Evan found the hand in a District 3 slum alleyway.
The rain had stopped, replaced by a thick, rust-scented fog that clung to the ground. His right hand remained shoved in his pocket, the fingers long since numb. The transformation he called "crystallization" was creeping up from his fingertips, covering the skin in a semi-transparent, slate-purple crust—a grotesque, keratinous shell.
Every movement produced a sound like crushed ice rubbing against raw meat.
He needed a black-market doctor. But before he found one, he smelled the blood.
It wasn't a sensory hallucination from the sediment; it was fresh blood, pulsing with high-concentration Source Energy.
Behind two decommissioned vending machines, Evan saw White Owl.
The woman who once predicted life and death three seconds in advance was now huddled in a pile of refuse like a discarded rag. Her right arm was severed at the elbow. The wound hadn't been stitched; it was sealed with a cheap, expanding foam spray that looked like hardening rot. Her once eerie, solid white eyes were now webbed with burst capillaries, the pupils dilated and unfocused.
Three "Cleaners" in Hephaestus Industries uniforms were closing in, their formation a lethal fan.
"White Owl, what you took doesn't belong to you," the lead cleaner said, his voice muffled by a respirator. "Hand it over, and we might make it quick."
White Owl said nothing. Her only remaining hand gripped a metal canister with white-knuckled intensity.
Evan stood in the shadows five meters away.
His right hand was trembling violently in his pocket, the crystallization devouring his nerves.
He could have walked away. In Greyfog City, meddling was the shortest path to a grave.
But White Owl looked up.
In the moment she saw Evan, a flash of something appeared in those dying white eyes—something she had never shown before. Relief. She didn't cry out for help. Instead, she breathed a single word, a mere whisper:
"Run."
Evan's feet moved.
Not out of pity, but because in those three cleaners, he saw that same nauseating, elevated "divinity" that made him sick.
He stepped out of the shadows.
Five meters.
As his radius covered the cleaners, the quiet alley suddenly erupted with the agonizing screech of twisting metal.
Because the sediment within Evan was so heavy, his Null Zone was no longer a silent erasure. It had taken on a frantic, grinding force.
"Who's there?"
The lead cleaner discovered, to his horror, that the energy core in his exoskeleton hadn't just stalled upon contact—it had begun to collapse inward due to a "logical infection."
Evan didn't draw his blade.
He pulled his crystallized right hand from his pocket.
It no longer looked human. It was an artifact composed of a thousand tiny facets, radiating a dead, cold light.
He clamped his hand over the leader's visor.
Crystal ground against metal, sparks splashing across Evan's expressionless face.
"I said," Evan's voice was raspy, like his throat was filled with grit. "In here, you're just humans."
He exerted force.
No supernatural enhancement—only the tearing of muscle and the weight of gravity. But under the inhuman strength granted by the rigid crystallization, the cleaner's skull and visor shattered together with a sickening crunch.
The remaining two tried to retreat, but the black flocculent matter swirling around Evan—the sediment—suddenly extended. It acted like dark, twisted tentacles, snaring their ankles.
"What is this... an ability? I thought you were a Zero!"
"This isn't an ability." Evan looked at the two men struggling in despair, his eyes flat. "It's the garbage... you threw away."
One minute later.
The alley returned to silence. Aside from the sound of rain dripping on tin, there was only Evan's heavy, labored breathing.
He knelt before White Owl. His right hand had cracked further from the exertion, grey shards of crystal falling into the muddy water.
White Owl stared at his hand, a ghostly smile touching her lips. "You're... dying."
"So are you."
Evan took the metal canister from her hand.
"What's inside?"
"Hephaestus... observation reports on the 'Null Zone'." White Owl coughed violently, the blood she spat containing tiny crystalline grains. "They want to... turn you into... a stable reactor."
Evan silently tucked the canister into his hoodie.
He looked at his right hand. The crystal had reached his wrist.
"Where's the doctor?" he asked.
White Owl pointed toward a red neon sign at the end of the alley. "Number seventeen... ask for 'Saw'. Tell him... the cat is dead."
Evan stood up. He didn't offer to help her up, because he knew that in this city, mercy was a useless luxury.
But after two steps, he stopped.
"Can you walk?"
White Owl leaned against the wall, swaying as she stood. The foam spray on her stump was peeling away, a gruesome sight.
"Can't... but have to. I haven't seen... this city fall yet."
Two broken figures moved slowly through the fog of Greyfog City.
One was a black hole carrying the remains of miracles.
One was a prophet who had lost her future.
They moved through the dark veins of the city, leaving behind a trail of dark red footprints flecked with grey crystal.