They see you, Andrew. They hear you. They feel you. They taste your fear… you are vulnerable, Andrew.
They will come for you. Wasn't it all amusement until it became your reality?
Powers? Have you seen the abominations your kind has become?
Gods? They are spawns of the devil. You all are spawns of the devil. Humanity has bled out of you.
A handful cling to their sanity, but the rest... afraid, incompetent, or the very cause of this world's collapse.
Have you forgotten your sins? The innocents you slaughtered? The families you shattered, condemned to grief? O Andrew… what have you done?
Let him be. He knows his guilt. He feels his madness. He suffers already.
No! He must know. Let him remember every deed with every breath he takes. Let him dwell in guilt and madness, knowing he can never repair what he destroyed. He deserves no peace. Not now… not ever.
But it was not him, it was corruption. He is innocent. He was not himself. Spare him. Please…
Was it not him who chose corruption? Does he regret the choice only now, when he sees the ruin it bore? He deserves no pity. He chose, and he shall bear the weight.
Corruption… corruption… corruption. I hate it. I do not want it.
It drags me into depravity. I am falling. Please, take it away. End it. Let me die. Let me be free. Please… Maliketh… I beg you.
"Sir Andrew, it's your turn."
The soft voice cut through, drawing him back. He turned toward its source: a slightly chubby man with oily, puffed cheeks that reflected the dim light. His red-rimmed eyes betrayed recent tears.
Only then did Andrew realize… he had blanked out. He had forgotten where he was. His own loathing had drowned the world.
This was once his comfort: the retreat into his mind. An escape from reality's heaviness into the embrace of delusion and imagination. He loved conjuring false realities that gave what this one withheld.
But now? Now, his mind was torment. A prison replaying every horror he had wrought. Did he truly still love it?
Those scenes looped endlessly. His hell. His misery. Misery he deserved.
"Sir Andrew?" A different voice this time.
The room came back into focus. Forty, maybe fifty people filled it. Men and women of all ages, each draped in gloom as heavy as the walls around them. Their faces sagged with shared sorrow.
Andrew sat among them, though he had lost track of why. They had been speaking… saying something. What was it? He could not recall.
"It's your turn to share your story. Don't bear the weight alone. Everyone here has known similar pain. We share the burden together. Speak, and you may heal. We care for you as we care for all who come here. So tell us, Andrew… let us understand you. Let us help you heal."
The voice belonged to a blonde man in his mid-forties, seated like a quiet leader. His eyes carried a wisdom both gentle and persuasive, his words radiating a mother's warmth.
Andrew felt compelled. He longed to unburden himself. To confess the monstrosity he had become. Perhaps, if they knew, he could find peace–he could finally be hated for what he was. The self-loathing wasn't enough.
"Do you really want to hear my story?" His voice quivered. He knew the tremble was an act, yet he couldn't stop it. Was it because he wanted to look pitiful?
Why cling to human theatrics after all you've done? You feel no guilt. Liar!
The voice inside thundered, making his eyes water.
"Tell us, Andrew. We'll help you carry your burden, my dear boy."
The words "my dear boy" brushed his ears, and at once, icy fingers trailed the back of his neck.
His body shook. His thoughts raced beyond reason, neurons firing until his nerves burned. Then… blankness. His face stilled.
And he spoke.
At first monotone, emptied of emotion. But quickly the cadence shifted. Emotion surged, raw and invasive. His words painted scenes so vivid that those listening felt them–his fear, his dread, his adrenaline. The explosions. The wailing. The screams. The chaos became theirs.
"Two days ago…" he began, his voice spilling a torrent of dark memory.
*****
Two days ago.
11:43AM.
"Citizens of Grede, this is an urgent emergency broadcast.
Our anti-air defense system has detected two unidentified, and potentially hostile, objects entering our airspace.
All residents are ordered to evacuate their homes immediately. We understand that ten minutes is barely enough time... but it may be all you have.
This order is for your safety. Do not hesitate. Do not delay.
After ten minutes… may God help us all."
Andrew froze when the announcement rolled over the city.
"What are y'all waiting for?! Start running home already! Don't y'all have families?!" his boss shouted, snapping him back.
Fuck! Grandma! How the hell am I meant to reach her in ten minutes?! The Retirement Home is nearly twenty minutes away even by car. Fuck, fuck, fuck…
Andrew thought as he bolted from the office, colliding with panicked colleagues.
The street had become a living press: people shoved and tripped, parents frantic for missing children, officers barking orders they'd do little to enforce. Every lost second felt like a minute stolen from fate.
He shoved through the tide toward the Retirement Home. He hoped the authorities had a plan for the elderly.
They had to have one. Andrew prayed, yet nothing about the day felt reassuring.
*****
High above Grede, two figures tore the sky apart the way missiles tear flesh–sharp, loud, and devastatingly fast.
Once human, now something else: Chosens. Some called them gods. Others, abominations.
"Interesting use of your Rift," the older one called, voice carrying like a knife. "Keeping up with Flight is no easy feat. Well done, Serkin." He hovered with casual menace, fitted shirt and silk trousers clinging to him as he played with the air.
Serkin, younger, balanced on a thread of motion, his posture nervous. "Disappointing," he said. "Flight alone won't win. Your maneuvering is flashy. Your overall durability can barely be considered manageable, Adrac, and that's all. You are rather mediocre." His tone was cool, the kind of contempt only the practiced could wear.
Adrac's laugh cracked the sky. "You dare call me mediocre? Hahahaha, me mediocre?" He paused, chest puffed, then stopped smiling as his body began to change.
It happened too quickly to feel natural: his form stretched, a glossy film crawling across him until every inch of skin gleamed like polished obsidian. His limbs lengthened, frame slimming into something predatory and aerodynamic.
Before Serkin fully processed the transformation, pain exploded through him. A howl tore from his throat as half his waist vanished, ripped away in an instant.
Bone and organ flashed then disappeared. The world bent around him; rifts peppered the air, small fractures that shredded matter.
He fell, a man turned hole in the sky, still spawning unstable rifts around him that gnawed at the fabric of space.
"Regenerate!" he commanded desperately.
The word was small but absolute; flesh stitched, bone knitted, the missing section spat back into place as if sewn by invisible hands. Serkin's lungs burned as his body rebuilt itself, faster than any mortal could hope, but the exhaustion showed in the tremor of his fingers.
Adrac crashed through what remained of the rooftops below in a wild, uncontrolled trajectory, the impact raising dust and tearing masonry like wheat. Serkin gave a dry, bitter smile. Distance was his advantage–always keep the dangerous close one at bay.
You should have gone for the head, Adrac. Serkin thought with a strangled humor. Nowyou've made me mad.
He couldn't say the words aloud; adrenaline braided his thoughts into blunt instruments. He focused on survival. Regeneration, perception, and timing became the axes he spun on.
Adrac reappeared in a whisper behind him. "You underestimated me," he hissed. Fingers like knives, sharpened by that glassy film, sank into Serkin's neck. The movement was a blink; even Serkin's heightened senses lagged a beat.
Adrac pushed beyond the ordinary. He activated something he called Hyperdrive, a state where movement became violence incarnate. Reality stuttered. The air stretched, sound shredded, and the world snapped into a smear as he accelerated.
Serkin's body revolved in autopilot: he poured his regeneration into his brain, bulwarked it so the pressure wouldn't explode his skull. That decision–focus regeneration where it would matter most–kept the lights on in his consciousness.
Then the sky detonated.
Explosions like chained supernovas detonated across the city: several enormous blasts rolling like thunder and lightning joined, each blow creating a crater and erasing streets. A mushroom of dust swallowed sun. Buildings trembled and collapsed, glass hailed down in a white noise. The shockwave washed across Grede, knocking people off their feet for blocks.
Adrac's glossy carapace cracked in the stress of Hyperdrive; crystal lines spidered across him as material limits screamed. He kept going, nevertheless, like a blade forced through wind.
Serkin, still falling, still fighting for breath, used everything in his arsenal; Teleportation, perception, regeneration, maneuvering through the aftermath in desperate bursts. He tore open rifts to dodge, reappeared to strike, then rifted away before the enemy could return a blow.
Adrac's presence was brutal, merciless, and inventive; he turned his very body into weaponry, his Hyperdrive a living battering ram. Buildings crumbled in his wake. Serkin knew he could not match that raw, reckless force; distance was survival, not bravado.
Yet fate had teeth of its own. Adrac miscalculated for a breath–perhaps arrogance, perhaps a smirk–and Serkin used that fragment to vanish. He teleported away at a moment that left Adrac cleaving through the skeleton of a ruined building, throwing him off-balance.
Serkin landed in a narrow alley, lungs burning, body trembling. He could still feel the imprint of Adrac's fingers along his neck, the phantom ache of it. He gathered himself, forced perception to widen, seeking the enemy's next vector.
Adrac, cursing, tore after him. For a heartbeat Serkin believed he had the upper hand, that he had distance, the ability to fracture space, and a stubborn will to survive.
But Adrac's Hyperdrive found him again. In a flash, the older Chosen scraped past the boundary of what Serkin could predict and struck.
Serkin's last thought before the chain of detonations was simple: keep the mind intact. Every other wound could be regrown if the brain and will remained.
When the city quieted its screams to a lower decibel, a crater yawned where the Retirement Home once stood and beyond, and dust hung like mourning veils. The sky above Grede was streaked with smoke, a pale wound across the horizon.
*****
Ten minutes later...
Andrew had ignored the explosions, the large debris flung into the air by the terrible shockwave, the dust mushroom cloud that shot close to the clouds–he had pushed forth in all these chaotic, apocalyptic events, dancing at the edge of death on a thin thread and somehow, he made it there.
But…
Andrew stood amid ruin. He wept. Hands trembling, voice raw, he stared at what used to be a building of rest–created for those who had served their country long enough–and found only ruin, the bodies unrecognizable. Some faces were turned to paste; the human became an anonymous matter under the onslaught.
"What the hell? What the fuck is going on? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!" Andrew whispered, more to himself than anyone else but his voice tore out of his throat like a shriek–a terrible shriek of anguish and wrath.
Voices, his and others', crowded his skull. They were not wholly his. Something in him, or through him, pushed a single poisonous thought:
Kill them. Slaughter their family. They took her. They took your light. They took everything. They took your only anchor to this accursed world.
He roared. Laughter bubbled, unhinged. "I… will… kill… them. I WILL TORTURE THEM. I WILL MAKE THEM FEEL IT. THEY SHALL SCREAM, THEY SHALL BEG… AND I WILL STILL FUCKING SLAUGHTER THEM. HAHAHAHAHA!!!!"
A bright orange glow swelled in his eyes as his vision thinned. Darkness swept in, heavy and absolute.