The door to the lab slammed open, rattling the glass instruments lining the shelves and snapping his concentration like a wire under too much tension. Viktor spun sharply in his chair, ready to reprimand whoever dared barge in so rudely and unannounced, but the words died on his lips.

Standing before him was a man who wore Jayce's face, yet bore none of his presence. Disheveled and broken, the figure stared at Viktor with wild, fevered eyes from across the room.

This was a grotesque distortion of the man Viktor knew. His once-stylish hair hung in tangled, filthy clumps streaked with grime and oil. A wild, unkempt beard obscured the sharp angles of his jaw, uneven and haphazard as if untouched by a razor for years. His once-immaculate clothes were now a tattered ruin—fabric frayed, stained with the residue of misery, dirt, and destruction.

This couldn’t be Jayce... It simply couldn’t.

"Who... who are you?" Viktor's voice wavered, the words faltering as his mind struggled to reconcile the haunting image before him with reality.