William · Royde sat in the violently rocking back seat of the car and looked down at the box and needle shaped like a compass in his hands. The needle thudded violently but kept pointing in the same direction, it was the abyssameter fabricated by the holy shrine for its special agents to detect anomalous fluctations.
"Fifth level resonance!" He yelled, "Faster! HuaQiang! Faster! This could be an emergency!"
"We're going as fast as possible, sir!" said the driver named HuaQiang.
Raindrops flung themselves heavily against the car window, their continuous thumping noise only exacerbated William's anxiety.
"What is an anomaly doing in the city? Wait, the resonance level is changing again!"
The car made a sudden jerk to the side and threw William to the side, the hard metal surface of the abyssometer on the side caught on his shins and he doubled up in pain as the wounds under the bandages around his waist started to bleed again.
There was a heavy crack and a thump. The engine rattled resignedly and stopped after a few moments. And as it abruptly died, the car shuddered violently.
"Damn road condition!" William grumped as he clutched his sides trying to quell the pain.
"It's not the road sir." said HuaQiang with a tremor in his voice.
William had not had time to reply when he saw the needle jerked against the side and stayed there. That could only mean one thing, undefined level of abyssal resonance. Why here, in Shanghai? What is the abyss doing here? There is no way for anomalies to manifest in such a densly populated area, that doesn't make sense!
"Sir, it's coming." said HuaQiang, "We have to call for suppor--"
His voice suddenly subsided, and William looked up, he saw a slit in the man's neck where blood was oozing out.
"HuaQiang, are you alright? Liu HuaQiang?" William asked.
HuaQiang did not reply, he slumped forward against the stirring wheel, blood gushed out from the cut in his neck.
"No! HuaQiang!" William cried.
Wham! something landed heavily on the car roof and left a dent from outside.
The next moment, the car roof produced a whining sound of metal deforming under sheer force. Large white fingers pierced in through the canopy and took hold, penetrating metal as if it were butter, and ripped it off.
A giant being, somewhere near three meters, gazed down at William with burning golden pupils.
It was a magnificent being, it was what you expected an angel would look like, perfect, proportionate, glowing, and with huge, beautiful feathery wings with a probable wing-span of five meters folded behind its back, it was what the holy shrine had been fighting for years, an anomaly.
But William did not waste time to contemplate its beauty, he reacted fast, he had reached for his weapon the moment his abyssameter went off.
"Die! fiend!" he roared, and pulled the trigger.
The holy shrine provided its agents with special weapons to fight the anomalies, William's gun, fully charged, had an immense recoil force which now threw him backwards into the air and out of the car. The momentum, material and shape of this bullet allowed it to penetrate even the strongest of protective material fabricated by humans, but it merely glanced off the skin of the creature without even leaving a mark.
William wasn't surprised. He'd never expected an anomaly of unknown classification to fall so easily. Surging to his feet, he drew another pistol from his jacket as fist-sized raindrops pummeled his back. The wet southern autumn wind seeped through every seam of his clothing, its bone-chilling tendrils coiling around his ribs.
The creature descended from the armored vehicle with liquid grace, each step a predator's languid saunter. Its golden-slitted eyes remained locked on William, glowing with the detached amusement of a cat watching crippled prey stagger through its death throes.
His hands trembled, the gun's grip slick with rain and blood. Every attempt to steady his aim sent white-hot agony lancing from the gash across his abdomen. Vision swam at the edges, his body numbing under the dual assault of blood loss and hypothermia. Consciousness felt like a stone slipping through fingers gloved in mist.
"Hallowed be the Sanctum's light! Grant this faithful your valor!" The prayer spilled from cracked lips, absurd yet vital - a lifeline cast into raging waters. The neural implant at his neck flared with warning signals as it broadcast desperate coordinates. Not long now. Just needed to stall until reinforcements came. Couldn't let this thing reach the city.
Those molten gold eyes bored into him, triggering vertigo. He squeezed the trigger through fading consciousness, the gunshot echoing like distant thunder. The anomaly's form rippled in his vision, warping behind rain-curtains. Knees struck asphalt as the world tilted sideways.
Freezing rain needled his face. Darkness rose like floodwaters, dragging him toward suffocating depths. Yet as oblivion claimed him, crimson stained the edges of his vision.
Suddenly he floated in warmth, liquid silk caressing bare skin. Eyes fluttered open to no water, only infinite scarlet. The decades of hunting abyssal horrors felt like some half-remembered nightmare. This...this was real.
The red coalesced into blazing wings spanning eternity. A phoenix forged from solar fire and arterial spray, its primordial song vibrating in his marrow. Flames licked his flesh without burning, scouring away pain and fear. For one crystalline moment, he touched divinity.
"Phoenix..." The whisper dissolved in fire's roar.
Then winter's bite returned tenfold, wounds screaming renewed protest. Yet power thrummed in his veins now. Across the rain-slashed battlefield, the anomaly stalked closer with mocking deliberation.
William exploded forward. The pavement cratered under his foot as his fist tore through the rain with thunderclap force.
"This is for Hua Qiang!"
The impact shattered chitinous armor like spun glass.
The three-meter giant stumbled back with evident surprise. It then snarled and lunged at William. Wounded and battered though he was, William felt a surge of fury and lust for battle rise up in him like flamboyant flame. He leapt at the angry giant and locked into a furious fist fight.
Every assault from him found its target, and knocked shards of marble dust off the wrathful creature with loud echoing cracks, while the sudden power injected into him enabled him to dodge every attack from his adversary. It was a like one-sided slaughter, but neither could do the other any real harm.
The creature roared in sheer anger as it gradually found that the recalcitrant little human seemed to have suddenly gain strength and was on the same level with itself. Anger demented its composure and gave William chance.
The maddened creature gave no thought for tactics and knew nothing but strength, as it leapt again straight at William who this time somehow failed to dodge and pinned William to the ground.
"Got you!" William snarled, blood trickling down the side of his lips as his insides broke into pieces.
William sticked into the creatures eyes, the only part of it that can really take critical damage, and pulled the trigger. Soundlessly, the creature's form collapsed into powdered marble.
William's triumphant snarl died as hot blood fountained from his side. His vision tunneled to blackness. Even with divine intervention, this bleeding-out husk had reached its limit...
Click-click-click.
Stiletto heels chimed through downpour. A voice like smoldering incense brushed his ear: "Not bad for a new Emberbearer's debut. Slaying an Abyssal Strain while gutted? You'll make fine kindling."
"Who..." Blood bubbled on his lips.
"Drink, little flame. We who bear the Phoenix's spark cannot die so cheaply." Metallic warmth flooded his mouth.
Consciousness frayed.
Through fading senses, he heard her chanting. The silver haired youth stared at broken flesh that somehow still burned:
"The gods have spoken once more, alas! the great conflagration comes as fate have foretold, Emberbearers must bathe in war's ashes, rend the pasts asunder, and rise glorious from the pyre's crucible, to restart the eternal strife!"
Her exultant laughter chased William into the dark.