The Commander didn't wait for another word. Fear, cold and paralyzing, forced his hand. "Fire! Kill this monstrosity!" he roared, pointing his plasma-blade at the figure standing in the center of the dark crater.
The guards, though their hands were shaking, obeyed. Ten high-caliber plasma rifles roared at once, spitting streaks of searing blue energy toward Rayan. The air sizzled, and the ground beneath Rayan's feet melted into glowing slag.
A cloud of steam and dust covered the area. The Commander panted, his eyes wide. "Did we get him? No one survives a concentrated plasma burst. Not even a Void Beast."
But as the smoke cleared, the Commander's heart nearly stopped.
Rayan was still standing. He hadn't even moved.
Around him, a swirling sphere of black smoke was slowly dissipating. The plasma bolts hadn't hit him; they had been swallowed. The dark energy was literally eating the light and heat from the weapons.
"My turn," Rayan said, his voice a low, vibrating hum that made the guards' teeth ache.
He raised a hand, and the shadows beneath the guards' feet suddenly came to life. They didn't just move—they rose like jagged, solid spears.
Shuck!
In a split second, three guards were impaled from below, their bodies lifted ten feet into the air. They didn't even have time to scream. The shadows didn't just pierce them; they began to drain the color from their skin, absorbing their 'Essence' directly into the Void.
"Monstrosity? No," Rayan whispered, appearing in front of another guard in a blur of black mist. "I am the consequence of your choices."
He grabbed the guard's throat. The man's plasma armor, designed to withstand tank shells, cracked like dry glass under Rayan's grip. Darkness began to creep up the guard's arm, turning flesh into grey ash.
"Please... mercy..." the guard gasped.
"Mercy?" Rayan tilted his head, his black eyes devoid of any human emotion. "I searched for that word for twenty years in the darkness. I didn't find it there. Why should you find it here?"
With a sickening crunch, Rayan let the body fall.
The Commander backed away, his plasma-blade flickering. He was a veteran of the Blood Wars, a man who had killed hundreds, but he had never seen anything like this. This wasn't magic. This wasn't Essence. This was a total erasure of life.
"You... you're a monster from the Beyond!" the Commander shrieked, turning to run toward the city gates.
Rayan didn't chase him. Instead, he reached out into the air as if grasping an invisible thread.
"Run, Commander," Rayan muttered, his violet veins glowing brighter. "Run and tell the 13 Bloodlines that the debt collector has arrived. Tell them Earth-0 is no longer their playground."
As the Commander disappeared into the distance, Rayan looked up at the blood-red sky. For the first time in twenty years, he felt the faint warmth of a sun he had forgotten. But his heart remained as cold as the Void.
The hunt had only just begun.
[End of Chapter 3]