EXT. DOMAIN WASTELANDS – NIGHT
Ashstorms churned above, red lightning splitting the sky. Fifty-eight survivors marched as one, weapons ready, their shadows stretching across broken stone.
They were tired. Scarred. But alive. And in Hell, alive was victory enough.
EXT. DEMON SWARM – CONTINUING
A tide of demons poured from the cliffs — thousands shrieking in unison.
Kwame slammed his gauntlets into the ground, shockwaves rippling outward, crushing dozens.
Cassian swung her halberd in a brutal arc, black sparks tearing through flesh.
Kairo blurred past in streaks of speed, each step snapping necks like dry twigs.
Grace and Arven moved back-to-back, blades carving in perfect rhythm.
By the time the storm settled, six thousand demons lay broken — many slain by their own Sigil's stray shockwaves, their bodies torn apart in the chaos they worshipped.
EXT. FLOATING WRECK – LATER
The survivors froze. Hanging in the crimson sky was a colossal, shattered structure — splintered beams, cracked hull, fragments suspended as if chained by memory itself.
Lyra (whispering): What... is that?
A silence fell, broken only by the sound of breath.
INT. SURVIVORS' MINDS – SAME TIME
A voice, soft and endless, coiled inside every skull.
Gabriel (voice): The Noah's Ark. Once, it carried humanity's chosen hundred. They fought. They failed. And so the flood came — to reset the world.
The survivors stiffened, whispers spreading.
Kael: If their goal was to erase us, why let Noah rebuild?
Gabriel (voice): Because extinction was never the design. Humanity is not meant to end — only to begin again. The flood was not death. It was reset.
EXT. THE ARK – CONTINUING
The group pressed closer. The air was heavy, stifling.
Grace turned on Arven, eyes sharp.
Grace: When I first met you... I thought you were one of them. A Sigil. Even now, I wonder. May's death broke you. And when hope dies... betrayal follows.
Arven froze, hand tightening on his katana.
Arven (low): Don't. Mention. Her. Name. Again.
The silence cut deeper than the ash winds. Grace looked away, jaw set, but her doubt remained.
INT. THE ARK – LATER
Inside the ruins, the survivors found what remained of the first chosen.
Corpses mummified by ash, weapons fused to bone, sigil cards cracked and blackened. Empty sockets stared from hollow skulls.
Narration: They had stood where the survivors now stood. They had fought. They had fallen. And the silence of their failure lingered still, louder than any scream.
A faint tremor rolled through the Ark's hull, groaning like a corpse turning in its grave.
Narration: The Ark was not empty. The dead had stories yet to tell.
INT. THE ARK – MAIN HULL – NIGHT
The survivors step into the Ark's hollow interior.
Ash drifts from the ceiling like snow. Lanterns flare once... then gutter out.
The dark swallows everything.
Even fire refuses to live here.
Only Cassian's Herald aura glows faint red, a trembling halo across her halberd. The survivors instinctively press toward her light.
Kwame: Stay tight. Circle formation. If you're alone, you're dead.
The silence is suffocating. No footsteps. No breath. Only the weight of black pressing against their ears.
A violent crack of sound tears through the Ark. The floor shudders. Survivors collapse to their knees, palms clamped over ears.
Kwame slams his gauntlets into the ceiling, dust cascading down.
Kwame: Hold the circle! Strike forward! Don't wait for eyes—trust your steel!
Blades flash into nothingness. Halberds whistle. Bullets spark against unseen flesh.
A scream bursts in the dark—demonic, shrill, swallowed almost instantly by silence.
They hold. Wounded but alive.
The stillness returns. They strain for breath. Then another explosion of sound rattles the hull, iron beams groaning.
The formation locks. Dimitri's sword drips blood, Lyra's daggers chip against claws.
Kairo closes his eyes, forcing rhythm into his lungs.
Kairo: She's timing it... silence, then the strike. When it hits—don't stop. Two minutes, everything you have.
The circle roars alive.
Steel, gunfire, gauntlets—constant. Relentless.
Every survivor fights blind, tearing into the void with fury, filling the Ark with an orchestra of defiance.
The air shifts. Silence thickens until even Cassian's aura flickers. Shadows peel away like skin from bone.
A voice bleeds through the dark, whisper and scream entwined.
??? (voice): Silence belongs to me.
The void recedes enough to reveal her. A towering figure, shrouded in shifting night, pale eyes glowing like twin voids. When her mouth opens, the silence itself shrieks.
Viktor (horrified): Nyxira... the Sixth Sigil Demon.
The survivors freeze. The Ark itself groans under her presence.
She moves.
Kairo flashes forward, blades sparking—but her hand closes, and he's hurled across the chamber like a ragdoll.
Kwame braces with both gauntlets. The impact throws him into a shattered pillar, stone exploding around him.
Cassian plants her halberd, Herald's aura blazing, red light flooding the dark. For a heartbeat, the survivors breathe—
Then Nyxira strikes. Cassian crashes into the wall, her glow sputtering.
Arven: KAIRO! KWAME! CASSIAN!!
The silence roars back, heavier than before.
Nyxira: Not one of you leaves my silence alive.
To be continued...