June 20th, 1983
The group of five moved through the facility in silence.
The halls were quiet.
Too quiet.
Even by Erebus standards, something felt wrong.
As they passed the living quarters, every door stood open. Room after room lay empty, abandoned so completely it looked as though the people inside had simply vanished between breaths.
There were no signs of struggle.
No blood on the floor.
No broken furniture.
No claw marks, no bullet holes, no destruction at all.
Just absence.
It was as if the entire facility had been hollowed out overnight.
Then Wren turned the corner—
and her heart stopped.
Arlo stood there.
His back was to her, but she knew him instantly. His blond hair. His frame. His posture. And most horrifying of all—
his legs.
Restored, just as they had been that night.
For one impossible moment, Wren forgot how to breathe.
Then he stepped through the doorway ahead of him and disappeared inside.
The library.
"Arlo!" Wren shouted.
She broke into a run before anyone could stop her.
She knew it couldn't be him.
She had killed him herself.
She had watched him die.
And yet—
if there was even the smallest chance, no matter how impossible, she had to chase it.
The others ran after her, confusion and dread written across each of their faces.
They had seen him too.
Every one of them.
When the group entered the library, they found August waiting.
He stood near the center of the room, calmly painting on a large canvas as though none of this were unusual. A soft hum escaped him, and with each beat of the tune in his throat, another careful brushstroke slid across the surface of his work.
He didn't even look up right away.
"Do try to be quiet," August whispered, his voice light with amusement.
Only then did he glance toward them.
"This is a library."
August paused his painting and lifted the wooden end of the brush to his arm, scratching at it absently.
No—
not absently.
Compulsively.
He dragged the wood across his skin in short, harsh strokes, as though something beneath the flesh was begging to be let out.
Nicholas didn't wait.
He raised his gun and fired.
The shot cracked through the library, deafening in the silence.
The bullet tore straight through the canvas August had been working on—
but August himself slipped aside at the last possible second.
Not by ducking.
Not by stepping.
His neck snapped sharply out of the bullet's path with a movement that bent far too far, far too suddenly, as if his body had forgotten the limits of human anatomy. For a moment, his head hung at an angle it should never have reached.
Then, calmly, he lifted a hand and forced it back into place with a sickening pop.
"I did say this was a library," August said smoothly.
His smile never faded.
"You really should be quieter."
Nicholas kept the gun trained on him.
"What are you planning?"
Eliza stepped forward slightly, eyes narrowed behind her glasses.
"Have you been turning the people here into monsters?"
August let out a soft, amused laugh.
"Monsters?" he repeated. "No. I have done no such thing."
He tilted his head.
"I have merely shown them the beauty of our lord."
From within his robe, he drew out a photograph.
Wren's blood ran cold.
August held it delicately between two fingers and waved it in the air like a treasured relic. The image had been folded over several times, revealing only a small corner of whatever it contained.
Even so, no one in the room dared look too closely.
"I managed to take a photograph of him," August said, smiling with reverence. "He is truly quite beautiful."
The folded fragment trembled lightly in his hand as he held it up.
"It seems even a simple photograph of our lord is still too radiant for the masses to endure in full." His grin widened. "But after a few tests, I discovered this much—"
He indicated the tiny visible section.
"—is sufficient."
As he rose from his chair, his movements became more erratic. His free hand went back to his arm, scratching faster now, more frantically, the wooden end of the brush dragging against his skin over and over as though he could barely contain himself.
Wren's eyes moved across the library, scanning every dark corner between the shelves.
Something felt wrong.
More wrong than usual.
It felt like she was being watched.
Not by August.
Not by anyone standing in the room with her.
But by something else.
Something hidden.
Something patient.
She couldn't tell where it was.
Only that it was there.
"When we were coming here, everyone was gone," Jasper said, glaring at August. "What did you do to them?"
August's smile softened into something almost fond.
"Oh, Jasper," he said. "I truly had hoped you would join me in this grand endeavor. I always thought of you as something like a son."
Jasper's face twisted with disgust.
"Stop dodging the question and tell me!"
"If you desire knowledge," August said calmly, "then seek it out yourself rather than begging for it from me." His mismatched eyes gleamed beneath the blindfold. "I found my truth. You should find yours."
As he spoke, he slowly pulled back his sleeve.
The moment the group saw his arm, the room seemed to tense around them.
The flesh had turned a sickly gray, stretched tight and corpse-like over the bone. Small eyeballs were embedded all across it, blinking at random, each one weeping thick black tears that ran down his skin in oily trails.
Just looking at it made Wren's stomach drop.
A wave of cold paranoia swept through the group. Their breathing grew tighter. Their skin crawled. It felt as though the edges of reality were distorting around that arm—like the room itself couldn't fully agree on what it was seeing.
Then August smiled.
And in the next instant, he was gone.
No footsteps.
No warning.
One moment he stood before them—
the next, he was behind them.
Everyone jerked in shock.
August stood near the doors now, moving with a speed no normal human should have possessed.
"I have already relocated my fellow church members to a more stable environment," he said lightly. "As for the rejects—those poor souls who could not endure our lord's light—they have been left behind."
His smile widened.
"To play with you."
Before anyone could react, August stepped backward through the library doors and slammed them shut.
The lock clicked immediately.
By the time Nicholas lunged forward, it was already done.
They were trapped inside.
August stood on the other side of the narrow glass panel in the door, his robed figure blurred by shadow and distance, but his smile was still visible.
"Do remember," he said softly, "be quiet in the library."
As the library doors slammed shut, August's painting toppled over.
The canvas hit the floor with a dull thud.
It was the one Nicholas had shot through.
Even damaged, it was unbearable to look at.
The image was a maddening storm of black and yellow, an incomprehensible riot of color and shape that refused to settle into anything the human mind could properly understand. Strange symbols were buried within it, half-formed and overlapping, while countless eyes seemed to emerge from the paint only to sink back into it again.
Nothing about it stayed still.
Nothing about it made sense.
Jasper looked at it for only a second.
Then blood began to pour from his nose.
He staggered back, one hand flying to his face in shock.
Nicholas reacted immediately. He tore off his suit jacket and threw it over the fallen canvas before anyone else could stare too long.
Even that brief glimpse had been enough.
A thin line of blood slid from his nose as well.
Wren's stomach turned.
It was only a painting.
A crude imitation.
A cheap, incomplete attempt at recreating whatever August believed he had seen.
And yet even this distorted replica—something nowhere near the real thing—was enough to harm them just by being looked at.
If this was what a false image of Azathoth could do…
None of them wanted to imagine what the real thing was capable of.
June 20th, 1983
On this date, the artifact later designated Wonder of the Abyss was created.
Extended exposure was found to cause progressive mental deterioration and bodily mutation.
A.E.G.I.S. classified the object as a Class 1 Artifact.