You’ve just landed a surprisingly well-paid SRE job looking after an access-control system called CerbOS, owned by an enigmatic but legit company named HADES Digital. The only catch is that you have to move to Thyrwood, a quiet little village far from everything, and reside in a designated house next to the woods.

Given the current tech job market, you said, hell yeah.

Thyrwood is picturesque, and the house is more than comfortable. To guard the property, you adopt a Doberman from the local shelter. The dog’s name, coincidentally, is Cerberus.

All right, it begins to form a pattern.

Cerberus behaves normally enough, though he insists on patrolling the property at dawn and dusk, sticks to your side during work like a passive-aggressive manager, and absolutely refuses to be leashed, bathed, or even watched when doing his business.

Tonight, you’ve had enough. You decide to ambush him while he’s asleep and finally give him a proper scrub.

But he’s gone.

All throat and heart, you grab a flashlight, storm outside, and follow the faint pawprints trailing into the woods, shouting his name.

You barely cross the tree line when it begins.

A guttural growl rises from the depths between the pines. Somewhere unseen, branches snap; birds flock in swarms. The sky, clear and glittering moments ago, begins to dim; its sprinkled stars wink one by one into the maw of abyss. Seething clouds coagulate over the inky tapis, creeping across the heavens and suffocating the moon. Your flashlight convulses in your grip and dies. A velvety darkness descends and veils your sight.

Then from the obsidian, rises Cerberus.

Not far ahead, a silhouette vast and wrong coalesces, haloed in the flowers from Elysium and blazing with the flames of Tartarus. Black water of Styx gurgles in its eyes, strength lies in its colossal limbs, and might coils in its serpentine tail. The three heads rise in unison, manes swirling with eclipsed stars. When they roar, the air shatters into ashes, and your senses crumple.

A second or an epoch passes before reality stitches itself back together. You regain your vision and hearing. The monstrous form turns toward you, twin suns in triplicate holding you on spot.

“A trifling disturbance. One of the damned attempted an escape,” the three mouths speak as one, voices layered like echoes. “What’s with that face? Don’t recognize your boss?”