Episode 100: Zero Sum

Written By Karl White

Dictator Farouk Dastan continued ruling Darvashir with an iron fist. The Crimson Virus, supplied by Dr. Bellian Vale, became his most guarded instrument of fear. Rarely used, yet always an unspoken threat lingering behind interrogations, disappearances, and the quiet machinery of his regime. To Dastan, it was more than a weapon -- it was a promise to one day secure his place beyond the reach of any rival nation.

In the late 1980s, seeking to crush growing resistance in the northern province of Namarak, Dastan unleashed a series of chemical attacks using VX and Sarin gas against his own people. The footage reached international media, and the world took notice. Human rights organizations condemned the regime. Allied nations withdrew assets, and severed oil contracts, hardening Dastan’s defiance. But there was one attack he never acknowledged...not for fear of reprisal, but to conceal what he was ultimately building.

In 1988, in the isolated village of Khoradesh, a planned coup was uncovered, with rebels and high-ranking officials preparing to move against him. Dastan responded not with chemicals or gun fire, but instead he ordered the Crimson Virus to be used.

It was the first time he deployed it at scale, and even he did not fully grasp what would follow. The village fell quickly, but when his forces entered to secure the area and declare victory, zombie hordes easily overtook them -- turning them as well. Unable to bomb the site without drawing global attention, Dastan established an electronic perimeter miles beyond the village and declared it off-limits to all. Whatever remained inside was left to rot, but it didn’t.

Zombie of Khoradesh - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Years later, at the apex of his power, Dastan made his move. In 1991, he invaded the neighboring country of Sahran, drawing swift condemnation from the international community. The provocation, along with the atrocities perpetrated against his own people and whispers of a secret weapon, pulled the West into a war with the dictator. Though beneath it all lay the quieter objective of securing the region’s oil fields.

Though Dastan held a biological ace up his sleeve with the Crimson Virus, he’d never get the chance to use it. Allied forces struck with overwhelming precision. Cruise missiles launched from carriers in the Persian Gulf, and coordinated airstrikes dismantled his military from a distance. Within weeks, Darvashir’s infrastructure collapsed. Farouk Dastan was killed in a targeted strike, his reign ending abruptly. To the world, it was the fall of another dictator. But the war didn’t end cleanly.

Dastan’s regime falls - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

As coalition forces pushed deeper into the desert, pursuing remnants of Dastan’s militia, a British battalion was led off course towards a trap in Khoradesh. The infection had endured, unchecked, feeding on itself, evolving into something far worse than the original outbreak. Following the slaughter of the battalion by the zombies of Khoradesh, an American Special Forces unit destroyed the city, but not before procuring specimens of the infected. And with that, the cycle began again as the plague was revealed in modern war. And without Larry Halford to stop its exploitation, the argument shifted -- not whether the virus should exist, but who should ultimately control it...

All of this was the design of the Dark, and the demon who was Dr. Bellian Vale. To place the plague in the hands of the most powerful. To let nations convince themselves they could control it, while drawing ever closer to using it. Vale didn’t need to unleash the end of the world himself. He only needed to nurture the conditions, and wait for men to turn the key. While governments sharpened their knives in secret, preparing for a war no one could survive, there were still those who understood what was truly at stake.

Years after the loss of Larry Halford, Bhekizizwe abandoned his reliance on governments and intelligence networks, knowing Vale couldn’t be tracked by conventional means. The demon moved through shadows, to whisper, tempt, and influence, then disappear. To pursue something like that required a different kind of hunter, one who could look beyond.

Gérard Roux, once a devout Crusader, had become a man shaped by eight-centuries of confronting the unseen. He’d fought alongside the Order of Wormwood, and the Forces of Light. But after a falling out with his partner Broderick Zayne, Roux returned to the Vatican, where he’d serve as Inquisitor Tenebrarum. A man the Church called upon to destroy things belonging to the darkness. Armed with holy relics, forbidden knowledge, and magic gathered over lifetimes, he hunted vampires, werewolves, and of course, demons.   

Roux and Bhekizizwe on the hunt for Vale - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Together, Bhekizizwe and Roux, two Eternals, each unable to be killed, formed a rare team, moving across continents chasing any rumor or trace of the elusive Dr. Vale. For years, they followed the frustrating signs just like Halford before them. Always arriving just behind something they could never quite reach. Then, in 1995, came a shift… 

While the pair was in Eastern Europe, they received a telegram from the Vatican. A monk in the Apostolic Archive, uncovered a fragment within the Disciplina Arcani. A hidden incantation, buried deep within texts, spoke of summoning something specific, not in the crude sense of pulling lesser demonic entities across the threshold. That sort of simple spellcraft, could be done lighting some candles and drawing any rudimentary glyph or sigil on the floor. But to name one, to bind the call to a specific demon, especially one as powerful and ancient as Vale, required precision and strength.

Demons have a hierarchy. The highest echelon is known as the Ninth State -- an Exarch. The demon hiding behind the guise of Bellian Vale was one of only a handful of Exarchs in existence. And though still forbidden from directly taking human life, his kind could siphon a soul from a body, just as he’d done with Larry Halford. Each soul consumed added to the demon's power, granting it the memories, knowledge, and experiences of the life it’d stolen. To summon an Exarch was beyond dangerous, but to stop it, there was no other choice. 

The plan would be for Roux to conjure Vale, and together, he and Bhekizizwe would strike. They’d use The Sword of Saint Michael, a blade that could force a demon into its true form. And the Rhongomyniad, a spear meant to wound and unbind the dark from this world, casting the fractured essence into the Abyss.

Holy relics - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

They traveled to an abandoned structure at the edge of a long-forgotten industrial district and the ritual began. Roux followed the incantation with absolute precision, each word measured, each movement exact. As the final phrases were spoken, the space around them shifted. Bhekizizwe felt it, not pressure pushing outward, but something drawing inward, as though the world was collapsing toward an unseen point.

The darkness that followed was not the absence of light, but the presence of something that consumed it. A shape formed within it. And when it resolved, the figure standing before them was unmistakable -- Dr. Bellian Vale.

Roux moved first, swinging the Sword of Saint Michael. The blade ignited as it struck. Its surface blazing as it forced a fracture in Vale’s form. For a fleeting moment, the human illusion faltered, revealing beneath it something vast and ancient. The strike landed cleanly, but met resistance beyond flesh, something layered, immovable.

Bhekizizwe followed, driving the Rhongomyniad forward with full force. The impact reverberated through the space, but instead of destroying Vale, it shattered the environment itself. The structure twisted violently. Walls stretched. The ground lost its orientation. The space no longer obeyed the rules of the world it belonged to.

Roux had an uneasy feeling, during the summoning ritual, as he hadn’t felt the resistance he’d prepared for. No strain in the conjuring, no sign of anything being forced into place... And that’s when it dawned on him, it was a trick. What had been uncovered in the Vatican archives had not been a means of bringing Vale out into the light. But to deliver THEM to HIM....

Bhekizizwe and Roux readied to attack again, but it was too late. Holding out his hand, reality began to crack around Vale. The distortion spreading outward towards them. They couldn’t run, or escape it. 

Vale bending reality - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

VALE: You cannot be ended. But you can be removed.

Behind them, the world tore open, to an absence of light. Shapes reached out from the dark, seizing them with absolute force. They braced against it, trying to anchor to something solid. But the ground failed beneath them, not collapsing, but releasing them, as though they were no longer bound to it. The shapes from beyond pulled them into the void. 

Then the fracture sealed shut. The space settled, returning to what it had been. Vale faded into a wisp of smoke. 

Bhekizizwe and Roux found themselves in a formless place, surrounded by nothing but endless darkness. Roux, having spent lifetimes with Broderick Zayne, knew the stories of the black void, they were in the Abyss...And he knew, with certainty, there was no easy way out.

TO BE CONTINUED…