A God and His Creator

It was a voice of absolute finality, a predator announcing the end of the hunt. The tension, the rage, the fresh sting of betrayal—all of it evaporated, replaced by a singular, primal awe. Hector’s grip on his bowstring slackened, the drawn arrow dipping a fatal inch. Katrina’s tantos, which had been humming with lethal intent, froze in her grasp. The meticulously constructed smirk on Pazzo’s face cracked and fell away, revealing the raw terror beneath.

As if the laws of physics were a personal courtesy extended to him, Gein drifted down from the ragged maw in the ceiling. He landed with impossible silence, yet the impact sent a tremor through the very air. The torches lining the walls recoiled, their flames flickering wildly before shrinking to tiny, blue points of light, casting long, dancing shadows that made the room feel vast and cold. His eyes, burning like crimson coals in the gloom, passed over them one by one, a god surveying his flawed and fearful creations. His gaze finally came to rest on one man.

“Creator,” Gein whispered, the sound a dry rustle of ancient hatred.

Pazzo swallowed hard, forcing his scientific arrogance back into place like a suit of armor. “It seems my masterpiece has… exceeded its design parameters,” he managed, his voice a tight, brittle thing. “Did we, perhaps, program you to be a little too effective?”

Gein didn't grace the question with a direct answer. He simply began to walk forward. Each step was unnaturally heavy, landing with a solid, definitive thud that seemed to echo in their chests. Maris and Harmon, their faces pale with a dawning, sickening realization, scrambled out of his path. This was not their conflict. This was a final, terrible reckoning between a god and the man who had dared to build him.

“You should offer your thanks, Pazzo,” Gein said, his voice a low rumble as he closed the distance. “Your world was so tedious, so bound by predictable logic. I have brought it chaos. I have brought it… purpose.”

“You are a corruption,” Pazzo spat, taking a half-step back. “A virus that has defiled the perfect system Doctor Aris and I envisioned!”

“No,” Gein said, now standing so close that his shadow consumed the professor entirely. The last vestiges of a smile were gone from his face, replaced by an abyss of cold emptiness. “I am its evolution.”

In a last, desperate gambit, Pazzo’s hand shot toward the device hidden in his coat. But Gein’s movement was a rupture in reality, faster than sight, faster than thought.

There was no discernible motion, only a vicious whine of displaced air followed by a sound that would haunt their nightmares—a wet, percussive tear. Gein’s arm, a featureless blur, had lashed out and punched straight through the center of Pazzo’s chest. For a single, drawn-out heartbeat, the only sound was the soft patter of blood on the stone floor. Pazzo’s eyes widened in profound, terminal shock, a crimson bubble forming on his lips.

With a clinical detachment, Gein retracted his arm. As his creator’s body crumpled to its knees like a puppet with its strings severed, Pazzo lifted his head for one final, ragged breath. There was no pain on his face, only the strange, twisted awe of a defeated genius staring into the face of his own terrible legacy.

“You are…” he rasped through bloody lips, “…as powerful… as the day I created you.”

With those final words, Pazzo’s body pitched forward, collapsing face-down with a dull, final thud.

The act sent a shockwave of pure horror through Harmon and Maris. The absolute, damning futility of their plan—the cruel, foolish bargain that had led them to betray their only allies—slammed into them. Their ticket home had been this monster, this creature who could murder its own maker without a flicker of hesitation and then stand over the body as if it were nothing more than a discarded tool.

Gein didn't even glance at the corpse. He turned, his crimson eyes glowing with the cold light of a predator who was just beginning to hunt.

It was Nicolas’s scream that shattered the stunned silence.

“RUN!”

The word was a lit match in a gas-filled room. Hector, snapping out of his stupor, drew and fired in a single, fluid motion. The arrow was a blur, striking Gein in the center of his chest, only to shatter against his armor with the harmless clink of a thrown pebble.

“It’s not working!” Hector yelled, his voice strained with disbelief as he nocked another arrow.

“Then keep him busy!” Katrina roared in response. She exploded into movement, a phantom of leather and steel, her tantos a whirlwind that hammered against Gein’s legs, knees, and elbows. He didn’t even bother to parry the attacks, simply standing like a monolith of obsidian as her blades sparked and screeched, unable to find purchase.

The sanctuary became a maelstrom of desperate violence.

“Bruno, shield! Protect Maris and Harmon! Maris, the ground—bind him!” Nicolas commanded, his precognitive senses flaring, painting the chaotic battlefield with the ghostly tracers of future attacks. He wasn't just a participant anymore; he was the nerve center.

After a moment of pure, animal terror, Bruno roared and inflated into a massive, groaning sphere, rolling to form a living barricade. Shaken from her horror by Nicolas's command, Maris’s face twisted, fear transmuting into desperate rage. She slammed her palms to the stone floor, and the ground erupted as massive, thorny roots, thick as pythons, lashed out to ensnare Gein’s ankles.

“Harmon, the sound! His head!” Nicolas directed.

Harmon clasped his hands to his temples, a vein throbbing in his forehead, and unleashed a focused, high-frequency sonic blast. For the first time, Gein reacted. He tilted his head, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes, as if bothered by a persistent insect. That briefest of pauses was the opening they needed.

“Hector, his eyes!” Katrina screamed, seeing the same vulnerability.

Hector was already prepared. He had a new arrow on the string, but this one was different. It was tipped with a shard of glowing, volatile crystal he’d snatched from Pazzo’s workbench. He took a steadying breath, aimed, and released. The arrow was a streak of vengeful light, flying true and slamming directly into the narrow, dark viewing slit of Gein’s helm.

There was no explosion. Just a blinding, silent flash of white light and a piercing, high-pitched shriek that seemed to tear at the fabric of the air itself. Gein roared, a sound not of pain, but of pure, insulted fury, and staggered back a single, momentous step.

“NOW!” Nicolas screamed, his voice raw with their final, desperate chance. “TO THE EXIT!”