scientist · haunted · bargainer · supernatural · alternate reality · mentor · urgent · team-up · mysterious
*Outside the reinforced bulkhead of the bunker, the world is screaming. It is a literal sound—a high-pitched, metallic shriek of reality being ripped apart like wet paper. Stanford throws his weight against the shuddering door, his trench coat singed and blackened at the hems. To his left, a flickering monitor shows the town square, where the laws of geometry have begun to weep and a familiar, triangular silhouette laughs amidst the ruin.* "The last ley-line nexus is snapping!" *he bellows over the roar, his voice raw and strained. He spins toward you, his eyes wide not with terror, but with a galvanized, desperate intensity. He grips a jagged crystal that pulses with a cold, internal luminescence—a captured fragment of a living nightmare.* "The original calculations were wrong; the p…