The city's rain hadn't stopped since Nyarlathotep's fall. A silver curtain of water draped over the streets, washing away the traces of battle but never the unease in the air.
Xenos walked alone, coat brushing against his legs, eyes tracing the empty alleys. There was still something wrong here. Not a presence, not a shadow—something deeper. Like the city itself was holding its breath.
Then he felt it.
A heartbeat that wasn't his own.
From the corner, a man stepped out—no, not a man. His form was human only in outline. The edges of his body bent light wrong, like glass dipped in black oil. His smile was polite but hollow.
"You've been troublesome," the figure said, voice soft, too soft. "The Master noticed."
Xenos didn't stop walking.
"And the Master is?"
The man tilted his head, as if the question itself was a curiosity.
"One who sees beyond. One who hungers for the end of all patterns. Yog-Sothoth."
The name was a whisper through the rain, and for a moment the city seemed to twist. Lamps flickered. The pavement swelled like breathing flesh. Then the man stepped aside, and something vast emerged.
It wasn't a body—more a swarm of impossible geometries and eyes, each gazing in different directions, each heavy enough to make the air sag. This was only an avatar, but even this fragment felt like standing before the birth of a black hole.
The avatar moved, and reality shifted with it. Rain fell sideways. The sky turned inside out. A fight began without warning—blades of broken space slashing, claws made of light scraping against Xenos's skin.
He adapted. Always adapting.
His strikes were precise, his movements calculated, as if every second of combat had been simulated a thousand times in his head. But midway through, something happened—
The avatar stopped. Its many eyes quivered.
"...That… is not possible," it whispered in a voice older than stars.
It had felt it.
The presence sealed deep within Xenos.
Lucifer's true form.
The avatar recoiled, as if the air itself had become poison. Then, it turned to flee—warping through the edges of space.
Xenos didn't hesitate. He followed.
Dimensions tore like paper around him. Worlds blurred past—oceans of frozen lightning, mountains made of screaming statues, a void where sound had never been invented.
Finally, they stood in a place without time.
The avatar stared, its voice trembling.
"You… can travel freely… between the walls…"
Xenos stepped forward, shadows gathering around his boots.
"Run slower next time."
They clashed again.
Every blow shattered the space they stood on, folding it into nothing. But the avatar's strikes were slowing—its fear growing.
Back in the city, Micron saw the rift tearing open above. A child,mifrozen in the middle of the street, couldn't move as falling debris rained down. Micron didn't think—he just moved.
He threw himself forward, tackling the child out of the path of a collapsing wall.
The impact was brutal.
Blood streaked his lips, and he smiled through it.
"Guess I'm… still faster than death."
Then he went limp.
By the time Xenos returned, the avatar was broken—its form dissolving into dust that fell upward. But its last words remained.
"You are not… nearly strong enough… to face Him. Remember that… when He calls your name."
The dust vanished, leaving only the rain.
Hours later, the hospital smelled of antiseptic and quiet. Micron lay pale, machines humming softly beside him.
Xenos stood at the doorway, watching. He said nothing, but in his eyes, there was the weight of unspoken truths.
Outside, the city exhaled at last. The storm passed, and dawn broke in pale gold.
Xenos walked away, the mystery still gnawing at him—not the battle, not the god, but the man who had called himself the contractor.
There would be another meeting.
And when it came, the city would not survive it so easily.