Back on the ashen ground, Lyriq knelt. It was not an act of reverence, nor a moment of weakness. It was a cold, precise preparation. His body, still scarred and etched with the faint, glowing runes from his previous transformation, buzzed with the raw, volatile energy of his Order II: Emberling status.
He was no longer just responding; he was beginning to anticipate. The constant, gnawing hunger within him had found a clearer voice, a more defined objective. It wasn't just "more" now. It whispered, "Next."
Next." The universe is a feast. One bite at a time. The last one was... small. A flicker of disinterest", then a shift to a pure, predatory focus." What comes next? What flavour of ruin?"
Because something else approached. He felt it in the shuddering ground, a deeper resonance than any simple Devourer migration. His enhanced senses, honed by his Nyz'khalar awakening and the brutal fight with Rathuur, registered the shift in the very fabric of localised reality. This was not merely another Second Order Chaotic Being. This was something more substantial, more ancient, radiating an aura that spoke of profound conceptual power.
A Third Order.
And Lyriq, despite his recent ascension, despite the new power humming in his veins, was not yet ready. His thoughts were simple, yes, but not dull. They were pure, honed to a razor's edge by the constant demand for survival in this shattered world. His mind had not been sharpened for philosophy, for grand strategies of conquest, or the intricate dance of human diplomacy.
It had been shaped by raw necessity, forged in the crucible of blood, edged by an insatiable, primal hunger. But now, that hunger had a more refined language. It didn't merely demand sustenance; it demanded the next, higher form of power.
The shard nestled deep inside his chest pulsed again. Harder this time. Like a heavy, rhythmic heartbeat. Like a war drum beginning its slow, inevitable rhythm. It was more than a mere echo of devoured power; it was a guide, an internal compass pointing toward the next, more significant confrontation.
Or perhaps, it was not guiding him but actively calling to something. Sending out a signal that resonated with other horrors, other powers, drawn to the rising anomaly that was Lyriq.
He looked at his hands, those tools of unmaking. They were still visibly cracked from his recent change, the new bone structure beneath the skin not yet perfectly settled. His claws, though formed, still lacked the absolute refinement he sensed they would one day possess. Muscles beneath his skin twitched with unresolved rage, an echo of the brutal transformation he had just endured. The blackened, steaming blood from Rathuur still clung to his fingers, a sticky, visceral reminder of his last meal.
His hair, thick and black, shifted again. The reddish-purple ends, which had become a permanent feature of his new form, flared slightly, intensifying their ominous glow. Each pulse from the shard in his chest spoke of new doors opening within his being, new tiers of power becoming accessible. He wasn't done changing. He was merely at the threshold of a greater, more terrifying metamorphosis.
In the distance, a screech tore through the sepia-rotted air. It was not a sound of pain, nor a simple roar of aggression. It was an invitation. A challenge was issued across the desolate landscape.
The clash was not a spectacle for witnesses. It occurred in the deepest, most broken parts of the city's corpse, where rubble formed canyons and forgotten infrastructure became the bones of a grave. What transpired was a brutal, one-sided contradiction of existence against being.
Kyrrhalith, a Third Order Chaotic Titan whose very essence was the unmaking of concepts, met Lyriq, the nascent Nyz'khalar. The entity sought to erase Lyriq's relevance, to un-remember his existence from the continuum. But Lyriq was already outside of memory. His function was to unmake. The encounter was swift, savage, and ultimately decisive.
When the dust settled, or rather, when the localised un-making dissolved back into the pervasive entropy, Lyriq stood. He was more scarred, more torn, but palpably stronger. The wounds he bore were now etched with new, intricate glyphs that glowed faintly, a testament to the brutal absorption of Kyrrhalith's power.
Another shard, larger and pulsing with a colder, more profound light, settled into his chest.
Order III attained.
His skin cracked anew, the fissures deeper this time, before sealing over with unnatural speed. The horn on his brow, which had been merely an itch, now protruded subtly, a nascent point of bone. His spine lengthened further, solidifying his already unnaturally predatory stance. And then, his third eye opened fully beneath his regular eyelids – a raw, black orb that perceived not only physical reality but the unseen currents of cosmic power, screaming silently into the void.
He collapsed, not from defeat, but from the sheer, overwhelming influx of new power that coursed through his being. The dust and rubble softened his fall. And in the subsequent quiet, the profound hunger within him no longer just purred. It roared, a silent, internal demand for more.
The morning in Sector 17 crawled out of the dead hours like a wounded thing. The skies above did not shift from their perpetual sepia rot; the clouds hung heavy, spitting ash with a lazy menace. Smoke curled from makeshift chimneys along the battlements, and pale, sallow figures worked tirelessly to reinforce the walls.
These were not soldiers defending a glorious past, nor crusaders fighting an encroaching darkness. They were simply survivors, clinging to a precarious existence in a world that had forgotten them.
Lyriq walked among them without a word. Two days had passed since his brutal triumph over Kyrrhalith, two days since the last shard of devoured power had settled into his chest, solidifying his ascent to Order III. The wind, heavy and wet with the stench of rust and the burnt ozone scent of plasma residue, had led him to this place. It was not a gentle breeze, but a constant, physical pressure, guiding him with an unseen hand. In the aftermath of his battle, he had wandered, disoriented by the sheer influx of new power, but profoundly alert.
There were no longer beasts behind him, no immediate enemies before him, but the sheer weight of his accelerated awakening pressed against his skin like unseen fingers, demanding direction.
His senses, sharpened to an almost unbearable degree by his latest ascension, caught things others might miss. Not just the common sounds or smells of a ruined city. He perceived intent.
The subtle rustle of displaced air that indicated a hidden movement, the faint hiss of silenced machinery buried beneath cracked pavement, the elusive tang of recycled water vapour drifting up from exhaust vents. The presence of civilisation, however broken, however desperate, was palpable to him.
A different kind of noise. A different kind of hunger. He felt a strange pull towards it, a new form of curiosity. His Nyz'khalar nature instinctively sought out not just raw power, but points of concentrated existence, nodes of activity where something could be studied, tested, potentially unmade. He followed this thread for miles, the silent promise of greater meaning drawing him ever onward.
Sector 17 sat like a scab on the blighted land, a desperate monument to rot-bound survival. It wasn't merely built; it had grown, a monstrous organic-metallic entity. Jagged black walls, fused from layers of alloyed concrete, were wrapped in thick, sinewy strands of arc-steel and fungal mesh, pulsating faintly with captured ambient energy. Ancient mecha husks, their metallic bodies skeletal and hollow, were fused directly into these formidable defences, heads bowed like grim sentinels, forever watchful despite their emptiness.
The main gates, immense and forbidding, weren't guarded by inert statues, but by two living beings encased in sleek exo-frames, their spines laced with chrome, their movements rigid but swift. They were human, recognizably so, but awakened, their forms subtly altered by the Age of Power.
The moment Lyriq's shifting outline crossed into their view, their weapons, long and thin like predatory insect limbs, snapped up, aiming directly at his chest.
"Stop. State designation. Order. Bloodline." The voice was clipped, synthetic, filtered through their armored masks.
Lyriq's voice was hoarse, rough from disuse and the raw changes in his throat. "None. First Order. No known lineage." He stated his current public Order, allowing them to perceive him as a newly mutated Chaotic Being, rather than revealing the inverted path of his Nyz'khalar nature. The air around him still hummed with the faint, unsettling aura of his Order III status, a detail that wouldn't register as a familiar threat to these guards, but as a chilling, unknown anomaly.
The guards hesitated. Their masks, normally impassive, twitched slightly, indicating an unseen surge of data processing. One of them tilted its head, a question in its posture. "You carry shards?"
Lyriq said nothing. His silence was not evasion, but a calculated response. He didn't need to confirm. The energy signatures emanating from him, from the two absorbed shards within his chest, would be screaming their presence to any capable sensor.
A tense pause stretched. Then, the first guard's voice, now tinged with a grudging assessment, echoed through the gate. "Let him in."
The gates did not open with the familiar groan of machinery. They unfolded, plates shifting with an organic fluidity like the petals of some monstrous, metal flower, revealing the inner city.
Lyriq stepped through.
Sector 17, once glimpsed, was not merely a fortified outpost. It was a miracle of rot-bound survival, a layered, complex ecosystem where desperation had birthed perverse ingenuity. Old technology, rusted and repurposed, was intermingled with grotesque bioconstructs, towering organic spires that hummed with a strange, dark vitality. These monstrous structures loomed over tightly packed, neon-lit markets, where transactions were swift and often violent.
Children, their eyes too large and haunted for their skeletal frames, chased broken drones through fractured courtyards, their laughter a brittle, unsettling sound. Traders, their faces wary and etched with the lines of constant struggle, bartered fiercely for protein-slugs glistening, pallid forms of synthesised sustenance, and synthetic wine, a bitter, chemical concoction. High above, sluggish hover barges, relics of a forgotten era, patrolled beneath a sky sick with bruised, perpetually violet clouds, their exhaust vents exhaling a thin, acrid mist.
Lyriq walked slowly through the labyrinthine streets, his senses now honed by his Order III: Mindbreak ascension, drinking in every detail. He perceived not just the physical layout, but the underlying currents of fear, hunger, and desperate resilience that permeated the air. The humans watched him, their gazes sidelong, wary, but not with primal terror. Instead, their eyes held a disturbing recognition.
They saw the still-steaming black blood that stained his clothes, the unsettling void in his eyes, the way he moved with the liquid, lethal grace of a blade pulled halfway from its sheath. They had seen it before. They were it before, in their chaotic awakenings. Here, in Sector 17, everyone was awakened to some degree, a survivor by mutation or inherited power.
"Interesting". Lyriq's thoughts, a detached observation, unfolded. "They recognise hunger. Not as a weakness, but a state of being. Like the way I recognise theirs. They are all teeth here. Just smaller".
A woman in a crimson shawl, its fabric surprisingly vibrant against the pervasive gloom, approached him without hesitation. Her hair was intricately braided with bone and copper, strange, unsettling adornments. One arm was missing, severed cleanly just below the shoulder. In its place was a gleaming skeletal limb of unknown material, crackling faintly with dormant, blue energy. She moved with a practised, almost dismissive confidence.
"You're feral," she said, her voice raspy but direct. It wasn't an accusation, simply a statement of fact, an astute observation of his raw, untamed presence. "Just awakened?"
Lyriq gave a subtle, almost imperceptible nod. Words were still a tool, not a natural expression.
"Come," she continued, her golden eyes assessing him with a shrewdness that bordered on predatory. "You smell like rot and pain. You'll want a place to scrub that off. Our hospitality is... pragmatic."