The city did not sleep anymore.
Even after the void beasts were driven back and the rifts momentarily stabilized, the ruins breathed with unease. Cracked streets whispered beneath drifting ash. Half-standing buildings leaned like witnesses afraid to testify. And through it all, shadows lingered longer than they should, darker than they had any right to be.
Tharyx moved through the fractured district with quiet intent. His presence bent the darkness around him, shadows stretching instinctively to keep pace, sometimes moving a fraction of a second ahead of his steps. He no longer questioned it. The threads had become… companions of a sort dangerous ones. Curious ones.
Behind him, Zalivra stumbled over a loose stone, panting. "You know," he muttered, "most people become famous for saving lives or discovering fire. You're doing it by terrifying the concept of light."
Tharyx didn't answer. His focus was outward on the city, on the people watching from behind broken windows and collapsed doorways. Survivors had begun to emerge. Not all at once. First eyes. Then whispers. Then, courage, thinness and trembling.
They saw the aftermath before they saw him.
Void-corrupted carcasses reduced to drifting black ash. Streets cleared unnaturally clean, as if darkness itself had swept through scorch marks that weren't burns, but absences, places where light refused to exist.
And then they saw him.
A man wrapped in shadow, walking untouched through a city that devoured the careless.
The whispers spread faster than fear.
"He killed one with darkness alone."
"I saw his shadow move before he did."
"He wasn't alone. There were… more of him."
Zalivra heard that last one and visibly flinched. "No. Absolutely not. I refuse to be part of a legend that includes multiplication. I don't even like clones, and now there are more of you?"
Tharyx slowed.
He felt it again, that subtle pressure, like a thought that wasn't his own. One of the shadow threads detached briefly, stretching along a ruined wall before snapping back into place. He hadn't commanded it. He hadn't stopped it either.
Across the street, a survivor pointed with shaking hands. "There, did you see that? Another one behind him."
Another voice whispered, "No… that was his shadow."
But it hadn't behaved like a shadow should.
It had moved with intent.
The rumors did not stay contained.
By nightfall, fractured signals and whispered messengers carried the story beyond the ruined district. To scavenger camps. To hidden enclaves. To places where people didn't believe in coincidence anymore.
A shadowed man.
Void beasts are dying faster than they can adapt.
Darkness that answered him.
In a candlelit chamber miles away, a hooded figure from the Obscure Watchers lowered a listening device, fingers tightening.
"Confirmation?" they asked.
The reply came flat. "Multiple eyewitness accounts. Survivors claim assistance from shadow duplicates during combat."
Silence followed.
Then, softly: "Prepare the observers. If shadows are acting independently… this is no longer a localized anomaly."
Back in the ruins, Tharyx stopped atop a collapsed overpass overlooking the city. From there, the devastation spread endlessly, with rifts pulsing faintly, shadows moving where no light source justified them.
His threads fanned outward, mapping terrain, sensing movement. One shadow extended farther than the rest, solidifying just enough to resemble a second silhouette beside him.
Zalivra stared at it.
Slowly.
Carefully.
"…I'm going to say this very calmly," he said. "There are two of you right now."
The shadow turned its head.
Not toward Zalivra.
Toward Tharyx.
For a single breath, Tharyx felt something brush against his thoughts—not hostile, not obedient. Evaluating.
Then the shadow dissolved back into the mass.
SYSTEM MESSAGE:
[Rumor Propagation Detected.]
[Threat Escalation Probability: Increasing.]
[Note: Shadow Projection Instability… or Evolution.]
Tharyx exhaled slowly.
"So they've noticed," he murmured.
Zalivra swallowed. "They?"
Before Tharyx could answer, the shadows around them rippled violently. Not in response to danger but to attention. Something unseen had shifted, like eyes turning toward a spotlight.
From the far edge of the city, a signal flare ignited blue, then purple, marking territory, calling allies.
A faction had arrived.
And somewhere within the darkness, multiple shadows moved in ways that no longer matched his own.
Tharyx's pulse quickened not with fear, but with anticipation.
If the world was going to whisper his name…
Then it would learn what it listened to.