The school year at Kaelyn Academy eventually drew to a close, a series of blurred days for Null. He attended classes, absorbed information with chilling efficiency, and effortlessly excelled, yet remained a ghost within the bustling halls. His golden-yellow eyes, crossed by their unique pupils, never lingered, never expressed curiosity or warmth. The initial buzz of his startling handsomeness and the whispers of his lineage had settled into a wary respect. Boys kept their distance; girls still stole glances, but none dared approach the silent, unreadable young man with the golden hair that seemed to shimmer with an ancient light. Kai and Ashley remained steadfast, a constant, often frustrated, presence, tirelessly recounting shared pasts that Null regarded with blank detachment. He was a perfect student, a living enigma, and utterly alone in his own mind.
One sweltering evening, as the first stars pricked the twilight sky over Kaelyn, Null walked home alone. Kai and Ashley had been delayed by a club meeting, and Null, as was his new custom, preferred the solitary quiet of the evening streets. The hum of the city, the distant laughter of children, the faint scent of dinner from open windows—it was all just noise. But tonight, a new sound cut through the mundane: a low, discordant note, like a predator's purr.
A figure emerged from the deep shadows of an alleyway, stepping into a pool of sickly yellow streetlight. He was a tall man, impeccably dressed, with a disquietingly smooth, almost ever-present smile stretched across his face. It was not a smile of joy, but a fixed, artificial grin that never reached his cold, calculating eyes. This was Smile Carson.
As Null's golden-yellow gaze, framed by his golden yellow-esque hair, met Smile Carson's, something visceral snapped within him. A cold, alien sensation bloomed in his chest, rapidly escalating into an unmatchable, scorching rage. It was a fury utterly unlike anything he had felt since his memory loss, a primal scream from a part of him he didn't know existed. The void in his mind filled not with memories, but with a searing, unidentifiable grief, an instinctual, profound hatred for the man before him. His hands clenched, knuckles whitening.
Smile Carson's perpetual smile widened slightly, a flicker of cruel amusement in his eyes. He saw Null not as the handsome youth, but as a distorted, horrifying specter—a figure of pure, consuming shadow, with two pinpricks of chilling white light for eyes, a jagged, gaping maw of darkness where his mouth should be, and corrupted tendrils of blackness reaching towards him, just like the image Null himself had evoked with his power. A shiver, not of fear but of anticipation, ran down Carson's spine.
"Well, well, well," Carson purred, his voice slick and unctuous. "Look what the current dragged in. The infamous Null Asura. Or should I say, Soren Asura? It's been a long time, boy. Long enough for your little pet project to earn quite the generous sum." He gestured vaguely, as if presenting an invisible ledger. "The Stone Kingdom has truly outdone itself with your bounty. A very, very high price on your head."
Null's golden-yellow eyes flared, the cross-shaped pupils seemingly burning with an inner inferno. He took a single, deliberate step forward, the rage within him building to an unbearable crescendo. He didn't know why he hated this man, but every fiber of his being screamed for his annihilation.
"You..." Null's voice was a low growl, laced with raw, unidentifiable pain. His usually hollow tone was replaced by a guttural vibration. "What did you do?"
Smile Carson chuckled, a dry, unpleasant sound. "Oh, the details are quite... messy. And entirely irrelevant now. What is relevant is that you're worth more to me dead than alive, and considerably less troublesome." He snapped his fingers, and from the alley's deepest recesses, two hulking figures, their forms vaguely human but composed of shifting, shadowy muscle, began to emerge, their eyes glowing faintly red. They were clearly not elemental users, but something else, something forged in a different kind of darkness.
"No questions, boy," Carson chirped, his smile stretching impossibly wide. "Just... an execution." He made a small, dismissive gesture.
Null didn't respond to the command, nor did he acknowledge Carson's shadowy enforcers. His entire being was focused on Carson, on the unbearable weight of forgotten agony that tied him to this man. The anger inside him boiled over, a black tide.
Without a sound, the air around Null grew heavy, oppressively cold. The streetlights above him flickered violently, then died, plunging the immediate area into an unnatural gloom. The shadows cast by the surrounding buildings stretched, deepened, and began to writhe with an unsettling life of their own. They didn't just grow; they pulsed.
Smile Carson's cruel amusement faltered as he watched. To his eyes, the Null from the image came to life: the shadowy form grew, consuming the light, leaving only the blazing golden-yellow crosses of his eyes. The distorted mouth of darkness seemed to widen into an abyss.
Null's hands, still clenched, began to tremble, but not from weakness. Dark tendrils, thin as wisps of smoke, yet sharp as razors, snaked from his fingertips, curling around the two shadowy figures Carson had summoned. They didn't scream; they simply dissolved, consumed by the encroaching darkness that seeped from Null, as if they were made of the very essence Null now commanded.
Smile Carson's perpetual smile finally cracked, replaced by a flicker of genuine alarm. This wasn't the raw power he expected from a Prime user; this was something... else. Something more fundamental, more terrifyingly hungry.
Null took another step, then another, a slow, deliberate march through the gathering shadows. He didn't rush. The darkness that poured from him wasn't simply a power; it was an extension of his absolute fury, a physical manifestation of the void within him.
"You..." Null repeated, his voice now a low, resonant thrum that seemed to vibrate the very air. The shadow tentacles reached for Carson. They didn't strike or tear. Instead, they began to absorb him. First, a faint grayness touched his crisp suit, then his skin. It was as if his very substance was being siphoned away, not burned or cut, but devoured by an ethereal vacuum.
Carson tried to scream, but the sound was choked, swallowed by the consuming darkness. He thrashed, desperately clawing at the shadows that clung to him, but they were inexorable. His form began to flatten, to distort, to stretch thin like a canvas being drained of its paint. His eyes, wide with terror, were the last thing to dim, his fixed smile contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated horror as the overwhelming shadow consumed him, leaving nothing but a lingering chill and the faint, acrid smell of ozone. He didn't just die; he was unmade.
Null stood there, still, the pervasive shadows around him slowly receding as if satiated. The streetlights flickered back to life, casting an eerie glow on the empty space where Smile Carson had been. Null's golden-yellow eyes, still marked by the cross-shaped pupils, seemed to glow with a faint, residual energy, but the crushing rage had subsided, leaving behind only the familiar, cold blankness. He didn't remember why he felt such fury, nor did he remember the man he had just erased. All that remained was the quiet hum of the night, and the unsettling understanding that something profound and terrifying resided within him.
The distant wail of a siren cut through the night, growing closer, but it was not for Smile Carson. Null stood amidst the lingering chill of the alleyway, the unnatural shadows already receding, leaving no trace of the horror that had just transpired. His golden-yellow eyes held their familiar cross-shaped blankness, devoid of the earlier rage. The fragmented Prime Stone in his hand pulsed faintly, a quiet counterpoint to the city's returning hum.
Just then, the hurried footsteps of Kai and Ashley echoed down the street. They burst into the alley, breathless, their eyes scanning for Null.
"Null! There you are!" Ashley panted, relieved but quickly noticing the strange atmosphere. "What was that bang? And the lights just went out... are you okay?"
Kai looked around, a frown creasing his brow. "Something feels... off. Did you... did you see anyone, Null? We heard yelling." His gaze drifted to a dark stain on the pavement that seemed too deep, too absolute to be mere oil.
Null simply turned his head, his golden-yellow eyes meeting theirs for a fleeting moment. "Nothing," he stated, his voice flat, emotionless. The shadow he had woven, the power that had unmade Smile Carson, had also consumed all evidence, dissolving flesh and bone into nothingness, leaving behind only an unsettling emptiness. The very air, however, seemed to remember. Kai and Ashley shivered, unaware of the reason.
"Are you sure?" Ashley pressed, a worried tremor in her voice. "You look... different. More... intense."
Null offered no further explanation. He merely resumed his silent walk towards home, leaving his friends to exchange perplexed, uneasy glances before they hurried to follow him, the questions about his amnesia now compounded by the chilling mystery of the alley.
Miles away, in a penthouse apartment overlooking the sprawling neon veins of Kaelyn, a lone figure stood by a floor-to-ceiling window. The city lights sparkled below, a vibrant contrast to the hushed, almost somber atmosphere of the room. The only illumination came from the screen of a sleek, black phone clutched in their hand.
A new message blinked, freshly arrived:
SUBJECT: Carson STATUS: Terminated. Complete disintegration.
A low, humorless chuckle escaped the figure's lips. They were clad in tailored, dark clothing that seemed to absorb what little light permeated the room. Their face was sharp, intelligent, yet veiled in an aura of detached calculation. They slowly lowered the phone, their thumb tracing the smooth glass.
"Foolish, utterly foolish," they murmured, their voice a silken whisper that seemed to ripple through the very air. "To target him directly. To misunderstand the true nature of his power. Smile Carson always did overestimate his little 'contract' with the lesser devils." A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through the air around them. "He thought his meager, borrowed shadows could stand against that."
Their eyes, dark and piercing, drifted from the phone screen to the distant glow of Null's district. "The bounty on Soren Asura will rise exponentially now. The Stone Kingdom is truly desperate. But they hunt a god's fragment, not a mere Prime user." A faint, almost imperceptible shadow detached itself from their wrist, swirling like smoke around their fingers before dissipating. The gesture was fluid, practiced, but subtly constrained, hinting at a power that required precise control, unlike Null's raw, overwhelming force. It was a power born of pact, of careful negotiation, not inherent right.
"A pity," they sighed, turning away from the window. "Such potential, wasted on a simple assassination attempt."
As they spoke, the shadows in the luxurious room deepened around them, not gradually, but with an almost supernatural speed. They stretched, twisted, and enveloped the figure entirely. In moments, the space by the window was empty, the only sign of their presence a faint, lingering coolness in the air and the barely audible whisper of a displaced breeze. The figure was gone, vanished into the very fabric of the darkness, leaving only questions and the chilling confirmation of Null's devastating power.
End of chapter 24
See you next time