The red laser dot on Ayla's chest was a full stop at the end of her life's story. Her breath caught in her throat, a knot of pure, ice-cold terror. All her fight, all her running, the memory of her brother's face—it all culminated in this single, silent point of light. The upload was complete, but she wouldn't live to see what came of it.
The distorted voice of the Eraser squad leader echoed in the sudden quiet of the blocked-off street.
"Erase the witness. Secure the asset."
The world slowed down. Ayla could see the finger of the masked soldier tightening on the trigger. She saw the other Erasers fanning out, their advanced weapons aimed not at her, but at the boy standing beside her. They considered him the real threat—the asset. She was just collateral damage to be cleaned up.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
But the gunshot never came.
Instead, a soft thud echoed, followed by a sound like a wet towel being dropped on concrete. Ayla opened her eyes.
Ravi Kuro was no longer by the bench. He was standing directly in front of her, a human shield she hadn't asked for. In his hand, he held a small, dark object. It took her a moment to realize what it was: a high-velocity tranquilizer dart, its needle pristine. He had caught it out of the air.
He looked at the dart in his hand with mild curiosity, as if it were an exotic insect he'd never seen before.
"Inefficient," he murmured to himself.
The Eraser squad leader's red optics widened fractionally. The dart was subsonic. Catching it was not humanly possible. His tactical AI, which had calculated a 99.8% success rate for the incapacitation, was now flashing a stream of error messages.
[ ANOMALY DETECTED. TARGET 'ZERO' EXCEEDS ALL KNOWN PHYSICAL PARAMETERS. ]
"Open fire! Suppress the asset!" the leader commanded, his voice losing its synthetic calm and gaining a sharp edge of urgency.
In a deafening, percussive roar, the street erupted in a storm of gunfire. But this wasn't the sound of normal bullets. It was a high-pitched, energetic whine, the sound of futuristic weaponry discharging plasma and kinetic penetrators designed to shred through armored vehicles. The air itself seemed to sizzle.
Ayla screamed, throwing her arms over her head. The bus stop bench behind them was vaporized in a flash of white-hot light. The storefronts across the street exploded into showers of glass and concrete. It was a level of force not meant for a city block, but for a warzone.
Yet, through it all, Ravi stood unmoved. He hadn't dodged. He hadn't flinched. The storm of lethal projectiles simply… stopped. They hung in the air a few inches from his body, suspended in space by an invisible, oppressive force that distorted the air around him like a heat haze. The rain sizzled and evaporated where it touched this unseen field.
The gunfire ceased. The Erasers stood frozen, their advanced targeting systems unable to comprehend what they were seeing.
"His aura…" one of them whispered over their private comms, his voice trembling. "It's not just pressure… it's a physical barrier."
Ravi looked at the dozens of glowing projectiles hovering motionlessly before him. He raised a single finger and gently tapped the closest one—a molten-hot plasma bolt.
It fizzled out of existence with a pathetic pop.
He sighed, a sound of profound boredom. "You are loud," he stated, his voice cutting through the ringing in Ayla's ears. "And you broke the bench. She was sitting there."
Then, he moved.
He didn't run. He simply closed the distance. One moment he was in front of Ayla, the next he was standing directly in front of the Eraser squad leader. The forty feet between them had been crossed in less time than it took to blink. The suspended projectiles all fell to the ground at once, clattering uselessly on the asphalt.
The squad leader reacted on pure instinct, years of brutal training taking over. He dropped his rifle and drew a vibro-knife from his chest rig, its blade humming with hypersonic frequencies capable of carving through steel. He lunged, stabbing forward in a motion designed to sever a spinal cord.
Ravi didn't block it. He didn't dodge it.
He simply let the knife hit him.
The blade, which could slice a tank's armor, struck his plain black school uniform over the heart and stopped dead. There was no impact, no resistance, just a final, absolute cessation of movement. The humming blade went silent, its energy completely and utterly neutralized. The soldier stared in disbelief at his ultimate weapon, now as useless as a butter knife against a mountain.
Ravi looked down at the knife pressed against his chest. Then he looked up, his empty eyes meeting the red optics of the soldier's mask.
"My turn."
His hand came up, open-palmed. He didn't strike fast. He moved with a deliberate, almost lazy slowness. He gently placed his palm on the soldier's chest plate—a composite armor designed to withstand anti-materiel rounds.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then, Ravi spoke a single word, not loud, but with a finality that shook the very foundations of the world.
"Crumble."
It began with a fine web of cracks appearing on the soldier's chest plate. But the cracks didn't stop at the armor. They spread. They spread to the tactical gear underneath. They spread to the man's flesh and bone.
The squad leader's body began to disintegrate from the inside out. It wasn't gory. It wasn't bloody. It was a quiet, horrifying process of deconstruction. His armor, his bones, his organs—they all broke down into their constituent parts, turning to a fine, gray dust that poured out of the seams of his suit. He didn't even have time to scream. His vocal cords had already turned to powder.
Within two seconds, all that remained was a hollow suit of armor, which collapsed in on itself with a soft metallic sigh. A small pile of gray dust puffed out from the helmet's neck seal.
This was Ravi Kuro's signature. This was not a punch. This was not a kick.
This was Divine Dismantling.
The other nine Erasers stared in silent, abject horror. Their advanced tactical displays were screaming with incomprehensible data. Their comms were filled with ragged, terrified breathing. Their training had prepared them for terrorists, soldiers, and even rogue superhumans. It had not prepared them for a god.
"What… what is he?!" one of them choked out.
"That's not a man…" another whispered, taking an involuntary step back. "That's a monster in human form!"
Ravi turned his gaze toward them, his hands falling back to his sides. The aura around him pulsed once, a wave of pure, undiluted dread that felt like drowning in an arctic ocean.
"You have two options," he said, his voice a flat monotone that promised annihilation. "One: Disappear. Two: Be disappeared."
It was not a choice. It was a statement of fact.
Without a moment's hesitation, the remaining Erasers broke. Their discipline, their training, their loyalty to the Pale Hand—it all shattered in the face of this absolute, incomprehensible power. They dropped their weapons and ran, scrambling back into their vans with a panic that was utterly unprofessional and entirely human. The vans' tires screeched as they sped away in a desperate, disorderly retreat.
Within ten seconds, the street was silent again, littered with discarded future-tech and the empty suit of armor.
Ayla sat on the pavement where the bench used to be, her phone clutched in a white-knuckled grip. She had just watched a man catch a tranquilizer dart, stop a barrage of plasma fire with his mind, and turn another man into dust with a single touch.
Ravi walked back over to her. He looked at the empty space where the bench had been, then at her sitting on the ground. A flicker of something—perhaps annoyance at the inconvenience—crossed his face.
"This is inefficient," he repeated.
He then did something that surprised her more than the violence. He extended his hand to her.
"You can't stay here," he said. "They know who you are now. Your old life is gone."
Ayla stared at his outstretched hand. It was the same hand that had just reduced a human being to dust. It was clean, pale, and steady. It was the hand of a killer. The hand of a god. The hand of a monster.
But it was also the only hand in the entire godforsaken city that had offered her help.
With a deep, shuddering breath, she placed her small, trembling hand into his. His grip was firm and surprisingly warm. He pulled her to her feet with effortless strength.
"Where… where are we going?" she asked, her voice barely audible.
Ravi looked up at the glittering, rain-swept towers of Duskfall, his gaze distant, as if searching for something only he could see.
"Somewhere quiet," he said. "I need to think."