Germany, deep within a forest that maps refused to name.
Arnim Zola hated nights like this.
The trees pressed in too closely, their branches clawing at the dark sky like skeletal hands. The Hydra camp was small—too small for his liking—but secrecy demanded it. Twenty soldiers. One scientist. One objective: verify rumors of a supernatural artifact buried somewhere beneath the forest floor.
Zola stood near his tent, arms folded, nerves already frayed.
Ever since Schmidt's descent into obsession—rituals, relics, blood-soaked ambition—Zola had felt like he was balancing on the edge of a blade. One wrong step, one perceived failure, and he would be discarded. This mission had been a reprieve. Distance from the Red Skull. Space to breathe.
Or so he thought.
A scream cut through the night.
Short. Sharp. Final.
One of the soldiers near the perimeter dropped out of sight, his cry ending as if something had torn it out of him. The forest swallowed the sound whole.
Zola jolted upright, heart hammering.
"What was that?" someone shouted.
Another soldier turned, rifle raised. "I saw something—"
He never finished the sentence.
A blur moved between the trees. Too fast. Too tall.
The soldier vanished mid-step, a black distortion blooming briefly in the air where he'd been standing—like a hole punched through reality itself. Then nothing.
Panic erupted.
"Contact! CONTACT!""Fire into the trees!""Where is it?!"
Gunfire shredded the darkness, muzzle flashes strobing the forest. Bullets tore bark from trees, chewed through leaves, but hit nothing solid. Shadows shifted. Something moved—always just outside clear sight.
Another scream.
Then another.
Zola stumbled backward, breath coming fast. Damn it. I'm not even safe here. He grabbed a lantern with shaking hands and hurled it at the ground.
Glass shattered.
Flames roared upward—and for the first time, the thing was fully illuminated.
Zola froze.
It stood impossibly tall and thin, its body emaciated to the point of horror. Grey-brown skin clung tightly to elongated limbs that were far too long for its torso. Its arms nearly brushed the ground, ending in black, talon-like claws that gleamed in the firelight.
Its head was massive. Wrong. A smooth, spherical shape balanced precariously on a thin neck, as though it should snap under its own weight.
Then it opened its mouth.
The jaw split wide—unnaturally wide—revealing a crescent of broken, rotten teeth set at random angles. And within the darkness of its throat, something moved.
A single, milky-blue orb rolled forward.
An eye.
Zola's blood ran cold.
The creature noticed him.
It tilted its head, the eye fixing on him with an unsettling, almost curious focus.
"Shoot it!" Zola screamed.
He drew his pistol and emptied the magazine, firing wildly. Bullets struck its torso—sparks, dull impacts—but the creature barely reacted. It stepped forward, slow and deliberate, as if the gunfire meant nothing.
Behind him, soldiers were dying.
One was lifted off the ground, limbs flailing, before being swallowed by that same black distortion—gone without a trace. Another tried to run, only for claws to close around him and pull him screaming into the dark between the trees.
The forest had become a slaughterhouse.
"RETREAT!" Zola shouted.
The remaining soldiers broke formation, fleeing blindly into the woods. Zola ran with them, boots slipping on roots and wet leaves, lungs burning as screams echoed behind him—cut short one by one.
Something followed.
Not fast.
Unhurried.
Patient.
Branches snapped. Shadows shifted. Every so often, that black orb appeared again—brief, hungry, final.
The Hydra camp was abandoned in minutes.
By the time Zola and a handful of survivors burst out of the forest, gasping and half-mad with terror, the night behind them had gone quiet.
Too quiet.
Whatever they had come looking for… had found them first.
And somewhere far away, the Foundation's warning lights were about to turn red