The Great Hall at the University of Benin held silence like a suffocating blanket. Over ten thousand students and faculty packed into the cavernous space, a sea of somber faces under the harsh fluorescent lights. The air hummed with a low, restless grief, the kind that comes not from personal loss, but from collective, uncomfortable shock.
David Osayi sat in the middle of it, feeling completely alone.
I've personally never had someone I love die, he thought, his gaze fixed on the empty podium. Maybe the closest was my grandma, but I never liked her.
The Dean's voice was a polished, solemn drone echoing through the speakers. "…a tragic and unexplained loss of two bright lights in our academic community. Chidi Ibara and 菲菲 Okeke will be remembered. To their families, we offer our deepest condolences. In times like these, we must remember the scripture: to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
A ripple of murmured "Amens" washed through the hall. David felt his jaw tighten.
This could have been me, the thought was a cold spike in his gut. If I'd died in that courtyard, turned to ash… how would my family feel? All their hopes, their tuition payments, my stupid, secret dreams of being an artist… all just gone. Poof. Like they never existed.
The assembly began to disperse, a slow, murmuring exodus. David stood, the plastic seat creaking in relief. He shuffled into the stream of students flowing toward the exits.
"To live is Christ and to die is gain?" he muttered under his breath, the words tasting like ash on his tongue. "Isn't that just a glorified way to make you stop mourning? A spiritual painkiller."
As he walked out into the searing afternoon sun, his eyes instinctively tracked across the campus. And he saw them. Not the grieving students, not the anxious lecturers.
The Phobias.
They were everywhere, now that he knew to look—really look. A slick, many-limbed thing the color of a fresh bruise oozed up the trunk of a palm tree, drinking from the vibrant green fronds. A cluster of whispering, faceless shapes clung to the shadows under a faculty building, their forms vibrating with the anxiety of students rushing to late lectures. A spidery construct of rust and static crackled around a malfunctioning ATM, feasting on the frustration of the queue.
The world was infested, and he was the only one with the disease of sight.
Nobody actually wants to die, he thought, weaving through the crowd, his skin crawling. Regardless of God, or faith…
Faith.
The word stopped him mid-stride. The cult guys—Jaron, Jonathan—they kept using that word. Faithful. Use your Faith. You have powerful Faith.
Was it faith that made me kill that Phobia?
He found himself standing at the edge of the service road behind the engineering block. The pavement was repaired—or had never been broken in the first place. Reality had stitched itself back together, erasing the evidence of war. But David could still see the ghost-images: the unfolding monster, Marcus's white sword, the two students life leaving them.
I had faith in what? In my own death? In God? The thought was hollow. He didn't believe in that kind of divine intervention. Jaron had called what he did a Communion. A communion with God? That felt even more wrong. Marcus, a trained Vanguard with a manifested weapon, hadn't achieved one. And now he was dead.
How would his family feel? David pictured stern, proud parents receiving a flag, a medal, and a story about their son dying heroically against an enemy they could never see or understand. It would be a beautiful, useless lie. He'd thrown his life away for what? A secret victory in a secret war.
I can't even access that 'communion' thing, he realized with a surge of frustration. The memory of the green power was vivid, but trying to summon even a spark of it now yielded nothing. It was like trying to recall the exact feeling of a first kiss—the ghost of the emotion without the heat. It's like I didn't do anything at all.
He finally reached the Structural Engineering department building, the weight of his indecision as heavy as the reinforced concrete they studied. He slipped into a lecture hall, took a seat in the back, and immediately opened his sketchbook. The professor's droning voice on load-bearing calculations became white noise.
His pencil moved, not with artful flair, but with clinical necessity. He drew the courtyard. He drew Jonathan's blue mauls, Praise's golden crossbow, Marcus's fierce grin and white fang. He drew the horror of the Logizomechanophobia, and in the center of the page, he drew himself—not as he was, but as he felt in that moment: a figure erupting with wild, uncontrolled green light, his hand slashing a single, world-cutting line through the chaos.
Should I have taken their offer?
He didn't know. The question was a maze with no exit.
The lecture hall door clicked open. Two figures slipped in. David didn't need to look up to feel their presence—a focused calm and a sharp, analytical gaze that cut through the drowsy classroom atmosphere like lasers.
He looked up. Jonathan and Praise stood just inside the door, dressed in inconspicuous casual wear that did nothing to hide who they were. Their eyes found his instantly. David felt a surge of sheer, profound inconvenience. Can't I just have one normal hour?
They moved down the aisle with a predator's quiet grace and took the empty seats on either side of him. The student on his left glanced at the newcomers, sensed the intensity, and subtly edged away.
Jonathan opened his mouth to speak, his expression serious.
David didn't give him the chance. He simply rotated his sketchbook and slid it across the desk toward Jonathan. The page showed the detailed comic panel of yesterday's battle, culminating in his own green-lit moment of Communion.
Beneath the panel, in clean, bold lettering, David had written two questions:
1. HOW DO YOU LAND A COMMUNION AGAIN?
2. HOW DO I GET MY WEAPON?
He looked from Jonathan's stunned face to Praise's wide, amber eyes, his own expression flat, demanding, and utterly done with preamble.
The war had followed him to class. And this time, he had questions