BREW

T-minus 5 minutes.

Somewhere behind the fog, a metallic chime echoed—subtle, warped, like a broken elevator bell buried beneath the earth.

The humming had stopped. The mirrors were still. The town stood in a breathless, unnatural calm.

Then the industrial elevator appeared.

It wasn't attached to any building. It rose from the ground itself—grinding, shrieking metal clawing its way free from the bones of the earth. Cables snapped loose from nowhere. The floor warped under its weight.

Ran's barrier trembled.

Merry's scissors twitched, blades tightening of their own accord.

From the cage of rusted steel stepped the Janitor.

It walked. One heavy step at a time.

Its form was tall—nearly inhumanly so. A porcelain-white suit, perfectly ironed, clung to an elongated frame. No face—just a blank mask, smooth and unmoving. But something darker grew from beneath its skin:

Coffee plants.

Twisting vines of dark-stained leaves and shriveled berries grew from its collar, down its arms, and burst from the seams of its pants. Some pulsed, others twitched. Roots dragged behind its steps like rotten veins searching for soil.

It held a broom—not burned, but strange. Its wooden shaft was smooth and stained with old sap. The bristles were fine, impossibly neat… yet the wind around them felt sterilized. Wrong.

With each step it took, the world seemed to unmake itself.

A soldier screamed from one of the squads on the far west block. By the time the others turned—he was gone.

No blood. No trace. His gun clattered to the pavement. His helmet vanished before hitting the ground. Even the patch of street he had stood on gleamed unnaturally clean.

Another soldier gasped. "H-Hector? Where did—wait who again?"

She turned toward the Janitor. Just a glance.

Her lips moved in confusion. Then terror. Her eyes clouded.

"Wait… what's my name…?"

Her skin paled. Her weapon slipped from limp hands. She stood, trembling.

Then she vanished. Not in light. Not in fire.

Just… gone.

"Don't let it look at you!" Merry's voice tore through the comms. "Do not engage alone! Avoid direct line of sight!"

But too many had already fallen.

Lucid squads across the barricade zones collapsed—screaming names, whispering prayers, some curling into fetal positions as the memories peeled from them.

Others recited their own names over and over, desperate to stay tethered to reality.

The Janitor moved forward. Each step left streaks of sterilized reality. Rubble vanished. Bullet holes smoothed over. Streets reformed into untouched pavement.

It wasn't cleaning.

It was erasing.

Ran thrust out a hand. "SEALING RITUAL: CONTAINMENT CIRCLE!"

Massive glyphs erupted from the ground beneath the Janitor. Chains of glowing sigils swirled, locking into place.

The Janitor paused. Tilted its head.

Then stepped forward.

The circle shattered.

Ran gasped. "That barrier should've held…!"

Merry darted forward, flanked by two strike squads. She kept her eyes low, aiming only at its chest.

"Light barrage!"

Bolts of condensed energy ripped through the air—each one carrying ritual disruptors and anchor runes.

Some fizzled mid-flight. Others struck the Janitor directly.

No reaction.

It reached out—slowly, mechanically—and plucked one of the spells from the air, like dust.

It dropped it. The sigil shattered like glass.

—The light dimmed.

Across the town, surviving Lucid squads scrambled to regroup.

A young operative scribbled counter-sigils into the dirt with her blood as her team shielded her.

One Lucid phased in and out of visibility—his limbs twitching between frames like broken film.

"He's being wiped!" someone shouted.

"Anchor him! Name chant—now!"

But the chant failed. One limb vanished. Then another.

Soon, he was nothing.

His dog tags clinked to the floor.

Then they, too, vanished.

Back at the center of town, Merry staggered. Her shoulder bled freely. Her cursed scissors spun uncontrollably now, carving invisible lines through the air. Even her was damage by her own weapon.

Ran stood tall beside her, arms outstretched. Dozens of sigils shimmered above his barrier net, shielding the civilians and wounded.

"We're not going to hold unless we learn why it's here," Ran muttered.

Merry nodded grimly. "This isn't chaos—it's cleanup. Something fed it. Something warped the field first. The surge… the flora… the choir… all of it was preparation."

This fissure doesn't felt like an accident or natural disasters, to both commander this was more like arranged attack.

They felt like the anomalies here was TOO PREPARED to consider it as normal fissure, all of them were in TOO GOOD condition.

Then the ground pulsed.

Not a quake. A heartbeat.

In the mist beyond the burning rooftops, the Janitor turned.

And began to walk toward them.