbeat—just one—he felt it.
Another presence.
Ancient. Starved. Furious.
And then—
The angel moved.
It raised one hand.
Reality obeyed.
Invisible force slammed outward, rippling across the island. Trees bent flat. Stone cracked. Mark was lifted off his feet and thrown backward, smashing into the ground hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.
Pain flared.
Then stopped.
Not dulled.
Muted.
The angel's wings spread wider.
> "Breach sealed."
High above, something failed.
Not destroyed.
Denied.
The pressure vanished as suddenly as it had come. Sound rushed back in all at once—wind, leaves, distant howls, human breathing too loud and too fast.
Mark lay on his back, staring at the sky.
It looked normal again.
Too normal.
The angel hovered for a moment longer.
Then its gaze finally fell—not on the mercenaries.
On Mark.
Direct.
Unblinking.
The pressure returned—but focused now, sharp and surgical.
Mark couldn't move.
Couldn't look away.
Something inside him twisted violently, snarling against restraints it didn't understand.
The angel's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
> "…Anomaly noted."
That was all.
No judgment.
No action.
The wings folded.
Light collapsed inward.
And the angel was gone.
The moment the angel vanished—
Mark screamed.
Not in fear.
In pain.
He clawed at his chest as something inside him tore free, ripping through muscle, bone, blood, and soul. His spine arched violently, vertebrae snapping and reforming as his body rejected its own shape.
Bones rearranged.
Muscle swelled grotesquely, skin tearing as black fur burst through in violent waves. His fingers elongated, nails splitting and curving into claws thick as knives. His jaw forced forward, teeth erupting into jagged fangs as his skull stretched unnaturally.
Every breath was fire.
Every heartbeat was war.
One of the mercenaries shouted, finally breaking the stunned silence.
"What the hell is happening to the kid—"
The scream cut off.
Mark finished changing.
No.
The beast did.
Nine—no—ten feet tall.
Broad shoulders hunched forward, chest wide and dense like a living battering ram. Standing on two feets, slim waist, Thick black fur soaked in blood and sweat. Eyes glowing a violent amber—not feral, not mindless.
Awake.
This was no ordinary werewolf.
This was a transformation forced open by divine presence, a bloodline trigger ripped loose before it was meant to mature.
The beast inhaled.
And roared.
The sound crushed the air.
Men dropped to their knees, ears bleeding. Trees shook. The island answered with howls from things that knew better than to come closer.
The mercenaries didn't hesitate.
They opened fire.
Bullets tore into fur and muscle.
None of them mattered.
The beast moved.
Too fast.
A blur of black and red.
The first mercenary died before his brain registered motion—his torso split in half, spine torn free and flung aside like scrap. Another was lifted off the ground and smashed headfirst into a tree so hard his skull liquefied.
Mark—what was left of him—didn't think.
Didn't plan.
Didn't care.
He remembered hands forcing him to fight. Voices ordering him to survive. Pain disguised as training.
The beast repaid every lesson.
A kick crushed ribs inward like paper. A claw tore through armor and organs alike. A bite snapped a man in half at the waist.
Blood coated the ground.
Screams lasted seconds.
Then there were only bodies.
The two other Mercenaries william and his subordinate they both ran toward him.
They didn't run away.
They attacked.
They knew his moves. They knew his openings. They had trained him for years.
It didn't save them.
One leapt with a blade—too slow.
The beast caught him mid-air and slammed him into the ground again and again until nothing inside moved anymore.
The second hesitated.
Just for a second.
Recognition flashed across his face.
"Mark—"
The name died with him.
The beast drove a claw through his chest and ripped his heart free.
Silence returned to the island.
Mark stood alone.
Chest heaving. Hands dripping. Eyes burning.
Then—
He screamed again.
Not rage.
Terror.
The beast collapsed, muscles shrinking, bones grinding back into human shape. Fur receded. Claws cracked and snapped off. Blood soaked into the dirt as Mark lay naked among the dead.
A sixteen-year-old boy.
Surrounded by corpses he had created.
He tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
He tried to scream.
His throat failed him.
High above, far beyond the sealed Veil—
The angel did not look back.
It believed the anomaly resolved.
It was wrong.
What stood on that island wasn't a monster.
It was a premature alpha, born under divine pressure, baptized in blood, and left alive by mistake.
And the world would pay for that error later.