The air thickened without warning.
Black fumes bled into existence, slithering through the vault like living serpents. They wrapped around the ruined body at its center—half-burned arms, torn legs, flesh that should have remained scattered across the floor like discarded meat. Instead, it returned.
Bone dragged itself back into alignment with a sickening insistence. Muscle knitted together in violent spasms. Skin crawled over exposed horror, sealing itself with grotesque determination. This was not healing. It was reconstruction—forced, invasive, unwilling to accept death as an answer.
The sound eclipsed the sight.
Wet tearing echoed through the chamber. Bones ground against each other like stones crushed under weight. Sinews snapped into place, stretched taut by invisible hands, each correction delivering sharp, electric jolts of pain that rippled through the forming body.
This was not something meant to happen in reality.
Things like this belonged in nightmares—half-remembered horrors whispered in fear. Yet the vault bore witness to it in brutal clarity. This was real.
The black fumes tightened their grip, spiraling upward, lifting the body into the air. It hung there, suspended like a marionette, limbs dangling uselessly as unseen strings pulled tight. Control was no longer its own.
No one knew where the fumes came from. No one understood why they clung so desperately.
But they did.
And they refused to let go.
Pain alone was not what unsettled Bheeshma.
It was the look reflected in his own eyes.
A flicker of disbelief cracked through his hardened expression. A man who had carved his way through wars and monsters—who had ended countless lives without hesitation—stared at the floating figure as if it were the aberration.
"What's happening…?" His voice fractured.
Behind the suspended body, Vault B10 groaned.
The restricted zone—steel walls layered with reinforced alloys, encrypted locks, and C.O.S.M.O.S.'s obsessive paranoia—began to throb like a living organ. Metallic pulses rippled outward, vibrating the air, rattling teeth, setting nerves on edge.
Then came pressure.
Not heat. Not force.
Oppression.
The chamber compressed as if reality itself were being squeezed. Oxygen turned thick, crushing. Breathing became labor. Bheeshma staggered, dropping to one knee, sweat pouring down his face as the weight doubled… then tripled.
And then—
The vault split open.
Not explosively. Not violently.
It tore apart like rotting wood, spilling black light into the world.
From within drifted something impossible.
A lotus.
Blacker than shadow itself, its petals consumed light rather than reflecting it. Each movement was unnervingly smooth, fluid like oil sliding across water. It did not rush. It did not hesitate.
It chose.
Bheeshma's composure shattered completely.
"What is that flower…?" desperation bled into his voice. "That intensity—Chairman… what secrets have you hidden?"
The lotus reached the suspended body.
And unfurled.
Twenty-four petals spread open like surgical blades.
Without pause—without mercy—they pressed into the eyes.
One. By. One.
Agony erupted instantly.
Not a slow burn. Not a gradual ascent.
Molten pain tore through the skull as if fire were being poured directly into the brain, carving away vision and replacing it with something alien. Veins lit up beneath the skin like overloaded circuitry. Bones creaked, threatening to rupture from within.
The scream that followed shattered the chamber.
It was no longer human.
Bheeshma watched, frozen—not by fear, but by helplessness. His fists clenched, not in rage, but in the realization that rank, power, and authority meant nothing here.
Then—
Silence.
The pain ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
The lotus vanished.
The fumes receded.
And the body descended.
It was no longer a nineteen-year-old boy.
The figure stood taller. Heavier. His shadow warped unnaturally, stretching across the broken floor as if it no longer belonged to him. Reflected in a shard of shattered steel was not a man, nor a beast—but something carved from nightmare.
Power rolled off him in suffocating waves.
His movements twitched, blurred—limbs responding before intention, instincts acting before thought. His body obeyed commands written deeper than consciousness.
And there was no resistance.
Why would there be?
Blood spilled effortlessly. Flesh tore beneath casual motion. Dominance coated his hands—hot, slick, undeniable.
Bheeshma's expression twisted.
Not fear.
Humiliation.
For an A-rank soldier, failing to kill a target instantly was sacrilege.
"Don't you dare think you'll walk out of here alive!" he roared.
His aura ignited. Blaze Chakra erupted violently.
"Judgement Arc!"
Flames screamed through the air, each swing capable of shredding steel into ribbons.
Not a single strike landed.
Before Bheeshma could even draw breath, a fist buried itself into his abdomen—dead center, crushing the blaze Chakra core.
The impact folded him.
His body tore through floor after floor—ten levels down—leaving ruin in its wake.
The transformed figure landed lightly, an executioner's blade cutting through the chaos.
Soldiers lay scattered. Moaning. Silent.
Dead or unconscious—it did not matter.
Then—
The Necradron.
A grotesque A-rank Interstellar, serpentine and immense. Its writhing body was studded with dozens of shifting eyes, scales slick and alive.
Battling it was Bheema—C.O.S.M.O.S.'s right hand, elder brother of the man just obliterated. Stone Chakra hardened his fists as he hammered the beast with desperate force.
His gaze snapped toward the newcomer.
He saw his brother.
Then he saw that.
"What the fuck is happening here, Bheeshma!?" fury burned through his voice. "Who—no. What are you?"
The Necradron roared, answering for him.
Bheema snarled, slamming a Terra Fist into the beast and sealing it inside a stone dome. "Match isn't over, worm!"
The Necradron's Psychic Roar ripped through the air. Blood streamed from Bheema's ears.
But the monster was no longer focused on him.
It was staring at the transformed figure.
And it understood.
Something worse than itself stood there.
The body moved before thought.
The Terra Shield—an earth-forged fortress—tore apart like wet paper. A single strike smashed into the Necradron's skull.
Its scream was no longer rage.
It was fear.
Black fumes poured from its wounds, funneling into the figure.
And understanding followed.
The fumes were his.
They had always been his.
Soldiers had not fallen to monsters.
They had fallen to him.
To his hunger.
The Necradron went limp.
Power surged—heavier than blood, sharper than thought.
Without hesitation, the corpse was ripped apart. Chunks of flesh were hurled into the already-ruined headquarters. The meteor strike had left the structure hanging by threads.
One final strike severed it.
The building collapsed in a thunderous roar of rubble and screams. Lives—begging or silent—were irrelevant.
Through the haze, eyes watched.
Hundreds of them.The figure leapt.
Again. Again. Higher.
Weightless.
Until a gleaming structure pierced the skyline—a holy monument of light and reverence.
Beautiful.
If one was not him.
Then dizziness struck.
Gravity reclaimed him.
He fell like a stripped meteor, slamming into the earth and carving a crater into the road.
Darkness followed.
When consciousness returned, sunlight brushed his face. The same cramped room. The same suffocating box he called home.
But the terror was not the walls.
It was the mark burned into his vision.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Black Lotus acknowledges your existence.
Welcome, slave of the petals.