The air was still, heavy with a silence that was more terrifying than any sound. It was the moment before a predator strikes. The hulking, tentacled Void-borne Tier-Three, a beast that had haunted this city for decades, stood frozen, its multitude of eyes fixed on the boy at the center of the brilliant purple light. It was a beast of pure malice, a thing that had fed on fear and grief for generations, yet now it was still. It felt something it had never felt before: true, unadulterated cold.
And then, the voice. It wasn't a scream or a roar. It was a dry, hollow whisper that scraped against the soul. "Pathetic."
The words weren't aimed at the beast. They were aimed at the very concept of its existence. Kwandezi, or rather, the thing that now wore his skin, raised a single hand. The dark, ethereal flames of his power, a living manifestation of the Void itself, danced around his fingers. They were not hot; they were an absolute absence of heat, a terrifying, necrotic cold that made the air itself crackle.
He didn't move. The creature did. It charged, a horrifying mass of hatred and raw power, its tentacles lashing out with the force of a battering ram. The Veil operatives, who had watched this in a state of catatonic shock, tried to fire. Their guns let out a pathetic click. Their specialized ammunition, designed to pierce a monster's hide, simply disintegrated. The sheer density of the power emanating from the Void Host was a field that nullified all technology and all force.
The Void Host simply extended its hand. The world distorted. The very fabric of reality seemed to warp and bend. It was not a physical strike. It was a Null-Kinetic pulse, a form of anti-matter that erased all existence. The monster didn't explode. It didn't scream. It simply folded in on itself, its massive, tentacled body collapsing into a single, compact point, as if all the air, all the light, all the molecules of its being had been violently and brutally compressed into nothingness. The only thing left was a wet, sickening pop. A single, perfectly spherical orb of black goo, the size of a fist, fell to the ground. That was all that remained of the beast that was supposed to be a threat.
Aisha's entire team stared in horrified silence, their training and resolve utterly useless. Kaito was on his knees, his face ashen, his body shaking with a primal, animalistic fear. "What… what is that?" he whispered, his voice a broken plea.
The Void Host turned its head, its eyes twin abysses of swirling purple light. It looked at them. Not with anger, but with a detached, clinical curiosity. It was studying them, examining them like insects under a microscope.
"You're not Void-borne," it said, its voice a hollow, chilling echo. "You're... fragile."
It took a single, deliberate step towards them. Kaito's fear turned to blind rage. He scrambled to his feet, grabbing a large wrench from a nearby workbench. "You're not him!" he screamed, his face a mask of furious desperation. "Kwandezi would never do this! You're an abomination!"
The Void Host tilted its head slightly, as if confused by the word. "Abomination?" it repeated, and a small, dry, humorless laugh escaped its lips. The sound was so wrong, so devoid of all warmth and humanity, that it made Aisha's blood run cold.
It raised its hand and made a simple gesture, as if swatting away a fly. A blade, a long, thin, impossibly sharp tendril of dark energy, shot from the Void Host's palm and sliced through the air. Kaito, frozen with a mixture of terror and rage, didn't even have time to scream. The blade of pure Void energy sliced through his chest, bisecting his torso with a sickening, wet sound. His body separated, his top half falling forward and his bottom half falling back, the two halves hitting the ground in a spray of blood and bone. The stench of iron filled the air, thick and nauseating. The Void Host simply watched him fall, as if observing a simple physics experiment.
Aisha screamed, a raw, primal sound that had nothing to do with her training. She wasn't an operative. She was a witness to an act of pure, detached cruelty.
The other two members of the team, hardened veterans, knew they were outmatched. One of them, a man named Tunde, had the foresight to turn and run. The Void Host simply watched him go, its head tilting to the side, a gesture of pure, childlike curiosity. It didn't follow. It didn't chase. It simply raised its hand, and a single, perfectly formed bullet of pure void energy materialized at its fingertips. It was not a bullet, not in the traditional sense. It was a concentrated ball of nothingness.
"Fleeing," it said, its voice a low, chilling whisper. "Fleeing is... inefficient."
The bullet shot out, a silent, invisible projectile. It didn't strike Tunde's body. It struck the ground in front of him, and the very concrete beneath his feet evaporated, a sudden, perfect chasm of nothingness that sent him plunging into the darkness below. A muffled scream was followed by a sickening crunch, and then, silence.
There were only two of them left now. Aisha and the other operative, a quiet, skilled woman named Nneka. Nneka, in a move of pure desperation, fired her last remaining clip at the Void Host. The bullets shattered against its invisible energy field like glass.
The Void Host's head turned to Aisha, and it began to walk towards her. It didn't hurry. It was enjoying the game. Aisha, her body shaking uncontrollably, fumbled for her sidearm. She pointed it at the thing that was once a boy, but she knew it was useless. Her training, her purpose, her entire life, was a lie in the face of this power.
The Void Host stopped a few feet away, its eyes fixed on her. The raw, terrifying power it wielded was palpable, a physical weight that pressed down on her chest. It looked at her, and it looked at the pendant she wore around her neck, a small, silver cross that had belonged to her brother. It extended a single, long, black finger, and touched the pendant, a chilling, cold contact.
"Fear," it whispered, its voice a low, sibilant sound. "Your kind is... full of it. It's so... delicious."
It wasn't a threat. It was an observation. And for a moment, Aisha realized that it wasn't going to kill her. Not yet. It was interested in her. It was going to play with her, too.