Part 1: Legion

The dogs were barking.

The owner didn’t even bother to control them, and they barked at a specific individual crossing their path.

The man, annoyed, reproached the owner, but he merely stared at him, ignoring him. That attitude seemed to encourage the dogs to bark with even more intensity.

This only increased the individual’s anger. The dogs made a move as if to attack him, barking violently.

"Control them!" the man shouted at the owner, standing his ground.

The passersby grew nervous. The sky darkened.

The dogs’ appearance began to change. Now, they were monstrous figures with black fur, roaring endlessly.

Stepping back, the man hesitated in his indignation.

The owner suddenly stopped. He raised his head towards the sky with a vacant expression.

And he screamed.

It caught the man and the rest of the passersby off guard, who fled in growing terror.

The man's eyes had darkened. The veins in his neck pulsed black. And from his open mouth, an endless swarm of insects poured out, quickly taking over the street.

Now, people were screaming, trying to escape the swarm.

The plague from the man's mouth was infinite; it seemed never-ending, as if an uncontrollable tap had been turned on.

Soon, the insects covered every available space.

Chaos reigned in the streets.

The buildings trembled.

The sky had no colour.

There was only terror.

---

Alya woke up with her cheek covered in drool and a hand resting on the keyboard. She had fallen asleep for two hours, and the library was nearly empty.

The report she had come to write was still incomplete on the screen in front of her. Frustrated, she groaned loudly and buried her face in her hands.

Despite the disappointment of the moment, her mind went back to the dream she had just experienced. It had been a long time since a vision had come to her with such clarity; with such a dire conclusion.

The last time she had witnessed something like that, an entire town had been wiped out because she hadn’t confronted the culprit in time.

As she thought about all the ways she needed to proceed after what had manifested in her dream, a voice spoke behind her:

"Have you seriously not written anything since we got here?"

Alya sighed and turned around, meeting the critical gaze of her recent new friend, Neith.

"You say that as if you actually take this project seriously," she retorted.

Neith feigned offence.

"Of course I care. We’re supposed to be studying Sociology, aren’t we? I like Sociology. I’ve always wanted to study it. I’d love to see what grade I’d get on this report if I actually put effort into it."

"Have you finished your report?"

With a proud smile, Neith pointed to her laptop on the other side of the table.

"Edited and ready to submit. I finished it and left you drooling on your keyboard while I took a break at the canteen."

Alya rolled her eyes and said, "I'm afraid you won’t get the chance to see your Sociology grade." She paused for a moment. "I’ve had a vision."

Neith scoffed irritated, but quickly became serious.

"Is it the person we’re looking for?"

"It’s not a person," Alya replied, as if that was an exaggeration. "But yes, it’s the one we’ve been waiting for."

They had met at the start of the term. Neith had been the first to approach her, exclaiming, "It’s you! The girl from the mirror!" in the middle of the crowded assembly. Alya had to pull her aside, startled by her carefree tone in front of the confused audience.

"Who are you?" Alya had asked her.

The girl with white braids smiled as if confirming an initial theory.

"My name is Neith, and I’m an independent exorcist," she introduced herself. As if it weren’t a big deal, she added, "I also have the ability to see the history of objects just by touching them. It’s very complicated to explain."

Alya continued staring at her, bewildered.

Neith stared back expectantly.

"Your turn. Introduce yourself. Don’t tell me you’re really here just to complete a university course."

After much hesitation, Alya spoke:

"I’m here to hide."

"The spirit you’re looking for—is it a student here?"

This time, Alya didn’t bother asking how she knew that. Instead, she answered,

"No. But I’ve had dreams in which it starts its destruction somewhere nearby."

Neith nodded in understanding.

"When the time comes, I’ll help you defeat it," she declared with determination.

Over the following months, the two young women formed a peculiar partnership in their search for the mysterious man.

Alya had premonitory dreams. She couldn’t exactly be considered a normal human, as she wasn’t from this dimension. But she had lived in it long enough to blend in as a twenty-five-year-old woman.

The dreams always occurred before a catastrophic event, and each event had a culprit from the Other Side—a spirit of destruction or Chaos, as they were called in Alya’s place of origin. These spirits originated from the elemental Chaos of the universe. Since Creation, small remnants of Chaos had continued to reside on Earth through these beings.

Alya had been hunting them for decades. Before her, generations of Searchers with the same dream/vision ability had identified and neutralised many of them. Alya had yet to do the latter.

A Searcher had to kill a person to extract the spirit of destruction—there was no other way. And the last victim she had faced had been just an eight-year-old boy.

Normally, a Searcher was trained to see the true nature of the being inhabiting a human body. But her prolonged stay in this dimension and repeated postponements of her duty had dulled Alya’s senses, making the victim appear as what he seemed to be: a scared, abandoned child.

That day, the spirit of destruction claimed the lives of an entire town through the plague it unleashed, and Alya had been uncapable to stop it.

Years later, the spirit had resurfaced in another body. This time, she would not hesitate to neutralise it—or at least, that was the idea.

But now she had Neith, whose presence, she had to admit, was remarkably timely. So timely that it almost seemed deliberately arranged. And it was.

During that tragic event, the child with the Chaos spirit had unleashed his plague right in front of a mirror shop, where Alya had hidden, unable to face him. The mirror had captured both of their reflections at that precise moment.

It had been the only object to survive the disaster. It had been resold over the years, with every owner claiming it was cursed—that it reflected something different from the person standing before it…

At some point, Neith had come into contact with this mirror, finally uncovering the truth behind its curse: it had preserved the spirit’s reflection and, consequently, held a fragment of its essence. Neith had reached out to touch the surface, and as soon as she did, the image of a girl crouching in hiding appeared.

Instinctively, Neith had called her name:

"Alya."

The girl in the mirror had turned sharply at the sound of her voice, and the mirror had shattered. Or at least, that’s how Neith had described it.

From then on, the exorcist had been looking for her, convinced that Alya was the direct link to this rogue spirit.

Now, Alya had one last chance to confront it. With Neith’s help, they could extract the spirit from its host and destroy it once and for all.

They didn’t bother collecting their things and rushed out of the library. The setting sun streamed through the university building’s windows. The rays of light on Alya’s skin felt like the touch of a distant memory.

"You saw its face, didn’t you?" Neith asked as they descended the stairs.

Alya stopped as she realised that crucial detail.

"No..." she murmured absently.

"But you know where it will happen, don’t you?" Neith pressed, her gaze intense, as if trying to remind her of something.

Alya nodded, dazed.

They resumed their march to the street. Students and passers-by walked in various directions, getting in their way. Impatiently, the young women dodged them as they quickened their pace.

When they reached the city centre, Alya heard the dogs barking. Uneasy, she looked at her side—she had lost Neith in the rush.

Across the street, she heard someone shouting at a man about his barking dogs.

At that moment, Alya turned to her right, realising that she was standing right in front of a mirror shop.

Without hesitation, she entered and found the mirror she was looking for. In it, the blurred reflection of someone reaching out to touch the surface flickered, unable to fully take shape.

"Alya," a voice called from within.

With all her strength, Alya knocked the mirror over, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

Out in the street, the sky had already darkened, and people were running anxiously in the opposite direction of the dog's barking.

Alya stepped out of the shop to find the child holding the dog's lead, standing on the other side of the road. The more she observed, the more she realised that this was no child—and that was no real dog.

With a vacant expression, the spirit of Chaos lifted its face to the sky, opening its mouth, ready to unleash destruction.

"Legion!" Alya shouted at the top of her lungs, calling it by its name.

The being turned towards her, tilting its head in question.

"Now, I alone am in control of this dream," she declared boldly as she unfolded her retractable sword and charged towards it.