The air smelled of burning copper and static.
Ethan Vale adjusted his Carnitrix, watching its holographic interface flicker with ghostly runes that weren't in any Omnitrix database. The symbols pulsed like they were alive — whispers coiling into his ears in a tongue that wasn't human, wasn't alien… wasn't anything that should exist.
Beside him, Jason Wayne walked without a sound, the half-presence's footsteps somehow not disturbing the rain-slick asphalt. His cloak shifted like it was made of shadow and starlight, the sigils of both Lucifer and Michael etched into its weave. In his hand, the Blade of Aeons hummed — a sword forged from the first and last moments of creation, its edge trailing threads of eternity.
They had entered Zone-13, one of the worst SCP breach sectors in the Amalgam Ω-Verse.
The breach alarms had gone silent hours ago — not because the anomalies were contained, but because the containment systems no longer existed in any stable timeline. Whole streets were warping into Escherian loops. Buildings bled black ichor. The sky rippled like a heartbeat.
---
Jason's voice broke the oppressive quiet.
"Nyarlathotep's avatar is here. And it's feeding."
Ethan tapped his Carnitrix, selecting a hybrid form: Dreadfenix — a fusion of Four Arms, Ghostfreak, and an SCP-682 genetic sample the System had graciously "acquired." His body shifted, bones snapping, muscles twisting, a second pair of arms unfurling as ghostly tendrils spilled from his back.
"Feeding on what?" Ethan asked, his voice now layered, distorted.
Jason's eyes, glowing with twin halos of light and darkness, swept the street.
"On meaning. It's not killing people for blood or fear — it's erasing them from the concept of reality. Look—"
He gestured toward a corner café where a half-eaten sandwich floated in mid-air. No plate. No table. No person. Just the sandwich, suspended, while the rest of the world had already forgotten who it belonged to.
---
They turned the next street and found the cult.
Dozens of figures in patchwork robes stood around a pit that hadn't been there yesterday. It pulsed with black-and-gold light, shapes writhing inside that didn't obey geometry. The cult leader wore a crown of SCP containment tags — each tag still glowing faintly, like trophies.
Jason recognized them instantly: SCP-096, SCP-049, SCP-2521 — all missing.
The leader's voice rolled through the air like a bad dream:
"The Messenger walks. The Crawling Chaos wears flesh. We are his fingers, his mouths, his—"
Ethan didn't wait for him to finish. With a roar, he leapt forward, slamming two massive arms into the ground. The shockwave shattered the cult circle, scattering bodies like dry leaves. Tendrils lashed out from his back, yanking robed figures into the shadows and silencing their screams.
But the pit… the pit kept pulsing.
---
Jason moved next. He didn't run. He didn't even seem to move faster than a walk. But one heartbeat he was beside Ethan, and the next he was in the middle of the shattered ritual site, his blade already cleaving through a shape trying to crawl out of the pit.
It wasn't Nyarlathotep's avatar — not yet — but it was a fragment. A fleshy, shifting mass of teeth, eyes, and golden masks that hissed in a thousand voices at once.
"Containment breach: SCP-████. Class upgraded to Apollyon." Jason's voice was cold as steel.
---
The fragment lunged, splitting into three separate bodies mid-air. Jason slashed once, twice, and they fell apart — but the pieces kept writhing. Ethan dropped into the fight, his Carnitrix recalibrating mid-battle, fusing DNA from Heatblast, Ripjaws, and SCP-610. His arms ignited with molten fire, jaws elongating into something predatory, his body dripping writhing red biomass.
"Burn and infect, huh?" Ethan grinned, fire dripping from his teeth. "Let's see if the big bad Messenger likes this."
---
The pit answered.
The ground around them warped, the street folding upward like a blooming flower. The world turned sepia and static-filled. And then… it stepped out.
Nyarlathotep's physical avatar was tall, impossibly tall, its head brushing the warped clouds. Its body was humanoid only as a cruel parody — all joints bent wrong, skin patterned with spirals of golden eyes. Each eye focused somewhere different: on Jason, on Ethan, on you, the reader. Its smile was too wide, too knowing.
---
Jason's grip on the Blade of Aeons tightened.
"This is just one mask. But even a mask can kill an Endless."
Ethan snarled, twin hearts pounding in sync with the Force flowing through him. "Then let's unmask the bastard."
The avatar moved with speed that defied its size, reality stuttering as it shifted between positions. One instant it was across the street; the next, it was whispering directly into Ethan's ear in a voice made of every regret he'd ever had.
Jason moved like inevitability, parrying strikes that came from before the avatar moved, the Blade of Aeons cutting not just flesh, but the timeline those strikes belonged to.
Ethan countered with raw chaos — leaping, transforming mid-air into a Carnitrix-fused nightmare beast, Force-enhanced reflexes letting him meet blows before they landed, Harry Potter magic flaring from his free hand in arcs of chain lightning and fiery curses.
---
The SCP anomalies weren't idle.
From the shattered containment tags, the escaped SCPs poured forth — SCP-096, screaming in faceless rage; SCP-049, whispering about "the cure"; SCP-682, massive and grinning at Ethan like a predator recognizing kin.
Nyarlathotep's avatar laughed — and the SCPs turned on Jason and Ethan, not the Messenger.
This wasn't a battle anymore.
It was a hunt, and they were the prey.