Dusk fell like a goblet of cooling blood wine, splashed across the skyline of Nocturnal Shadows City. The forest of glass-clad towers greedily drank the last dregs of gold and crimson, while below, neon eyes had already begun their impatient, bleary staring, watching the ant-like crowds flowing through the concrete canyons. This city was a stitched-together monstrosity of light and shadow; prosperity was its skin, darkness its lifeblood.
Yin Lie moved through the tide of commuters, an unassimilable drop of oil in water. His tall frame was clad in an ordinary black jacket, his aura deliberately restrained, yet an innate, predatory coldness still caused intuitively sensitive pedestrians to unconsciously veer around him. His silver pupils, usually better concealed, threatened to betray a faint glow in the gathering gloom.
His destination was the Old Docks. A forgotten corner of the city, it reeked of rust, salt-spray, and transactions that shunned the light. Just a street away from the modern metropolis's bustle, it felt like another world.
The frequencies are too intense. He rubbed his temples, trying to suppress the cacophony in his mind—the whispers of distant lovers, the scrabble of a stray cat in a dumpster, even the hum of current through an aging lightbox. These sounds wove an intangible web in his skull—a curse he was born with, and a weapon he relied on. He craved silence, but tonight, from the direction of the docks, an anomalous 'frequency' seemed to be calling him, pulling at his nerves like an invisible thread.
The exchange was drearily simple. In a corner stacked with rusting shipping containers, he took a strangely shaped metal USB drive from a shifty-eyed, gaunt man. The man, refusing to meet his gaze, snatched the cash and melted back into the shadows.
Just as Yin Lie secured the drive inside his coat and turned to leave, everything changed.
Crack!
The sharp report of a gunshot tore the port's silence, sending a flock of birds roosting on the masts scattering into the sky. It wasn't aimed at him. The bullet found its mark in another figure engaged in a transaction nearby—a scholarly-looking man in a brown trench coat.
Armed figures swarmed from all directions, disciplined and heavily armed. The trench-coated man's guards fell instantly. He himself, shot in the abdomen, stumbled back, a metal case etched with glowing blue patterns clattering from his grasp. On impact, a seam split open on its surface.
In the chaos, no one noticed Yin Lie, standing rigid.
No, not rigid. Preternaturally still.
When that invisible pulse of energy washed over him from the cracked case, it felt like a red-hot sledgehammer smashing into his skull.
—It's happening!
The Lupine ferocity roared to life first. His hearing and smell exploded exponentially. He could hear the minute compression of a trigger spring a hundred meters away, could smell the cordite, blood, brine, and the thick, substantive reek of fear, killing intent, and… a faint, familiar scent—kin! His bones creaked, his muscles bulged unnaturally. A primal urge, pure and destructive, lava-hot, surged through his veins, threatening to breach the dam of his reason.
Simultaneously, the other power—cold, alien, and vast—erupted from the core of his spine. The world leached of color in his vision, becoming monochrome shades of black, white, and grey, except for the living, who were now outlined in bright red blobs representing their life's heat. An instinctual understanding flooded him—he could freeze that red, snuff it out into deathly blue.
Heat… and cold. They're warring in my veins, trying to tear me in two. The beast wants to howl, to rip out throats with its teeth; the frost wants to seal everything away, even my heartbeat. Stop! Both of you, stop!
Two distinctly different powers collided and warred within him. The agony was beyond any physical wound, a torment as if his soul were being wrenched apart by two opposing destinies. The instinct to protect himself and the desire to annihilate everything tangled madly. One of the armed men spotted him, a 'witness,' and swung his rifle around.
Crack!
A bullet screamed toward him.
Yin Lie didn't think. Driven by uncontrolled fury and self-preservation, he lashed out toward the incoming threat—not at the bullet, but at the suffocating, hostile air itself.
Whoosh—
The air groaned under the strain where his fist passed. A visible, light-warping trail of rime-white energy instantly solidified, an invisible ice blade. The bullet, passing close, unnaturally decelerated mid-air, its surface frosting over before clinking to the ground. The 'ice blade' continued, slamming into the shipping container behind.
SCREEE—CRUNCH!
The thick steel skin was torn open as if by an invisible axe, leaving a several-meter-long gash edged with jagged icicles.
For a heartbeat, everyone—assailants and victims—froze. All eyes were on the man standing before the rend, eyes blazing with pure silver light, a visible aura of chill radiating from his body.
Yin Lie gasped, each breath pluming white in the suddenly frigid air. He stared at his hands, at the horrific scar on the container, his mind a storm of chaos and self-loathing.
What am I? A monster? So, beneath this city's dazzling veneer, there are others like me… flawed ones? This power… a gift, or a curse I can never escape?
"Target is a variant! Priority capture!" came the order through the raiders' comms. All weapons swung to bear on Yin Lie.
He gave them no chance.
Lupine instinct drove him forward, a specter among them. His movements were a blur, his strength preternatural. Every strike carried a biting cold; those he touched found their movements slowing, skin frosting over. The icy power, fueled by the vast vitality of his lupine side, was no longer just defensive; occasional spikes of ice shot out, precisely piercing wrists or shins.
The fight became a one-sided rout. In under a minute, no enemy remained standing.
Yin Lie stood amidst the wreckage, groaning enemies and patches of frost at his feet. He glanced at the scholarly man, now lifeless in a pool of blood, and the case, still pulsing with its eerie light. He didn't touch it.
A wave of profound weakness, and deeper confusion, washed over him. With one last look at the 'frozen hell' he'd created, he turned and vanished into the deeper darkness.
Just before he disappeared, he snapped his head around, silver eyes piercing the night, fixing on the top floor of a derelict office building in the distance.
Someone's there.
The sensation of being watched, of a cold, analytical gaze, clung to him like a leech.
...
Minutes later, sirens wailed, and unmarked black vehicles belonging to the 'Special Affairs Directorate' cordoned off the port. Network news feeds began pushing official statements about an 'accidental explosion due to hazardous chemical leakage' in the dock area.
But in certain encrypted channels flowing through the city's underbelly, a message was already spreading:
[New powerful Awakened sighted in Nocturnal Shadows. Ability unknown. Described with silver pupils. Threat Level: To be assessed.]
The city's true night had begun. And Yin Lie's journey, baptized in blood and ice, was forced into motion.