Chapter 5
The **Devour** ability frightened him. He first accidentally activated it at four, reaching for a dropped rice cake. A pinprick of absolute darkness, a tiny, silent black hole, swirled in his palm for a millisecond. The rice cake vanished, not eaten, but *unmade*. In its place, he felt a minuscule influx of… substance. Energy. It was nutritional data, the concept of "rice cake." The ability didn't just consume matter; it assimilated its fundamental properties and added them to his own existential reservoir.
He practiced in secret, devouring a leaf. He gained a faint, almost imperceptible understanding of photosynthesis, of cellulose structure. The power was profound and terrifyingly absolute. He vowed to use it with extreme discretion.