Unsettling music droning beneath the howling wind…)
Azra stood frozen, mouth slightly agape. The world around him dimmed into silence, save for the eerie rustle of the wind. Then, without warning, his mind clicked into sharpness, clearer, colder than ever.
"I see now," he whispered inwardly, voice edged in revelation.
"This demon… it's different. It's taken the shape of Refel."
The thought rang like a scream in his skull.
The wind howled with a vicious edge, thick bolts of lightning cracking across the darkened sky, painting the chaos in harsh, fleeting light. People screamed in the distance, scattering like leaves before a storm, chased by the nightmare spawn of hell itself.
Azra, gripping his three sacred stones, flung them into the storm's heart just before the first raindrop kissed the earth. The air warped, the stones compressing into a malignant gust, lashing out at the shape-shifting fiend.
Then a low, guttural moan.
"Whooooo…"
The demon twisted grotesquely, doubling in size, flames licking its skin like serpents. Its clawed hand tore a moving car from the street and hurled it toward Azra like it weighed nothing.
With a snap of his palm, Azra shattered the car mid-air, fragments raining around him like metallic hail.
The demon roared, spewing fire in a blinding wave.
Azra's response was swift, he called upon the water within, drawing it from the stormclouds above and his own blood, hurling it in a crashing tide that met flame with hiss and steam. The fire died in a shriek of vapor.
"You won't stop me."
His voice was low, almost lost to the storm.
Gripping a shattered club from the wreckage nearby, Azra spun into a brutal spiral, wind and wrath surging with every motion. The weapon became a blur his fury made flesh.
The demon screamed as it was torn apart in a cyclone of death. Its facade peeled away, crumbling into ash…
And then the truth emerged.
Walt.
(The music tightens, a discordant crescendo…)
Azra's eyes widened, heart lurching. That face…that cursed face. A ghost from the past dragged into the present.
"Azra… it's been a while," Walt says, rising to his feet.
The environment falls silent. Azra stares, frozen in disbelief.
"What…?"
"Relax, Azra," Walt replies with a faint grin. "I've been saving up my energy just for you."
He begins to walk away, voice lingering.
"Next time… we'll finish this."
---
Old Cabin
Roberson Street.
(Low, foreboding music creeps in…)
A ragged old bear limps toward a cave near the cabin, its movements slow and pained. The air shivers with the sound of eerie chanting—unnatural, otherworldly, sending a chill through the trees.
Birds scatter violently, screaming as they flee the sky. Then human screams pierce the air raw, desperate, agonized.
From the mouth of the cave, a figure emerges. Bloodied. Broken. Barely standing. He staggers forward, as though fleeing something that refuses to let him go.
"I'm coming for you…" he rasps, just as a man steps out behind him—
—an axe raised high—
—then crashing down.
"Refel…"
[Exeunt]