[s11e1] Out Of The Darkness, Into The Fire -

They climbed back into the car, the rumble of the engine the only familiar thing left in a world that had suddenly turned alien. As they drove toward the nearest town, Superior, Nebraska, the signs of the "Darkness" began to manifest. It wasn't monsters in the shadows; it was a sickness.

The black smoke that had roared across the landscape was gone, leaving behind a stillness that felt like a trap. Dean wiped a smear of blood from his forehead, his eyes darting to the tree line. He could still feel the phantom touch of the woman in the black dress, the Mark of Cain gone from his arm but the weight of her words settled deep in his marrow. "Sam," Dean rasped, his voice cracking. "You okay?"

"It’s a localized infection," Sam whispered, hopping out of the car to inspect a fallen road worker. "Whatever that smoke was, it changed them." [S11E1] Out of the Darkness, Into the Fire

"We didn't have a choice," Dean snapped, though the conviction was hollow.

Sam didn't answer immediately. He was staring at the road ahead, where the asphalt seemed to shimmer with heat that shouldn't be there. "We let it out, Dean. We actually let it out." They climbed back into the car, the rumble

The town was a graveyard of the living dead. Amidst the chaos, they found a young deputy, Jenna Olson, terrified and clutching a shotgun in the local hospital. She was protecting a newborn baby—a girl whose mother had succumbed to the darkness moments after birth.

Tell me which character's perspective you'd like to dive into next. The black smoke that had roared across the

The first body they found was slumped against a road sign. Then another near a rusted-out truck. These weren't demonic kills or angel smitings. The victims were covered in black, veiny growths, their eyes wide and vacant, as if their very souls had been vacuumed out.