The journey to the temple in the army truck feels surreal. The two soldiers, Corporal Davies and Private Miller, are all brisk efficiency and black humour, treating the mission like a routine patrol. Their casual disbelief is a stark contrast to the knot of dread tightening in your stomach.
As you approach the temple, the mood shifts. The same unnatural silence hangs over the clearing. The soldiers feel it too, their jokes dying on their lips, fingers moving instinctively to the triggers of their rifles.
You don’t have to breach the entrance. The cultists are waiting for you, emerging from the temple’s dark maw like wraiths. “Halt! British Army!” Davies barks, but the command is met with a guttural, inhuman chant. A shot rings out—from whose side, it’s impossible to tell—and the clearing erupts into chaos.
The firefight is a brutal affair of deafening reports and shouts. The cultists are unnervingly resilient, moving with an unnatural grace as they use the jungle for cover. Miller goes down with a cry, clutching a wound that smokes with a strange, cold vapour. Davies lays down suppressing fire, his face a mask of terrified determination.
In the midst of the fray, a ricochet or a stray blast of dark energy—you can’t tell which—smashes into the stone pedestal inside the entrance. The Jade Serpent is sent flying, tumbling through the air in a shimmering arc before landing with a heavy thud on the mossy ground, right at your feet.
It pulses with a malevolent light, its obsidian eyes seeming to stare into your soul. The air around it hums with power. Davies, his voice cracking with stress and fear, screams over the gunfire, “The artifact, sir! Secure it!”
The relic lies unprotected. The decision is yours, and yours alone.