The wall exploded.
Stone and dust burst inward, and the bonfire's sparks scattered like dying fireflies. The ground shook hard enough to knock bowls off laps and send people stumbling. Raizen jumped up, heart hammering in his chest, fish on the stick still in his hand. For a heartbeat, he couldn't understand what he was seeing. The wall wasn't just cracked - it was gone, obliterated, a massive hole opened where solid stone had been. Jagged edges bled dust into the air, and through it, something seeped in. Not smoke, not shadow, but something blacker than night itself, as if darkness had been given form and was slowly pouring into his world.
Three minutes ago, everything had been perfect.
The bonfire had crackled in the center of the village, warm and bright. His father's loud laugh had cut through the evening air as he told another exaggerated story about a fish that got away - not even trying to make it believable, that was the whole point. People had groaned and laughed anyway. His mother had passed behind him with another skewered fish, her hand squeezing his shoulder in that way that meant I'm here, you're safe, everything is alright. Someone had shouted that Raizen was burning his dinner.
That world - fishing, firelight, warm familiar faces - got torn apart in an instant.
The laughter died so fast it felt like it had never existed. Sound dulled, as if his ears had been stuffed with cotton. The bonfire still crackled, but it came from far away. Panicked voices sounded like underwater noises. Raizen's throat tightened and his hands went numb around his stick, fish forgotten, falling into the dirt.
And through the dust, he saw them.
They weren't animals. They weren't people. They had a ruined human shape, but their bodies looked like they were made of pure darkness, like someone had carved monsters out of a place where light couldn't survive. Their eyes - if they were eyes - glowed faintly white, cold, flat and emotionless, watching the villagers the way a predator watches prey.
Nyxes.
The word didn't feel real in his head. It belonged in whispered stories, in rumors traded by travelers, in forgotten prayers - not here, not in front of him, not real.
Panic hit like a wave. Men scrambled for anything that could be held like a weapon - rusted blades, hunting spears, even burning firewood ripped straight from the flames. Someone shoved a child behind them with shaking hands. A spear flew, hitting one of the Nyxes. For a split second it looked like it went in, piercing. Then the darkness rippled and the sturdy shaft shattered like it was simply a stick. A torch was thrust toward another Nyx's chest and the flame flickered, then went out, the Nyx not even flinching.
Nothing touched them. Nothing mattered.
But across the village, through the chaos and screams, two figures moved in the opposite direction. Raizen's parents. His father gripped his fishing spear, knuckles white. His mother stood beside him with a cleaver in her hand - the knife looked too small, her shoulders looked too thin, but they stepped forward anyway. Not because they thought they'd win, but because every second they could buy mattered.
His father lunged forward, spear driving straight into a Nyx. For one bright, stupid second, hope sparked in Raizen's chest. The tip met resistance, it looked like it passed through. Then the darkness coiled around the shaft like smoke given form, twisting tighter and tighter. With a sickening crack, the wood splintered into hundreds of shards that exploded outward, spinning through the air and falling uselessly to the ground.
His father's eyes widened - not in fear, but in understanding.
In less than a blink, the Nyx's hand lashed out and wrapped around his throat, lifting him off the ground like he weighed nothing. His feet dangled, his fingers clawed at the grip, frantic and desperate, but the Nyx's hand didn't move.
"Dad!" The cry tore out of Raizen before he could think. His legs finally moved, carrying him forward, blind and reckless.
Beside his father, Raizen's mother screamed and rushed in, blade flashing in the dim firelight. She stabbed, she slashed, she struck again and again. Every cut tore through the dark mass, but every time it knit itself back together immediately, as if her rage was simply a joke.
Raizen had to do something. He had to reach them, he had to help, but his body betrayed him. A crushing weight pressed down out of nowhere - fear, real and primal - and his knees slammed into the ground. His hands sank into cold soil. He tried to crawl, tried to drag himself forward, but his arms shook and refused.
"Please," he choked out, not even sure who he was begging. "No-!"
The dark hand around his father's throat tightened. His eyes flicked toward Raizen, and there was still something there - warm and scolding, encouraging and stubborn, the light that had held his world together.
That very light went out. His body hung limp, like a puppet with the strings cut.
Raizen's throat ripped open in a sound he didn't recognize as his own.
But his mother didn't stop. Her hands shook, her breath came in broken gasps, yet she lifted the knife again. She swung with everything she had left. The Nyx answered with its other hand, moving faster than Raizen's eyes could see. A sharp strike - a simple, cruel motion - and its cursed hand pierced her chest.
There was a wet, terrible sound, and her scream cut off. The knife slipped from her hand and clattered to the ground, stainless and clean, like it had never even touched a Nyx. She turned her head slowly, and her eyes found Raizen through the smoke. They were wide, watery, terrified - yet still full of love. Her lips moved, torn by pain, her voice barely reaching him.
"Raizen... Run."
The Nyx turned toward him. One instant step that looked like teleportation. Then another, slower. Another, even slower. Its hand lifted - reaching. Raizen couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't even blink. The Nyx's long claws stretched toward his face and then-
It froze.
In that same moment, something whispered inside his skull. Too close, too cold to be human, it made his whole spine shiver.
Raizen...
You will suffice.
The words weren't heard with his ears. They were placed inside his mind, gently and deliberately, like a decision that had already been made.
Time seemed to slow down. The bonfire's wild flames unraveled slower than normal, the other Nyxes' rapid movements now distinguishable at the edge of his vision. Then the impossible happened. The thing that had killed everything it touched - the one looking at him with those white empty eyes - began to break. Not from a weapon, not from a strike, but from the inside out, dissolving.
The darkness peeled away from its sharp hand first, curling off in thin strips and dissolving into particles that turned gold. Then its arm. Then its shoulder. The blackness that had mercilessly killed his father and mother without a second thought, that had walked through their village like it owned every life inside it, broke apart into something that looked like ash.
But not black ash.
Golden.
Shining.
Drifting upward instead of falling, as if the cloudy sky was calling them home.
For a few seconds, the air around him glittered. Warm light filled the space where a monster had been standing. The particles floated past his face, gentle and slow, brushing his skin like warm snow.
It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
And the most wrong.