The door groaned shut behind him, rusted steel scraping against metal like the grinding of ancient bones.
All For One stood still for a moment, eyes scanning the wilderness beyond the ruined facility. The land stretched before him, it was scarred, but not dead. A dense forest, blackened in parts by past firestorms, swayed in the wind. Mountains loomed in the distance, jagged and remote, and the sky above them churned with low-hanging clouds that threatened rain.
It was not his world.
But it felt familiar in all the wrong ways.
The lab had been buried beneath the earth, it was hidden, forgotten. Whoever had built it had not wanted the world to find it again. Perhaps they had feared the mutants they held within. Or perhaps… they feared who might come looking for them.
He took a breath. The air was thinner than he was used to. Cooler. No signs of civilization reached his senses — no cities, no vehicles, no machines. Just the quiet. The kind that came after catastrophe.
He started walking.
Trees creaked overhead as he moved through the ruins of what had once been a paved road. Nature had reclaimed it, the roots splitting concrete, vines strangling the old machinery. Twisted remains of aircrafts and rusted transport vehicles lay half-swallowed by the earth. One bore the faded symbol of a bird black wings outstretched within a circle but it meant nothing to him.
He reached out with his stolen senses, letting his newly absorbed powers taste the environment. Sonic pulses returned only stillness. Psychic threads brushed nothing but old wounds. Even the stolen teleportation flickered unstable, rejecting the terrain around him like mismatched blood in a new host.
Still… something lingered.
Like a whisper beneath the leaves.
Like a shadow watching from the trees.
Not a presence. Not a person.
Just an echo — of pain, of war, of secrets long buried.
Then he heard it.
A low hum. Faint. Mechanical.
He turned, his head tilted slightly. Not from above. From beneath.
Kneeling at the base of a moss-covered pillar, he swept aside the gravel and vines, revealing a cracked surveillance lens that was still powered, barely. Still watching.
A node. Ancient. But not dead.
He leaned in, the corner of his lip twitching into a thin, knowing smile.
"So... someone's still watching."
With a flick of his fingers, he crushed it. Sparks popped. The light died.
Let them come.
Let them wonder who had walked out of this grave.
He rose and vanished into the trees like dusk swallowing a shadow.
Far from the ruins.
Far from the blackened soil and twisted roots.
Buried deep beneath a mountain shrouded in storm and silence, a cold light pulsed in the dark.
A room, windowless, circular, and silent. Lit only by the pale glow of monitors lining its walls.
Each screen showed footage from forgotten places: derelict labs, dead cities, sealed vaults, and long-abandoned black sites. All dormant. All quiet.
All but one.
Screen 13-B flickered violently, its image crawling with static.
Then blackness.
An alarm chimed. Low. Ominous.
A voice stirred from the overhead system. Female. Artificial. Lifeless.
"Monitoring Node 13-B offline. Site: Bolvar Sub-Laboratory Theta."
"Organic contact confirmed prior to failure. Unknown signature. No biometric match."
"Threat classification: pending."
Shadows moved across the room. Figures, a dozen or more stepped from the edges of darkness. Some wore armor. Some robes. Others stood behind reflective glass, their silhouettes blurred. Each bore the mark of a military and agencies the world believed forgotten long since buried.
At the room's center stood a tall man in silence, hands clasped behind his back. He stared at the blank screen.
"Impossible," one voice muttered. "That lab was purged. Everything inside was destroyed."
"No extraction team ever reported back," said another. "The AI locked it down and scrubbed the assets. We assumed—"
"Assumed wrong," the central figure interrupted. His voice was calm. Measured.
He raised a hand.
A hologram shimmered into the air — glitching footage from the final moments of the node. A dark figure walking away from the ruin. Broad-shouldered. Cloaked in shadows. A coat trailing behind like smoke. No face. No signature. Just shape and movement.
The image froze.
Silence followed.
"…We have no record of this subject," a voice said. "No match in mutant, metahuman, or extraterrestrial registries."
The tall man stared for a long moment.
Then spoke quietly:
"No... but he walks like someone who used to be."
He turned from the monitors, stepping toward a sealed chamber at the rear of the room. Warning glyphs and futuristic symbols glowed red around its frame. The door rumbled as internal locks began to shift.
"Dispatch reconnaissance teams," he ordered. "Nothing overt. Keep it small. Keep it silent."
"And if he resists?"
The man paused, hand resting on the chamber door.
"He won't resist," he said softly.
He glanced over his shoulder, back at the image of the dark figure disappearing into the forest fog.
"He'll want to be found."
The trees thickened around him as he descended from the cliffs.
The forest below was older. Wilder. Not untouched, but just waiting. Some of the trees were bent by time or by force. The birds here did not sing. The wind carried the smell of smoke and rot.
He stopped at a crumbling overlook, gazing down into a vast valley flooded with mist. And there at the edge of it a city.
Or what remained of one.
Shattered towers pierced the clouds like the ribs of a fallen beast. Roads broken and buried beneath root and ruin. Windows hollow. Streets silent.
Not lifeless. Not yet.
But hiding.
He stared at it without blinking.
Abandoned... Or watching?
He reached out with a psychic trace — a subtle probe.
At first, nothing.
Then — a flicker.
A breath of thought. Distant. Faint.
But aware.
They know.
He opened his eyes.
And smiled.
Not out of fear. Not concern. Not caution.
But opportunity.
If this world had the means to watch him…
…then it had the means to fall.
He turned from the overlook and stepped into the mist. Each footfall drew him deeper into the valley, and with every step, the air changed. The land shifted. The silence grew more hollow.
The world had forgotten what true power looked like.
But it would remember.
And high above, in the sky where no birds flew, a single satellite blinked awake.
Its camera turned.
Its light flickered.
And somewhere, deep in the bones of the earth, old powers stirred in their graves.
The Demon Lord had returned.
And he would not be silent for long.