The year was 1794. French soil, war-worn and riddled with unrest, trembled beneath the boots of men
hungry for purpose.
Captain Rousseau of the 17th Expeditionary Survey wiped the sweat from his brow as he stepped over a
fallen column of stone. His men, a mixture of soldiers and archeological enthusiasts in uniform, fanned out
across the overgrown clearing. The trees leaned in like eavesdroppers, their roots long since overtaken the
stone ruins that jutted out from the earth like shattered bones.
"Mon capitaine," called a voice. A wiry soldier waved from the edge of a pit.
Rousseau approached. Beneath the soldier's feet, a sloped trench descended into a cavernous hollow.
Moss, lichen, and centuries of rot clung to the carved stones.
He saw it then.
A sigil.
Cracked. Worn by time. But unmistakable.
He had seen this symbol in old church texts. An archaic warning: SILENCE HOLDS THE LAUGHTER.
The soldier beside him chuckled nervously. "It is a joke, no?"
Rousseau frowned. "No. It is a warning."
They descended together. The air grew cold, unnaturally so, and dry as old parchment. Torchlight painted
flickering shadows across the inner chamber where rubble and stone had collapsed around an altar. And at
its center—
A box.
Roughly the size of a child's skull. Bound in metal and veilsilk now yellowed with age. The surface was
covered in faded runes, etched deep enough to survive time, smeared faintly with something like ash.
One of the younger men stepped forward.
"Shall I open it, sir?"
Rousseau hesitated.
Something in his bones screamed against it.
But pride—national, personal, and scientific—overruled instinct.
He nodded.
The young man pulled away the veil. Metal bindings snapped brittle. As the box shifted, a low vibration
hummed through the stone beneath their feet.
Then—
click.
Nothing more.
At first.
But Rousseau felt it. The moment the latch loosened, the world exhaled. Not air, but presence. Like
something asleep had rolled in its slumber.
The box didn't open fully. Just a crack. But it was enough.
The men exchanged glances. Then laughed it off.
That night, the camp was ripped apart.
A fog rolled in thick and wet, silencing the sentries. Something moved through the mists—laughing. The
screams came in waves. By dawn, every soldier was dead.
Except the box.
It sat untouched atop a stone slab, faintly open, the runes now glowing a sickly red.
Within the Veil, Jack emerged.
He was different—more solid than before, but leaking shadow with every step. The box's partial opening
had weakened the seal. He clawed his way through the thinning boundary, howling with glee and fury. His
shape bent reality around him. Trees leaned back. The grass browned.
Then something else arrived.
From the deeper dark stepped a tall figure robed in a garment that shifted like living ink. A Dark Entity, old
and cold, without name. Its voice was velvet on broken glass.
"You are magnificent," it said. "Serve me. Together we will shatter the Veil."
Jack only stared, blood and laughter smeared across his painted lips.
The Entity stepped forward. "Your hunger is beautiful. Your power unmatched. But unfocused. Let me guide
—"
Jack lunged.
Their battle shook the Veil.
Shadows warped. Time fractured. The Entity's form twisted under Jack's blows, unable to match the raw,
unbound chaos of the fusion Jack had become.
In desperation, the Dark Entity hissed and reached into its chest, withdrawing a chain forged from essence
older than language—a soul chain. A link meant to bind monsters too strong for gods.
It lashed the chain around Jack's essence mid-roar, anchoring it back to the box. Jack screamed, his limbs
snapping back into their spectral mold.
The Entity dragged Jack through the Veil, down into a prison of barbed whispers and iron roots. There, it
tortured him.
Endless illusions. Flashes of light. Chains soaked in forgotten agony.
All to break him.
All to mold him into a weapon.
But Jack laughed through it all.
He laughed for years.
Until something heard him.
From far beyond, deeper in the chaotic outer reaches of the Veil, they came—entities of chaos, unshaped
and bound to no order. Hungry for entropy. Drawn to the vibrations of Jack's madness.
They breached the prison—not to free him out of mercy, but out of amusement.
They unbound the soul chain, shattered part of the box's seal, and carried Jack through screams and light
into the roiling tide of their dominion. The Dark Entity tried to reclaim him but was cast back—its claim
broken, its chain severed.
In the Court of Tumor and Song, the chaos beings danced around Jack's floating, war-torn form. He did not
speak. He only grinned. They could not control him.
He was not like them.
And so, from the shadows behind the throne of entropy, a voice emerged. One without face or name. An
ancient Master of the chaos-born, silent for centuries.
"Deliver him," it said.
To whom, the crone did not ask.
She obeyed.
Crossing the threads of realms, she stepped into the waking world beneath an English sky.
She carried the sealed box like an offering.
And placed it gently into the arms of a curious young man named Anthony Leastock.
"He's been looking for you," she whispered.
And vanished into the morning fog.