The research lab was silent except for the ragged breathing of a lone HYDRA scientist, curled into a trembling ball beneath his desk. His fingers clutched at his knees, nails digging into fabric as prayers tumbled from his lips in desperate whispers.
"Please don't let it see me… please, please…"
Outside, the sounds of slaughter echoed through the halls—screams cut short, gunfire that accomplished nothing, the wet tearing of flesh. The entire base had descended into chaos the moment The Wraith's forces breached their defenses. For a fleeting second, the scientist dared to hope his prayers had been heard.
Then the growl came.
"GGRRRR!!!!!!—"
Low. Guttural. Hungry.
The man froze, his breath hitching as the sound vibrated through the floor beneath him. Slowly, agonizingly, he turned his head—and met the glowing violet eyes of a matte-black tiger, its maw dripping with shadows.
"No, no, no, no—!"
The creature pounced.
"GGRRRAAAHHHH!!!!!".
Under the desk, in the dark where he thought he was safe, the scientist died screaming. As his flesh were tear apart, skin cuts and his blood pooling on the floor.
Ten minutes.
Just ten short minutes, that was all it took for the HYDRA base to transform from a fortress of order into a charnel house. The Wraith's army moved with nightmarish precision—soldiers clad in inky darkness, their forms wreathed in violet-tinged smoke, their eyes burning like cursed stars. All of them were here for one thing and one thing only, and that is to Kill and maimed.
They were everywhere.
HYDRA agents emptied entire magazines into them, only for bullets to pass through their shadowy bodies as if they were firing at mist. Explosives barely made them stumble. And when the creatures struck back, it was with savage, almost artistic brutality.
Some of The Wraith's soldiers wielded rifles, but the bullets they fired were no ordinary lead—they were jagged shards of darkness that hissed through the air, punching through armor and flesh alike. Others fought with archaic weapons—swords that split skulls, maces that crushed ribs, arrows that screamed as they flew.
Then there were the ones who didn't need weapons at all. A towering figure with a staff conjured searing purple projectiles, reducing men to ash mid-sprint. A pack of shadow-wolves tore through a barricade, their muzzles-stained crimson. A horned, demonic entity lifted a screaming agent by the throat—and swallowed him whole.
But the true horror came when the dead began to rise. As The Wraith strode through the carnage, his very presence warped reality. Corpses twitched. Shadows peeled from lifeless bodies, reforming into kneeling figures before standing again—now clad in the same matte-black nightmare as their master's army. A HYDRA soldier, gutted moments prior, lurched upright with a blade of darkness in hand—and turned on his former comrades.
From the relative safety of his office, Dietrich Voss and Peter Haggs stared at the surveillance feeds in mute horror.
Screen after screen showed the same scenes: hallways running red, creatures that defied logic, and their own men being turned against them.
"W…what is going on?" Voss whispered, his voice hollow. His fingers dug into the armrests of his chair, knuckles white.
Haggs, ever the analyst even in the face of madness, swallowed hard. "It's like a necromancer… but different. He's not just raising the dead—he's remaking them."
Voss's chair screeched as he shot to his feet, sending a half-empty bottle of brandy crashing to the floor. "This… this shouldn't be happening!" he roared, slamming his fists onto the console. Monitors flickered under the impact, static distorting the images of his crumbling empire.
A new feed activated—showing him.
The Wraith.
Standing amidst the slaughter, his masked face tilted upward as if he knew he was being watched.
Voss's breath caught.
Voss's fingers tangled in his own hair, pulling hard enough to sting. The monitors before him displayed scenes that defied reason—corpses rising as shadow soldiers, creatures from nightmares tearing through his men—yet the most infuriating part was the *gap* in their intelligence.
"Nothing ever showed The Wraith was capable of this!" he snarled, gesturing wildly at the screens. All their dossiers painted him as a skilled, intelligent operative—not a warlord commanding an army of the damned.
Peter Haggs swallowed audibly. "Sir... I think he's a mutant."
Voss whirled on him; teeth bared. "You think?!" The sarcasm dripped like venom.
Haggs didn't flinch, his eyes locked on the feeds. "But raising the dead? As a power? This is... unprecedented." Shadows flickered across the screens as another squad of HYDRA agents were swallowed by the advancing tide.
A grim realization settled over Voss. "In terms of sheer scale, this man might be scarier than Magneto."
Haggs nodded mutely. Magneto's mastery over magnetism was formidable, but it had limits. The Wraith's ability? It breached limits. The resurrected moved with perfect coordination, retained their skills, and were utterly unkillable. An army that grew with every fallen enemy—and he didn't even need to lift a finger to command it.
"Threat assessment," Haggs murmured, voice hollow. "The Wraith may be the deadliest living entity HYDRA has ever faced. Not just a threat to operations—to our own existence."
Voss let out a bark of laughter, bitter and raw. "Hah~ What's the point of analyzing now? We're trapped in here with him." The weight of their helplessness pressed down like a physical force. No reinforcements. No escape. Just the creeping certainty that death was coming—and it would wear a mask. The very same one that is currently committing a massacre all over the entire base.
Five minutes passed in suffocating stillness. The screams had stopped. The gunfire ceased. Even the distant sounds of tearing metal and shattering glass had faded. Voss and Haggs were in despair, already losing hope. To the point that they simply set aside the monitor and just sat in silence as they recounted their sad life.
Voss jolted upright; ears straining. "It's... over?"
The surveillance feeds showed nothing but empty halls. No shadows. No monsters. Just bloodstains and scorch marks—and no bodies.
"Where are the corpses?" Voss whispered.
Haggs shook his head, mouth opening and closing like a fish. A hysterical thought struck them both: Was this a hallucination? A telepath's cruel game?
Then—
"Knock. Knock."
Both men froze. The sound was polite, almost mundane, against the door to Voss's office. The Brief silence had brought him a little bit of hope and guts, so, Voss take out his gun from his drawer and pointed it at the door.
"Who's there?!" Voss shouted; pistol raised. Silence answered. His finger tightened on the trigger. "ANSWER OR I'LL—"
"BANG! BANG! BANG!"
Voss being a conniving person that he is, sneakily fired his gun, as he masking the fear, bullets punched through the door, splintering wood. Panting, Voss waited—
"Knock. Knock."
The sound came again, unhurried, mocking. Rage, fear, and frustration warred in Voss's chest. With a snarl, he wrenched the door open—
—and stared into the hollow eyes of a shadow. Not a soldier. Not a creature. But, rather a black humanoid shaped shadow. A perfect, matte-black replica of Dietrich Voss body shape stood in the threshold, and a creepy smile spread on its face, stretching too wide.
"Found you," it whispered—
—just as the real Wraith stepped from the darkness behind it, his armored fingers closing around Voss's throat.