Note: might include spoilers
They called the first one an angel. That was before it tore through four city blocks and left a bus full of corpses with their eyes turned white and their hearts still beating.
Typically, when something kills a hundred people in one night, everyone looks for a reason; terrorism, chemicals, divine punishment, whatever fits their brand of denial. However, none of that explained why every victim looked like their life had been vacuumed out of them.
It took three months of chaos before someone gave them a name that stuck.
EIDOLONS.
No one knows where they came from. Some people think they've always been here, blending in, waiting. Others say they're what's left when a soul goes so rotten that even Hell doesn't want it. Either way, they look human... until they don't.
They drain what keeps you alive; your life force, soul, whatever you want to call it, and leave you looking like a bad wax sculpture of yourself. That's why when one shows up, you don't run for your life, you run with what's left of it.
They're faster, stronger, and some are actually smarter than us. The higher the Rank, the more their minds evolve and the less they resemble anything remotely human.
E-Rank are animals. Pure instinct, no thought.
D through B-Rank can coordinate. They hunt in groups and actually plan ahead.
A-Rank can fake emotions. Some even blend in for years before anyone notices.
S-Rank are natural disasters with a face.
And SS-Rank? Those are the bedtime stories soldiers tell each other before missions they know they won't come back from.
When an Eidolon attacks you, you don't necessarily die right away. Sometimes, you change.
That's how Malforms happen.
MALFORMS.
Malforms are the mistake that refuses to finish dying.
They are people whose life force was being ripped out of them when something, usually an Eidolon, got interrupted. However, if that interruption happens and the person survives, they do not come back whole. Instead, they wake up half-human and half-Eidolon.
Even though they keep most of their mind, their body can match the speed and strength of the things that nearly killed them. Whether they stay sane depends on how much of the corruption their body can handle and how often they can afford suppressants. And since those things cost more than rent, most Malforms just pretend to be normal until they can't anymore.
Because the corruption that touched them is a fragment of an Eidolon, the higher the Rank of the Eidolon that turned you, the stronger and faster you become. As you climb from E up toward A, your reflexes, regeneration, and perception increase, while your risk of overload rises with it. When overload happens, you stop being a Malform and become a full Eidolon, and that change is irreversible.
However, there is a ceiling to what a body can survive. S and SS-Rank Eidolons cannot create Malforms at all because their energy is too much for any human body to contain. Instead of turning you, they simply unalive you on contact. That is why encounters with anything above A-Rank are considered almost zero-survival scenarios.
Also why Malforms live with suppressants if they can afford them, and why most of them hide among normal humans until the infection eats through whatever is left of their sanity.
When the infection gets too strong, they snap. They lose control, drain someone dry, and the government adds another line to the casualty list.
Naturally, when that started happening too often, the higher-ups needed a new plan. Hiding the truth wasn't working. So, they built a solution that sounded noble on paper.
THE HALO DIVISION.
A "special operations" task force made up of Malforms trained to hunt Eidolons, and occasionally, their own kind. They work alongside human soldiers, even though most people wouldn't sit next to them on a bus. They're not respected, not trusted, and definitely not welcomed. The government calls them assets, while civilians call them monsters.
Every city has a branch and every branch loses people weekly. They call it attrition, because "suicide mission" doesn't look as good on reports.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world keeps pretending everything's fine. People go to work, watch the news, and hope they never see one of those things up close.
Because when they do, there's no mistaking it. An Eidolon doesn't eat you. It unmakes you.
And if the day ever comes when they outnumber us, the only ones left fighting won't be the heroes. It'll be the monsters who learned to live with what they are.