The sky above District 7 didn't rain water; it bled a lead-colored fog that choked the city's alleys. Here, people didn't flinch at the sound of explosions or gunfire. Instead, they trembled at the dead silence that suddenly swallowed the backstreets, and the creeping cold that slithered under their skin without warning.
Raiden's worn-out shoes dragged across the cracked pavement, his school bag hitting his back in a rhythmic thud. He was seventeen, but the dark circles etched under his glassy eyes told the story of a much longer life. In the halls of the Preparatory Academy, he was nothing more than a walking joke: "The Zero.". He possessed eyes that saw nightmares and a hollow soul that couldn't be scratched—like someone whose hands were tied, forced to watch his own home burn with everyone inside.
"A warm loaf of bread... Mia loves the crunchy edges," he muttered through dry lips, trying to chase away the cloud of anxiety sitting on his chest. But the air was sticky today. Livar particles—the remnants of decayed emotions—were piling up like invisible spiderwebs. A burning sting hit the back of his neck; the spiritual rust in the air was boiling.
He reached the edge of the slums. The wooden door to his house wasn't locked; it was slightly ajar.
His heart stopped for a second, then began hammering against his chest like a frenzied drum. The smell... it wasn't dinner. The air was heavy, reeking of sharp metallic rust and the sweetness of fresh blood mixed with the suffocating scent of burning sulfur.
"Mom? Mia?"
He pushed the door slowly. The creak of the rusted hinges pierced his ears like a death rattle.
The table was smashed and overturned. On the cheap wool rug his mother had spent her life cleaning, a viscous black pool was slowly spreading. A dark, gelatinous substance bled from motionless bodies. Raiden's feet froze.
His eyes widened until they nearly tore, staring at the corner of the sofa. A small hand was visible... pale fingers loosening their grip around a tattered rag doll.
"No..." A slip of a voice broke in his throat. "No, no, no."
From atop that pile of remains, the nightmare rose. It had no fixed shape—a twitching mass of severed limbs and writhing shadows, topped by a featureless face with nothing but a gaping hole representing an eternal scream. An "Embodiment of Grief."
It was born from the womb of despair in this miserable neighborhood and had chosen Raiden's family as its first meal.
Raiden's muscles spasmed. The poisoned air in the room was enough to destroy the nervous system of any human without powers. But something inside him snapped, rebelling against the laws of nature. A black hole opened in his chest, swallowing the terror of the moment and spitting out a primal predatory instinct.
The entity turned. A white void vomiting black droplets stared at him, emitting a sound like knife blades being sharpened on stone.
Raiden roared, the sound of a cornered, bleeding wolf: "You... you took everything!"
He didn't run. He didn't scream for help. He lunged like an arrow toward the kitchen, barely dodging a shadowy arm that smashed the wall behind him, showering his back with cement dust.
His hand reached for a large meat cleaver. His grip tightened around the handle until his knuckles turned white and shook from the sheer pressure—not from fear.
The monster pounced with blinding speed. Icy claws tore through Raiden's shoulder. Hot blood sprayed, but he didn't take a single step back. He charged the entity, driving the cleaver into the shadow's chest with every ounce of his agony.
The metal passed through the black smoke uselessly, but he didn't stop. He threw the cleaver aside and lunged with his bare hands, digging his nails into the dark gel, scratching, tearing, spitting every moment of bullying he had endured and every love that had been stolen from him into the face of this absurdity.
"Die! DIE!"
And then, logic shattered. When his bare fingers pierced the heart of the dark Embodiment, his body didn't burn or turn to ash. Instead, a strange, searing heat—a heat that didn't belong to him—pulsed from the monster's heart into his veins.
The Livar particles making up the entity went wild, being sucked toward his bare palm like a whirlpool. The nightmare monster let out a deafening shriek... a scream of pure pain for the first time. Its massive body twisted, shrank, and collapsed in a violent vortex of solid darkness toward Raiden's fist.
"What is this?" Raiden muttered, the pressure nearly exploding his skull. The whispers of hundreds of shredded throats carved into his brain: "Why did you leave me?... Hunger... Darkness... Pain..."
Suddenly, the monster vanished.
In Raiden's hand, there was no longer a kitchen cleaver. He was gripping a long dagger, its blade as black as cold volcanic glass. Wrapped around its hilt was a living tissue that looked like flayed human nerves, pulsing with a sick purple glow.
Raiden fell to his knees amidst the wreckage, gasping like a drowning man, his body broken and his clothes dripping with blood. In his hand, the weapon shimmered with the coldness of death.
Outside, tires of armored vehicles screeched. Blind searchlights tore through the darkness of the shattered windows, scanning the walls.
"Purge Squad! Breach the perimeter! We've detected a high-level Embodiment emission!" a firm, metallic voice roared over the speakers.
Raiden stared at the pulsing dagger. From the depths of the black blade, a slimy voice slid into his mind, sounding like the cry of a deformed child: "Use us... until we are finished."
The door was ripped off its hinges. Men in complex armored suits flooded in, their advanced rifles aimed at the center. But they froze in place like statues. They didn't find a monster to fight; instead, in the middle of a pool of corpses, they found a boy shattered by loss, holding a weapon that the laws of spiritual physics shouldn't allow to exist, his eyes glowing for a moment the color of dark blood.
Before Raiden's consciousness slipped into the comforting abyss of darkness, he saw a tall man with a black scarf wrapped around his neck cutting through the ranks of the terrified soldiers.
The man stared at the dagger, his eyes widening in a shock that didn't fit his harsh demeanor. He whispered words that were the last thing the boy heard:
"Impossible... he performed a 'Materialization'... without any spiritual energy?"