The warlord had declared a rare "feast-day" in the city. Not from kindness, but to parade strength. Markets were forced open, banners hung higher, soldiers patrolled with false smiles.
Caden, Mara, and Taren walked among the crowd, clutching their scraps of bread. For a moment, it almost felt like a holiday. Children ran between stalls, music scraped from old instruments, smoke rose from meat skewers roasting on open fires.
But beneath it all, unease gnawed. The storm still churned above, heavy and wrong, and the air smelled faintly of ash.
Mara whispered, "This isn't a feast. It's a warning. The warlord's telling the other factions he owns this city."
Caden barely heard. His eyes were drawn to the shadows between the towers. Shapes stood there, still, watching. When he blinked, they were gone.
The music faltered. A flute cracked on a sharp note. People turned their heads as the air thickened, heavy as wet cloth. The sky pulsed, once, twice, as if a second heartbeat pressed against the clouds.
Then the chanting began.
Low at first, almost lost beneath the chatter. Then louder. Dozens of voices, maybe hundreds, rising in eerie unison. Words that clawed at the ears, syllables not meant for human tongues. The sound came from every direction at once, echoing off stone and steel.
Mara froze. "Ascendants." Her face drained of color.
The ground cracked open. Not deep, not yet, just fissures running through the cobblestones like veins of black fire. Lamps flickered, then burst, plunging the square into half-darkness.
Screams tore through the crowd. People shoved, stumbled, fell. Soldiers shouted orders, rifles raised, but the chanting drowned them out.
At the center of the square, a symbol burned itself into the stone, a circle of ash and blood, glowing faintly red. From it, the air bent and tore. A thing forced its way through, all shadow, no shape, writhing like smoke alive. Its presence pressed against skulls, filling minds with whispers.
Caden's head throbbed. He stumbled back, clutching Taren's arm.
The shadow-being lunged. The first soldier it touched crumpled inward, his body folding as if into itself, gone in an instant. No blood, no scream. Just erased.
"Run!" Mara pulled them through the stampede, weaving between fleeing bodies. Caden's chest burned, fear clawing at his throat. He glanced back. The shadow writhed taller now, its limbs stretching unnaturally, consuming soldiers like paper in flame.
They ducked into an alley. Caden shoved Taren ahead. His heart raced.
Then a figure stepped from the smoke blocking their path, a cultist. Hooded, ash smeared on his face, eyes gleaming with fanatic hunger.
"The Devourer," the cultist whispered, looking straight at Caden. His grin split wide. "The key has come."
Before Caden could move, the man hurled a knife. It grazed Mara's side. She gasped, staggered, but pushed Taren forward.
"Go! Caden, take him!"
Caden grabbed Taren's wrist. "No, we can fight."
"GO!" Her voice cracked like iron. She shoved them with her last strength as more cultists swarmed from the shadows.
Taren screamed as hands seized him. "Caden!"
Caden tried to pull him back but the cultist's grip was too strong. He saw Taren's terrified face vanish into the swarm, swallowed by chanting and smoke.
Something inside Caden broke.
The world narrowed to a single point: his family ripped away, shadows closing, cultists chanting his name. Rage and terror exploded in his chest, white-hot. His vision tunneled and then inverted.
Air bent. Light bent. The alley twisted like water circling a drain. The cultists froze, eyes widening.
Caden didn't scream. He devoured.
A sphere of blackness erupted around him, silent, perfect, wrong. The world folded inward. Walls, stones, bodies, ash, all tore apart, stretched thin, and vanished into nothing. The chanting cut off mid-syllable.
When it ended, there was silence. The alley was gone. Half the square was gone. Only a jagged hollow remained, edges scorched black, the ground sunken as if a piece of reality itself had been bitten out.
Caden staggered, chest heaving. His hands shook violently. His ears rang with the memory of screaming or maybe it had only been in his head. Mara was gone. Taren was gone. Everyone who had been near him was gone.
Survivors stared from the distance, their faces pale with terror. Soldiers pointed at him, rifles trembling. Whispers rippled through the crowd:
"Monster."
"Gifted."
"No… worse."
"The Devourer."
Caden stumbled backward, shaking his head. He wanted to say I didn't mean to. He wanted to scream I was trying to save them. But his throat locked, dry as ash.
Then the cult's laughter echoed from the rooftops. One hooded figure remained, untouched, standing beyond the ruined circle. His voice carried like venom:
"The Black Hole awakens. The key is ours to claim."
Then he vanished into smoke.
Caden fell to his knees. The void inside him had closed, but it still roared in his chest, hungry, endless. His hands trembled as if they no longer belonged to him.
Mara. Taren. Gone.
The city would never look at him the same. He wasn't just another orphan scraping by in the ruins. He was a weapon. A curse. A monster.
And the world had seen it.