Silence.
It was the loudest thing David had ever heard. It roared in the hollow space where adrenaline had been, pulsed in time with his throbbing knuckles, and filled the ruins of the lecture hall like a physical substance.
He stood in the epicenter of the wreckage, breathing in the dust of shattered desks and pulverized plaster. Around him, the world was a photograph of violence paused mid-frame. A textbook lay splayed open, its pages torn. A single sneaker rested upside-down under a snapped chair leg. Two patches of fine, grey ash on the tiles—the only physical evidence that two people had been here, had argued about philosophy, had lived, before doubt became a disease that ate them from the inside out.
They're gone. Just… gone.
The thought wasn't a scream. It was a cold, heavy stone settling in his gut. This wasn't a manga panel. It was real death. Anonymous, meaningless, and final. He'd seen their fear, seen the light leave their eyes, and he'd been powerless to stop it. The green light inside him felt like a cruel joke. What good was seeing the truth if you couldn't change it?
A low groan pulled him from the thought. Then another. The surviving students were stirring, like sleepers waking from a shared, terrible nightmare. They blinked, looked around at the destruction with dawning confusion, clutching their heads. The crushing weight of Axum's logic was gone, leaving behind only the mundane shock of a disaster.
"Easy now. Stay seated. You're safe."
The voice was calm, familiar. Praise. She moved through the debris with Jonathan, helping students up, her amber eyes scanning them for injuries that weren't physical. Jonathan was a pillar of stoic efficiency, directing dazed undergrads toward the now-clear doorway.
A third Vanguard moved with them—a young man David hadn't seen before. He was on the shorter side, maybe 5'9", with a slim, almost wiry build and light brown skin. He moved with a restless, graceful energy. His hands were raised, and from them emanated a soft, gentle pink aura that flowed over the broken furniture and cracked walls like liquid light. Where it touched, splinters drew together, cracks sealed, and overturned chairs righted themselves with soft clicks.
"Eloghosa, the back wall," Jonathan said, his voice a low rumble.
The young man—Eloghosa—nodded, shifting his focus. The three Vanguards formed a loose triangle in the center of the room. They didn't look at each other. They simply began to speak, their voices harmonizing in a low, resonant chant that was more felt than heard.
"He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire."
It was from Psalms. David recognized it vaguely from compulsory chapel services. But here, now, the words weren't just scripture. They were a command. As they chanted, their auras—Jonathan's steady blue, Praise's radiant gold, and Eloghosa's mending pink—weaved together into a single, shimmering tapestry of light that washed over the entire room.
The effect was slow, deliberate, and deeply unnatural. A shattered table leg rolled across the floor and re-joined its table. Scattered papers lifted into the air and restacked themselves neatly on a repaired desk. The great, gaping hole in the wall where Jaron had shattered the Crusade knitted itself back together, brick by brick, until only a faint, hairline fracture in the paint remained. The very memory of violence was being edited out of the architecture.
But not from the people. David watched a girl touch her forehead, her expression blank, as if trying to recall a dream. They were fixing the building, not the trauma. The two patches of ash remained, until Praise knelt and, with a whisper and a pass of her golden-glowing hand, gathered the particles into a small, plain urn that manifested from her light. She handled it with a reverence that made David's throat tighten.
No one else. The promise formed in his mind, brittle and fierce. No one else dies because I'm standing here doing nothing. No one else turns to ash on my watch.
The cleanup was nearly done when Jaron approached, Ezra a silent, mountainous shadow half a step behind him. The leader's purple shield was gone, but he still carried that aura of unshakable calm.
David looked from Jaron's weary, scarred face to the now-pristine lecture hall, then back. His voice, when it came, was scratchy with dust and exhaustion, laced with a sarcasm so thin it was almost transparent.
"Secrecy. Much."
Jaron's brow furrowed slightly. "What secrecy?"
"You told me this was a secret war. Covert ops. Pest control." David gestured vaguely at the room, at the students being gently ushered out by Eloghosa. "Seems like a pretty loud secret now. Whole classroom of witnesses. Not very 'under the radar,' is it?"
Jaron followed his gaze, his expression somber. "It is a secret war, David. And secrets… sometimes have casualties. That's why our first rule is containment. We don't let battles escalate. Phobias grow during fights. They feed on the fear of the conflict itself—the combatant's and the bystander's. The longer and messier it gets, the stronger they become."
"So I guess I was the 'messy' part," David said flatly, the stone in his gut growing heavier. "The collateral damage."
"You were the unexpected variable," Jaron corrected, not unkindly. "And the reason these people," he nodded toward the last students leaving, "are walking out with confused memories instead of being siphoned into nothing. They saw terror. They saw destruction. But in a day, it will feel like a bad dream, a strange shared hallucination. The human mind rationalizes the unexplainable to protect itself. They only see Phobias clearly when death is imminent. To be saved is to forget the face of the monster."
David absorbed that, the weariness seeping into his bones. He felt a hundred years old. "So what now? I just… go back to my dorm? Study for a Structural Mechanics test tomorrow? Pretend a walking philosophical debate didn't just try to turn me into a footnote?"
"You could," Jaron said, his eyes holding David's. "Or you could stop pretending. You could step into the reality you now see clearly. You could become part of the Covenant. Get the training you clearly need. Find out why Phobias are drawn to you like moths to a green flame."
Throughout this, David had been acutely aware of the giant standing behind Jaron. Ezra hadn't moved. His pitch-black eyes weren't scanning the room for threats; they were fixed, with a calm, unnerving intensity, directly on David. It wasn't hostile. It was… assessment. Like a sculptor considering a block of marble. It made David's skin prickle.
He finally couldn't take it anymore. He dragged his eyes from Jaron's and looked straight at the executioner. His voice dropped, losing its sarcastic edge, revealing the raw, frayed nerve beneath.
"Please," he said, the word sounding small in the quiet room. "I don't feel comfortable with a giant staring at me like I'm a puzzle. You can… say something. Right?"
Jaron's lips twitched, the ghost of a chuckle.
A low, rumbling sound came from Ezra. It took David a second to realize it was a laugh. "Heh." It was a sound that held no humor, only a deep, earthy resonance. "The Leader of the South-South Region was talking with you. It would be… rude to interrupt. You see, buddy."
The word 'buddy' in that cavernous, calm voice was the most vaguely terrifying thing David had heard all night.
Jaron cut in, a genuine smile touching his eyes. "Nice team-up, by the way. Smooth. Almost like you'd drilled it. Haven't seen a fresh Sensitive sync with an Executioner on first contact before. Ever."
The fight flashed in David's mind—the green line, the black chain snatching Axum from the air, the shared pummeling. It had felt less like teamwork and more like two separate forces of nature incidentally hitting the same target.
"Speaking of which," David said, the practical part of his brain flickering back on. "The Phobia. Axum. It escaped. We didn't… we weren't able to ki—"
"Exorcise," Ezra interrupted, his voice flattening the word into a statement. "Yes. It was not exorcised. But it is shattered. Weakened to its core. It will be in hiding, licking its wounds, for a time. We will track it." He paused, those black eyes still pinning David. "I am Ezra Uyiosa. It was… instructive… to meet you, David Osayi."
He extended a hand. It was enormous, the fingers thick and corded with muscle, yet it was held with a deliberate, almost gentle openness.
David stared at it for a second. He's really a giant. How is he even allowed to be that big? What do they feed him? Pure conviction? The absurd thought bubbled up through the fatigue. Then another, more startling one: I landed three Communions. Three. In one fight.
The sheer impossibility of it hit him like a delayed shockwave. The green light. The understanding. He'd done it. Not once, but three times, while being beaten to a pulp.
The realization was the final straw. The adrenaline that had been holding him upright evaporated all at once.
He reached out and took Ezra's hand. The grip was firm, warm, and impossibly strong, yet carefully measured. "Yeah," David managed, his voice slurring slightly. "Instructive."
As he withdrew his hand, the room did a slow, graceful tilt. The clean, repaired walls seemed to pulse. Jaron's face blurred. The last thing he was aware of was the feeling of the floor rushing up to meet him, and the distant sound of Jaron's voice saying, "Whoa, there—"
Then, nothing. Just a silent, green-tinged dark, and the faint, lingering echo of the chant: He maketh wars to cease…
The war, for David Osayi, had only just begun. But for now, he had finally, mercifully, fainted.