Grand Aurora Hotel – Conference Room
The aftermath hung thick in the air, a tableau of violence and vulnerability. Seraphina Vale lay sprawled across the Persian rug, her chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of drugged unconsciousness. The delicate chiffon of her blouse had come undone at one wrist, revealing a silver bracelet—an heirloom from her grandmother, its inscription catching the dim light: "Virtue is the only true nobility." The irony would have made her sneer had she been awake.
Across from her, Kael Stormcrest's corpse sat propped against the conference table in a mockery of life. His head lolled at an impossible angle, the vertebrae of his neck protruding through torn skin like broken piano keys. A fly, drawn by the metallic tang of blood, landed on his unblinking eye—nature's final insult to the man who'd believed himself untouchable.
Banquet Hall – Moments Earlier
The grand ballroom had been a study in decadence mere minutes before. Crystal chandeliers refracted light across champagne towers, their bubbles rising like souls fleeing purgatory. The orchestra had just begun a Viennese waltz when the first scream cut through the melody.
At the center of the chaos stood the bureaucrat—or what had once been a bureaucrat. His once-pristine tuxedo strained against a stomach swollen to obscene proportions, the buttons popping off one by one to reveal flesh stretched translucent over whatever writhed beneath.
"Sir, you must stop!" The waiter, a young man barely out of university, reached out with the polite restraint of someone trained to handle drunk millionaires. His hand froze millimeters from the man's shoulder.
The thing that had been Chairman Wang turned.
Its jaw unhinged with a wet pop, skin tearing at the corners to reveal a maw that gaped like a shark's. The remaining teeth—flattened to nubs from years of grinding against nothing but hunger—glinted dully in the light.
"So... hungry..."
The words emerged not from a throat, but from the hollow space between its ribs, vibrating through marrow and spoiled meat.
CRUNCH.
The waiter's head disappeared between those grinding plates of bone. For one grotesque second, his body remained standing, fingers still twitching with residual propriety before collapsing in a heap of starched linen and spurting arteries.
Silence. Then—
The Deluge.
A socialite's scream shattered the pause. Champagne flutes rained down as guests became a single organism of panic. A Russian oligarch overturned a dessert table, its five-tiered chocolate fountain cascading over silk gowns worth more than the waiter's annual salary.
Through it all, the Starving Specter stood motionless, its host body quivering as it processed this new sensory input—the pounding hearts, the sweat-slicked skin, the fear hanging thick as the scent of blood.
Then its bloodshot eyes rolled upward, fixing on something beyond the ceiling.
Something pulsing with energy from the conference room.
Something... better.
Rooftops of Beihai City
Ethan moved through the night like a living shadow, his transformed legs leaving no more impression on the rooftops than a bird's wingbeat. The golden straw comprising his calves hissed against concrete, each strand vibrating with unnatural vitality.
{{Superior load distribution.}} The analytical part of his mind catalogued the advantages even as he leaped a six-meter gap between buildings. {{Tensile strength exceeds human tendon by 300%. Impact absorption eliminates microfractures. Regeneration rate... impressive.}}
Kael's death barely registered—a minor variable eliminated. The staged "Wraith attack" would keep the Bureau chasing ghosts for weeks. His fingers flexed, recalling the precise torque required to mimic a Straw Head's signature kill.
Then—
THOOM.
The rooftop trembled. Ethan pivoted mid-stride, straw legs hissing against gravel.
It stood twenty meters away—a blasphemy against biology:
Mouth: A ragged chasm stretching ear-to-ear, its edges frayed like old parchment. Strands of saliva swung pendulum-like, each droplet bursting with bacterial rainbows.
Torso: Swollen to obscene proportions, the skin stretched so thin it revealed the peristaltic pulse of organs beneath—if they could still be called organs.
Limbs: Leg muscles had torn open like overripe fruit, the fibulas beneath polished to an ivory sheen from constant friction.
"Huuuungry..."
Ethan's eyes narrowed.
"A Starving Specter."
Not a flesh-and-blood Wraith like Lady Eight Feet, but something far worse—a ghostly entity born from souls who perished in famine, now cursed to devour eternally.
The Specter lunged, its bloated body moving with terrifying elasticity. Ethan's straw legs coiled—