JAY LUCAS
I stepped forward.
I wanted him dead.
No matter how it was achieved, I didn't care.
At the far end of the shop, two Awakeners were locked in brutal clash- tearing each other apart, both bleeding profusely, but the hunter was in far worse condition- blood pouring from both sides of his ribs. They crashed into each other; the hunter's movement became more desperate and animal. He charged into a kick, the Robber connected smartly, pushing his lower body back as his right leg lunged the wounded Hunter with savage force, sending him crashing into the wall- it didn't just move the man, it erased the distance between him and the wall. The Hunter slumped against the crater his body had carved into the concrete, the Robber unleashed a barrage of terrifying blast—each impact generating
shockwaves that rippled through the air, shattering display cases and sending
glass shards raining down like crystalline shrapnel.
The shockwaves sent customers scrambling in terror. A mother threw herself across her toddler and dove behind an overturned table. An old man stood still while the coffee cup he'd been planned to buy slipping from trembling fingers and
shattered against the tile at his feet. The sound lost beneath everything louder. As the dust and debris finally settled, the Robber stepped back. The sight of the dead Hunter was horror—his chest caved in, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, with blood trailing them down, he had stopped being a person in any meaningful sense. Fear rooted deep
into the hearts of the un-awakened civilians.
But something else had happened.
The alarm screamed. The sound was mechanical and sharp, circling through the stunned air of the shop. It had been triggered. The shrill, mechanical wail cut through the chaos, echoing off the blood-splattered walls.
"Bastard!" the surviving Awakened cursed.
Perhaps it was a final act of defiance from the dying Hunter, a last-ditch effort to redirect one of the blasts toward the alarm with his final breath. Or perhaps it was
simply luck. No one would ever truly know.
But to me, none of that mattered.
The alarm was enough of a distraction to draw the second Robber's attention away, away from the un-awakened boy standing in the shadows- watching, waiting, I posed no
threat to him he might have thought or it had never even crossed his mind that
I was still standing there.
"Ahgggh!!... What now?" his mind shaken in fear and turmoil, his jaw tightened.
He spun toward the alarm with a worried look etched on his face. His guard dropped for a second, maybe less, his gaze was elsewhere.
That was all I needed.
That was my opening door and I walked toward it, but then something impossible happened, I wasn't sure of it at first—an interface materialized in front of me, translucent and glowing with an otherworldly black light. It anchored itself to nothing in the air like a phantom, visible only to me. The chaos around it dim, sounds muffling as if I'd been submerged underwater.
'What's… this?...'
It displayed immediately: Making a sound that folded-inward, muffled, distant, like the world beyond a windowpane
[You have met the requirement: Killing Intent]
[Inheritance Core Artifact: Synchronize]
[Type: System]
[Rank: ???]
[Name: ???]
'What… the heck?'
I stopped in shock. My heart hammered against my ribs—not from fear, but from something else, something hungrier.
The interface shifted, changing its display:
[You have
received rewards prior to your achievement:]
[Awakening of an Elemental Core — Dark Elemental]
[Unseen Movement — Unlocked]
Something cold moved through my chest, like liquid shadow pouring into an empty vessel. I could feel it now—it was not the cold of pain or fear either it was something
else. The cold of depth, of still water with no visible bottom. Something settled into my hallow core. Dark, patient and. Alive. It whispered promises without words, Power. Control, the ability to take what I wanted and never be stopped. It didn't need to speak, the pressure I felt was the only communication.
My face, which had been locked in a cold, emotionless mask, finally cracked.
Possibilities unfolded before me, stretched far beyond anything an un-awakened person could comprehend. This wasn't just power—it was *my* power. Not borrowed. Not trained for. Not earned through years of grinding in the Labyrinth like those fools bleeding out on the floor. Mine.
"System… ha?"
I smiled. The expression felt strange on my face, like wearing a mask that had always
belonged there.
'This is mine, a power of my own. And now...'
"Hey… you."
The Robber turned toward me. He saw the boy he had dismissed- the expressionless child standing motionless in the wreckage. But the boy was grinning now, it felt weird.
Jay saw the confusion flicker across his face. Then fear.
'What the hell is he smiling at?'
For a moment… his eyes widened in terror, he thought he glimpsed at a horrendous
monster, born from pure malice, something that belonged in the deepest floors of the Labyrinth—something that wore a boy's proportion, something that crawled up to inhabit the frame of a child. It had never been human, but all of that was his own madness flaring on, and on. His thoughts lost sequence. 'No... Argh— I think I'm upside down. How?Why? I can't really remember.'
But he couldn't see that sinister grin anymore. It was gone, everything was.
It had all become a blur.
I didn't feel myself move.
I hadn't moved an inch from where I stood—at least, that's what the cameras would show. The witnesses, when they were questioned later, would describe the boy who stood perfectly still during the entire ordeal, an un-awakened boy who never left his spot, who just watched helpless, who couldn't possibly have done anything.
"Helpless." The word rolled on his mind as he logs about his current achievement. 'Ha… ha, helpless? No.'
Blood reached the ceiling before gravity remembered its obligation and drew it back
down. The sound the head made when it stopped rolling was quiet. His melon-like
head came to rest against my shoe, eyes dilated. I stared, then nudged it aside
with my toe, letting it roll behind a toppled shelf where the shadows were thickest.
A woman's voice broke silence, in deafening scream.
The other Awakened—the Robber who had just killed the Hunter—turned in shock to see his companion in a dilapidated, headless state. Slowly, he looked up to see what he shouldn't have seen. Or perhaps, something he should have never made eye
contact with.
Jayson Lucas.
His eyes were gruesome and cold, devoid of any emotion at all. For someone to kill—he
should have felt something, even a little. A glimmer of expression: fear, anger, horror, shock, relief, emotional shutdown, excitement. Something.
But this was no emotionless child. For amidst his cold, dead eyes, the downward curve of his lips sent chills spiraling down the surviving Awakener's spine. It was a
nightmarish grin—the kind that belonged to something that had transcended humanity.
Something that had never been human to begin with, no one else seemed to notice. Jenna was too far away, her view blocked by the collapsed shelving unit. Hal was still struggling to catch his breath, bent double with his hands on his knees. The rest of the civilians were either panicking or had already passed out from the commotion.
He yelled wildly- howling and bellowing, he let out a ferocious roar. His head was a mess
as he pant and gasp, his chest heaving violently.
Shadows shifted at the edges of the shop. A team of Hunters dispatched to handle the alarm burst through the entrance, weapons drawn and auras flaring—crimson, gold and electric blue. They pinned the surviving Awakened to the ground, who cried out with a twisted mixture of relief and terror in his eyes.
"Mon... monster. Mon... Monster ARGHHH!!"
He cried looking at Jay.
He tilted his head, studying him the way a scientist might study a bug pinned to a board. 'He broke so easily,' He murmured.
Then He smiled again—small, polite, the smile of a good son. "Umm... I made a grown man cry."
"Jay!!" Jenna called out to him.
He twitched. The darkness in his chest recoiled, folding itself into a tight knot,
waiting. He turned to look at his mother.
Despite bleeding from multiple wounds—her arm hanging at a wrong angle, a gash across her forehead dripping into her eyes—she ran toward him with desperate speed.
---
JENNA LUCAS
A man had just died right in front of my innocent child.
Jay—my Jay, who still slept with the stuffed rabbit bought for him when he was four, who'd never even been in a fistfight—had just witness someone's head get separated
from their body.
But how had it happened?
I scanned the floor, my vision swimming, blood everywhere, bodies and broken glass
glittering like stars in the wreckage. But I couldn't see the other Awakened, the one who'd been standing near Jay just moments ago. I couldn't see...
'Jay! I need to reach him!'
"Jay!!" I called out; mustering every ounce of strength I had left. My broken arm screamed in protest as I pushed myself forward, but I didn't care. I ran toward him, not knowing what had happened, not caring about the pain radiating from my wounds or the blood slicking my shoes.
"It's okay! Mom is here now!"
I squeezed Jay tightly against my chest, my mind racing through the horrendous ways this already dire situation could have played out. He was small in my arms, so warm, so *still*. I felt his heartbeat against my own—steady, calm, completely unfazed.
That terrified me more than the blood.
I saw that the other Awakened—the Robber—was being restrained and taken away.
I held him tighter.
I helped Hal to his feet, and together we guided the other shaken victims out of the
shop. The area would soon become a restricted zone, cordoned off due to the two
deaths that had taken place within its walls. Red tape and Hunter barricades would go up by morning. The un-awakened would be questioned, memories fuzzy and fragmented. The Awakened would file reports that would be buried in bureaucracy.
No one would look too closely at the un-awakened boy who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We reached Hal's house after what felt like an eternity. The walk was a blur of streetlights and sirens and the copper taste of blood in my mouth. During the entire journey, Jay hadn't flinched or flickered. He hadn't asked if I was okay. He hadn't cried. He hadn't said a single word.
For a boy his age, that was... unsettling.
"Jay, are you okay?"
He nodded silently. His paled white pupils caught the moonlight as he looked up at me,
and for a fraction of a second, I thought I saw something move in their depths—something dark.
I blinked. It was gone.
"We'll be staying at Grandpa's for the night."
We entered the old house, its familiar creaking floorboards offering a small comfort in the chaos. The smell of cedar and old books enveloped us, unchanged since my childhood. I set Hal down on the worn couch, its springs groaning in protest.
He was still in shock, twitching as he adjusted his glasses with trembling fingers.
"I guess you didn't have any plans of leaving the shop early today, did you?"
I tried to lighten the mood, forcing a weak smile that felt like a crack in my face.
Silence answered me.
Hal just stared at his hands. They were still shaking.
I sighed, the weight of the evening pressing down on my shoulders like a physical force.
"Jay, go take your bath."
He nodded again and walked toward the stairs without a word. I watched him go, his small form swallowed by the shadows of the hallway. Something cold settled in my stomach—a mother's intuition, screaming that something was wrong.
I went to the shelf and grabbed the med kit. Hal, though still shaken, helped me treat my
wounds with trembling hands. We worked in silence; the unspoken horror of what we'd witnessed hanging thick in the air between us like smoke.
"Jenna…" Hal said quietly, not looking at me.
He smiled.
My hands stilled over the bandage I was wrapping around my arm.
"When that man's head..." Hal's voice cracked.
He couldn't continue.
Moments later, I climbed the rickety stairs to check on Jay. 'He should have been done
with his bath by now.' The old wood announcing every step.
I moved past the bathroom and headed towards a room, down the short hall, and pushed open the bedroom door.
What I saw on the other side drove the air right out of my lungs. It didn't make sense.
Horror was the wrong word for what moved through me. What I felt was worse that fear, it
was as though a nightmare had clawed its way into reality- 'it's, it's…'