The air became thick.
Kael felt it before he saw it. An invisible pressure pressed down on him, as if an entire mountain were breathing on top of his chest. The sky was covered by black clouds, and not even the moon dared to peek out. Something was creeping among the abandoned buildings, a presence so ancient that the concrete trembled with its passing.
He had been sent to investigate an anomaly at the edge of the dead neighborhood, an area sealed off since the last collapse. It was just a test, an exercise. So they said. But when the silence became absolute, he understood that it was not a simple evaluation.
There, among the rubble, stood an impossible figure.
It had no face, only a mass of living darkness that fluctuated, like flesh made of smoke and pain. Multiple eyes opened and closed along its body. And when it spoke, it used no words: it was a wail, a direct vibration in the marrow, a threat that said, without saying it, I am going to devour you.
Kael could barely move. Something in that creature broke logic. It was as if the world rejected it, as if its existence was a mistake that dragged with it the end of everything.
But then the scars on her skin began to burn.
The moon, shy, broke through a crack in the clouds and its light touched Kael's face. He felt the power beat in his chest like a war drum, how his muscles tensed and the air turned to fire in his lungs.
The monster charged first. An impossible speed. A claw that left a crack in the ground and tore away part of the wall beside him. Kael rolled just in time, instinct taking over. He wasn't thinking. He felt.
A bone spear materialized in his hand, not out of will, but out of necessity. It was his power responding to fear. Or maybe it was another memory that didn't belong to him.
The shock was brutal. Every time the creature touched him, part of his essence seemed to drain away. It was not just a physical struggle: it was a spiritual duel. The being wanted to break him, to erase him.
Kael screamed.
Not out of pain, but out of rage.
The spear pierced one of the eyes. A shriek broke the night. The monster recoiled, parts of its body collapsing and remaking itself. But Kael gave it no respite. With each wound, the spear grew sharper, more vivid.
Until finally, with a leap driven by all that was left within him, Kael drove the weapon into the creature's core. There was a burst of light. Absolute silence.
And then... nothing.
When he awoke, he was kneeling in the middle of a smoking crater. His body covered in blood - not all of it his own - and the scars glowed with a faint glow. The creature no longer existed. All that remained was a burnt shadow on the concrete... and a strange symbol drawn in blood that Kael didn't remember tracing.
He didn't know what he had faced. He didn't know how he had won.
But he knew one thing for certain:
The world was declaring war on him.
And he... was no longer just a child.