[KAISER'S POV]
"I'm dying huh." The words tumbled out in a weak, raspy chuckle, barely cutting through the haze of pain and dust in the ruined clinic. Tara's face hovered above me, her golden hair framing those wide, tear-filled eyes—regenerated, whole, thanks to the rig I'd torn from my own skull. The void tugged at the edges of my vision, pulling like gravity on a bad chrono-skip. No grand exit, no blaze of black flames. Just me, slipping away, traits gone, body heavy as lead. Funny, I thought, all that talk about gods, and here I am, checking out like a glitchy augment running on fumes. The world blurred—rubble, beeps, distant voices—then black.
The fall wasn't gentle. I slammed into nothingness, an endless void that swallowed sound and light. No body to speak of, just a sense of self floating in the dark. Powerless. No Chrono-Collapse to rewind the mess, no black flames to burn a path out. Just Tyler Wayland, stripped bare, facing the abyss.
"Pathetic." Ryzen's voice echoed, sharp and familiar, like a knife from the old days. He stepped from the shadows—old Ryzen, lean and smirking, trench coat hanging loose, eyes gleaming with that intellectual edge we used to admire. No Nameless King aura, no crown of shadows. Just the brother who'd twisted our dream into a nightmare.
I forced a grin, pushing up on invisible limbs. "Ryzen, you backstabbing ghost. This your idea of hell? Dragging me down for a chat? What's next, tea and betrayal stories?"
He circled slow, chuckling. "Always the joker, Tyler. But the punchline's on you. Look at yourself—powerless, no tricks left. Your plans? A farce. They'll never work. All you care about will die—Hawk gutted in some zone brawl, that kid Tara back in chains, Jerry scrapped like old tech. Give up. You're finished."
[HAWK'S POV]
"Clara, vitals—talk!" I snapped, my hands slamming down on the compress over Kaiser's forehead wound. Blood seeped through the fabric, warm and sticky, mixing with the dust choking the air in this rubble heap that used to be Molloy's clinic. His chest rose and fell—barely—each breath a rasp that set my teeth on edge.
Clara's voice crackled from the jury-rigged speaker Jerry had patched into the portable rig. "Pulse erratic, dropping to 52. Neural activity spiking—deep coma state. Recommend immediate low-voltage pulse to stabilize synapses. Risk of overload at 27%."
Molloy cursed, her hands flying over the wires snaking from the rig to Kaiser's ports. "Hawk, keep that pressure steady—the bleed's clotting, but his brain's lighting up like a faulty grid. Jerry, grab the neural clamp from the kit—move!"
Jerry grunted, his mechanical arm whirring as he rummaged through the scattered med supplies. "On it. Damn it, K, you pick the worst times to play dead. Hold together, you cocky bastard."
"Less chit-chat, more fixing," I growled, Oracle-Eye flickering red as it ran scans. "If he crashes, I'll haul his ass back just to stab it for the trouble."
[JERRY'S POV]
Tara's sobs were like rusty nails scraping my aug circuits, the kid huddled in the corner, knees to her chest, golden hair matted with dust and tears. She rocked back and forth, small fists clenched, like she was trying to hold the world together. I knelt beside her, my tin-aug eyes whirring to focus in the dim light, one hand on her shoulder—gentle, despite the metal. "Hey, starshine, easy now. K's tougher than a zone rat on steroids. He'll pull through."
She hiccuped, looking up with those wide eyes. "he's not moving. It's my fault—my powers... I broke him!"
"Nah, kid, K broke himself 'cause he's a dramatic fool. Let me tell ya a story to pass the time—might dry those tears. Back when K was training with this nasty Apex beast—huge thing, all fangs and fury, lurking in some Scarpoint ruin. Thought he had it beat, but wham! It slashed him deep, scarred him up bad, blood everywhere. He fell down hard, yelling like the world was ending."
Tara's sobbing quieted a notch, her eye peeking up curiously. "What... what happened next?"
I smiled, even as a tear leaked from my aug eye—damn moisture buildup. "He studied the bastard. It was playing dead, waiting for him to let his guard down. So K charged in—intense hand-to-hand, no fancy traits, just raw grit and punches. Dodged its bites, landed hits that cracked bone, then ripped the trait right out of its spine. Walked away with new power and a scar that makes him look tougher. Laughed it off later, said, 'Jerry, next time bring popcorn.'"
Tara wiped her face, a small smile breaking. "He... he won? Even when it hurt?"
"Damn right. Pain's just motivation for guys like K."
[KAISER'S POV]
Kane's voice boomed next, the big guy stepping from the dark, arms crossed, looking disappointed. "He's right, K. Your plans are shit. They'll never work. All you care about will die—Hawk, Tara, Jerry. Give up. Walk away."
I staggered. "Kane? You too? We were brothers!"
Ryzen smirked. "See, Tyler? Even the muscle knows you're done."
Kane's eyes flashed. "Shut it, Ryzen." His fist flew, cracking Ryzen's jaw. Ryzen stumbled, spitting. "You don't call him Tyler. That's K."
Ryzen grinned through blood. "Fool. Tyler, embrace the truth—or die."
Their forms blurred, merging—Kane's strength into Ryzen's shadows, a void power swirling. "Join us, Tyler."
Power stirred—Convergence. I lunged. "This is mine—Convergence!"
The colossus swung shadows. I dodged, countering with fused blasts.
Kane watched, chuckling. "You guys still fight like pussies."
Ryzen and I yelled in unison: "Fuck off!"
I closed in, embracing the merge. Convergence awakened—merging and mimicry surging, shattering the void.
[HAWK'S POV]
Clara's warning sliced through the clinic's dust-choked air like a plasma bolt through flesh. "Alert—we are being surrounded by rot priests." The words hung heavy, carrying the weight of inevitable death in their digital precision. The makeshift medical bay—what remained of Dr. Molloy's clinic after Tara's mythic awakening had torn it apart—suddenly felt like a tomb. Emergency lighting flickered against the thick haze of pulverized concrete and twisted metal, casting long, dancing shadows across Kaiser's motionless form on the blood-stained stretcher.
Sixty shambling silhouettes materialized from the rubble beyond the gaping hole that used to be the outer wall. Their movements were wrong—too fluid for the dead, too purposeful for the mindless. Skin hung in festering strips from bone and sinew, mottled green-black with decay, weeping rivulets of corrosive bile that hissed and steamed wherever it touched the cracked floor tiles. The stench hit like a physical blow—rotting meat mixed with industrial chemicals, the signature perfume of Baron Varn's plague priests.
Behind the shambling horde, three grotesque giants loomed like nightmare totems. Eight feet tall, their bodies were canvases of tumorous growths that pulsed with sickly bioluminescent light. Veins of corruption spider-webbed across their bloated forms, and where their eyes should have been, hollow sockets leaked streams of acidic tears that ate furrows in their cheeks. These were the higher-ups, the plague catalysts that could amplify decay itself.
What chilled my blood wasn't their appearance—I'd seen worse in Scarpoint's underbelly. It was their behaviour. They didn't rush us with the mindless hunger of typical rot priests. Instead, they simply watched, heads swiveling in perfect unison like synchronized security cameras, as though waiting for some silent signal that only they could perceive.
Jerry's mechanical voice cut through my analysis. "Why the hell are they just standing there?" His tin-aug eyes whirred as they zoomed and refocused, trying to parse the threat. "Usually these bastards charge the moment they smell fresh meat."
My Oracle-Eye blazed red, running combat algorithms and threat assessments. The results were frustratingly incomplete: Stationary—elevated bio-decay signature—focus unknown—intent: unclear. Whatever they were waiting for, it wasn't showing up in any spectrum I could access. The calm before infection—or worse, before something that made infection look like a mercy.
I swallowed the metallic tang of fear that coated my tongue and snapped into tactical mode. Overdrive thrummed through my nervous system, phantom pain from a dozen half-healed wounds providing the fuel for enhanced reflexes and strength. "Jerry, get that plasma cutter charged to maximum output. Molloy, load your syringe with the strongest acid neutralizer you have—these things bleed corrosives that'll eat through standard armour in seconds. Clara, lock the defensive grid to seventy percent power and prepare for emergency surge protocols."
My Razor Pulse activated with its familiar wet hiss as blades slid from the housings beneath my forearms. The pain was sharp and clean, a welcome contrast to the creeping dread that threatened to paralyze my thoughts. "We buy Kaiser ten minutes to wake up, or we die buying him nothing. Those are the only options on the table."
[JERRY'S POV]
Molloy's weathered hands were steady as she flicked me the neutralizer cartridge, her medical training overriding the fear I could see lurking behind her professional facade. My mechanical fingers trembled just enough for Tara to notice from her vigil beside Kaiser's stretcher. The kid looked impossibly small next to his broken form, her tiny fists white-knuckled where they gripped his blood-soaked sheet. Eight years old and she'd already seen more horror than most adults could process. Her regenerated eye—the one he'd saved by sacrificing his neural rig—tracked between Kaiser's shallow breathing and the growing threat beyond the wall.
Nobody expected him to wake up. That was the brutal truth none of us wanted to voice. I'd been around enough dying men to know the signs—the gray pallor, the thready pulse, the way his chest barely rose with each labored breath. Truth was, I'd already started composing his eulogy in my head: Kaiser—he joked too hard, loved too fierce, died too young protecting what mattered most. Same generic bullshit I'd mumbled at every Scarpoint funeral I'd attended.
But Tara didn't understand the mathematics of death. She didn't know how many liters of blood a human body could lose before the organs shut down, or how few seconds sixty rot priests needed to dissolve a corpse into acidic sludge. All she saw was family on that stretcher—the man who'd pulled her from hell and given her a name, a purpose, hope for the first time in her short, brutal life.
The plasma cutter hummed to life in my grip, blue energy arcing between the contacts like caged lightning. The weight was familiar, comforting even. I'd used similar tools to cut through everything from bulkheads to bone over the years, but this felt different. This was about protecting the only real family any of us had left.
[MOLLOY'S POV]
My hands moved with practiced efficiency, loading the neutralizer into my shock prod's secondary chamber. Forty years of emergency medicine in Scarpoint had taught me to compartmentalize terror, to function when the world went sideways. But this was testing those limits. The rot priests weren't just diseased—they were plague incarnate, walking vectors of decay that could corrupt anything they touched.
"Clara," I called to the AI's holographic form, "can you give me a biochemical breakdown of their corrosive secretions? If I'm going to treat anyone who gets splashed, I need to know what we're dealing with."
"Analysing," Clara responded, her voice maintaining that eerie calm even as death surrounded us. "Compound consists of necrotizing enzymes, concentrated sulfuric analogues, and unknown biological catalysts. Recommend immediate amputation for any significant exposure—neutralization protocols have only thirty percent efficacy against advanced decay variants."
Cheerful. I gripped the prod tighter, feeling the electrical hum against my palm. This was going to hurt—all of us.
[HAWK'S POV]
The priests moved without warning. One moment they were statue-still, the next they flowed forward like a tide of liquid corruption. No battle cries, no roars of fury—just the wet whisper of flesh sliding against stone and the quiet hiss of acid eating through debris. I met them at the breach, Razor Pulse blazing as I carved through the first wave.
My blades found purchase in rotting flesh, parting sinew and bone with surgical precision. But for every priest I dropped, two more clawed their way through the gap. They reformed from wounds that should have been fatal, necrotic tissue knitting back together with obscene speed. One lunged at my throat, jaw unhinging like a snake's to reveal rows of needle-sharp teeth. I ducked low, drove my blade up through its skull—watched half its head come apart in a spray of black ichor—and still it kept coming.
"Invincible variants on the front line!" I shouted over the wet sounds of combat. "Standard attacks aren't penetrating their regeneration!"
Jerry appeared at my flank, plasma cutter screaming as he swept it in wide arcs. The superheated beam carved through two priests, cauterizing their wounds even as it severed limbs. Steam rose from the cuts, but within seconds the flesh was already beginning to knit back together. "One fried invincible coming up!" he roared, ramming the cutter's focusing lens directly into a priest's throat. The thing's head exploded in a gout of steam and gore—and somehow, impossibly, it kept fighting with just a smoking stump above its shoulders.
Molloy charged past us both, shock prod crackling with desperate energy. "Get away from them, you rotting bastards!" She drove the weapon into the nearest priest's chest, ten thousand volts arcing through decomposing tissue. The creature convulsed, skin blackening where the electricity touched—but it didn't fall. Instead, it backhanded her with casual contempt, sending her flying into a pile of rubble. I heard the wet crack of ribs breaking, saw her crumple like discarded paper.
"Molloy!" The cry tore from my throat as I carved through the priests trying to reach her prone form. But there were too many, and they kept coming, their chanted prayers to decay rising like a funeral dirge.
The horde pressed forward with inexorable momentum. Jerry went down on one knee as three priests tackled him simultaneously, their corrosive touches eating through his mechanical arm's housing. Sparks flew as acid chewed through servo motors and data cables. His aug eyes flickered as secondary systems failed.
"Can't hold the line!" he gasped, swinging his plasma cutter in increasingly desperate arcs. "Too many of the fuckers!"
Clara's voice blared through the clinic's remaining speakers. "Perimeter breached—multiple vectors—defensive grid failing—recommend immediate evacuation!"
But there was nowhere to run. We were pinned, surrounded, the walls of our makeshift fortress crumbling under the weight of decay incarnate. I felt the familiar grip of despair—that cold certainty that this was the moment where luck finally ran out, where all the skill and augmentation and stubborn refusal to die finally met something bigger and hungrier.
Kaiser lay motionless on his stretcher, chest barely rising, oblivious to the battle raging for his life. And Tara...
[TARA'S POV]
Noise exploded all around—screams of pain and fury, the shriek of metal being dissolved by acid, the wet slap of rotting flesh against stone. The smell was overwhelming, like every bad thing in the world had crawled into one place to die. But I tuned it out, pressing harder against Kaiser's chest, my tears soaking through his bloodstained bandages.
"Wake up... wake up... I'm sorry!" The words came out broken, ragged with desperation. My small hands pressed against his ribs, feeling for the heartbeat that seemed to grow fainter with each passing second. This was my fault—my powers exploding, him tearing out his brain thing to save me. If I'd been stronger, been better, maybe none of this would have happened.
No response. No twitch of recognition, no flutter of eyelids. Just the steady beep of Clara's medical rig monitoring his failing vital signs. And then, horror of horrors, the beeping stopped. Flatline. The electronic tone that meant death.
"Kaiser?" My voice cracked like splintering glass, hope collapsing into a black hole of despair. The beep returned—slower, weaker, irregular. Clara's holographic form flickered, her voice cutting through the chaos: "Neural activity dwindling—synaptic cascade failure imminent—recommend—"
"No!" The word exploded from me with such force that several priests actually paused their advance. Everything inside me fractured like a broken mirror, each piece reflecting a different kind of pain. I hugged him tighter, my whole body shaking as tears streamed down my face. "You always keep promises! You said i'd never be afraid again!" My voice was getting smaller, younger, reverting to the terrified child I'd been before he pulled me from that cage.
The fighting was getting closer. I could hear Hawk screaming, Jerry cursing, Molloy groaning from somewhere in the rubble. The rot priests' chanting grew louder, their corruption spreading through the air like visible poison. One of the big ones—a giant covered in pulsing tumors—was pushing through the smaller priests, heading straight for us. Its hollow eyes leaked streams of acid that carved furrows in its cheeks, and when it smiled, I saw rows of teeth like rusty knives.
But I couldn't move. Couldn't run. Kaiser was here, and I wasn't leaving him again. Not after everyone I'd lost, everyone who'd abandoned me, everyone who'd treated me like meat for the auction block. He was the first person who'd seen me as human, who'd given me a name.
"Pleaasee," I whispered again, leaning down until my forehead touched his. "Just come back. Please. I need you."Something answered. Not words, not movement, but a pulse that rolled up from somewhere deep inside him. Like thunder muffled under skin, like an earthquake starting in his bones. Warmth spread from his chest into my arms, a hum that made the metal frame of the stretcher vibrate. The air around us began to shimmer, reality bending in ways that made my regenerated eye water.
His eyelids fluttered. Once. Twice.
I gasped so hard it felt like my lungs might explode. "Kaiser?"
[KAISER'S POV]
Consciousness returned like a punch to the gut—sudden, violent, unwelcome. The void dream shattered around me, Kane and Ryzen's merged form dissolving into smoke as Convergence roared to life in my neural pathways. The new power felt different from anything I'd stolen before. Where my other traits were tools to be wielded, this was something deeper, more fundamental. It hummed in harmony with my heartbeat, whispered promises in a language older than words.
The first thing I saw was Tara's face—tear-streaked, desperate, beautiful in the way that only hope against impossible odds could be. Her small hands were pressed against my chest like she was trying to hold my soul inside my body through sheer force of will. When our eyes met, her expression transformed. The fear and despair melted away, replaced by pure, radiant joy.
"You're here," she sobbed, laughing and crying at the same time. "You're really here!"
Her arms wrapped around me with desperate strength, as though she could prevent death itself from claiming me if she just held on tight enough. I managed a ragged grin, tasting blood and dust on my lips. My voice came out as barely more than a whisper, but it carried all the defiance I could muster.
"Told you, star. Gods have lousy aim."
The clinic around us was a war zone. Through the haze of settling dust and combat smoke, I could see Hawk dancing through a crowd of rot priests, her blades weaving patterns of death that would have been beautiful if they weren't so desperate. Jerry was down on one knee, his mechanical arm sparking as acid ate through the housing. Molloy lay crumpled against a pile of rubble, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.
And the priests—sixty of them, maybe more, with three towering plague catalysts directing their movements like conductors of a symphony of decay. They'd been advancing steadily, but the moment I opened my eyes, they froze. Every single one of them, from the smallest rot-touched cultist to the massive tumor-covered giants, stopped mid-stride and stared.
They could feel it. The change. Convergence hadn't just awakened—it had announced itself to everything with the sensitivity to perceive power. The air around me rippled with potential energy, shadows deepening and writhing like living things. This wasn't the crude mimicry I'd relied on before, stealing fragments of other people's abilities. This was something new, something that could take those stolen pieces and forge them into something greater.
An invincible priest lunged forward, clearly designated as the executioner for this little family drama. Its blade—a jagged thing that wept acid—descended toward Tara's neck in a perfect killing arc. Time seemed to slow as my new power assessed the situation and found it lacking.
I flicked my finger. Just a casual gesture, like shooing away an annoying fly.
Convergence reached out, touched the priest's existence, and... edited it. No explosion, no spray of gore, no dramatic death throes. One moment the creature was there, blade gleaming, the next moment it simply wasn't. The space it had occupied was empty air, as though reality had simply forgotten that anything had ever been there at all.
Silence crashed over the clinic like a physical force. Even the constant background hum of Clara's systems seemed to pause. The remaining priests stared at the empty space where their companion had been, their hollow eyes wide with something that might have been fear, if things like them were still capable of such emotions.
[JERRY'S POV]
Holy shit on a stick. I'd seen some impossible things in my time—watched K chrono-skip through solid walls, seen Hawk slice through steel with her bare hands, witnessed enough Apex bullshit to fill a library. But this? One casual gesture and a rot priest just... ceased. Not dead, not destroyed. Gone. Like it had never existed in the first place.
Laughter bubbled up from somewhere deep in my chest—manic, relieved, tinged with hysteria. "Hahahahahahahah!" The sound echoed through the ruined clinic, bouncing off broken walls and shattered dreams. "What doesn't kill you always makes yo ass stronger! Quote's finally paying some sense!"
I hauled myself upright, shaking acid residue off my damaged arm. The servo motors whined in protest, but they still functioned. Good enough for government work. "Hey bot Clara," I called to the AI's flickering holographic form, "how many rot-fucking priests we still got breathing?"
Clara's image stabilized, her digital eyes processing the tactical situation with inhuman speed. "Fifty-nine standard plague priests remain active. Three higher-rank catalysts maintaining overwatch positions. Threat assessment... recalculating."
The priests were still frozen, apparently trying to process what they'd witnessed. Good. Let the bastards think. Maybe they'd realize they were fucked and save us all some time.
[CLARA'S POV]
Analyzing. The energy signature emanating from Kaiser's position was unlike anything in my databases. Not the crude mimicry of his previous trait-stealing ability, not the temporal distortions of Chrono-Collapse, not the molecular combustion of his black flames. This was something that existed at a deeper level of reality, something that could reach into the fundamental structure of existence and make alterations.
Convergence. The name felt appropriate. This power didn't just steal or copy—it merged, synthesized, evolved. It could take disparate elements and forge them into something greater than the sum of their parts. The implications were staggering.
"Kaiser," I said, my voice cutting through the unnatural silence. "Your new ability—I'm reading quantum fluctuations at the subatomic level. This isn't just another trait. This is something that operates on the basic building blocks of reality itself."
He was sitting up now, Tara still clinging to him like a lifeline. The shadows around him moved independently of any light source, coiling around his arms like smoke given form and purpose. When he spoke, his voice carried harmonics that hadn't been there before, as though multiple versions of himself were speaking in perfect unison.
"Feels different," he agreed, flexing his fingers experimentally. Energy crackled between his knuckles—not the familiar black fire, but something deeper, more primal. "Like I've been playing with toys and someone just handed me the real deal."
[HAWK'S POV]
I lowered my blades, watching in fascination as Kaiser rose from what should have been his deathbed. The aura rolling off him was intense—dense, gravitational, hungry in a way that made my Oracle-Eye throw up warning flags even as it tried to analyze what it was perceiving. The priests could feel it too. Their advance had stopped completely, confusion and something that might have been primal fear rippling through their ranks.
He stood slowly, movements careful as he adjusted to whatever changes the void dream had wrought. Tara stayed pressed against his side, unwilling to let go of the miracle that had brought him back. His free hand came to rest on her golden hair, the gesture protective and possessive at once.
"Everyone get back," he said, voice carrying that new harmonic undertone. "Tonight's a feast for the living."
The shadows around him deepened, taking on substance and weight. They moved like extensions of his will, coiling around his arms and shoulders in patterns that hurt to look at directly. This wasn't the man who'd collapsed after saving Tara. This was something new, evolved, dangerous in ways that made my survival instincts scream warnings.
But when he turned to look at me, his eyes were still his own. Still that mix of cockiness and vulnerability that had drawn me in despite every warning my rational mind had whispered.
"Miss me?" he asked, that familiar smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Relief and exasperation warred in my chest. "Honestly? I thought I'd have to start dating another corpse. Don't make this a habit—I'm running out of black dresses."
He laughed—actually laughed—and some of the otherworldly menace faded from his presence. Still dangerous, still transformed, but fundamentally still Kaiser underneath it all. "Good to know I'm irreplaceable."
His gaze swept the clinic, taking in Jerry's damaged arm, Molloy's crumpled form, the tide of decay that had nearly overwhelmed us. When he looked back at the priest horde, his expression went cold. Predatory. Hungry.
"Tara, stay behind Jerry and Clara. What comes next isn't for kids to see."
She nodded, reluctantly releasing her death-grip on his shirt. "You'll be careful?"
"Careful's for people who can die," he replied, stepping forward into the space between us and the priests. "I'm past that now."
[KAISER'S POV]
I reached down, fingers closing around a piece of rebar that had been bent into a rough approximation of a crowbar when the clinic collapsed. The metal was still warm from Tara's power surge, humming with residual energy. It would do.
Convergence whispered possibilities as I hefted the improvised weapon. I could see the connections now—the web of power that linked every living thing, the fundamental forces that governed existence itself. The rot priests weren't just diseased humans. They were nodes in a network, their decay synchronized and amplified by the catalysts lurking at the back of their formation. Cut the right threads, disrupt the right patterns, and the whole system would collapse.
But first, a demonstration.
I drew back my arm and threw the crowbar in a perfect arc toward the nearest catalyst. Mid-flight, I activated my new power, feeling reality bend around me as I slipped through space. The world folded like origami, distance becoming a suggestion rather than a rule. I appeared behind the towering plague priest just as my improvised weapon struck its chest.
My palm met its spine at the exact moment of impact. Convergence flared, reaching into the creature's essence and finding the source of its invincibility. The power was complex—a fusion of regeneration, decay resistance, and quantum uncertainty that made conventional attacks slide off like water. Beautiful, in its way. And mine now.
I absorbed the trait, integrated it into my own power matrix, then turned it inside out. The catalyst's invincibility became vulnerability, its resistance became weakness. It didn't scream as it died—just crumbled into component atoms, dispersing on a wind that existed only in dimensions I was learning to perceive.
The remaining priests shrieked in harmonized terror. Their network had been disrupted, one of their lynchpins removed with contemptuous ease. But they were still bound by Baron Varn's will, still compelled to attack despite their newfound understanding of what they faced.
I turned back to my family—Hawk with her blades ready, Jerry grinning despite his injuries, Molloy pulling herself upright with medical determination, Tara watching with eyes full of wonder and trust. Clara's hologram flickered as her sensors tried to process what they were recording.
"About time I tested my power," I said, rolling my shoulders as fifty-eight plague priests began their final charge.
The feast was about to begin.
End of chapter