Xavier didn't hear it coming—he felt it.
One moment, he was walking, body aching but intact, head spinning from a silence that pressed too hard on the ears. The next, something struck him in the ribs with a force so sudden and absolute that it knocked the thought clean out of his mind. His body lifted, twisted, and hit the pavement with a brutal slap that stole the breath from his lungs.
Pain followed—not the kind he knew from falling on a court or bumping a table corner—but something deep, real, and terrifying. A sound left his throat, half-scream and half-gasp, and he clutched his side, fingers already wet with warmth. Blood soaked through the fabric of his hoodie in seconds. He could feel it pouring.
He tried to push himself up, but another blow caught him hard across the back, forcing him to the ground again. His jaw cracked against the asphalt, teeth rattling. The world spun sideways, and every inch of his body flared with pain he wasn't ready for. He coughed once, and a streak of red landed on the ground in front of him.
Then the whispers came.
Soft at first. Disjointed. Too many voices speaking at once, layered over one another like badly tuned radio stations. But as they grew louder, he started to make out pieces. Words he recognized. Phrases he didn't think anyone else had ever heard.
"You shouldn't be here."
"They were right to leave."
"You never mattered."
And then, the worst part.
One of the voices was his.
Not his voice now, but younger, rawer. The voice from the night he had tried to disappear. The voice that had asked for someone to help, and heard nothing back.
He forced himself onto one elbow, blinking hard to clear the tears welling in his eyes—whether from pain, fear, or exhaustion, he didn't know. The forest around him remained still, impossibly still, like even the air had stepped away from this moment.
And then he saw it.
A figure emerged from the darkness between trees, jerking forward like a puppet dragged by invisible strings. It wasn't running. It didn't need to. Its body was too long, too thin in all the wrong places, its joints bending against logic, limbs twitching as though learning how to move mid-step. It wore what looked like soaked, skin-tight cloth—or perhaps it wasn't clothing at all, but part of its body. Mouths twitched along its surface, trying and failing to form words, though the whispers still rang clearly in his ears.
It had no eyes. No face. No identity.
And yet it spoke with every part of him.
He dragged himself backward, scraping skin against stone, trying to breathe through broken ribs and a tightening throat. He didn't understand what this thing was, what it wanted, or how it even existed—but every instinct he had screamed the same truth.
He was going to die here.
The creature lunged before he could move. Its arm extended too far, bent like a coiling snake, and wrapped itself around his neck with a pressure that felt more like possession than violence. It wasn't squeezing yet, just holding—measuring. It wanted to savor this.
Xavier thrashed weakly, hands clawing at the slick, unnatural limb, nails finding no purchase. His vision dimmed. His thoughts blurred. A tremble worked its way through his chest and limbs as the whispering doubled in volume and hatred.
"You should've died when you had the chance."
"No one would've stopped you."
"No one even noticed."
Tears slid down his temples. The kind you didn't even feel coming. His body ached, his skin burned, and for a moment, there was only darkness—crushing, absolute, and infinite.
But beneath that…
Something stirred.
Not in the air.
Inside him.
A warmth—subtle, still, but spreading like breath against a windowpane. It wasn't comforting. It wasn't righteous. It felt heavy, ancient, and out of place. Not strength. Not power. Just a presence. A truth that had never spoken before but had always been there.
His eyes opened.
He remembered a rooftop back home. Music humming through old headphones. A pencil in his hand. His sketchpad half-filled. The sky stretching above him, untouched. He hadn't felt happy that day. But he had felt quiet. Whole.
That memory held.
And something inside him reacted.
Light exploded outward—not with grace, not with mastery, but like a dam bursting from within. The pressure tore through his chest, a fractured pulse of raw energy that radiated golden and unshaped. It didn't target. It didn't aim.
It just was.
The spirit jerked back with a convulsing shriek, its body unraveling where the light touched it. Mouths opened in panic and began to split apart. Its limbs frayed at the edges, unraveling like burned paper. Its center cracked wide, and the whole body began to fold in on itself like a dying star collapsing into dust.
The sound stopped. The whispers fell away. And the thing fell, crumbling into ash and smoke where it stood.
Xavier collapsed beside it, his body barely holding together. His vision blurred again, this time not from tears, but from exhaustion. His limbs twitched involuntarily. Every breath dragged through him like broken glass.
He didn't know what had happened.
Didn't know what that light was. Didn't know what the thing was.
And then he saw the ashes shift.
They didn't blow away. Didn't scatter into the forest like they should have.
Instead, they rose.
First slowly. Then steadily. Gathering in the air above the bloodied road.
The ash particles twisted together, drawn toward a single point, spiraling inward like dust caught in gravity. He watched, too hurt and too confused to move, as the mass folded tighter and tighter—until it changed.
The smoke solidified into a black sphere, perfectly smooth and polished like obsidian. It hovered inches above the ground, motionless. And then thin golden rings began to orbit around it, rotating in silent, deliberate patterns, as if marking time in a way only the sphere could understand.
Xavier stared.
It didn't glow. It didn't speak. But it felt wrong—not evil, not threatening, just… foreign. Like it had never belonged to this world, and now it did.
He didn't know what it was.
Didn't know what it meant.
But deep in his chest, something answered again—quietly, gently, as if acknowledging what had just happened.
And though the night returned to stillness, Xavier understood something without knowing how.
Whatever that thing was…
It had died.
And from its ashes…
Something else had been born