"You shouldn't be alive."
Nyx flinched as the words echoed from behind him. His ears were still ringing, the alleyway lit only by the red glow of the smoldering corpse. The monster if that's what you could even call it was gone, its flesh turned to ash, but its presence still haunted the air.
He turned slowly.
A man stepped forward, draped in a dark blue coat with a badge shaped like a cracked eye. A Peacekeeper. Tier Red, maybe higher. His presence made the air tighter somehow.
"Name," the man ordered.
"Nyx... Nyx Caelum," he said, voice raw.
The Peacekeeper stared at him like he was a puzzle someone glued together wrong. "You're not in the registry. No record of Will activity."
"I'm Unmarked," Nyx muttered.
"Impossible."
"Believe me," Nyx snapped, "I wish it was."
The Peacekeeper took a step closer, kneeling near the smoldering remains. He ran a scanner over the blackened alley floor.
"That thing was a Level Four Aberrant. It killed three Marked in the plaza before heading this direction. You did this?"
Nyx just nodded, throat tight.
Another voice joined them. This one younger, sharper.
"Sir, there's movement in the clouds. Military scouts just passed over. High speed signal relays were triggered."
The Peacekeeper cursed under his breath. "Too fast. They already flagged this. He's going to be taken."
"Taken?" Nyx asked.
The younger Peacekeeper stepped into view. A girl. About his age. Short silver hair, one eye glowing faint blue.
"You used Will. Without a Mark. That breaks about seven natural laws and twenty man made ones. You're an anomaly now. They won't let you walk free."
Nyx blinked. "I saved people."
"Exactly," she said. "That makes you valuable. And valuable means owned."
The older Peacekeeper stood. "We don't have long. Military will be here in minutes. We can say you escaped before we got here, but you better run like hell and stay underground."
Nyx stared at him. "You're helping me?"
The man sighed. "I was Unmarked once. Before the System corrected my 'error.' You don't want to know what that means."
The girl tossed him a patch.
"Put that on. It'll scramble local scans for a while. Don't trust anyone. Especially the ones who smile."
He caught it. Looked down. A simple black patch with a broken chain symbol.
"Who are you people?" he asked.
The man smirked. "Nobody. Ghosts. Rebels. Survivors. Call us what you want. But if you're one of us now..."
The girl finished his sentence. "Then you better learn to hide your fire. Because the System burns anything it can't control."
Behind them, the clouds began to churn. Airships descending. Sirens howling in the distance.
Nyx turned, clutching the patch, heart pounding in rhythm with the sky.
He ran.
And the chase began.