The blue flame on his finger didn't burn.
That was the first wrong thing.
It ate.
It drank the air around it with a soft, vacuum-like hiss.
Luo Shen stared, mesmerized and horrified.
The tiny tongue of azure fire licked toward a stack of old lab reports.
The paper didn't ignite.
It just… grayed.
Withered.
Turned to a fine, scentless dust that drifted to the floor.
It left a perfect, flame-shaped hole in the stack.
What the hell?
What the hell is this?
He jerked his hand back.
The flame, connected to him, followed.
It danced on his knuckle, cool and hungry.
Panic was a live wire in his chest.
Put it out. Smother it.
He slapped his other hand over it.
Big mistake.
The flame didn't go out.
It seeped into the skin of his covering palm.
He felt it, a glacial trickle moving under his flesh.
It moved between his tendons, heading for his wrist.
A sensation of profound, alien hunger traveled with it.
It craved complexity.
It craved structure.
It craved the ordered bonds that held matter together.
It wasn't his hunger.
It was the fire's.
"No, no, get out—"
He shook his hand violently.
The flickering blue light just pulsed brighter under his skin.
It lit up his veins like neon wires.
He could see the bones of his own hand.
His stomach lurched.
Think. You saw it happen.
How did it stop?
His memory replayed the scene upstairs.
The man in the lab coat, screaming.
The comet of fire.
The dark figure lifting its hand.
Not a gesture of deflection.
A gesture of… negation.
It hadn't blocked the fire.
It had dismissed it.
Erased its permission to exist.
But the man had screamed something first.
I paid my price.
The memory audio track clicked on, crystal clear.
The man's voice was ragged with terror.
"I paid my price!"
And before that, a name, gasped like a prayer.
"Kael! Tell Kael it wasn't—"
Kael. A name. A person.
Another sound cut through his internal replay.
The heavy clang of the stairwell door two floors up.
Voices, closer now.
"Basement clear?"
"Moving down."
They were coming.
The flame under his skin pulsed.
It responded to his spike of adrenaline.
It wanted to feed.
He could feel its desire like a phantom limb.
An urge to reach out and unmake the concrete, the pipes, the very air.
He stumbled back against his custodial cart.
His hip knocked against the metal fire extinguisher mounted on the wall.
A red, standard-issue thing.
Without thinking, he yanked it from its bracket.
He pulled the pin and aimed the nozzle at his own infected hand.
He squeezed the lever.
The white chemical powder blasted out.
It coated his hand and wrist in a thick, chalky layer.
The blue glow dimmed, obscured.
For half a second, he thought it worked.
Then the powder on his hand began to melt.
Not burn, not dissolve—melt.
It dripped in gloopy, sizzling streaks to the floor.
It revealed the azure light beneath, now brighter, angrier.
The flame had consumed the extinguishing agent's chemical structure.
It had eaten the concept of 'fire suppression'.
The metal nozzle of the extinguisher in his other hand grew searingly hot.
He dropped it with a yelp.
It hit the ground.
The red paint instantly blistered and blackened.
The steel beneath warped with a soft, agonized groan.
The thing inside his hand was learning.
And it was happy about it.
The hunger sharpened.
It wasn't just a sensation anymore.
It was a voice, not in his ears, but in the back of his skull.
A dry, rustling, multi-layered whisper.
Like a chorus of dead leaves.
…more…
Luo Shen's breath hitched.
That wasn't him.
…see through the eyes… taste through the flesh…
The shadows in the room twitched.
Not a trick of the light.
A deliberate, cohesive movement.
They all slithered an inch toward him.
The thing in his hand was connected to them.
It was singing to them.
And they were listening.
The door to the stairwell on this level flew open with a crash.
Two figures burst through.
They weren't security.
They wore sleek, dark grey uniforms with no insignia.
They moved with a predatory grace.
Their eyes scanned the room.
They locked onto him.
Onto his glowing, melting-powder hand.
"Manifestation confirmed!"
A woman with a severe blonde ponytail.
"Neutralize the host!"
Host.
The second agent raised his hand.
A man with a jaw like a slab of granite.
His fingers contorted into a complex, brutal-looking gesture.
The air in front of him warped.
It shimmered like heat haze.
A sound like tearing canvas filled the room.
Luo Shen's brain analyzed.
Pressure wave. Concussive force.
Aimed to stun, not kill.
They want me alive.
He had nowhere to run.
The door was behind them.
The room had no other exit.
The hunger in his hand surged.
A wave of desperate, alien glee.
It wanted the rippling air.
It wanted to taste that structured energy.
NO.
Luo Shen did the only thing he could think of.
He didn't try to throw the fire.
He didn't try to run.
He focused every ounce of his will on the dark figure from the lab.
He recalled the absolute void in its wake.
The effortless, contemptuous un-making.
He imagined that same negation applied to the blue hunger in his veins.
He didn't command it to stop.
He rejected its very premise.
You don't exist here.
You are not permitted.
The effect was instant and violent.
The azure light snuffed out.
Not faded. Died.
The whispering hunger in his skull cut off.
It ended with a soundless shriek.
The void it left behind didn't fill with relief.
It filled with a pain so profound it had no location.
It was everywhere and nowhere.
It was the pain of a phantom limb.
But the limb was a piece of his own awareness.
The sensation of having a memory forcibly, surgically un-remembered.
A white-hot spike of agony drove itself directly between his eyes.
It speared deep into the core of his perfect memory.
He staggered.
Vision swimming with black and red static.
He felt something tear inside his mind.
Not a thought, but the scaffold that held thoughts together.
A fundamental file corrupted.
A permanent index lost.
He gasped, clutching his head.
A wet heat bloomed under his nose, over his lips.
The female agent paused, her hand still raised.
"Paradox backlash."
Her voice was clinical.
"He just paid something. Subdue him now."
The male agent lunged forward.
Luo Shen tried to move.
The world was tilting.
The pain was a bell still ringing inside his skull.
He tasted salt and metal.
His own shadow did something impossible.
It moved on its own.
It snapped up from the concrete.
Like a sheet of black paper caught in the wind.
It inserted itself between Luo Shen and the charging agent.
The agent's fist passed right through the darkness.
And stuck.
The man grunted, yanking his arm back.
It came free.
But his hand and forearm were… bleached.
Colorless.
The skin looked like old parchment.
The hairs gone.
The nails a pale, lifeless grey.
He stared at it.
His eyes wide with a shock that quickly curdled into horror.
The shadow pooled back at Luo Shen's feet.
It quivered slightly.
The dry rustle filled his mind again, weaker now.
Satisfied.
…mine to watch… mine to… keep…
The female agent didn't hesitate.
She drew a device from her belt.
A slender rod that hummed to life with a low, dangerous frequency.
"Abyssal interference. Priority escalation."
She took a step.
"Lethal force authorized."
Luo Shen was on his knees.
The world a blur of pain and disorientation.
The nosebleed was heavy now.
It dripped freely onto the front of his janitor's uniform.
He looked down at the dark, spreading stain.
It wasn't red.
It was black.
A thick, viscous black.
Like printer ink or crude oil.
It gleamed under the fluorescent light.
The female agent advanced.
The hum of her weapon rose in pitch.
Luo Shen's shadow stretched long across the floor toward her.
It was a deeper black than any shadow had a right to be.
The black blood dripped from his chin.
It hit the concrete with soft, sticky pats.
He heard it.
A sound from the shadow itself.
Not in his mind this time.
In the air.
A low, sibilant, utterly inhuman chuckle.