Every step was calculated with clinical precision.
Kael knelt, pressed against the cold wall of the underground storage facility. Here, behind rusted bars and intermittently sparking cables, interplanetary transport technology was kept. Not rare, but not common either. The kind of thing no one would notice missing... until it was already too late.
His breathing was steady. Cold. Around him, only the electric hum of control systems and the slow creak of an ungreased wheel. No alarms. No guards. Yet.
From his shadow, a figure materialized… faceless, yet alive. The soldier's shadow. But it was no longer the soldier from his memories.
It had become something else.
Distorted, with elongated limbs and jagged, black edges pulsing like open wounds. Hollow, yet solid. Malevolent. When Kael had offered a part of his own shadow as a "tribute," the creature had transformed. Now, it was a fragment of his will, an extension of his hatred, a silent instrument of revenge.
Kael blinked slowly. He felt the pulse of the corridor in his chest, but didn't hesitate. The thought of his mother, her face burned by fragmented memories, the laughter of those who had destroyed him… all of it forged his resolve. He didn't want another massacre. Not here. Not now.
Not yet.
The shadow slid across the floor like a stain of dried blood. It slipped through the metal door and, within seconds, the silence was interrupted only by a soft mechanical click. A system disengaging. The security had been disabled.
Kael entered.
In the center of the room, atop a glass pedestal, sat the device: a metallic sphere split down the middle like a fractured heart. Small, yet capable of sending him anywhere in the universe—if he knew the coordinates.
And Kael did.
He'd stolen them from a classified report long ago, back when he stayed silent and listened. When he was still just the "cleanup boy," the one who scrubbed blood from walls after interrogations.
Earth. The only planet where they wouldn't look for him. Too far. Too chaotic. Too alive.
He reached out. The shadow coiled around him, forming a cloak of darkness.
He touched the sphere.
A violet light began to pulse at its center, like a heart stirring to life. Then a synthetic voice:
"Coordinates confirmed. Activation in 10... 9..."
Kael closed his eyes. He didn't say goodbye. There was nothing left behind. Only ruins and scars.
"3… 2… 1…"
Space tore open.
Silence was replaced by an explosion of light, of distorted voices, of the feeling of being ripped from the flesh of his own reality.
Then—nothing.
He woke in a place where the air tasted like burnt smoke and ozone. Towering buildings, carved from living glass and organic metal, etched with glowing runes. Floating fountains. Drones with the wings of artificial angels. A world where magic and technology were one and the same.
The streets were packed with people. Each had an activated system, each wore an aura around their wrists—a blend of incantation and digital code.
Kael pulled up his hood. He drew no attention. Just another lost-looking youth, freshly teleported in, like so many others.
But inside him… something simmered.
The shadow was there. Sleeping. Waiting.
Seraphine… was silent. Still locked away in the abyss of his mind.
For the first time in his life, Kael wasn't being hunted. He wasn't a prisoner. He wasn't known.
He was… no one.
And no one could become anything.