The bunker's emergency lights flickered to life, casting jagged shadows across Azriel's stitched face. Sam's pulse hammered in his throat as he watched the black veins pulse under Lila's skin like a living thing. The bound hunter thrashed against her restraints, her mouth foaming that same corrosive bile that had taken Richie, her face slowly melting from it.

"Six days?" Sam wiped his bleeding arm with a torn sleeve. "That's your idea of a warning?"

Azriel's grin stretched wider, the sutures pulling taut. "Oh, Sammy. You think this is the worst of it?" He kicked Richie's corpse, making it jolt in response. "This is just the fever breaking. Wait till the infection really takes hold."

A wet gurgle came from the corner. One of the infected hunters—a kid no older than Claire—was changing. His jaw unhinged with a sickening pop, tendons snapping as his mouth stretched wider and wider...

"Jesus Christ—" Bobby grabbed an iron poker from the fireplace.

"Not quite," Azriel purred.

The kid's skin split down the middle like rotten fruit, peeling back to reveal glistening muscle beneath. But no blood spilt out. Just that same black ooze, bubbling up from his pores.

Eileen's hands flew in sharp, furious signs: "How do we stop it?"

Azriel tilted his head again, considering her. "You don't. Not yet." He reached into his coat and pulled out a rusted pocket watch. The glass was cracked, the hands spinning wildly. "First, you need to see what you're up against."

He snapped the watch shut—

—and the bunker warped.

The walls bled black and the air turned thick with the stench of rotting meat. And suddenly, they weren't standing on the war room floor anymore.

They were in the Empty.

This was not the hell Sam's soul remembered. This was older. The walls pulsed like a living heart, the screams heard sounded less of damned souls and more of...something else. Hungrier.

"Welcome," Azriel whispered, "to the first prison."

Ahead, in the darkness, something stirred.

And it was laughing.

The laughter didn't feel like a sound but like a vibration, crawling up Sam's spine like spiders made of static. The darkness here wasn't just the absence of light—it was alive, thick as oil, pressing against his skin with the weight of drowned beings.

The laughter always felt just a bit farther away moving neither away or towards them, yet drifting and fading like a man into the sunset.

"This isn't the Empty," Sam choked out. His breath didn't fog. The air stole it before it could.

Azriel's stitched mask glistened in the non-light. "Ding-ding. Give the boy a prize, actually just half." He spread his arms, trench coat bleeding into the void. "This is what came before the Empty, same location, different time." He turned towards the group smiling like a maniacal tour guide, "What do you think the empty lot was before it became the empty?"

Booby looked confused.

"Amara. This, my dear humans, is Amara's little teenage room where she looped her l's and hearted her i's as she wrote kill god over and over again."

Something shifted in the dark. A shape too vast to comprehend, its edges fraying like torn film.

Eileen's fingers dug into Sam's arm. "We need to go," she signed, her hands trembling.

"Oh, you can't." Azriel tapped his broken watch. "Not until he lets you."

The thing in the dark coiled.

And then—

"Sammy."

Sam's heart stopped.

That voice. Gravel and whiskey and home.

He turned.

Dean stood three feet away, his leather jacket pristine, his face unlined. But his eyes—his eyes were all wrong. The green had bled out, replaced by the same bottomless black as the infected hunters.

For a minute, Sam still wanted to believe.

"Miss me?" Not-Dean then grinned, and his teeth were needle-sharp.

Sam's breath hitched. Every instinct screamed wrong-wrong-WRONG, but his feet stayed rooted to the ground. The thing wearing Dean's face tilted its head—too far, the motion liquid and unhinged—and took a step forward.

"C'mon, Sammy." Not-Dean's voice dripped with honeyed malice. "You gonna hug me or what?"

Eileen's fingers dug harder into Sam's arm, her nails drawing blood. "Don't," she signed with violent precision.

Azriel clapped his hands together, that sounded like bones snapping. "Oh, this is amazing! Samael always did have a flair for dramatics." He circled Not-Dean, inspecting him like a butcher eyeing a cut of the meat. "The hair's a nice touch. Bit too much product, though. Original recipe Dean was more...grease and regret, wasn't he?"

The illusion flickered.

For half a heartbeat, Dean's face melted—skin slithering off to reveal something gnarled and pulsating beneath, all exposed muscle and twitching tendons. Then it smoothed back into place.

Bobby's voice came from behind . "Enough with the damn lightshow. What the hell is this?"

"A memory," Azriel said, tapping his temple. "Samael's been down here a long time. He digests things. Souls. Places. Time." He gestured to Not-Dean. "This one? This is Dean Winchester's echo. All the bits and pieces Samael couldn't quite...stomach, his nightmares of his brother."

Not-Dean's grin widened. "Yeah, well. I always was a tough chew." His voice glitched, warping into something deeper, older. "But oh, the flavor of you, Sam. All that guilt. That hunger."

Sam's stomach turned. "You're not him."

"Aren't I?" Not-Dean's black eyes glitched, fracturing into a thousand shards of reflected light. "I'm every 'what if' you ever choked down. Every late-night whiskey-fueled if only." He leaned in, his breath reeking of burnt sugar and rot. "Tell me—when you put me in the ground, did you finally feel like the better brother?"

Sam swung.

His fist passed straight through Not-Dean's face, the image rippling like disturbed water. The thing wearing his brother's skin laughed, the sound spiraling into a chorus of screams—familiar screams.

John. Mary. Jessica.

"Sam—!" Eileen's hands flew up, but too late.

The darkness convulsed.

And then the walls began to peel.

The world snapped like a rubber band stretched too far. One second, Sam was choking on the Empty's thick, soulless air—the next, he was alone, the bunker's war room empty save for Azriel and the thing that was no longer wearing Dean's face.

The illusion sloughed off like dead skin, revealing Samael's true form beneath.

Sam's breath caught.

Identical.

From the curves of their jaws to the way they held their shoulders—Samael was Azriel's mirror image, save for the eyes. Where Azriel's were a dull, stormy brown, Samael's burned black and endless, swallowing the light whole.

"Surprise," Samael crooned, his voice a perfect match to Azriel's—if Azriel's had been barbed with poison.

Azriel didn't flinch. "Cute. You always were a drama queen, weren't you?"

Sam's head pounded, the room tilting. "What the hell—?"

"A warped reality," Azriel cut in, stepping between Sam and his twin. "Samael's idea of a funhouse mirror. He doesn't want you seeing—just guessing." He shot Samael a boring look. "Hence the cheap theatrics."

Samael tsked, circling them. "You ruin all my games, brother."

"Games?" Sam's hands clenched. "People are dying—"

"Oh, people always die," Samael sighed, as if explaining rain to a child. "But this? This is art. The Yetzer Hara isn't just in them, Sam. It is them. The part they bury. The part that hungers." He leaned in, his breath frigid against Sam's ear. "Even you have it. That little voice that whispers take, take, take."

Sam stared.

Azriel shoved Samael back. "Enough." His voice dropped, low and urgent. "Sam, listen. This place—the Empty—it wasn't always empty. Before Amara was locked away, before God built anything—this was hers."

A flicker of something passed through the dark—not a memory, but the ghost of one. The walls breathed again, pulsing with the echo of a heartbeat. Almost human.

"The first war wasn't between God and Amara," Azriel continued. "It was between creation and hunger. God built. Amara consumed. And when He finally trapped her, He needed something to hold the dark she left behind."

Samael laughed, the sound splintering the air. "So Death made us."

Azriel's jaw tightened. "We were his first and only children. The scales. I was the end.  And Samael... was supposed to be the pause—the space between breaths, the want before the act."

"But then dear old Dad realized hunger has a taste," Samael smiled. "And oh, Sam. Once I tasted it?" His grin split, stretching too wide. "I craved."

Sam's blood iced over. "The Yetzer Hara."

"Bingo," Azriel muttered. "God, Death, and.. well, I, locked him away here—in a section of Amara's room, the basement of the empty. But now?" He shot Samael a glare. "Death's gone. God's a kid playing house. And this bastard's itching for a rematch."

Samael's fingers twitched, the shadows coiling around them like vipers. "Why rule the world when you can ruin it?"

Then, the dark surged—

—and Sam fell.