The customers in the hardware store all stopped what they were doing.
With confused expressions, they moved in unison toward the entrance and looked up at the sky.
This remote and peaceful small town hadn't heard a disaster siren like this in decades.
Sephirot stood by the door, listening to the high-pitched, piercing wail with a look of nostalgia.
This familiar alarm almost made him think he was about to enter the Otherworld.
While everyone exchanged uncertain glances, an old man covered in blood came stumbling out of the parking lot, running toward the hardware store.
As he ran, he waved his arms in desperation, crying out in a heart-wrenching voice:
"There's something in the mist! John is dead! That thing dragged him into the fog! Run!"
Seeing this, the hardware store manager quickly pushed the door open to pull the old man inside, and Sephirot stepped back into the store as well.
He planned to observe first and see if the monsters within the mist had undergone any changes.
In the original story, the individual combat prowess of these mist monsters wasn't actually that high.
At least for the smaller insects and creatures, an ordinary person armed with a handgun or a knife could manage to kill them effectively.
"Bullshit! It's all fucking bullshit! I'm going back to my car!"
Inside the hardware store, a fat man irritably shoved aside anyone blocking his path and strode toward the exit.
Though the other customers tried their best to dissuade him, warning him that it was dangerous outside, he ignored them completely and charged out without looking back.
Almost the very moment he burst out of the hardware store...
A thick, heavy fog rolled toward the town like a towering tsunami, blanketing everything in its path.
In just a few breaths' time, the boundless white mist completely swallowed the entire street.
The fat man's screams drifted back from the fog. Witnessing this, the crowd looked on in terror, shrinking back and distancing themselves from the glass windows.
Only Sephirot remained standing calmly in front of the glass door, meticulously observing the churning thick mist outside.
"It must be toxic smog from the chemical plant! A storage tank at the plant over the mountain must have exploded!"
In the crowd, an old man gripped a shelf tightly, his voice trembling as he tried to explain the catastrophe before his eyes in a way he could understand.
But no one responded to him. With a mist this bizarre and the sound of the fat man's screams, no one was naive enough to believe this was just an accident.
"Death has arrived."
A sharp-featured woman wearing a wool knit sweater stepped out from the crowd.
Seeing Sephirot standing unharmed by the door, she forced herself to appear calm and walked forward. Looking out at the scenery beyond the window, she proclaimed loudly:
"This is a punishment sent by God! Death has come to harvest the souls of the guilty!"
Sephirot gave her a faint, sideways glance.
If he remembered correctly, this woman should be that cult-preaching medium from the movie.
He had always loathed people like her.
When humans are in utter despair, they indeed place their ethereal hopes in Gods or religious beliefs to seek solace. Faith born of suffering should never fall prey to such schemes, nor become a tool for these ambitious hypocrites to pursue their own interests.
The woman's behavior reminded him of Christabella from Silent Hill, who ruthlessly eliminated any dissenters.
If those two ever met, they could probably swap tips on how to brainwash people.
Maybe he should find an opportunity to throw her into Silent Hill as a plaything for Pyramid Head.
The sky gradually darkened.
"Mr. Sephirot, it's really thanks to your warning earlier today. Otherwise, my wife might have..."
Drayton's voice was filled with lingering fear and gratitude.
His wife held their son, Billy, tightly, her eyes also full of gratitude as she looked at Sephirot.
Billy hid in his mother's arms, his large eyes wide with curiosity as he studied this cold, imposing older brother.
"You should thank yourselves for choosing to believe me," Sephirot replied casually.
In the original story, Drayton was a team leader with great initiative.
He led a group of people who trusted him to break through the siege, only to fall into despair at the final moment because the car ran out of gas. He ended up shooting his companions and his son with his own hands.
Yet he survived because he ran out of bullets.
The most agonizing part was that in the very next moment, army tanks emerged from the mist, followed by a line of rescue vehicles filled with civilians.
It was an utterly devastating ending.
"Bullshit! This is all fake!"
An argument broke out on the other side of the supermarket.
Sephirot snapped out of his thoughts and looked over. The speaker was a well-built Black man.
"That's Norton, my neighbor," Drayton explained. "He's a lawyer. He's quite stubborn and rigid in his thinking."
Though no major crisis had occurred yet, several small factions had already formed inside the hardware store.
One was the rationalist faction led by the Black lawyer, Norton. They believed it was all a hoax and that everyone was simply scaring themselves.
The other was the religious faction led by the old lady. A group of them huddled in a corner, chanting prayers and believing this was all punishment sent by God.
The remaining majority were like grass in the wind, swaying uncertainly between the two sides.
In a corner, Clancy held up his camera, recording everything happening during this disaster.
Sephirot leaned against a shelf, his gaze sweeping over the people around him.
The group currently gathered around him was almost identical to the small band from the movie.
Aside from Andre and Clancy who had come with him, there was Drayton, the hardware store manager, the teacher Amanda, and that exceptionally combat-capable old lady.
"What should we do now?" Drayton asked.
Everyone looked at each other and then turned their gaze toward Sephirot.
From start to finish, he was the only one who appeared completely calm. Since he had gone out of his way to warn Drayton earlier, everyone instinctively felt he knew some inside information.
"I want to go out and see what's happening."
Sephirot didn't hide it; he stated his intentions directly.
"Are you crazy? You aren't actually believing Norton's nonsense, are you?!" Drayton said in disbelief.
He was about to say more when a loud crash echoed through the room.
A massive pane of glass at the front of the hardware store shattered completely.
Several flying insects swarmed in through the gap.
Their eyes bulged, and they trailed hooked stingers as they vibrated their wings, darting chaotically through the hardware store.
The crowd instantly fell into chaos as screams erupted everywhere.
"Scorpion-flies..."
Sephirot recognized the monsters immediately.
These insects had tails like scorpions, and their toxin could cause a person to swell up within minutes, leading to death by suffocation.
He raised his hand and closed it as if gripping something.
Hum...
The deer blade assembled into a bow in his palm. Purple magic flared like fireflies in the dark, instantly illuminating the entire hardware store.
The suffocating pressure of his magic caused the screaming crowd to fall silent.
Sephirot raised the deer bow, aimed, and drew the magic string into a full moon.
Swish!
Swish!
Several faint streaks of light flashed by.
The scorpion-flies, which had been aggressive just a second ago, exploded in mid-air the next. Even their blood was annihilated by the magic.
All of this happened in just a few seconds, so fast that the crowd hadn't even reacted.
They stared blankly at the man holding the longbow, their minds a total void.
Was this... magic?
"ROAR!!!"
Just then, a violent wind howled outside the hardware store.
A massive, four-winged pterosaur crawled in through the broken window.
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TL NOTES — CROSSOVER GUIDE
Some references in this chapter come from source universes that may be unfamiliar to some readers. The notes below provide the context needed to understand them without leaving the page.
CHARACTERS
Mrs. Carmody — The religious fanatic Sephirot recognizes as "that cult-preaching medium from the movie." In The Mist, she is a fiercely devout, sharp-featured woman who interprets the disaster as divine judgment. As the situation deteriorates, she gains a growing following among the terrified survivors and begins demanding blood sacrifices to appease God. She is one of the story's most dangerous antagonists, more threatening in many ways than the creatures outside. Sephirot's instinctive contempt for her, and his comparison to Christabella from Silent Hill, signals he already knows exactly how far she will go.
Brent Norton — The Black lawyer Drayton identifies as his neighbor. He is the leader of the rationalist faction, adamantly refusing to accept that anything supernatural is happening. In the original story, he leads a group of skeptics out of the store to prove the danger is imaginary, and none of them return. His stubbornness proves lethal.
Amanda Dumfries — A local schoolteacher, part of the core group that forms around Drayton. She is a level-headed survivor who sides with the pragmatists rather than Mrs. Carmody's faction.
CREATURES
Mist creatures — The entities that poured through the dimensional rift opened by the Arrowhead Project. They range from insect-sized to colossal. The scorpion-flies in this chapter are among the smaller creatures: winged insects with scorpion-like stingers whose venom causes rapid, lethal swelling. The four-winged pterosaur that appears at the end of the chapter belongs to the category of giant flying creatures, some of which are large enough to carry off a person.