The surviving strangers reacted instantly.
"Eyes up," one ordered. The man in the beanie, voice calm and clipped, like calling formation was the same as breathing.
Faces lifted in perfect unison as they stepped back from the monster. Ethan stood horrified, chest tightening, but was yanked backward by another agent—a woman with sunglasses tinted dark enough to hide her eyes.
He had been dragged out of the convenience store and onto the cold asphalt street. The other three leapt out as well, stance-ready for a surprise attack.
His legs nearly gave out. Even breathing became hard.
Someone had just died in front of him.
There was blood. There was a hole in her chest.
And these people could not care less.
It sickened him.
A third agent, the one with a cigarette behind his ear, stepped forward.
"Shit," he muttered. "I told HR this Rift was wrong."
Beanie didn't look at him. "Don't get close, if that thing even touches you, it's over."
The three moved with practiced precision, each motion identical, the kind of motion that came from practicing the same formation over and over again. They positioned themselves between Ethan and the mass of fog where the Specter had vanished.
Ethan felt like he was drowning in the silence between their footsteps.
It was clear these people had seen deaths like this before—
He was the only one reacting like a normal human.
He hated that he couldn't stop shaking.
Then the fog thickened.
A ripple spread through it.
All three agents backed up and opened their palms.
Ethan blinked, confused by the gesture, but the question was quickly answered.
The air around their hands warped. Dark fog started pulling inward, bending to form a shape like filling in a mold.
Then, they coalesced, forming themselves in their owner's hands. Weapons.
Beanie now held up a large shield, the ones Ethan had imagined big medieval fantasy knights holding. While Sunglasses' turned into a black arming sword, decorated with all types of edgy accessories that made it scream "fantasy weapon."
Ethan barely had time to process any of it.
The monster reformed.
Violently, as the mist snapped into shape. The Specter hurled its entire mass toward Beanie, impact resounding across the whole street. His shield buckled immediately, the force launching him across the aisle and into a rack of canned goods.
By the time the smoke cleared, Ethan had seen the sight. The monster had already grabbed Beanie, its many arms wrapped around the man in a grotesque, almost tender embrace.
"No…NO PLEASE! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!"
CRKKKK.
His scream cut off.
There was a sharp, sickening compression, like air being crushed out of a balloon. The shield slipped from Beanie's fingers as his body went limp in the creature's arms.
Sunglasses inhaled sharply through her teeth, the first real break in her composure. Smokes swore under his breath—not a casual mutter this time, but a raw, fearful string of words that betrayed how fast the situation had collapsed.
"What the hell is going on with that Specter?!" Smokes snapped, stumbling backward as the monster lifted its many heads in eerie unison.
It flickered, limbs jittering, body jerking through the fog in a way no living thing should. Smokes froze for half a heartbeat, then conjured his own weapon, a composite bow.
"Don't—!" Sunglasses shouted.
Too late.
He attacked like someone who had forgotten every bit of training he ever had. He tried firing countless arrows into the monster, just for them all to phase past it completely.
Ethan watched, breath shallow, stomach twisting in knots.
Then he snarled through clenched teeth:
"Pierce String."
The bowstring lit up with a sharp shimmer, like a wire being superheated. A single arrow formed, denser and darker than the rest, its tip vibrating with a faint, rhythmic pulse.
Smokes let it loose.
Contrary to what Ethan thought. The arrow slammed into one of the Specter's faces, hitting with real, impossible force. Fog rippled outward like shockwaves.
The creature staggered back, limbs convulsing.
It opened its mouths, all of them, and let out a sound that didn't belong in this world. A guttural wail, not animalistic, but more of broken grief…
The cry of something mourning a child it never had.
And the creature turned all of that loss onto Smokes.
"Bryan—!" Sunglasses barked.
He didn't even turn.
The creature's limbs converged on him in a single, decisive motion. They tore through his flesh like butter, leaving behind the same hole that had horrified Ethan the first time.
Ethan bit down a cry and gritted his teeth. Not once did he ever expect any of this to happen. Did any of these people deserve to die so brutally?
The monster didn't pause, as it pivoted straight toward Sunglasses.
She stepped back, raising her arming sword with both hands, her stance tight and professional, but even from where he stood, Ethan saw it:
Her blade was shaking.
The monster lunged without warning. In his head, Ethan already knew…another carnage was about to happen.
Ethan saw it happening.
He saw the creature closing the distance in a heartbeat.
He saw Sunglasses lifting her blade, too slow, too late.
And his body moved.
A cold snap underneath his step. The world blurred, his foot seemingly dissolved into the ground.
THWOOP—
[Mist Step]
Ethan didn't know he'd activated anything. He just suddenly wasn't where he had been.
One instant, he was meters behind her—the next, he was right beside her, shoving her out of the path of the killing strike.
Sunglasses stumbled, slamming into a shelf, as the creature's large limbs slammed down on the ground, leaving behind a dent mark in the asphalt as large as a car.
Ethan blinked, dizzy.
"What—how did I—?"
Sunglasses stared at him like he had sprouted a second head.
"YOU'RE A PROXY!?"
Ethan's mouth opened, but nothing came out. His pulse thundered in his ears.
"I—I don't know what that means!" he managed, voice cracking.
Sunglasses pushed herself upright, gripping her sword with both shaking hands. Her breath hitched as she looked him over, at the black fog that suddenly surrounded him.
"You just used a soul-skill. How—"
The fog behind them boiled, cutting her off.
The Specter shifted its attention fully onto Ethan now, all its faces peeling open, jaws splitting in unnatural ways.
Sunglasses' expression twisted.
"It's marked you. Proxy signatures attract Wraiths…it's coming for you."
Ethan took a step back, almost tripping on a small pebble.
"S-Stop saying that! I'm not—whatever you think I—"
"Then where's your Mortis!?" Sunglasses snapped, panic finally breaking through her professional tone.
Ethan blinked. "My what?"
"Your soul weapon! The ones your Reaper gave to you!?" She pointed with her sword with her empty hand.
"Where is it?!"
Ethan stared at her like she was speaking another language.
"I don't have a weapon! I don't even know what that is!"
Her face drained of color.
"Then CHECK YOUR LEDGER!"
The Specter shrieked, a sound so loud that it broke all the windows in a twenty-foot radius.
Ethan fumbled mentally, calling the Ledger up out of pure desperation. The UI snapped into existence beside him, but he could only try and find what she was talking about.
[MORTIS: AVAILABLE]
[SUMMON?]
[Y/N]
Ethan's breath caught.
"…That wasn't there before."
Sunglasses' grip tightened. "Well? WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!"
The Specter reared back, every part of its body converging into a killing strike aimed directly at him.
Ethan's hand shook as he hit YES.
Then he went completely still.
The fear vanished from his face. The trembling in his hands ceased.
It was as if someone had reached inside him and gently turned a switch.
Sunglasses felt her stomach drop.
The boy standing in front of her wasn't the same one who, seconds earlier, had been stumbling and gasping in panic.
His posture had changed, upright, confident, like nothing could ever hurt him.
Dark veins of shadow threaded outward from his palm, tracing up his wrist in slow, deliberate branches, like ink bleeding through paper. Each pulse spread farther, winding around bone and muscle with a calm that felt deeply, unnaturally wrong.
The creature did not advance. It watched.
Something pressed outward from Ethan's hand.
A slender black rod slid into existence, like growing from beneath his skin, emerging from his palm in a smooth, continuous motion. Tendrils curled from it gently before settling, turning themselves into a crescent blade at the end of the pole.
A shadow-touched scythe.
Ethan's hair shifted.
Not all at once.
A single strand near his temple drained of color, turning stark white. Then another. And another. The pale hue crawled across his scalp like frost forming over a window, replacing black with a cold, ghostly sheen.
When Ethan opened his eyes, all the Specter could see was the abyss. White iris vanished until only dark remained. Then a ring of violet burst forward, glowing faintly within the dark.
Sunglasses stood frozen, breath caught, watching the transformation unfold with horrified awe.
Ethan didn't move.
The Specter recoiled a fraction, its limbs drawing in tight, like prey sensing a predator.
Then, he stretched his neck. Looking right at the Specter, he uttered:
"Rest."