Six years ago, in a certain desolate stretch of Berlin's outskirts, the sky hung low and black, thick clouds pressing down over the land like a lid sealed shut, pouring rain in relentless, heavy sheets that showed no sign of ever thinning. The two youths stood motionless in the middle of it, faces turned neither up nor away, simply blank, absorbing the downpour without a flinch. The musky, choking smell of wet soil clawed into their throats with every breath, thick and inescapable, mingling with something far worse underneath it.
They were the only two living things left for miles.
Around them, corpses stretched out in every direction, an unbroken field of the dead. Men. Women. The elderly, frail bodies crumpled where they'd fallen. Children, small and still, some curled inward as if they'd tried to make themselves smaller at the very end. The rain fell on all of them equally, indifferent, washing rivers of diluted blood into the mud until the ground itself had turned the color of rust, the metallic reek of it soaked so deeply into the soil that the rain could never fully rinse it clean.
One of the youths had purple hair, a streak of white bleeding through the right side of his bangs. His eyes, usually bright and restless, sat dull and hollow now, as though whatever light normally lived behind them had been poured out along with everything else that had happened here. This was Max, eighteen years old, still taller and leaner than most boys his age, not yet grown into the bulk he'd carry later in life. He stood rigid, shoulders locked, every muscle in his body still faintly braced, as though some part of him hadn't yet accepted that there was nothing left to fight.
His gaze drifted slowly across the endless field of bodies, lingering nowhere in particular, moving without purpose, simply cataloguing the scope of what surrounded him. After a long, heavy silence, he finally turned his head toward the other youth.
They had both just turned eighteen. They had both just finished erasing an entire village from the earth.
The young Eric sat atop a small, uneven mound formed from the dead, hands loosely clasped between his knees, staring down at the mud without seeing it, black eyes empty, his face carved from something colder than stone. He didn't move when Max's gaze found him. He barely seemed to be breathing.
Both of them wore bodysuits, once purple and pink, now torn and filthy, soaked through and clinging to their skin, stained in patches too dark to be simply rain.
Max's mouth opened slowly, and when his voice finally emerged, it came out rough and hoarse, cracked at the edges, like something unused for far too long.
"Are these the last of them?" His eyes swept the field once more. "Did anyone get away?"
Young Eric lifted his gaze at that, slow and heavy, and something small flickered behind the emptiness there the moment his eyes landed on Max, a faint spark, barely anything, but enough to pull him partway back from wherever his mind had drifted. His shoulders eased, fractionally.
"Yes," he said, voice flat, quiet beneath the rain. "These were the last. Everyone tied to that organization is gone now."
His gaze drifted briefly to a small boy's body a few feet away, eyes still wide open, mouth frozen mid-scream, rain collecting in the shallow hollows of his face.
Eric exhaled slowly, a long, heavy breath, and pushed himself up off the mound of corpses, walking toward Max with unhurried, measured steps, boots sinking slightly into the mud with each one.
"It's a shame all of them had to die," he said, tone carrying no real weight of guilt behind the words, more resignation than remorse. "But we couldn't risk anyone slipping through, not after everything we'd already done. They were just caught in it. Wrong place. Wrong people to know."
Max gave a small, slow nod, saying nothing.
Ever since the incident during his advancement to Lysi Nova back in Shirakawa-go, Eric had grown colder by degrees, more distrustful with every month that passed. Once he'd recovered enough, once he'd helped push Max through his own advancement as well, the two of them had set out with quiet, methodical purpose, tracking down every last member of the organization that had wronged them, and then, inevitably, everyone those members had ever known. This village had been the final thread of that unraveling.
Eric stopped beside Max and tilted his head back, looking up.
Rain fell directly into his open eyes, and he didn't blink against it, didn't flinch, simply let it come. He lifted his right hand slowly, palm turned upward toward the black clouds above, and watched as water gathered there, pooling shallow in the center of his palm, filling slowly until it could hold no more and finally spilled over the edges, thin rivulets running down his wrist, past his elbow, dripping steadily off him and vanishing into the mud below, swallowed by everything already soaking the ground beneath their feet.
He watched it fall for a long moment, expression unreadable, something distant and unfocused behind his eyes.
"You know," he said quietly, still watching the water run from his hand, "I've realized something."
Eric let the rain fall directly into his open eyes without so much as a blink, the water tracing thin, cold lines down past his temples and into his hair. He clasped his hands loosely behind his back, posture relaxed in a way that felt entirely wrong given everything scattered around them, and spoke in a voice so low and even it barely carried over the sound of the downpour.
"What have you realized?" Max asked, and there was something careful in the question, like he already half-expected the answer to unsettle him.
Eric was quiet for a moment, still watching the clouds.
"Through these last two years," he said slowly, "killing, slaughtering, running, hiding, escaping, being chased down and having to turn around and do it all again... I've come to understand a few things clearly." He paused, tongue running briefly over his lower lip, tasting rain. "First. As long as you have strength, it doesn't matter what you do. Nobody can touch you for it. Nobody can hold you accountable. Strength simply erases the question of consequence."
He said it plainly, without any particular weight behind it, the way someone might state that water was wet.
"Second. You can't actually trust anyone in this world. Not really. Not fully." His gaze drifted sideways toward Max, something almost gentle passing over his face for just a moment. "Except you. You're the only person left I can be weak in front of. Everyone else, I've learned, eventually becomes a liability, or a stranger wearing a familiar face."
Max didn't respond to that, though something in his jaw tightened slightly.
"Third." Eric's voice dropped even lower, almost thoughtful, almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. "Life is cheap. Cheaper than people like to believe, growing up being told otherwise. As long as you're weak, you get trampled. That's simply how the ground beneath everyone's feet is built. We just usually don't get to see it laid out quite this clearly."
He lowered his gaze from the sky at last, looking out over the field of bodies stretching around them with the same mild, unbothered expression he might have worn looking out over any ordinary landscape.
A small, easy smile spread across Max's face at that, his eyes catching a flicker of something bright and unbothered, almost fond, entirely at odds with the corpses cooling in the mud around his boots.
"Well," Max said, rocking back slightly on his heels. "What do you want to do now, then?"
Eric let out a soft, quiet laugh, barely more than an exhale, and finally let his hands fall from behind his back, wiping the rain from his face with the back of one wrist, an oddly domestic little gesture in the middle of all this ruin.
"Recuperate," he said simply. "Find some anchors, work through the steps of the Lysi Nova control method properly this time. And then, I think... live quietly. For as long as the world lets us. Somewhere far away from all this."
He said it the way someone might describe modest, ordinary plans for the weekend, and somewhere behind them, the rain kept falling steadily over everyone who would never get the chance to make plans again.
...
Back in the present, New Dawn High School emptied in its usual chaotic rush, students pouring through the front gate in loud, overlapping clusters, already halfway into plans for the evening ahead.
Adrian moved through the crowd quietly, Mr. Clown drifting along beside him, unseen and unnoticed by everyone else around them.
Adrian had just opened his mouth to say something, some passing comment about the day, when it hit him.
His chest seized without warning, a sharp, invasive pressure clamping down hard around his lungs, and his hand flew up to grip the front of his shirt as his breath caught somewhere in his throat and refused to move. His eyes went wide, darting instinctively toward the far side of the schoolyard, toward the street beyond it, toward some direction he couldn't have named if asked, some pull he had no control over at all.
"H-huh—" He staggered half a step, breath coming in short, uneven pulls now, each one shallower than the last. "What... what is this?"
Even with everything he still didn't understand about being an Aura user, some deep, instinctive part of him recognized immediately that this wasn't ordinary. This wasn't nerves, or hunger, or the low hum of everyday anxiety he sometimes carried around without noticing. This felt like something had physically torn loose somewhere just outside his own body.
Mr. Clown stopped mid-step, turning back sharply, his usual easy grin faltering into something more alert.
"Adrian?" His voice sharpened slightly. "What's wrong?"
Adrian couldn't answer right away. His whole body had gone rigid, gaze locked in that same fixed direction, jaw working uselessly for a few seconds before any real words managed to form. His breathing grew louder, ragged, audible even over the noise of the crowd still filtering past them, oblivious.
"S-something," he finally managed, voice cracking, hoarse and thin. "T-this premonition. Something happened. I don't— I can't—"
Mr. Clown crossed the distance between them quickly, closing his gloved hand firmly around Adrian's shoulder, steadying him.
"Breathe," he said, tone dropping into something quieter, more careful than his usual theatrical register. "Slowly. In through your nose. You're not in any danger right now, understand? Just breathe."
Adrian tried, chest heaving unevenly as he forced air in and out, his gaze still locked on that same fixed point somewhere beyond the school gates, somewhere he couldn't stop staring toward no matter how hard he tried to look away.
"Can you tell me what it feels like?" Mr. Clown asked gently, once Adrian's breathing had eased just slightly. "Anything you can put words to. It'll help."
Adrian swallowed hard, throat tight, eyes still glassy and unfocused. "It's like..." He struggled for a moment, hands trembling at his sides. "It's like waking up and finding someone in your family just... gone... with no explanation. They are just... gone. That kind of shock, that confusion, that fear all hitting you at once." His voice dropped lower, shakier. "Or like everyone you know is tied to you by these threads, and one of them just... snapped. And you don't know why. You don't know who. You know something's wrong."
Something flickered behind Mr. Clown's painted expression at that description, gone almost as quickly as it appeared, replaced instantly by a carefully arranged calm.
"Okay," he said softly, giving Adrian's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Okay. It's alright." He crouched slightly, meeting Adrian's eyes directly, keeping his tone steady, deliberately soothing. "Listen to me. Whatever it is, we don't know anything for certain yet, and panicking over half a feeling isn't going to help anyone. Let's get you home first. Make sure your sister's safe. That's what matters most right now, isn't it?"
Adrian's eyes snapped fully into focus at the mention of Lily, some fierce, immediate spike of protective fear cutting straight through the fog of the premonition. He nodded fast, jerky, already pulling free of Mr. Clown's grip.
"Right. Yeah. I need to— I have to go."
He took off at a dead sprint before Mr. Clown could say anything else, weaving through the last stragglers still filtering out of the gate, his shirt still clutched tight in one fist as he ran.
Mr. Clown watched him go, the forced calm slipping slowly from his own expression the moment Adrian was far enough away not to notice.
He let out a long, quiet sigh, gloved hand dropping back to his side.
I hope, he thought, gaze drifting briefly, almost involuntarily, toward the direction Adrian had been staring, that he never finds out what actually happened to that girlfriend of his.
He turned and started walking the opposite way, unhurried, hands slipping into his pockets.
Not that it's any of my concern, really. That's the third one's mess to clean up. His orders. His responsibility.
...
In the narrow, dark alley, the world seemed to have shrunk down to just the small space between Eric and Voyage and the thing lying between them.
Marie's headless body lay sprawled across the wet pavement, unmoving, her neck a ragged, open wound where blood still pulsed weakly outward in slow, dying rhythms, each pulse a little fainter than the last, until it finally stopped altogether, leaving only a wide, dark pool spreading beneath her, soaking through the white and blue fabric of her school uniform until barely any of the original color remained visible at all. The smell hit the alley in full force now, thick, coppery, faintly sweet in a way that turned the stomach precisely because it wasn't unpleasant enough on its own to explain what it actually was.
Eric stood perfectly still, watching, his expression carefully arranged into something unreadable.
No wonder Voyage chose her, he thought distantly, gaze drifting over the body with clinical detachment, finally realizing why Voyage chose her as the primary target.
A girl with the aptitude to become an Aura user eventually. Her body would have carried more potential than an ordinary child's, more resources for something like Voyage to draw on. Add the boost he gets from consuming people from the world he was reborn into, and she was practically ideal.
He let the thought settle, unbothered, though something distant and small in the back of his mind noted, almost against his will, that she had been alive only minutes ago. Laughing, probably. Walking home. A bright, ordinary flicker of a life that had simply, quietly, gone out.
He pushed the thought aside.
Voyage stirred in the stroller, small limbs shifting, and slowly sat himself upright. He climbed down with tiny, deliberate steps, each one carrying that same absurd, unsettling cuteness that had fooled an entire hospital full of nurses only hours earlier. But his eyes told a different story now, black and sharp, gleaming with something hungry and entirely without innocence.
He spat the pacifier from his mouth as it landed in the blood with a small, wet plop and sank halfway beneath the surface.
Voyage walked the last few steps and lowered himself directly into the pool surrounding Marie's body, sitting cross-legged in it the way a toddler might sit in a puddle after rain, utterly unconcerned as the crimson soaked instantly through his soft yellow clothing, staining it dark from the waist down within seconds.
"Tch," he muttered, glancing at the blood already thinning and cooling around him, some of it lost to the cracks in the pavement. "So much wasted already." A small, satisfied smile tugged at his lips despite the complaint. "No matter. I'll savor what's left properly."
He leaned forward.
His small mouth opened wide, jaw stretching further than a body that size should have allowed, revealing pale, toothless gums, and he pressed his face directly against the ragged wound where Marie's head had once been, where bone and shattered skull fragments still jutted up from the collapsed ruin of her neck.
The sound that followed filled the alley.
A wet, rhythmic pulling, thick and obscene, blood surging up into his small mouth in slow, greedy draws, his throat working visibly with each swallow, some of it escaping the corners of his lips regardless, running in thin rivulets down his chin, his neck, pooling further into the ruined collar of his shirt. His whole face had become smeared crimson within moments, blood catching in his soft baby hair, clinging in beads along his lashes.
Eric's jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly.
He didn't look away. He'd trained himself long ago not to look away from things like this, had built an entire wall of composure specifically for moments exactly like this one. But something in the sound, wet, rhythmic, endlessly patient, dragged uncomfortably at something buried deep beneath that wall, some small, distant part of him that still remembered what it felt like the very first time he'd witnessed something this deliberately, intimately grotesque.
He kept his expression flat anyway. There was no use in showing weakness here, not in front of Voyage, not over something he had, after all, ordered done himself.
Voyage drank on, unhurried, thoroughly absorbed in the process, his tiny hands braced against the pavement on either side of the wound to keep himself steady as he fed. The sound never let up, wet and steady, filling every corner of the narrow alley, echoing faintly off the brick walls pressing close on either side.
Finally, after what felt like several long minutes, he pulled back.
Pop.
The sound was small, almost delicate, absurdly so given everything surrounding it, a simple, wet release of suction as his mouth finally detached from the wound.
Eric's eye twitched, just barely, some small, involuntary flicker of reaction crossing his face at that particular sound before he smoothed it away again just as quickly.
Voyage sat back on his heels, blood dripping steadily from his chin, his cheeks, the tip of his nose, painting nearly his entire small face crimson. A wide, deeply satisfied smile spread slowly across his blood-slicked features, genuine contentment shining clearly in his black eyes, the exact expression of a child who had just finished his favorite meal.
His body began to change almost immediately.
Small, sharp points pushed up through his gums, first one, then several more in quick succession, thin white teeth breaking through soft pink flesh with tiny, wet clicking sounds. His frame swelled outward, bones lengthening beneath his skin in visible, uneven surges, joints popping softly as his small limbs stretched to accommodate the growth. Within moments, the infant who had first sat down in the blood was gone, replaced by something closer to a one-year-old, chubby-fisted and unsteady, but with a mind far older and far hungrier behind his eyes.
He clapped his blood-smeared hands as he started to laugh like an adorable baby, almost giggling, forming a deep contrast with the quiet, gruesome scene in front of him.
He stared at the corpse, his ancient, unblinking eyes tracking the final, dying twitches of her nerves. Lunging forward with a sudden, fluid violence that defied his soft physique, his plump, dimpled hands slapped wetly against Marie's open chest cavity. He plunged his tiny fingers directly down her severed esophagus, hooking the wet lining and stretching the muscular tube wide. The tissue was still warm, shivering with residual, autonomic spasms—the futile muscle memory of a body trying to swallow its own blood. A grotesque, knowing smile spread across his smooth, infant face as he leaned closer, fascinated by the dying vibrations pulsing against his fingertips.
He soon let out his Aura and crystallized it around his hands as he started to tear her esophagus in chunks before putting them in his mouth, teeth finding purchase against torn flesh for the first time. The sound changed now, wetter, thicker, tearing rather than sucking, and Voyage made a low, pleased sound in his throat with every mouthful, chewing with clear, unhurried satisfaction before swallowing.
For the segments of her esophagus he couldn't easily tear away, his method turned meticulous, mirroring someone picking the tight, sweet meat from a crab's claw. He pinned the fibrous tube down with one chubby knee, using his crystallized fingers like nutcrackers to pinch and snap the tough outer layers of tissue. Once the outer cartilage cracked open, he dug his tiny, sharpened nails into the narrow crevices, scraping and teasing out the stubborn ribbons of flesh buried inside. He stuffed the shredded chunks into his mouth, his teeth finally finding purchase against the raw meat. The sound changed instantly—turning into a wet, thick, rhythmic tearing that replaced the soft sucking noises from before. A low, rumbling sound of deep satisfaction vibrated in Voyage's throat with every mouthful. He chewed with an unhurried, epicurean indulgence, savoring the copper warmth before slowly swallowing.
"Good," he mumbled around a full mouth, barely intelligible. "Good, good."
Eric's stomach turned, faint and distant, a reaction he refused to let surface any further than the pit of his gut.
Voyage paused, sitting back slightly, blood-soaked and thoughtful. "Still not enough," he murmured, more to himself than to Eric. "Never quite enough from meat alone."
More of his crimson Aura rose from his small shoulders, fine black particles scattered through it like drifting embers, and sank directly into what remained of Marie's body. Under its influence, her blood began to change, thinning, lightening, shifting from deep red toward a pale, watery yellow, the smell of iron giving way to something warmer, blander, unsettlingly close to nothing at all.
The amniotic fluid and blood's mixture pooled thick around Voyage's small knees, and he lowered himself directly into it, humming with open contentment as it soaked through what little remained of his ruined clothing. He cupped some in both hands and drank, tilting his head back, throat working steadily.
"Salty," he said afterward, licking his lips slowly. "But sweet too. Interesting."
The transformation accelerated visibly now. Fine hair sprouted across his scalp in a slow, creeping wave. His eyes, previously huge and round, narrowed and settled into more proportionate features. His height stretched upward in small, sudden increments, his soft baby fat melting away from his face and limbs as his arms and legs lengthened, slimming, gaining the first hints of real muscle beneath smooth, unmarked skin.
By the time he stopped feeding, he looked to be seven years old, blood-soaked, calm, and deeply satisfied.
Eric remained where he stood, expression schooled into careful blankness, watching the entire transformation unfold without moving a muscle. He'd witnessed cruelty in more forms than he cared to count over the years, and had long since built the necessary distance required to observe something like this without visibly reacting.
That didn't mean it cost him nothing.
He tilted his head back briefly, gaze drifting up toward the thin strip of sky visible between the buildings on either side of the alley, and let old memories surface uninvited: rain-soaked fields, a mound of bodies, Max's dull, exhausted eyes staring back at him across a battlefield of their own making.
The world has always worked this way, he thought, watching without watching. I only stopped pretending otherwise a long time ago.
The path of an Aura user is built on consumption, Eric thought, watching the last of the transformation settle over Voyage's borrowed body. Every step forward costs something taken from somewhere else. Even if every pathway only ever produces a limited number of users, can the world's resources really stretch far enough to satisfy all of them? And even if they somehow could... would greed ever let them stay satisfied for long?
He already knew the answer. He'd known it for years now, had watched it prove itself over and over, in Berlin, in Moscow, in every quiet, brutal transaction he'd ever taken part in since.
Most people on this earth don't even know we exist. They walk past us every day, brush shoulders with things they can't perceive, live their whole lives inside a truth smaller than the real one. And in that blindness, the weak get consumed by the strong without ever understanding why. Exactly like her.
His gaze dropped to what remained of Marie, and something in his chest tightened, unwelcome and immediate. He tried to smooth it away the way he always did, and found, uncomfortably, that it didn't smooth as easily this time.
Did she want this?
He already knew the answer to that too, and hated how obvious it was. He felt almost sick asking this question.
Of course she didn't. She wanted to wake up tomorrow. She wanted whatever crush she was nursing to finally notice her. She wanted, someday, a husband, children, a whole ordinary, unremarkable life stretched out in front of her the way every young person assumes theirs will be. She wanted to live. That was never in question.
Did I want her dead? Did Voyage carry any real hatred for her?
No. Neither of them had. There'd been no anger in it, no personal grievance, nothing that could even generously be called malice. That was, Eric thought, somehow the worst part of all of it. It would have been simpler if there'd been hatred involved. Hatred, at least, gave death some shape, some reason a person could point to and say, there, that's why. This had none of that. This had only calculation.
For me, this secures cooperation with Voyage, cooperation with Divine Karma, and contribution points I need. For him, it's simply fuel, a rung on a ladder he's been climbing long before I was born.
She was never the point. She was only ever the cost.
He felt his jaw tighten, some old, buried part of himself pushing up against the calm he'd built so carefully over the years, and for one uncomfortable moment he let himself actually feel the full weight of that thought instead of stepping past it the way he usually did.
How many people have I already turned into a cost? How many will there still be before whatever I'm building is finally worth what it took to build it?
He didn't have an answer. He wasn't sure he wanted one.
Morality slowly erodes, he thought instead, forcing his mind back onto steadier, more familiar ground. Sympathy for the weak erodes faster than almost anything else in this life. Even the gentlest person alive can only hold onto their principles for so long before the world grinds them down to something smaller, harder, more useful.
It's a strange kind of joke when you actually sit with it. Every child gets raised on the same lessons. Be kind. Be good. Share what you have. And then that same child grows up and discovers, usually the hard way, that none of those lessons ever once made anyone stronger. If anything, they're liabilities, weights tied to your ankles while everyone else swims freely.
He thought, briefly, unbidden, of the boy with the football from a few nights ago, screaming his simple, uncomplicated dream to his mother without a shred of doubt in his voice. That boy will learn this too, eventually. Everyone does, sooner or later.
Plants pull what they need from the soil beneath them, indifferent to what that costs the soil. Deer strip the grass bare without a thought for the grass. Lions take the deer, and lose no sleep over it afterward. That's simply the shape the universe was built in, long before any of us arrived to argue with it. Even without cruelty, even without hatred, growth demands that something else gives way to make room for it.
I used to think that was unbearable. I remember hating it, once, hating the sheer unfairness of a universe built this coldly. Now I mostly just recognize it. That's the part that actually disturbs me, if I let myself look at it directly. Not the cruelty of the world.
How completely I've learned to live inside it.
He let out a slow breath, watching it fog faintly in the cool alley air, and finally allowed his gaze to drop back down to the wreckage on the ground.
I'm sorry, he thought, quiet, private, offered to no one who could ever hear it. For whatever that's still worth.
It wasn't worth much. He knew that better than anyone. But some small, stubborn fragment of the boy he used to be still insisted on saying it anyway, every single time, even now, even after everything.
Eric's fingers twitched; he almost wanted to go and stop Voyage.
But he didn't. He simply continued watching. Not because he was getting any satisfaction, but simply because he had killed her; it was his responsibility to see the consequences that he had brought now.
Time passed slowly in the alley. The only sounds were the wet sucking and chewing noises from Voyage. At first, he grew rapidly from small amounts of blood. Now he needed to consume much more just to advance a little.
He finished the last of her throat and esophagus.
His infant proportions shifted as he fed, the small body hardening and stretching until he resembled a boy of nine. He climbed onto Marie, looking down at her with a small, chilling smile.
Thick blood dripped from his chin onto her ruined collarbone.
He drove his lengthened fingers into her sternum. His body was still too young for real leverage, so he threw his weight forward, straining against bone until it gave with a sharp crack. Her chest burst open like a crimson flower, releasing a spray of cold, dark blood.
Eric's eyes flicked from the wound to Voyage's face and stayed there.
Voyage caught the look, held it for half a second, and went back to work.
He pushed two fingers down her esophagus, stretching it, watching the last spasms of muscle memory ripple through the dead tissue. A small smile crossed his face. He crystallized his aura around his hands and tore the esophagus into chunks, chewing with unhurried satisfaction, the sound wet and thick now, tearing instead of sucking. Each mouthful carried a faint mineral sweetness under the copper, and he made a low, pleased sound in his throat with every swallow.
He inhaled the last warmth rising from her open chest. It was heavy and fleeting, like stepping into a hot bath on a freezing night.
His eyes opened slowly on the bloomed ribcage, her lungs resting pale pink and porous inside it.
His nine-year-old fingers hovered above the left lobe.
For a second, an old memory surfaced, the first time he had done this, centuries ago, and the disgust he had once felt. His brow softened, something almost apologetic in it.
Eric noticed the shift and said nothing, only watched more closely.
Then the moment passed. A sharp light replaced it in Voyage's black eyes.
He drove his right hand into the cavity, gripping the root of her lung where vessel and bronchus anchored to spine, and yanked until the tissue tore free with a wet snap.
He opened his small mouth and bit in, huge and methodical, the flesh dense and spongy under his teeth, and something in the taste reminded him of a fish he used to eat as a child, generations ago.
He finished both lungs without slowing, tearing through the second without any care for flavor now, and Eric tracked every motion without blinking.
Their eyes met again, briefly, cold on cold, and Voyage almost said something before choosing silence and looking back down.
With the lungs gone, the heart sat exposed at the center of the cavity, still and heavy in its pale sac.
Voyage hooked his nails into the pericardium and tore it open with a wet peel, exposing dark maroon muscle underneath.
He gripped the base, bracing a foot against her broken ribs, and pulled until the aorta and vena cava gave way with a hollow pop, a last pool of blood spilling into her chest.
He lifted the heart to his mouth and squeezed first, savoring the fresh blood on his tongue before he bit down. It took real effort, the muscle packed tight, nothing like the give of the lungs, and the wet sounds carried down the length of the alley.
He cleared the intestines and stomach aside with a few careless slashes, eating them almost carelessly, like pulling noodles into his mouth.
"Now, it is time for the main course." He chuckled, already closer to thirteen now, a layer of crimson hair falling over his eyes.
Eric's mouth went dry as he realized what came next.
Voyage reached into the pelvis, forearms sinking into the pooled blood at her lower spine, tracking down to the dense mass of the uterus.
It would not move. The broad ligament and round ligaments held it fast, fibrous and built to resist.
He braced his knees against her hip bones, drove crystallized aura into his fingertips like wedges, and threw his weight back.
The ligaments stretched, then snapped one by one with sharp, hollow sounds, and the organ tore free.
He held it up, dripping, and looked at it with something between clinical interest and hunger, the ultimate prize for a Birth Pathway Walker.
For a moment an unwanted image crossed his mind, the child this womb might have carried, the quiet joy Marie never got to have.
The alley pulled him back. It was only meat now.
He nodded once at Eric, almost like a warning, before he kept going.
He detached the ovary, small and pale, and bit down. It snapped with a firm pop, releasing a concentrated, metallic warmth that hit his system like a current. His skin tightened along his arms, bone lengthening in small fractions as his body pulled the stolen blueprint into itself.
He turned back to the womb and bit straight into the myometrium, thick and fibrous, needing the full force of his jaw to work through it. Every mouthful sent the stolen essence through him like fire.
His body reacted at once. Bone lengthened with loud, wet cracks, joints snapping into new proportions, the softness of childhood burning away into something leaner. His breath came out heavier, his voice dropping half an octave with it.
By the time the organ was gone, the transformation slowed, and he sat in the wreckage, flexing his newly elongated hands with a satisfied grin.
He moved to her legs next.
Crystallized aura cleaved cleanly through the joints, and he ate through thigh and calf muscle with a steady, mechanical rhythm, tearing meat straight off bone.
Each swallow pushed the last stage of the change forward. His spine and legs cracked outward in overlapping bursts, his shoulders broadening, his jaw sharpening into something aristocratic. Muscle wrapped tight around the growing frame, skin stretching to hold it.
By the time the last bone was clean, the shifting stopped.
Voyage slowly stood up.
He was no longer a child in any sense. A tall, fully grown man stood in the wreckage now, testing his new balance, rolling his shoulders with a low, satisfied sound in his chest.
He looked down at the hollowed body. "Hmm. It would be a waste not to use the rest."
Eric understood without being asked. He raised his right hand, pink gravitational aura threading with black particles, and Marie's body lifted, inverted.
He closed his fist slowly. Cracks spread across her, and blood rained down onto Voyage in a steady fountain.
Voyage closed his eyes under it, expression almost peaceful, and converted half the blood into amniotic fluid before licking what remained from his lips.
His skin drank in the rest, absorbing it as his body kept settling into its new shape.
Marie's corpse thinned until barely anything was left inside it.
Eric clenched his fist fully, and what remained compressed down into a small, dense cube of meat and crushed bone.
It dropped into Voyage's palm. He opened his mouth and swallowed it whole.
His face had changed completely now, sharper, handsome in a way that still fell short of Eric or Max.
He stood there naked in the ruined alley, unbothered by it, and let out a slow breath, rolling his neck once.
Eric's expression didn't move, but he took a single step back, his aura still humming faintly around his hand.
Voyage noticed and let his smile fade.
"I owe you real thanks, Third One. You helped me more than you know today. My organization will see that you're paid well for it."
He tilted his head, considering. "Since I'm in a good mood, here's something extra. You felt it back at the nursery, didn't you, that pull that made House choose me. It wasn't luck. For a year after rebirth, anyone who touches me meaning harm gets pregnant and implodes. Good thing you never tested it."
Golden meditation aura wrapped around him as he turned.
"The mission's done. I'll take my leave. Goodbye, Third One. Let's hope for even better cooperation next time."
He teleported away, and the alley went quiet.
Eric didn't linger. He turned and walked out, his face cold and unreadable, like the man who'd just watched all of it hadn't been him at all.
...
The sinking sun draped Paris in a heavy veil of molten gold, warm and generous, painting the tops of buildings and the surface of the Seine alike, and for a little while, all across the city, people simply stopped what they were doing to watch it happen.
While that beautiful sunset unfolded overhead, unbothered and indifferent, someone's entire world was quietly coming apart on the street below it.
"Marie! Marie, where are you?!"
A bulky man moved through the crowd at something between a walk and a run, breath already ragged, sweat soaking through the collar of his shirt despite the mild evening air. He clutched a photograph in one shaking hand, thrusting it toward stranger after stranger, his voice cracking a little more with every repetition.
"Please, have you seen this girl? My daughter, please, if you've seen her—"
He'd already been to the school twice. He'd tracked down every friend of hers he could think of, knocked on doors he barely remembered the addresses to, asked questions he'd never imagined himself needing to ask. At first, hours ago now, it had felt manageable, a small worry easily explained away. She probably stopped somewhere. Bought something. Lost track of time with friends. He'd told himself that, over and over, each excuse growing thinner and more desperate than the last.
But hour by hour, the excuses had run out, and something colder had taken their place, some tightening, breathless dread that refused to loosen no matter how hard he tried to reason with it. His heart had been hammering against his ribs for the better part of an hour now, each beat louder and more insistent than the one before it, until finally he couldn't stand still in his own apartment for one more second and had rushed back out into the streets, driven by something far past logic now.
He turned a corner without looking, mind entirely elsewhere, and collided hard with someone tall standing in his path.
"I— I'm so sorry, sir," he stammered immediately, stumbling back a step, forehead damp with cold sweat despite the warmth of the evening. His hands were shaking so badly the photograph nearly slipped from his grip. "Are you alright? I wasn't watching where I—"
He barely registered his own words. Some frantic, exhausted part of him was already looking past the stranger's shoulder, scanning the crowd behind him for any flash of familiar hair, any glimpse of her school uniform.
Eric turned at the contact, still wearing his Mike Jackson persona, the small silver cross at his earlobe catching the last of the golden light with a faint, bright glint. He looked down at the man in front of him, taking in the sweat-soaked collar, the trembling hands, the crumpled photograph clutched so tightly the edges had begun to bend.
For one brief moment, his gaze settled directly on the man's eyes, brown and wide and rimmed red at the edges, brimming with a fear so raw it was almost difficult to look at directly.
Eric knew, with absolute certainty, exactly who this man was searching for.
Something flickered behind his own calm expression, gone almost as quickly as it surfaced, before a small, polite smile settled back into place, warm and practiced and utterly convincing.
"It's alright," Eric said gently. "No harm done."
The man nodded distractedly, already half-turning away, that same desperate energy pulling him back toward the crowd, toward the next stranger, the next door, the next fragile thread of hope he hadn't yet exhausted.
"If you happen to see her," he added quickly, voice cracking, holding the photograph out one last time, "please, call this number. Anything. Anything at all."
Eric glanced down at the photo for the briefest moment. Marie smiled up at him from the glossy paper, caught mid-laugh at some birthday party, sunlight in her hair, completely unaware that the photograph would soon become the last new memory her father would ever be given of her.
"I hope you find her," Eric said quietly, and meant it, in whatever strange, distant way he still meant anything these days.
The man gave a small, grateful nod, already moving past him, already calling out again toward someone else further down the street, his voice thinner now, more frayed, still refusing to stop.
Eric watched him go for a moment longer than he needed to, the golden light of the sunset settling warm and unbothered over the whole scene, indifferent to the small, desperate figure disappearing into the crowd, indifferent to the girl who would never come home, indifferent, Eric thought distantly, to absolutely everything.
Then he turned and continued on his way, the Imperator's Cross swinging gently at his ear, and let the man's voice fade slowly into the general noise of the city behind him.