Stepping into the house, both of them raise their guns to begin their scan and split up. 

The second they stepped away from each other, the empty yet otherwise normal house fell entirely dark.

"Jack?"

"Jill!?"

The pair tried to find each other, they had only taken one step after all. However, for all their stumbling and fumbling, neither could reach the other. They just kept running and running, trying to find the exit, a window, each other, anything.

But as they kept running, their minds shifted and changed. No longer were they scared, stumbling people in the dark, but children once more, running through a sunlit field.

It was a wheat field, one right outside where they used to live. How they would run and run, watched by their parents. What happened to them, again? It was so hard to remember. They were long gone, so far off, but right there at the edge of the field, watching them run and jump.

Jack wanted to race to the hill in the middle of the field. Jill wasn't so sure, but she could never back down when he egged her on. 

Oh, how they ran and ran, weaving through the wheat, making the crows fly around. Look at them now, circling overhead.

The two of them run, almost neck-to-neck with each other, and they get to the base of the hill. They push, they strain, they climb the incline as hard as their legs will carry them!

A rock trips up Jill, she stumbles for just a second, but that second is all that Jack needs to overtake her! He runs, and runs! He gets to the edge of the well first! But wait, he goes too fast, it's too much! He falls down into the well.

There is no splash, but a sickening, wet crack.

"Jack!?" Jill shouted, terrified. She races to the edge of the well herself, able to slow down and stop. But when she looks in, there is water. But something is in the water, it's a murky dark something, that flows like loose ink.

It's collecting, forming...a cross? There are two equal lines, and there's a dot at each end with one more in the middle. Something about that mark looks...comforting, safe, and almost enlightening. It feels divine, in a way.

Then, the sound of something dragging across the ground, and a deep echo.

"WAKE UP"

"JACK!!!" Jill shouts, lunging back to reality from the darkness. She snaps back into her mind and sees that she's maybe two steps away from an open second-floor window. Freaking out, she scurries back, tripping over loose papers and falling backward. 

Looking around the room, she sees loose papers, drawings, and glass vials full of various small clippings of plant life. She can't understand the language anything is written on, and certainly can't understand the scientific diagrams and abbreviations. But, she does see Jack's helmet and guns, laid neatly on the desk right next to the window.

Getting to her feet, and scanning the immediate area, she looks out the window, seeing small puddles of blood, one very fresh, littering the backyard, all with accompanying drag marks towards one location. A window into the basement.

Making sure her own helmet was on tightly, she grabs Jack's SMG, and nervously makes her way downstairs. She is nervous, and her breath is ragged, but something within her feels comfortable. Feels safe. Feels almost enlightened.

But it's also an extreme headache. Each step she takes, she sees in triplicate. Minor differences, a moment's change, but all carry safety with them. Until she looks at the basement.

She sees herself running to the exit. She sees herself burning the whole house down. She sees herself entering the basement.

The second option feels the safest.

She walks towards the basement door instead.

Opening it up, there is just a small wooden staircase down into the darkness of the basement. Gun at the ready, she heads down but doesn't make it one step past the bottom when she hears a sickening snap to her left, like a plank twisting and splintering.

"J...i...ll? A...re...you...ther...e?" Jack's voice wheezed out. 

"Jack? Are you okay?" She turned the gun in that direction but didn't take another step. Something in her gut told her not to.

"J-Jill...w-where are you?"

"I'm right here, come on follow my voice, we need to get the fuck out of here! Fuck the Swords!" She took a step forward this time, but when she did her triplicate sight showed the paths, all ending in an attack. Her gut feeling was verified.

"I...can't...see."

"Jack...can you remember the field outside our house? When we were kids?"

"The...field...? Oh...yeah...I wo-uld chase...you would...run...I win..." Jack chuckled lightly as if the air was leaking from him. Finally, Jill gathers the courage to turn on the flashlight attached to the SMG.

Thankfully, her helmet blocked the vision of her face twisting in anguish. Jack was slumped against a support beam for the basement, head visibly split open, with some thing attached to his head.

It was sickeningly red with white and green pustules, pulsing and undulating in time, as more of its bulbous form was trying to wrap around Jack's face. Thin tendrils were wrapped around his entire body, weaving in and out as it manipulated his form.

"I rem-em-ber...the well...I...raced you...I won..."

A whimper is barely blocked by the sealed nature of the helmet. 

"I'm sorry, Jack...there was never a well...I'm so sorry..."

The helmet could not cover the sound of the desperate scream, but SMG fire did the trick in its place.

A week later, Jill sat in a sterile hall in a hidden base, one of the many locations the Swords have access to. She sat at a bench in that cold, empty hall, clutching an urn close, eyes a mile wide.

"You did the right thing, Jill." The king returned, still covered with a hood, but without the mask, showing a full ginger beard.

"This might be cold comfort, but...autopsy confirmed blunt force trauma as the cause of death. He was already dead in the basement."

"But...he talked..."

"The autopsy of...of that thing from the basement showed it did have a well-developed mind. It was a hunter, and you were its prey. He...unfortunately, was bait."

"I don't...how did this even happen?" Jill choked out. Her eyes were still wide, but they looked up at the king, full of sorrow.

"Spores."

There was a silence with a thousand questions. Only one made its way out. "Huh?"

"Jack had spores all the way up to his brain and wherever the monster tendrils got him. I wager you had some as well. When our security team did their investigation, they found they came from the sunflowers near the fence. Well...calling them sunflowers isn't right. I guess bodies aren't the only thing the Tzimisce can corrupt." The king looked away, ashamed of himself.

"We...we put our helmets on after the fence...oh god." She put the urn on the ground and cradled her head in her hands. She had no more tears to cry but felt the emptiness in her heart all the same.

"This...this was supposed to be our meal ticket...but now. God, what am I supposed to do? I'm already hearing voices, seeing things!"

"You are? Like what?"

"I don't know I don't know! Back...back in the house...I heard a voice! A-And now...every time I move I get these fucking visions!" Her stress was building, but the King knew exactly what this was. But time would have to come first.

She is handed a card. A tarot card, specifically. "Page of Swords."

She looks up, seeing the king taking off his hood, showing a head of long ginger hair, starting to turn white, and a pair of kind brown eyes. "A journey that begins with a loss. It reminds us that good things can be found in the worst of situations and that we can grow past our worst moments."

He sits down next to her. "Welcome to the Swords, Jill. We want you in our number, our family. But, when you're ready."

There is silence for a moment. "Thank you, King." She doesn't seem to believe herself as she utters the words.

"Please, that's just a codename to keep things private. Call me Ethan."

While she seems to acknowledge it more, her eyes do not turn from the card, and then the urn at her feet.

"What was he like?" This caught her attention, as she turned to face Ethan. "Can you tell me about him?"

A tear returns to her eye, before a small grin forms on her face.

"When we were kids, there was this field next to our house,"