Detective Kaito Mori stood in the small, modest apartment, the air thick with the scent of old photographs and dried tears. The elderly woman, Hana, clutched a faded handkerchief, her knuckles white with tension. Every line on her face seemed to tell a story of sleepless nights and endless worry.
"I haven't seen my granddaughter in over three months," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Varos came to me in the middle of the night, Naira bundled in his arms. She was having one of her... episodes. The light from her skin was so bright it lit up the whole room."
Mori gently prompted, "What did he say to you?"
Tears streamed down Hana's wrinkled cheeks. "He said, 'Mother, I have to take her somewhere they can't find her. There are men in suits asking questions at the hospital.' He was terrified. I'd never seen my son-in-law look so afraid." She reached for a framed photo, her hands trembling. "This was the last time I saw them. He promised he'd bring her back when it was safe."
Mori studied the photo - Varos stood stiffly in his military posture, but his eyes showed the softness of a devoted father. Naira, tucked safely in his arms, glowed with an unnatural radiance even in the photograph.
"Why come forward now?" Mori asked softly.
Hana's eyes drifted to the window where the black rain fell like tears from heaven. "When the sky broke... I felt it in my soul. This is about Naira. I may be just an old woman, but a grandmother's heart knows when her blood is in danger."
The transition between locations was a violation of physics that left Orlov's senses reeling. One moment he stood in the damp warehouse, the next he was gasping in the thin, pressurized air of the jet's cabin. The disorientation lasted only a second before his training took over.
General Zhang was already moving, his hand sweeping toward his concealed weapon. "Orlov! How—"
Two suppressed shots cut through the cabin noise. The pilots slumped forward, crimson blooming across their white uniforms. The aircraft immediately nosedived, emergency alarms screaming like wounded animals.
"Welcome to the end of your relevance," Orlov declared, his voice cutting through the chaos as he seized the controls and violently leveled the plane.
Elyra stared, her scientific mind struggling to process the impossibility of his appearance. "The quantum displacement... only void energy could achieve this. What have you promised them, Orlov?"
Orlov's laughter was the sound of breaking glass. "You still think in terms of promises and deals, Doctor? How quaint." He released the controls, letting the plane shudder into another dive. "While you were measuring gravitational anomalies, I was learning to harness the void itself."
Zhang calculated distances, angles, survival odds. "You'll die with us, you madman."
"Will I?" Orlov systematically destroyed the control panel, each gunshot punctuating his words. "Russia has transcended your petty geopolitical games. We're playing with fundamental forces now."
As the plane screamed toward the churning ocean below, Orlov gave them a mock salute. "Give my regards to the void." Then he was gone.
From the cliffside, Orlov watched the aircraft vanish beneath the waves. Niu's form shimmered beside him like heat haze over desert sand. "The obstacle is removed," the void child communicated, its voice like cracking glaciers.
Orlov's smile was a dark promise. "Now we rewrite reality."
In the Nevada facility, Azar stood before Naira's containment unit. Sarah Mitchell's voice had become a desperate plea against the hum of machinery.
"Please," she begged, "see reason! We're trying to save our species from extinction!"
Azar's eyes, which had once reflected wonder at human complexity, now showed only cosmic frost. The patterns on his skin stilled, their light fading to the color of dead stars.
Mitchell recoiled from the change. "Azar, I'm trying to make you underst—"
The darkness came not as a wave, but as a subtle shift in reality. One moment the guards stood vigilant, the next they were screaming, clawing at their faces as eternal night consumed their vision.
"My eyes! God, I can't see!" a guard shrieked, dropping his weapon as he staggered blindly.
Dr. Evans, the lead scientist, stumbled away from his console. "The light... it's gone! Everything is... nothing!" His hands flailed before him, encountering only darkness.
Mitchell backed against a console, her own vision beginning to swim with swirling shadows. "What are you doing to us?"
Azar's voice echoed not through the air, but through their very souls. "You who would weaponize innocence shall never again look upon light. You sought to control the cosmos - now you will know only the void you tried to harness."
The darkness took Mitchell gradually. First the colors faded to gray, then the shapes blurred, then... nothing. An endless black expanse where the world used to be. She collapsed, her sobs echoing in the absolute silence of her new reality. Around her, the blinded staff stumbled and cried out, a chorus of the damned.
"The child is not your weapon," Azar's voice resonated in their darkness. "She is a bridge between worlds. And you have proven yourselves unworthy to cross."
As Azar turned to Naira's capsule, his form began to radiate pure cosmic energy. The being who had learned to love humanity was gone, replaced by an implacable force of cosmic judgment - cold, perfect, and utterly merciless. The void had spoken, and its gaze had left an entire facility blind to its glory.