Location: Crestwood City — Riverside Park / Downtown Streets / The Veilbreak Podcast Studio
Time: Morning — The Occupation
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The morning was bright and cold and ordinary, which made what happened next feel like a dream.
A woman walked her dog along the gravel path that ran beside the river. The dog was small and brown and entirely without dignity, and it trotted along with its tongue out and its tail going like a metronome. The woman's friend—a man in a jogging jacket—was throwing a plastic disc for the dog to chase.
The disc sailed. The dog launched.
And then the ground began to shake.
It started low—a rumble you felt in your teeth before you heard it—and then it grew, and the ducks on the river took off all at once, and the dog stopped in the middle of its leap and looked around with its ears flat.
The woman looked up.
The first tank came around the bend in the road.
It was not a war tank—no turret, no cannon, just a squat armored body on treads with a sensor mast on top and the crest of the OSI stenciled on the side. Behind it came a second. Behind the second came four armored personnel carriers, their wheels churning the gravel, their headlights cutting through the morning mist.
"Buster!" the woman screamed. "Buster, come here!"
The dog was frozen, the disc still in its mouth.
The man in the jogging jacket ran. He scooped the dog up in both arms and dove sideways off the path, into the grass, just as the lead tank rolled past where the dog had been standing. The disc fell from the dog's mouth and was crushed flat under the treads.
The woman landed beside them, breathless.
"Are you—is he—"
"He's fine. He's fine." The man was holding the dog against his chest. The dog was trembling. "What the hell is going on?"
Neither of them answered. They just watched the column roll past—tank, tank, carrier, carrier, carrier, carrier—and disappear around the far bend of the river.
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The streets downtown were no longer streets. They were checkpoints.
Every intersection had a barricade. Every barricade had men and women in dark tactical gear, their faces hidden behind visors, their weapons held at low ready. The sound of the city had changed—the usual morning traffic replaced by the click of boots on pavement, the crackle of radios, the low whine of a drone overhead.
A woman in a business coat stood in line at the corner of Ninth and Mercer with her briefcase on the ground beside her. A man in tactical gear was going through it—not roughly, but thoroughly, lifting each folder, flipping each page.
"Business or personal?" he asked.
"Business," she said. "I'm a—I'm an accountant. I work three blocks from here."
He nodded and handed the briefcase back. "You can go."
Behind her, a search dog—a big German shepherd with a harness that said OSI on it—was sniffing its way through a line of commuters. It stopped at a man in a hoodie, sniffed his bag, and then sat down.
The handler stepped forward. "Sir. I'm going to need you to open the bag."
The man opened the bag. It was full of sandwiches.
The handler looked at the sandwiches. The dog looked at the sandwiches.
"Sorry for the inconvenience," the handler said. "You can go."
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Across the city, in a small studio above a record shop, the lights were low and the microphones were warm.
Dell Halloway was broad-shouldered and dark-skinned, with a beard that had been trimmed with some care and then abandoned halfway through, and a cigar that he was not currently smoking but was holding the way other men hold pens. Clara Petra Vance was pale and sharp-featured, with red hair pulled back in a knot and a smile that had been described, by more than one listener, as "the reason I started listening in the first place."
The song playing low in the background was something with a reggae rhythm and a hook that went hurry up and come, hurry up and come.
Clara leaned into her microphone.
"Good morning, Crestwood. And good morning to everyone else out there listening. You're on the Veilbreak. I'm Clara Petra Vance, and with me, as always, is the man who keeps me honest—"
"Keeps you entertained," Dell corrected.
"—Dell Halloway."
"Morning, everyone." Dell's voice was warm and low. "And let me tell you something, Clara. I thought the mount was going to lift me up to paradise, yeah? But it turns out I was always at the bottom of the hole—the sticky kind, the kind where you get stuck and can't get out."
Clara's eyebrow lifted. "What are you talking about, Dell?"
"The whole hibijibis flying around these last few days. Before my eyes and ears—out in the streets—you just know what I mean."
Clara's lips curved. "Speaking of the streets, one of my clients at the gym—he works at a tire shop down on Mercer—he was near the Crestwood PD when it went up. He said he and his coworkers ran for cover, and then—" She paused. "He said he felt something. Something in the air. Something heavy. Like the whole street was holding its breath."
Dell leaned forward. "What did it feel like?"
"He couldn't describe it. He said it was like—like standing at a crossroads. Like there were things moving around him that he couldn't see. He said it felt like the ground itself was aware of him." Clara shook her head. "He thought maybe he'd breathed something. Some kind of gas from the explosion. But then he said—"
"Then he said what?"
"Then he said he went to the hospital, and these men came to see him. Men in black suits. They asked him what he'd seen, and he said—he said it felt like they were reading him. Like his thoughts were open. Like he couldn't lie to them."
Dell was quiet for a moment. Then he let out a low whistle.
"Clara. That man's been sniffing some drift he shouldn't have been sniffing. I need a contact for his supplier."
Clara laughed—a bright, genuine laugh that cut the tension in the room. "But the Crestwood PD did get blown up, Dell. You can't deny that."
"True, true."
"And the only thing being denied is that whole thing with Elijah Marcus and Chief Sarah and those—those weird bug things." Clara made a face. "Which the mainstream media is calling a false video. The same media that, when poachers were killing people in the African jungles with illegal firearms—when the documented emails between Otis Freeman and the Halverns came out—didn't say a word. Not until Freeman got killed. Then they accepted it as true. And even then—it was Theodore Halvern, not the family, who was reported to have ties."
Dell's cigar tapped the table. "Well. Too bad old Theodore's currently thought to be missing. Turns the case to cold, doesn't it?"
"Now the Bureau of Intelligence at the OSI—together with the Global Operations Agency—has issued a statement. The Crestwood PD incident, they say, was a terrorist attack. And Elijah Marcus—the same man they told us was a lone serial killer—is now allegedly in cahoots with the Yaldabaoth syndicate." Clara spread her hands. "How dumb do they think we are? Couldn't they come up with a better excuse? It's like they see us as children to be played with."
Dell leaned back. "What do I think happened? I think it was a cover-up. For the case involving former Lieutenant Detective Caleb Saye and Maylene Wynter—the Maison Salon woman."
Clara's eyebrow lifted. "The Maison Salon."
"Mm. The salon that was the size of a mall and also—if you believe the reports—a storage and distribution hub for the entire Effexaine trade in this city. I think the whole thing was designed to clean up evidence. The salon's gone. The records are gone. Maylene Wynter is dead. Her daughter Aubrey is missing. And the only person who might have talked—Caleb Saye—hasn't been seen in weeks."
Clara nodded slowly. "Now that you mention it. Maylene Wynter was one of Azaqor's victims. Aubrey Wynter is currently missing. And former Chief Slate—along with the late former mayor Blackwell and senior members of the police department—all turned out to be coconspirators in the Effexaine scandal. Apart from Caleb Saye, all of them are either missing or dead." She paused. "And the lieutenant detective—we haven't heard from him either."
"It appears a pattern is being created," Dell said, "and it appears the destruction of the Crestwood PD itself is summing up who the real enemy might actually be."
The song in the background shifted—something lighter now, a parody of a tune about fishes to fry—and Clara clapped her hands together.
"Alright. Let's lighten the mood. Dell, look at this."
She turned her screen toward him.
On it was a still from the broadcast—the shape, the shifting, the pale flickering thing that had passed through the officer's skull.
Dell looked at it for a long moment. His cigar stopped tapping.
"Now," Clara said, "if you ever wondered what vomit looks like when it gets a life of its own—well, that would sum up what I'm staring at."
Clara laughed. "Apparently the intelligence agencies and mainstream media are claiming it's an AI-generated composite. A studio product."
Dell made a face. "Then whoever came up with that image and turned it alive has to be one sick freak."
"No? Then what word would you have used?"
Clara smiled. "I'd have said artist."
"There's a difference?"
Clara laughed again. Then she leaned forward. "Here's the thing, Dell. Someone ran that video through an AI check. And it came back blank. No response. Not a fake, not a real. Just... nothing. The AI didn't know what to do with it. Some people are saying their chatbots shut down entirely."
Dell's eyebrow lifted. "That's weird."
"That's very weird."
"Even in AI standards, that video felt too alive." Dell shook his head. "You know what I think? I think the government itself made an artificial video of the real video, and gave us that one. The one we saw. The fake version of the real thing."
Clara's face shifted into that particular expression of who knows—half amusement, half genuine uncertainty.
"One thing's for sure," Dell said. "Demons exist. They've existed for thousands of years. The fabled tales of the Proto-Aerva—the Nephilim born of the star beings from another world and the humans. The descendants of gods themselves—the Asurim. Gilgamesh and his epic tales against the giants. There's archeological evidence. Ruins. Bones. Tombs of the Asurim being discovered for centuries—half-human, half-something-else. And rumours of star gates all over the world. Which the mainstream media will never mention."
He paused. His cigar tapped the table once.
"I believe those demons—the Proto-Aerva—rule the world right now. Their descendants are the world leaders. And all the evil happening in the world is their agenda. To keep us weak. To keep us divided. To keep us from ever questioning strange happenings."
He leaned forward.
"You remember that night, about six months ago, when the sky lit up? When the light came down on Crestwood like a pillar? I think that was a star gate. I think something came out. Something went in. And I think that never made the headlines. It got buried."
Clara was quiet.
"Whether the video is true or not," Dell said, "I don't know. But what I do know is that the World Government Organization has been hiding a great many secrets from us. And that the Earth has a history of three hundred thousand years. A lot can happen in that time. You and I have only been educated on the last two centuries. The archives of the whole history of the world need to start being unraveled to us. To the public." He tapped the table. "Because I feel like something big might happen. One day. On the horizon. And everyone needs to be prepared."
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The Livestream Comments
@MindBlown: "three hundred thousand years?? i need to sit down"
@FanBoy2026: "dell is spitting facts and nonsense at the same time and i can't tell where one ends and the other begins"
@HistoryLover: "the tombs of the Asurim are real. i've seen the photos. the bones don't look human."
@ObservantOne: "wait. the mechanic said he felt like he was being READ. that's not a gas leak. that's something else."
@HorriefViewer: "i'm not going outside today. i'm not going outside ever again."
@WaitWhat: "so the sky thing six months ago. i remember that. i thought i dreamed it."
@RealTalk: "the AI check coming back blank is the creepiest part. no response. no fake. no real. just... nothing. what DOES that?"
@CrestwoodLocal: "the tanks are still rolling down my street. i can hear them from my window. this is not a drill."
@TeamElijah: "whether dell's right or wrong about the star gates, he's right that something is going on. something big."
@StillSkeptical: "he's a podcast host with a rum bottle. let's not canonize him."
@ChaosEnjoyer: "canonize him? i'm buying the merch."
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