Until Dusk Protocol-Chapter 28: Interlude Between Curtains

A breathless hush clung to the air, thick with the sterile scent of decay. The laboratory was a ruin of its former self—cables lay coiled like dead serpents across the floor, glass canisters stood clouded with age, and rust crawled over the walls in slow, silent conquest. The overhead lights flickered, their dying hum the only companion to the man in the white lab coat.

He was old, far past the age of men who still dreamed, yet here he was, hunched over the table, his weathered fingers trembling over a tin container. Within, something small and round, nearly translucent, pulsed with a muted glow—like a craving trapped between existence and oblivion. His darkened eyes traced its shape, and his voice broke the silence, heavy with reverence and something deeper, something close to fear.

"A wish is never granted freely."

The words stretched beyond the walls, swallowed by the vastness of the dark.

Elsewhere—deep within a forest untouched by mercy—a blade cleaved through air, through bone, through flesh. The blade gleamed with an unnatural sheen, its curve stretching like a shadow at dusk, cold and poised with a promise of finality. The handle, blackened and gnarled, pulsed with faint symbols—veins of life that didn't belong to the living. Silent and graceful, it hovered in the air, casting a chilling darkness as if the floor itself leaned toward its edge. A sense of inevitability hung around it, thick with the scent of earth and endings, for those who beheld it knew: to wield such a thing was to make a deal, to give and take, and always, always, to pay the price.

Blackened steel arced, severing figures from the earth like wheat before the harvest. One by one, the shadows fell, their forms collapsing without resistance. The wielder moved without hesitation, a hand steady upon the hilt, a motion as fluid as the tide's return. Each cut was precise, an execution written long before the first swing.

The old man exhaled sharply, his fingers tightening over the tin. "To wish is to carve out fate with your own hands," he murmured. "But a wish cannot exist without its price."

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Like a wave crashing against the shore, the edges sang again, their voice sharp and merciless. A head parted from its shoulders, falling soundlessly into the undergrowth. Crimson mist bloomed, curling through the air in slow, delicate tendrils—like ink dissolving into water. The echoes of bodies meeting the soil harmonised with the old man's whisper, a requiem composed in tandem.

"The greater the wish, the greater the toll."

Another swing. Another life reduced to nothing but memory.

"And when the scales tip too far..." His breath faltered slightly. He looked down at the object in the tin, at the weightless thing that had brought ruin before. "It is not the wish granted—but the wisher taken."

A final arc of steel. A final body falling limp.

Silence.

The last whisper of wind curled through the trees. The forest exhaled, its feast complete.

Back in the lab, the old man hesitated. The wish in his hands pulsed once, waiting.

"Tell me, human," it murmured. "Are you ready to pay the price?"