Darkness, My Old Friend

120 years ago, back when people still thought they were hot shit, some genius decided, "Hey, you know what'd be fun? Opening a bunch of mysterious-ass portals and seeing what happens!" No long-term thinking, just full send. Maybe they were trying to flex their big magic energy, or maybe they were just dumb as hell. Either way, it went about as well as you'd expect.

BOOM-demons. So many demons. Crawling around like a bunch of crackheads on bath salts. And-poof!-a third of humanity just gone. One minute you're chillin', the next, your neighbor's getting his insides turned into an art project. But did the survivors take a step back and think, "Wow, we should probably chill the hell out and stop messing with shit"? Nah. They did what people always do-built some big-ass walls and gave 'em a pretentious-ass name: "The Mercy Curtains." Like, what kind of medieval bullshit is that? These holy infused walls? Yeah, they're made to keep the demons out. And they do-unless some idiot lets one in.

And these demons? They don't just kill you-they ruin you. They look like they were drawn by a drunk toddler on a bad acid trip. Legs in places legs should not be, faces that make you question if God ever cared about this planet, and a vibe that just oozes death. You don't just see them-you feel them, deep in your bones, in that primitive part of your brain that starts screaming "We are so unbelievably fucked."

In the Capital Cities, the government-whatever counts as a government these days-had one idea. And it was a simple one: "Kill demons, get paid." Just slap that on a flyer and call it a day. And shockingly, it worked. Demon hunters, psychos with nothing better to do-all of 'em lined up, ready to go stab some hellspawn for a quick payday. And out of all these demon-killing badasses, two names stand out. These guys? Absolute legends. Moral compass? Flexible. You wouldn't trust them to feed your cat, but if a demons trying to rip your face off? You'd pray they were there.