Three Years After the Zerion War
Atlas Vale stood in silence within the Rebirth Initiative's orbital station, staring at the holo-feed flickering in front of him. His left arm Mythralite-reinforced and re-engineered whirred softly, responding to the tension in his clenched fist. For three years, he and Stella had kept the world at peace.
They extinguished conflicts before they flared. Prevented a dozen wars. Disarmed tyrants.
But this…
This wasn't war.
It was something else.
A live feed from a temple in the Guangxi mountains of China showed grainy but unmistakable footage:
A figure in a plague doctor mask, robes scorched and fluttering, spun through the air.
His blade curved, eerie, and glowing like molten bone sliced through a demonic shadow, spraying black ash across the temple's shattered walls.
Next to him, a second man appeared, faster than the eye could follow. No mask. Just a trench coat, blood-slick boots, and fury in his eyes. He struck like a meteor tackling a horned, snarling demon through stone pillars and ancient shrines.
And then both vanished.
Pop.
Like bursting bubbles.
No trace. No energy trail. No teleport signature.
Atlas squinted.
"This isn't possible…" he whispered. "These guys aren't registered metas. No heatprint, no quantum residue…"
Stella appeared beside him, sipping from a cup of ginger tea. "Something got you rattled?"
He replayed the footage again. Slower this time.
Stella watched in silence. Her brow furrowed.
"That mask…" she said. "That's not ceremonial. That's battlefield gear."
Atlas didn't take his eyes off the footage. "Who the hell are they…?"
Then, softer. More disturbed.
"…Demons exist?"
The screen flickered. Static danced across the frame. One final freeze-frame showed the Plague Mask standing in the smoke, glowing blade dripping with black ichor… as something far bigger loomed behind him, barely visible.
Atlas turned to Stella.
A voice chimed in his comm. Stella again.
"You're going down there, aren't you?"
He nodded. "I have to."
She stepped into view, now in full black armor. Not SteelGirl armorfield stealth gear.
"I'm coming with you."
He looked up. "This might not be a fight."
She narrowed her gaze. "If demons exist, Atlas… it's always a fight."
Moments Later Atlas's Private Chamber
Atlas paced slowly, boots echoing against steel. The feed played again on a wall-sized display.
He ran a spectral distortion scan. Still nothing.
But deep in his gut, he knew: those two were real.
And they weren't just fighters. They were something else entirely.
He tapped into his encrypted mission prep interface. Stella sighed as she reviewed the freeze-frame again.
"I mean… come on, Atlas. Demons?" she said, nudging him with her elbow. "Next, you'll tell me the Easter Bunny's got a criminal record and works for Interpol."
Atlas didn't laugh.
Stella kept going. "What's next?Holy water, silver bullets, ancient prophecies etched in goat bones? Maybe these guys moonlight as vampire DJs."
He finally shot her a deadpan look. "You done?"
She shrugged, lips curled. "Almost. I just look, we've fought monsters, sure. But demons? Like the storybook kind? Possession? Black eyes? Pitchforks? I don't buy it. These guys probably used some cloaked tech, or they're rogue psychic types. Maybe even AI constructs playing vigilante."
Atlas didn't respond. His silence said everything.
She stopped joking.
"You're really spooked, huh?" she asked softly.
He looked back at the frozen image of the Plague Mask mid-strike too clean, too controlled.
"I've seen gods bleed, Stella. I've seen machines override human souls. But this? I don't understand it. And whatever I don't understand… usually ends in fire."
Later That Day Guangxi Mountains
Atlas and Stella arrived on-site via stealth drop from orbit. No media, no backup.
They surveyed the charred remains of the temple under heavy rain. The scent of sulfur and ash still hung in the air, mixed with wet moss and scorched incense. Birds didn't sing here. Even insects stayed silent.
Atlas knelt beside the last known impact site, Mythralite fingers scanning the fractured stone.
"Nothing," he muttered. "Again."
Stella walked ahead, eyes scanning the trees. "I asked the locals down the mountain. They said there were no sounds, no lights just thunder and then silence. Nobody climbed up to see. Superstitious types."
Atlas stood, frowning. "And no energy residue. No tech trails. It's like they vanished into…"
"Smoke and melodrama?" Stella offered. "That tracks."
He gave her a sharp look, but she winked. "Hey, I'm just trying to keep it light before the real horror begins."
He didn't smile.
They searched for two more hours interviewing monks, examining camera drones, even scanning the underground tombs beneath the site.
Nothing.
That Night Vale Residence, Iceland
Their home was quiet. Designed by Atlas years ago a place to retreat, to think. Glass walls, warm lighting, and every scientific and arcane database known to man.
Atlas sat in front of a triple-screen terminal, still in armor from the waist down. He hadn't moved in hours.
Stella stood in the kitchen, making tea, stealing glances at him.
"You haven't blinked in ten minutes," she said. "That can't be healthy."
Atlas didn't look up. He was buried in cross-referencing satellite archives, archived occult mythos, and classified global incidents.
"I found three cases," he muttered. "All redacted. Same pattern. Same disappearances. No evidence. No tech trails."
She walked over, sipping her tea. "You're spiraling. You do this when you can't explain something."
"I'm not spiraling," he snapped, more harshly than he intended.
He took a breath. Regret immediately washed over him.
Stella just nodded, quiet. She knew this version of him the obsessive version. The scientist in pain.
She touched his shoulder. "Just don't forget I'm here."
Midnight
Atlas was alone now. Still researching.
He bypassed five encrypted government firewalls. Even more dangerous he dove into non-governmental blacknet archives. Unlisted groups. Rumored circles. Forgotten names.
Then something flickered.
A page. Buried. Blurred.
THE RED VAULTS PROJECT FILE 114B "PROJECT HADES SONS"
Access Denied.
He forced a Mythralite protocol key into the system stolen once from a dead meta-archivist.
Access granted.
The screen opened.
A brief, scrambled document loaded.
"Unknown operatives appeared in Saigon 1991. Wore mask resembling 17th-century plague doctor. Cut down entity labeled as 'Pre-Demonic Form 6'. Vanished without detection. Incident classified RED LEVEL. Connected to rogue faction 'The Pale Order.'"
"They hunt. They erase. They do not speak to us."
"Status: ACTIVE. UNKNOWN GLOBAL LOCATION. DO NOT ENGAGE."
Atlas leaned forward, heart thudding.
The plague doctor… was real.
And he had been for decades.
More than that a secret organization existed that specialized in erasing demonic threats… beyond anything the Rebirth Initiative had ever known.
He whispered to himself.
"The Pale Order."
Behind him, the lights flickered briefly. Not from power failure.
Something unseen stirred. Atlas Vale leaned forward, staring at the decrypted text glowing on the center screen of his underground system terminal. The faint blue glow from the monitors bathed his tired face in a ghostly hue.
He whispered the name like a relic unearthed from some myth.
It wasn't just urban legend. It was real. Hidden behind firewalls that even Rebirth had never breached. And they weren't alone.
Something else flickered on the edge of the screen an embedded transmission hidden inside a decades-old Chinese intelligence log. The header blinked in red:
CLASSIFIED QI-LING BLACK VAULT CONFIDENTIAL TRANSMISSION REDACTED ACCESS ONLY READ AT OWN RISK.
He opened it. No hesitation.
There are masks in the mist.
They are not ours, but we've seen them. In jungles. In ruined cities. In mountains older than empire.
They wear no badges. Carry no flags. Their faces are hidden beneath plague masks, oni masks, gas filters, bone veils…
Some are Chinese. Others are foreign Filipino, Russian, Ethiopian, Peruvian, Japanese. United only by what they kill.
We call them The Masked Circle.
When demons rise, they descend. When possessed cry out, they do not pray they purge.
They do not ask permission. They do not speak to governments. They act when others stall.
Sometimes… the Hive fears them.
Atlas sat back in his chair, breathing shallow.
He remembered what Stella had said earlier "Demons? Seriously?"
But this?
This wasn't myth. This was infrastructure.
Unseen. Untouched. Operating on a level even Rebirth hadn't penetrated.
And it wasn't just one vigilante in a mask.
It was a hidden network. International. Covert. Unified by masks, silence, and purpose.
He tapped the console again, pulling a map of Asia onto the screen.
The system began to triangulate:
A temple fire in Laos, 1998. No survivors. Only two shapes seen on infrared before disappearance.
A missing cargo ship off Indonesia, 2004. Radioed demonic screeches before silence. Last camera showed two figures boarding the ship from the sea wearing masks.
A collapsed monastery in Nepal, 2012. Only signs of combat: ash, bone fragments, and carvings scorched into stone symbols used in Vietnamese and Tibetan exorcisms.
It was all there. Buried in data, never connected.
Until now.
Atlas whispered under his breath, "They've been here all along… hiding in the shadows."
Behind him, footsteps.
Stella entered, towel around her shoulders, hair damp from the shower, and an arched eyebrow raised at the chaotic map now spread across three giant holographic displays.
"You're still on this?" she asked, setting a mug down near him. "I thought we agreed you'd sleep tonight. Or at least blink."
"I found something," he said, barely looking up. His voice was hoarse. Excited. Haunted.
She stepped closer and studied the files.
Her brows drew tight. "What is this? Chinese intelligence logs?"
"Not just China. Russia, Vietnam, old U.S. blacksite leaks. Everything I could unbury."
He pointed to the header: "They call them The Masked Circle."
She read quietly. Her face changed as the weight settled in.
"So they're real," she murmured. "The ones from the footage."
Atlas nodded slowly. "And they've been operating longer than we've been alive."
Stella blew out a slow breath. "And we just... never saw them?"
"No. We weren't looking. Because we thought we were the top of the food chain."
He stood, eyes fixed on the data.
"This isn't just about demons or Hive creatures anymore. There's a whole war going on right beneath the surface. We've been playing in the light. But these people... they live in the dark."
She hesitated, then asked, "What are you going to do?"
He turned to her fully now.
"I need to find them."
She blinked. "The masked ones?"
"All of them," he said. "Plague Mask. The other one the brute in the coat. Whoever leads them. I don't care if I have to track ghosts through the Himalayas or follow ash trails in Saigon... I'm going to meet them."
Stella crossed her arms, skeptical. "You think they'll talk to us?"
"I don't need them to talk," Atlas said quietly. "I just need to understand. Because if what they're fighting breaks loose if the Hive isn't dead we won't be able to stop it alone."
There was silence for a moment.
Then Stella smiled dryly. "So… we're going demon-hunting now?"
He smirked faintly.
"Not yet. First, we're going shadow-chasing."
He turned back to the map and highlighted a flashing signal: an abandoned site in western Yunnan, deep in the forests. Last known anomaly. Reported 18 hours ago. Fire. No survivors. And one blurry image of a figure vanishing into mist a long coat and a mask with a beak.
Atlas whispered to himself, as if the name alone carried power:
The Masked Circle..
Then louder.
Stella prep a private jet." We're going to China. Tonight."
Atlas tapped the blinking signal on the map. The coordinates flashed. An anomaly in Yunnan. Recent. Violent. Masked figures reported. The thread was there he just needed to pull it.
Behind him, Stella didn't move.
She watched him with something that wasn't anger. Not really. It was fear. And maybe something worse fatigue.
"You're really going through with this?" she asked quietly.
He turned. "We have to."
She shook her head slowly. "No, you have to. I don't."
He blinked. "What are you saying?"
She took a step toward him, arms crossed tightly over her chest.
"Atlas… we fought Zerion. We've rebuilt cities. Prevented world wars. We nearly died half a dozen times. You can't tell me this is different."
"It is different."
"To you," she shot back. "Because you don't know how to stop. You always need a new war, a new threat, something to chase. Something to fix."
"That's not fair "
"No?" she snapped, cutting him off. "Then tell me when was the last time you sat still? Actually let yourself breathe? We said we'd make peace work. That we'd build something normal."
His face softened slightly. "Stella…"
"I'm tired, Atlas," she said, voice cracking. "I want out. I'm not joking. I've been thinking about retiring for months. This, this superhero thing, this 'global guardian' weight I didn't sign up to die for it over and over."
He stared at her, speechless.
"I want a life," she continued, tears gathering in her eyes. "A real one. I want to wake up without checking the threat index. I want to eat breakfast without wondering if another god is falling from the sky. I want to live like a human again. Not a weapon."
Atlas clenched his jaw, his mechanical hand flexing involuntarily. "I want that too."
"Then why won't you let yourself have it?" she asked, almost a whisper now. "Why chase shadows? Why chase them, Atlas?"
He looked away, voice low.
"Because something out there is killing people... and hiding from everything we know. Because there's a war we never saw. And because the next Zerion might not give us time to prepare."
He turned back to her. "Because if I ignore this, and it costs innocent lives I won't live with that. You know I won't."
Her silence answered him.
Finally, she stepped back, wiping her eyes.
"So that's it," she said. "You'll go to China. Chase ghosts. And maybe never come back."
"If I don't go," he said gently, "maybe no one comes back."
A long pause.
Stella stared at him for what felt like hours. Then she nodded slowly, bitterly.
"I'll fly the damn jet," she muttered. "But after this…"
Atlas nodded too, softer this time.
"We'll talk. I promise."
She gave a tired smile. "You always promise."
Then she walked away.
He stood in silence for a moment… then turned back to the map.
The coordinates pulsed.
The Masked Circle.
If they were real… he'd find them.
But somewhere deep in his chest, he wondered:
What would he lose this time?
Shadows Beneath Peace
Stella turned toward the door, shoulders tense. Her voice cracked as she spoke.
"You don't even see it, do you?"
Atlas didn't respond.
"You say you're saving people but you don't care who you lose along the way. Not even me."
He turned sharply. "That's not true "
Stella spun back, pain flaring in her eyes. "Then prove it! Stay. Let someone else chase these shadows. Let someone else fight this war. Just once."
He stepped toward her. "If we do nothing "
"Don't!" she snapped, tears spilling. "Don't turn this into a math equation. Don't hide behind duty. I know you care about saving the world. But what about me, Atlas?"
His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
"I'm not just your teammate," she said. "I'm not just SteelGirl. I'm Stella. Your lover. Your partner. I've stood beside you in every war. Every fire. Every hopeless moment."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"I just wanted us to finally live. To be human. Together."
Atlas's gaze dropped. His Mythralite fingers trembled at his side.
"This is wrong," he said softly. "All of it. We're not built for normal. Not anymore."
She stared at him, wounded.
"So that's it?" she said. "We just accept that we're broken? That we don't get to have anything good?"
He looked at her but his silence said everything.
Her expression hardened.
And then she slapped him.
A sharp, stinging blow across his face.
Not out of hatred. But heartbreak.
She turned and walked away, footsteps echoing in the silent chamber.
Atlas didn't stop her.
Couldn't.
He stood frozen, hand slowly rising to his cheek where she struck him. Seven Days Later
Onboard Atlas Vale's Private Jet 42,000 ft, en route to Vietnam
The clouds drifted like slow smoke outside the panoramic window, orange and lavender painting the sky. The jet hummed steadily, a quiet sanctuary in the air. Inside, no alarm sirens. No armor suits. No war machines.
Just two worn out souls trying to hold on to something human.
Stella sat barefoot on the sofa seat, a mug of ginger tea between her hands, eyes half-lidded as she watched the sky. Her hair was down, loose and free, catching the light like black silk.
Atlas stood at the window, his silhouette quiet and still, arms crossed, his upgraded Mythralite arm reflecting soft glints from the setting sun. The scent of brewed herbs and engine oil lingered in the air.
"Vietnam," he said, finally breaking the silence. "I haven't been there in over a decade."
Stella glanced up. "Last time was a mission, right? That international hostage op?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "Didn't even see the sky that time. In and out. This time's different."
She smiled faintly. "No demons. No world-ending threats. Just street food, humidity, and hopefully a bed that doesn't explode."
Atlas chuckled.
Then he turned, slower now, as if the words had been building up in his chest for years.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking… since the crash with us."
She met his gaze and said nothing.
"I know I've been distant. Obsessed. I chased ghosts, machines, gods… always thinking if I fixed the world, maybe I'd fix myself too."
He stepped forward, taking a seat across from her.
"But this this trip it's not just about rest. It's about you. Us."
Stella's fingers gripped her mug a little tighter.
"I promise you, Stella. After this no more missions. No more diving into the abyss. I'm not going to waste another second chasing something that keeps taking us away from each other."
His voice cracked. "We go home. For real this time."
She didn't reply right away. Her expression softened slowly.
"You mean it?" she asked, her voice smaller than usual.
"I mean it," he said. "This… this obsession ends here."
She looked out the window, then back at him.
"Then maybe," she whispered, "maybe I can finally believe that we're allowed to be happy."
He reached for her hand.
She let him take it.
Silence. Not awkward healing.
They sat there, leaning into each other as the soft drone of the engines lulled them into peace.
20 Minutes Later Somewhere Over Laos-Vietnam Border
The cockpit beeped twice. Atlas's HUD flickered.
"Flightpath's clean," he mumbled. "Another thirty minutes and we touch down in central Vietnam. Beach town. Quiet spot."
"You and your beaches," Stella teased. "Every time we crash, you aim for somewhere with sand."
He grinned. "Built-in escape plan."
Suddenly.
PING.
A sharp blip on the radar.
Atlas's expression darkened. "What the hell…?"
He stood quickly, walking toward the cockpit door. The co-pilot turned, face pale.
"Sir, we've got… some kind of ground lock. It's not military. No signature I recognize"
WHISTLE.
BOOM.
The left wing exploded into fire.
The jet pitched violently sideways.
"Impact! Port side! We've been hit!" the pilot screamed.
Stella tumbled forward, catching herself with a forceful slam against the bulkhead. "Atlas!"
"I'm here!" he yelled, rushing to her. "Hold on!"
The emergency protocol engaged seat restraints flung into position, foam walls deployed, and the interior darkened as the ship spiraled downward.
Outside, a rocket trail smoked in the sky, launched from dense jungle below.
Atlas's HUD scrambled. "Signal's jammed we're being tracked this wasn't random!"
The cockpit tore off.
Flames roared around them.
The last thing Stella heard before blacking out was Atlas screaming her name:
"Stella brace!"
??? Deep Jungle, Near Vietnam-Laos Border
Smoke drifted lazily over cracked metal.
The shattered fuselage of the private jet lay half-buried in tangled vines and mud, embers licking up toward the thick green canopy. The sky above was gone replaced with jungle and mist and silence.
Atlas's hand burst through the broken emergency exit metal fingers twitching, sparking.
He gasped, dragging himself out, blood on his brow, one eye swollen.
"Stella," he coughed. "Stella, answer me!"
He limped toward the other side of the wreckage.
Therea figure crawling from the twisted underwing, bruised, coughing, armor scorched.
SteelGirl.
Her voice rasped. "Still think this was a honeymoon?"
He almost laughed.
Instead, he dropped to one knee beside her. "You okay?"
"I've had worse birthdays."
Together, they looked around.
The jungle was eerily quiet. No birds. No insects. Only the crackling of broken machines and the distant call of something that sounded… wrong.
Atlas activated his visor.
No signal. No GPS. No comms.
They were alone.
Except.
Carved into a nearby tree, fresh and deliberate, was a symbol.
A mask. Split in half. One side a bird beak. The other a human face.
Stella stood slowly, her eyes wide.
"What is that?"
Atlas stared at it, heart thudding.
"…We've been watched."
He turned his gaze deeper into the jungle.
"They knew we were coming."
And then.
A single tear slipped down his face.
The same face that had stared down gods, killers, monsters.
But now? It was the face of a man realizing that love had slipped through his fingers... maybe forever.
— To Be Continued…