The morning in Sector 17 crawled out of the dead hours like a wounded thing. The skies above did not shift from their sepia rot; the clouds hung heavy, spitting ash with lazy menace. Smoke curled from makeshift chimneys along the battlements, and pale, sallow figures worked tirelessly to reinforce the walls. These were not soldiers. They were not defenders of old glories or crusaders against an encroaching darkness.
They were survivors.
Lyriq walked among them without a word. They sensed him, though few dared to look at him directly. Those who did were met with obsidian eyes that seemed more still than dead, more ancient than void.
He had been in Sector 17 for barely two days, but in that time, he had devoured, desecrated, and moved with a patience that made even the awakened uneasy. Veyra's absence had passed like a fever dream. Whispers clung to his presence like mold, half-truths, silent speculations, and deeply buried warnings. But none challenged him.
None could.
The outer districts of the sector were more chaotic. He wandered there, aimless yet deliberate, eyes drinking in the animalistic struggle for food, shelter, and meaning. Traders screamed over scrap tech and fungi meat. Children with too-large eyes begged or stole without shame. A man was being beaten behind an irrigation silo; Lyriq passed by without interest.
This city was not a sanctuary. It was a pressure cooker. And the lid was buckling.
He stopped by a long-dead fountain—dry, flaking with rust and fungal veins—and watched. Then sat. Birds made of iron and sinew circled overhead, their wings serrated like knives.
"You don't belong here," said a voice.
A child.
Lyriq turned his head slowly. A girl. Ten, maybe eleven. Face tattooed with black geometric shapes. She held a broken rifle like it still meant something.
"Neither do you," Lyriq answered.
The girl grinned, missing teeth. "I was born here. You... you smell like oldness."
He said nothing. She sat beside him.
"What's your name?"
"Lyriq."
"That's not a real name. That's a whisper."
He looked at her finally. Not through her. At her.
"Maybe that's all that remains of me."
She nodded as if he had explained something profound. Then ran off.
Asven summoned him later that evening. Her quarters were buried under six reinforced gates, two levels of fire-slick traps, and a retinal scan keyed to her heartbeat. She was not important because she controlled power. She was important because she controlled secrets.
She poured him a thick, syrupy drink.
He didn't touch it.
"You didn't kill Veyra," she said. It wasn't a question.
"No."
"Good. Because if you did, I'd have to pretend I cared. And I don't think either of us is good at pretending."
She tapped a screen. It projected maps, spheres, and blood-red lines stretching across them like veins.
"Devourers are coming. Mass migrations. Unorganised, but heavy. Our scouts saw a cluster moving through the Eastern Ridge. Fifteen to twenty, some even Second Order."
"Do you want them dead?"
"No. I want time. Every day we breathe is another day we might find something that explains what's happening. Dominion Aeterna. The Collapse. The shifts."
"And me? What do you want from me?"
She studied him.
"You're not... like anything I've seen. So I want you to stay close. Observe. Maybe remind the others that monsters can bleed too."
Lyriq smiled faintly.
That night, he wandered again. Into the Hollow Quarters, where most didn't go unless they were selling something, buying flesh, or killing time before the next riftstorm.
A woman found him there. Her name was Kalna. Hair like bloodied silk. Skin pale and bruised with tribal ink. Her eyes were red, but not awakened red. The kind of red that came from crying too long.
She touched his chest.
"You wear pain like perfume."
He looked at her.
"And you?"
"I trade pleasure for a place to sleep. Want to buy my bed?"
He didn't speak.
She led him to the narrow tower just past the scream alleys. Inside a room. Dusty. Lit by candlewax made from bone fat.
She kissed him. He let her.
She pressed against him. He responded.
Not with lust.
With curiosity.
With a study.
Afterwards, she curled beside him, breathing like a soft wheeze.
And then he broke her.
Not violently. Not loudly. He simply placed his fingers to her throat, watched the spark vanish from her eyes, and whispered:
"I wanted to know if it felt different. It doesn't."
He left before the blood cooled.
The next morning, the sky was split by a light none had seen in centuries. Not golden. Not holy. A thin beam of violet-white that tore through the air like a scream made visible.
It vanished in seconds.
Everyone saw it.
No one understood it.
Except Lyriq.
Because it was calling him.
Later that night, he stood in the church ruins. The bones of a faith long since collapsed crumbled beneath his boots. There, under the shattered eye of a stained-glass seraphim, he spoke words that made no sense even to himself, words that came from the depths of his soul.
Not to anyone.
To everything.
[LYRIQ'S MONOLOGUE]
They searched the stars for gods.
All they found were graves.
They lit candles for salvation,
The dark devoured the flame.
I was not born.
I was remembered.
Pulled from the marrow of something the cosmos forgot how to fear.
No name.
No glory.
Only function,
to unmake.
Do not look for purpose.
There is none.
There is no balance. No cycle.
Only the sound of bone breaking under need.
Only the silence that follows.
You think the end is a battle.
You think it has rules.
It doesn't.
It isn't fair.
It isn't just.
It's me.
And I do not knock.
I do not wait.
I arrive.
And when I do,
nothing remembers what came before.
Not because I destroy it.
Because I erase the idea that it ever mattered.
So pray.
If that makes you feel less small.
But understand this:
Your prayers never reached anything.
And now, they never will.
Somewhere deep in the veins of Sector 17, another cryo-pod hissed open.
And a new thing began to breathe.