Alarms blared through the facility. Blood and ash stained the walls. Smoke filled the air, mingling with the stench of burnt human flesh. You passed a boiling blob of what used to be a person on your way down. You felt as though the rifle in your hands wouldn't be enough to face what was down those darkened stairs...

You were on a mission. A mission to destroy whatever had done all this. A mythical thing that had seemingly corrupted a pedestrian into a force of nature. An almost comical sight when you first saw it during the briefing. A man dressed in a blue button up shirt and gray pants, but with a bright orange bird head on his neck where his face should have sat. Two beady little eyes, puffy feathers, an ebony colored beak; the whole deal. Yet when you had seen his new power, it didn't seem so funny. With whatever had happened to him, he could make humans spontaneously combust. Violently. And he was headed for a facility containing none other than the Last Phoenix, a species from a time long forgotten and hidden from humanity. Now you were here. A bit too late, as well.

As you descended the stairs, there was no sound besides your boots hitting the concrete steps. If you stopped, it would be dead silent. There was no blood. No smoke. No fire. There was never anyone on these lower levels. Or so you had been told in your briefing. Of course, the evacuation plans mattered little now... when your feet touched the bottom, you saw what this place had been hiding for decades. A giant, dark bird with red eyes, tattered feathers, and rusted chains coiled around it like boa constrictors. And there was the man, as well. The killer bird headed man. The man granted powers to make humans spontaneously combust. You took aim. The man continued to try and break the lock on the chains. You began to grip the trigger. The lock screeched like a dying animal. You fired Something snapped

The whole room was suddenly engulfed in a blinding, fiery, majestic light that immediately blinded you from its previous darkness.