Six years ago, in a certain desolate stretch of Berlin's outskirts, the sky hung low and black, thick clouds pressing down over the land like a lid sealed shut, pouring rain in relentless, heavy sheets that showed no sign of ever thinning. The two youths stood motionless in the middle of it, faces turned neither up nor away, simply blank, absorbing the downpour without a flinch. The musky, choking smell of wet soil clawed into their throats with every breath, thick and inescapable, mingling with something far worse underneath it.
They were the only two living things left for miles.
Around them, corpses stretched out in every direction, an unbroken field of the dead. Men. Women. The elderly, frail bodies crumpled where they'd fallen. Children, small and still, some curled inward as if they'd tried to make themselves smaller at the very end. The rain fell on all of them equally, indifferent, washing rivers of diluted blood into the mud until the ground itself had turned the color of rust, the metallic reek of it soaked so deeply into the soil that the rain could never fully rinse it clean.
One of the youths had purple hair, a streak of white bleeding through the right side of his bangs. His eyes, usually bright and restless, sat dull and hollow now, as though whatever light normally lived behind them had been poured out along with everything else that had happened here. This was Max, eighteen years old, still taller and leaner than most boys his age, not yet grown into the bulk he'd carry later in life. He stood rigid, shoulders locked, every muscle in his body still faintly braced, as though some part of him hadn't yet accepted that there was nothing left to fight.
His gaze drifted slowly across the endless field of bodies, lingering nowhere in particular, moving without purpose, simply cataloguing the scope of what surrounded him. After a long, heavy silence, he finally turned his head toward the other youth.
They had both just turned eighteen. They had both just finished erasing an entire village from the earth.
The young Eric sat atop a small, uneven mound formed from the dead, hands loosely clasped between his knees, staring down at the mud without seeing it, black eyes empty, his face carved from something colder than stone. He didn't move when Max's gaze found him. He barely seemed to be breathing.
Both of them wore bodysuits, once purple and pink, now torn and filthy, soaked through and clinging to their skin, stained in patches too dark to be simply rain.
Max's mouth opened slowly, and when his voice finally emerged, it came out rough and hoarse, cracked at the edges, like something unused for far too long.
"Are these the last of them?" His eyes swept the field once more. "Did anyone get away?"
Young Eric lifted his gaze at that, slow and heavy, and something small flickered behind the emptiness there the moment his eyes landed on Max, a faint spark, barely anything, but enough to pull him partway back from wherever his mind had drifted. His shoulders eased, fractionally.
"Yes," he said, voice flat, quiet beneath the rain. "These were the last. Everyone tied to that organization is gone now."
His gaze drifted briefly to a small boy's body a few feet away, eyes still wide open, mouth frozen mid-scream, rain collecting in the shallow hollows of his face.
Eric exhaled slowly, a long, heavy breath, and pushed himself up off the mound of corpses, walking toward Max with unhurried, measured steps, boots sinking slightly into the mud with each one.
"It's a shame all of them had to die," he said, tone carrying no real weight of guilt behind the words, more resignation than remorse. "But we couldn't risk anyone slipping through, not after everything we'd already done. They were just caught in it. Wrong place. Wrong people to know."
Max gave a small, slow nod, saying nothing.
Ever since the incident during his advancement to Lysi Nova back in Shirakawa-go, Eric had grown colder by degrees, more distrustful with every month that passed. Once he'd recovered enough, once he'd helped push Max through his own advancement as well, the two of them had set out with quiet, methodical purpose, tracking down every last member of the organization that had wronged them, and then, inevitably, everyone those members had ever known. This village had been the final thread of that unraveling.
Eric stopped beside Max and tilted his head back, looking up.
Rain fell directly into his open eyes, and he didn't blink against it, didn't flinch, simply let it come. He lifted his right hand slowly, palm turned upward toward the black clouds above, and watched as water gathered there, pooling shallow in the center of his palm, filling slowly until it could hold no more and finally spilled over the edges, thin rivulets running down his wrist, past his elbow, dripping steadily off him and vanishing into the mud below, swallowed by everything already soaking the ground beneath their feet.
He watched it fall for a long moment, expression unreadable, something distant and unfocused behind his eyes.
"You know," he said quietly, still watching the water run from his hand, "I've realized something."
Eric let the rain fall directly into his open eyes without so much as a blink, the water tracing thin, cold lines down past his temples and into his hair. He clasped his hands loosely behind his back, posture relaxed in a way that felt entirely wrong given everything scattered around them, and spoke in a voice so low and even it barely carried over the sound of the downpour.
"What have you realized?" Max asked, and there was something careful in the question, like he already half-expected the answer to unsettle him.
Eric was quiet for a moment, still watching the clouds.
"Through these last two years," he said slowly, "killing, slaughtering, running, hiding, escaping, being chased down and having to turn around and do it all again... I've come to understand a few things clearly." He paused, tongue running briefly over his lower lip, tasting rain. "First. As long as you have strength, it doesn't matter what you do. Nobody can touch you for it. Nobody can hold you accountable. Strength simply erases the question of consequence."
He said it plainly, without any particular weight behind it, the way someone might state that water was wet.
"Second. You can't actually trust anyone in this world. Not really. Not fully." His gaze drifted sideways toward Max, something almost gentle passing over his face for just a moment. "Except you. You're the only person left I can be weak in front of. Everyone else, I've learned, eventually becomes a liability, or a stranger wearing a familiar face."
Max didn't respond to that, though something in his jaw tightened slightly.
"Third." Eric's voice dropped even lower, almost thoughtful, almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. "Life is cheap. Cheaper than people like to believe, growing up being told otherwise. As long as you're weak, you get trampled. That's simply how the ground beneath everyone's feet is built. We just usually don't get to see it laid out quite this clearly."
He lowered his gaze from the sky at last, looking out over the field of bodies stretching around them with the same mild, unbothered expression he might have worn looking out over any ordinary landscape.
A small, easy smile spread across Max's face at that, his eyes catching a flicker of something bright and unbothered, almost fond, entirely at odds with the corpses cooling in the mud around his boots.
"Well," Max said, rocking back slightly on his heels. "What do you want to do now, then?"
Eric let out a soft, quiet laugh, barely more than an exhale, and finally let his hands fall from behind his back, wiping the rain from his face with the back of one wrist, an oddly domestic little gesture in the middle of all this ruin.
"Recuperate," he said simply. "Find some anchors, work through the steps of the Lysi Nova control method properly this time. And then, I think... live quietly. For as long as the world lets us. Somewhere far away from all this."
He said it the way someone might describe modest, ordinary plans for the weekend, and somewhere behind them, the rain kept falling steadily over everyone who would never get the chance to make plans again.
...
Back in the present, New Dawn High School emptied in its usual chaotic rush, students pouring through the front gate in loud, overlapping clusters, already halfway into plans for the evening ahead.
Adrian moved through the crowd quietly, Mr. Clown drifting along beside him, unseen and unnoticed by everyone else around them.
Adrian had just opened his mouth to say something, some passing comment about the day, when it hit him.
His chest seized without warning, a sharp, invasive pressure clamping down hard around his lungs, and his hand flew up to grip the front of his shirt as his breath caught somewhere in his throat and refused to move. His eyes went wide, darting instinctively toward the far side of the schoolyard, toward the street beyond it, toward some direction he couldn't have named if asked, some pull he had no control over at all.
"H-huh—" He staggered half a step, breath coming in short, uneven pulls now, each one shallower than the last. "What... what is this?"
Even with everything he still didn't understand about being an Aura user, some deep, instinctive part of him recognized immediately that this wasn't ordinary. This wasn't nerves, or hunger, or the low hum of everyday anxiety he sometimes carried around without noticing. This felt like something had physically torn loose somewhere just outside his own body.
Mr. Clown stopped mid-step, turning back sharply, his usual easy grin faltering into something more alert.
"Adrian?" His voice sharpened slightly. "What's wrong?"
Adrian couldn't answer right away. His whole body had gone rigid, gaze locked in that same fixed direction, jaw working uselessly for a few seconds before any real words managed to form. His breathing grew louder, ragged, audible even over the noise of the crowd still filtering past them, oblivious.
"S-something," he finally managed, voice cracking, hoarse and thin. "T-this premonition. Something happened. I don't— I can't—"
Mr. Clown crossed the distance between them quickly, closing his gloved hand firmly around Adrian's shoulder, steadying him.
"Breathe," he said, tone dropping into something quieter, more careful than his usual theatrical register. "Slowly. In through your nose. You're not in any danger right now, understand? Just breathe."
Adrian tried, chest heaving unevenly as he forced air in and out, his gaze still locked on that same fixed point somewhere beyond the school gates, somewhere he couldn't stop staring toward no matter how hard he tried to look away.
"Can you tell me what it feels like?" Mr. Clown asked gently, once Adrian's breathing had eased just slightly. "Anything you can put words to. It'll help."
Adrian swallowed hard, throat tight, eyes still glassy and unfocused. "It's like..." He struggled for a moment, hands trembling at his sides. "It's like waking up and finding someone in your family just... gone... with no explanation. They are just... gone. That kind of shock, that confusion, that fear all hitting you at once." His voice dropped lower, shakier. "Or like everyone you know is tied to you by these threads, and one of them just... snapped. And you don't know why. You don't know who. You know something's wrong."
Something flickered behind Mr. Clown's painted expression at that description, gone almost as quickly as it appeared, replaced instantly by a carefully arranged calm.
"Okay," he said softly, giving Adrian's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Okay. It's alright." He crouched slightly, meeting Adrian's eyes directly, keeping his tone steady, deliberately soothing. "Listen to me. Whatever it is, we don't know anything for certain yet, and panicking over half a feeling isn't going to help anyone. Let's get you home first. Make sure your sister's safe. That's what matters most right now, isn't it?"
Adrian's eyes snapped fully into focus at the mention of Lily, some fierce, immediate spike of protective fear cutting straight through the fog of the premonition. He nodded fast, jerky, already pulling free of Mr. Clown's grip.
"Right. Yeah. I need to— I have to go."
He took off at a dead sprint before Mr. Clown could say anything else, weaving through the last stragglers still filtering out of the gate, his shirt still clutched tight in one fist as he ran.
Mr. Clown watched him go, the forced calm slipping slowly from his own expression the moment Adrian was far enough away not to notice.
He let out a long, quiet sigh, gloved hand dropping back to his side.
I hope, he thought, gaze drifting briefly, almost involuntarily, toward the direction Adrian had been staring, that he never finds out what actually happened to that girlfriend of his.
He turned and started walking the opposite way, unhurried, hands slipping into his pockets.
Not that it's any of my concern, really. That's the third one's mess to clean up. His orders. His responsibility.
...
In the narrow, dark alley, the world seemed to have shrunk down to just the small space between Eric and Voyage and the thing lying between them.
Marie's headless body lay sprawled across the wet pavement, unmoving, her neck a ragged, open wound where blood still pulsed weakly outward in slow, dying rhythms, each pulse a little fainter than the last, until it finally stopped altogether, leaving only a wide, dark pool spreading beneath her, soaking through the white and blue fabric of her school uniform until barely any of the original color remained visible at all. The smell hit the alley in full force now, thick, coppery, faintly sweet in a way that turned the stomach precisely because it wasn't unpleasant enough on its own to explain what it actually was.
Eric stood perfectly still, watching, his expression carefully arranged into something unreadable.
No wonder Voyage chose her, he thought distantly, gaze drifting over the body with clinical detachment, finally realizing why Voyage chose her as the primary target.
A girl with the aptitude to become an Aura user eventually. Her body would have carried more potential than an ordinary child's, more resources for something like Voyage to draw on. Add the boost he gets from consuming people from the world he was reborn into, and she was practically ideal.
He let the thought settle, unbothered, though something distant and small in the back of his mind noted, almost against his will, that she had been alive only minutes ago. Laughing, probably. Walking home. A bright, ordinary flicker of a life that had simply, quietly, gone out.
He pushed the thought aside.
Voyage stirred in the stroller, small limbs shifting, and slowly sat himself upright. He climbed down with tiny, deliberate steps, each one carrying that same absurd, unsettling cuteness that had fooled an entire hospital full of nurses only hours earlier. But his eyes told a different story now, black and sharp, gleaming with something hungry and entirely without innocence.
He spat the pacifier from his mouth as it landed in the blood with a small, wet plop and sank halfway beneath the surface.
Voyage walked the last few steps and lowered himself directly into the pool surrounding Marie's body, sitting cross-legged in it the way a toddler might sit in a puddle after rain, utterly unconcerned as the crimson soaked instantly through his soft yellow clothing, staining it dark from the waist down within seconds.
"Tch," he muttered, glancing at the blood already thinning and cooling around him, some of it lost to the cracks in the pavement. "So much wasted already." A small, satisfied smile tugged at his lips despite the complaint. "No matter. I'll savor what's left properly."
He leaned forward.
His small mouth opened wide, jaw stretching further than a body that size should have allowed, revealing pale, toothless gums, and he pressed his face directly against the ragged wound where Marie's head had once been, where bone and shattered skull fragments still jutted up from the collapsed ruin of her neck.
The sound that followed filled the alley.
A wet, rhythmic pulling, thick and obscene, blood surging up into his small mouth in slow, greedy draws, his throat working visibly with each swallow, some of it escaping the corners of his lips regardless, running in thin rivulets down his chin, his neck, pooling further into the ruined collar of his shirt. His whole face had become smeared crimson within moments, blood catching in his soft baby hair, clinging in beads along his lashes.
Eric's jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly.
He didn't look away. He'd trained himself long ago not to look away from things like this, had built an entire wall of composure specifically for moments exactly like this one. But something in the sound, wet, rhythmic, endlessly patient, dragged uncomfortably at something buried deep beneath that wall, some small, distant part of him that still remembered what it felt like the very first time he'd witnessed something this deliberately, intimately grotesque.
He kept his expression flat anyway. There was no use in showing weakness here, not in front of Voyage, not over something he had, after all, ordered done himself.
Voyage drank on, unhurried, thoroughly absorbed in the process, his tiny hands braced against the pavement on either side of the wound to keep himself steady as he fed. The sound never let up, wet and steady, filling every corner of the narrow alley, echoing faintly off the brick walls pressing close on either side.
Finally, after what felt like several long minutes, he pulled back.
Pop.
The sound was small, almost delicate, absurdly so given everything surrounding it, a simple, wet release of suction as his mouth finally detached from the wound.
Eric's eye twitched, just barely, some small, involuntary flicker of reaction crossing his face at that particular sound before he smoothed it away again just as quickly.
Voyage sat back on his heels, blood dripping steadily from his chin, his cheeks, the tip of his nose, painting nearly his entire small face crimson. A wide, deeply satisfied smile spread slowly across his blood-slicked features, genuine contentment shining clearly in his black eyes, the exact expression of a child who had just finished his favorite meal.
His body began to change almost immediately.
Small, sharp points pushed up through his gums, first one, then several more in quick succession, thin white teeth breaking through soft pink flesh with tiny, wet clicking sounds. His frame swelled outward, bones lengthening beneath his skin in visible, uneven surges, joints popping softly as his small limbs stretched to accommodate the growth. Within moments, the infant who had first sat down in the blood was gone, replaced by something closer to a one-year-old, chubby-fisted and unsteady, but with a mind far older and far hungrier behind his eyes.
He clapped his blood-smeared hands as he started to laugh like an adorable baby, almost giggling, forming a deep contrast with the quiet, gruesome scene in front of him.
He stared at the corpse, his ancient, unblinking eyes tracking the final, dying twitches of her nerves. Lunging forward with a sudden, fluid violence that defied his soft physique, his plump, dimpled hands slapped wetly against Marie's open chest cavity. He plunged his tiny fingers directly down her severed esophagus, hooking the wet lining and stretching the muscular tube wide. The tissue was still warm, shivering with residual, autonomic spasms—the futile muscle memory of a body trying to swallow its own blood. A grotesque, knowing smile spread across his smooth, infant face as he leaned closer, fascinated by the dying vibrations pulsing against his fingertips.
He soon let out his Aura and crystallized it around his hands as he started to tear her esophagus in chunks before putting them in his mouth, teeth finding purchase against torn flesh for the first time. The sound changed now, wetter, thicker, tearing rather than sucking, and Voyage made a low, pleased sound in his throat with every mouthful, chewing with clear, unhurried satisfaction before swallowing.
For the segments of her esophagus he couldn't easily tear away, his method turned meticulous, mirroring someone picking the tight, sweet meat from a crab's claw. He pinned the fibrous tube down with one chubby knee, using his crystallized fingers like nutcrackers to pinch and snap the tough outer layers of tissue. Once the outer cartilage cracked open, he dug his tiny, sharpened nails into the narrow crevices, scraping and teasing out the stubborn ribbons of flesh buried inside. He stuffed the shredded chunks into his mouth, his teeth finally finding purchase against the raw meat. The sound changed instantly—turning into a wet, thick, rhythmic tearing that replaced the soft sucking noises from before. A low, rumbling sound of deep satisfaction vibrated in Voyage's throat with every mouthful. He chewed with an unhurried, epicurean indulgence, savoring the copper warmth before slowly swallowing.
"Good," he mumbled around a full mouth, barely intelligible. "Good, good."
Eric's stomach turned, faint and distant, a reaction he refused to let surface any further than the pit of his gut.
Voyage paused, sitting back slightly, blood-soaked and thoughtful. "Still not enough," he murmured, more to himself than to Eric. "Never quite enough from meat alone."
More of his crimson Aura rose from his small shoulders, fine black particles scattered through it like drifting embers, and sank directly into what remained of Marie's body. Under its influence, her blood began to change, thinning, lightening, shifting from deep red toward a pale, watery yellow, the smell of iron giving way to something warmer, blander, unsettlingly close to nothing at all.
The amniotic fluid and blood's mixture pooled thick around Voyage's small knees, and he lowered himself directly into it, humming with open contentment as it soaked through what little remained of his ruined clothing. He cupped some in both hands and drank, tilting his head back, throat working steadily.
"Salty," he said afterward, licking his lips slowly. "But sweet too. Interesting."
The transformation accelerated visibly now. Fine hair sprouted across his scalp in a slow, creeping wave. His eyes, previously huge and round, narrowed and settled into more proportionate features. His height stretched upward in small, sudden increments, his soft baby fat melting away from his face and limbs as his arms and legs lengthened, slimming, gaining the first hints of real muscle beneath smooth, unmarked skin.
By the time he stopped feeding, he looked to be seven years old, blood-soaked, calm, and deeply satisfied.
Eric remained where he stood, expression schooled into careful blankness, watching the entire transformation unfold without moving a muscle. He'd witnessed cruelty in more forms than he cared to count over the years, and had long since built the necessary distance required to observe something like this without visibly reacting.
That didn't mean it cost him nothing.
He tilted his head back briefly, gaze drifting up toward the thin strip of sky visible between the buildings on either side of the alley, and let old memories surface uninvited: rain-soaked fields, a mound of bodies, Max's dull, exhausted eyes staring back at him across a battlefield of their own making.
The world has always worked this way, he thought, watching without watching. I only stopped pretending otherwise a long time ago.
The path of an Aura user is built on consumption, Eric thought, watching the last of the transformation settle over Voyage's borrowed body. Every step forward costs something taken from somewhere else. Even if every pathway only ever produces a limited number of users, can the world's resources really stretch far enough to satisfy all of them? And even if they somehow could... would greed ever let them stay satisfied for long?
He already knew the answer. He'd known it for years now, had watched it prove itself over and over, in Berlin, in Moscow, in every quiet, brutal transaction he'd ever taken part in since.
Most people on this earth don't even know we exist. They walk past us every day, brush shoulders with things they can't perceive, live their whole lives inside a truth smaller than the real one. And in that blindness, the weak get consumed by the strong without ever understanding why. Exactly like her.
His gaze dropped to what remained of Marie, and something in his chest tightened, unwelcome and immediate. He tried to smooth it away the way he always did, and found, uncomfortably, that it didn't smooth as easily this time.
Did she want this?
He already knew the answer to that too, and hated how obvious it was. He felt almost sick asking this question.
Of course she didn't. She wanted to wake up tomorrow. She wanted whatever crush she was nursing to finally notice her. She wanted, someday, a husband, children, a whole ordinary, unremarkable life stretched out in front of her the way every young person assumes theirs will be. She wanted to live. That was never in question.
Did I want her dead? Did Voyage carry any real hatred for her?
No. Neither of them had. There'd been no anger in it, no personal grievance, nothing that could even generously be called malice. That was, Eric thought, somehow the worst part of all of it. It would have been simpler if there'd been hatred involved. Hatred, at least, gave death some shape, some reason a person could point to and say, there, that's why. This had none of that. This had only calculation.
For me, this secures cooperation with Voyage, cooperation with Divine Karma, and contribution points I need. For him, it's simply fuel, a rung on a ladder he's been climbing long before I was born.
She was never the point. She was only ever the cost.
He felt his jaw tighten, some old, buried part of himself pushing up against the calm he'd built so carefully over the years, and for one uncomfortable moment he let himself actually feel the full weight of that thought instead of stepping past it the way he usually did.
How many people have I already turned into a cost? How many will there still be before whatever I'm building is finally worth what it took to build it?
He didn't have an answer. He wasn't sure he wanted one.
Morality slowly erodes, he thought instead, forcing his mind back onto steadier, more familiar ground. Sympathy for the weak erodes faster than almost anything else in this life. Even the gentlest person alive can only hold onto their principles for so long before the world grinds them down to something smaller, harder, more useful.
It's a strange kind of joke when you actually sit with it. Every child gets raised on the same lessons. Be kind. Be good. Share what you have. And then that same child grows up and discovers, usually the hard way, that none of those lessons ever once made anyone stronger. If anything, they're liabilities, weights tied to your ankles while everyone else swims freely.
He thought, briefly, unbidden, of the boy with the football from a few nights ago, screaming his simple, uncomplicated dream to his mother without a shred of doubt in his voice. That boy will learn this too, eventually. Everyone does, sooner or later.
Plants pull what they need from the soil beneath them, indifferent to what that costs the soil. Deer strip the grass bare without a thought for the grass. Lions take the deer, and lose no sleep over it afterward. That's simply the shape the universe was built in, long before any of us arrived to argue with it. Even without cruelty, even without hatred, growth demands that something else gives way to make room for it.
I used to think that was unbearable. I remember hating it, once, hating the sheer unfairness of a universe built this coldly. Now I mostly just recognize it. That's the part that actually disturbs me, if I let myself look at it directly. Not the cruelty of the world.
How completely I've learned to live inside it.
He let out a slow breath, watching it fog faintly in the cool alley air, and finally allowed his gaze to drop back down to the wreckage on the ground.
I'm sorry, he thought, quiet, private, offered to no one who could ever hear it. For whatever that's still worth.
It wasn't worth much. He knew that better than anyone. But some small, stubborn fragment of the boy he used to be still insisted on saying it anyway, every single time, even now, even after everything.
Eric's fingers twitched; he almost wanted to go and stop Voyage.
But he didn't. He simply continued watching. Not because he was getting any satisfaction, but simply because he had killed her; it was his responsibility to see the consequences that he had brought now.
Time passed slowly in the alley. The only sounds were the wet sucking and chewing noises from Voyage. At first, he grew rapidly from small amounts of blood. Now he needed to consume much more just to advance a little.
He finished the last remnants of her throat and esophagus. As he fed, his infant proportions shifted, his body unnaturally expanding and hardening until he resembled a child nearing nine years old. He climbed slowly on top of Marie, looking down at her with a small, chilling smile. Thick, dark blood trickled from his chin, dripping onto her ruined collarbone.
Extending his newly lengthened fingers, he drove his hands directly into her sternum. Because his body was still transitioning from that of a toddler, he didn't have the leverage yet; he had to throw his entire weight forward, straining against the bone. With a sharp, sudden crack, the ribcage finally gave way. Her chest burst open like a grotesque crimson flower, releasing a sudden spray of cold, dark blood as the hidden cavity and her lungs were fully exposed.
He started at the dead body again, staring for a few seconds before lunging forward again, small hands slapping down against Marie's ruined body. He pushed his small fingers down her esophagus, stretching it using his two tiny fingers as he looked at the residual spasms in it from the muscle memory remaining in her body. A small smile spread across his face as he stared at it for a few seconds. He soon let out his Aura and crystallized it around his hands as he started to tear her esophagus in chunks before putting them in his mouth, teeth finding purchase against torn flesh for the first time. The sound changed now, wetter, thicker, tearing rather than sucking, and Voyage made a low, pleased sound in his throat with every mouthful, chewing with clear, unhurried satisfaction before swallowing.
Voyage let out a deep, slow breath, inhaling the final remnants of warmth radiating from her open chest cavity. It was a fleeting, heavy heat—rich and thick, like the sudden plunge into a hot bath on a freezing winter night. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He drank in the view of her shattered sternum, the ribcage peeled outward like the blooming petals of a dark, crimson flower.
Resting inside were her lungs, pale pink and porous. He leaned down, his nine-year-old fingers hovering just above the left lobe, testing its delicate, spongy elasticity. For a brief, unbidden second, a shadow of an ancient memory flickered across his mind. He remembered the very first time he had ever committed an act like this, centuries ago.
The long-forgotten phantom of his own past reluctance—the sheer, visceral disgust he had once felt—surfaced from the depths of his 200-year-old consciousness. His eyes softened. For a fleeting moment, his brow relaxed into an expression that was almost apologetic, a quiet mourning for the innocence he had lost lifetimes ago.
Then, the moment died. A sharp, icy light flared in his pitch-black eyes. The faint trace of regret vanished, replaced by an ancient, predatory focus. He drove his right hand deep into the cavity, gripping the root of her right lung where the thick pulmonary vessels and tough, rubbery bronchus anchored it to the spine. He yanked hard, once, twice, straining against the stubborn, fibrous connective tissue until the deep interior of her chest finally tore free with a wet, heavy snap.
He opened his mouth slowly, moving methodically with terrifying precision, biting into her wet, dense, and spongy lungs with huge bites as he chewed; he could remember the taste of a certain sponge-type fish he used to eat in his hometown.
He finished the lungs and the second lung soon too, tearing through it without caring about the taste at all as Eric continued watching every minute action without missing a single beat.
Voyage looked up and matched Eric's cold gaze for a brief second, almost cold, almost wanting to say something but choosing not to as he looked down and continued.
With the lungs completely gone, the deepest center of the crimson flower lay bare. Nestled between the empty spaces was the heart, encased in its pale, translucent protective sac. Though Marie's life had fled, the organ sat heavy and still, a solid knot of dense muscle waiting in the dark cavity.
Voyage leaned closer, his dark eyes fixed on the target. He reached in with his newly grown, stronger fingers, hooking his nails into the slick membrane of the pericardium. With a sharp tug, the tough sac split open with a wet, distinct peel, exposing the deep, dark maroon of the muscle beneath.
He gripped the base of the heart, his fingers sinking into the firm, slippery tissue. It was remarkably heavy for its size, anchored firmly to her spine by the thick, rubbery hoses of the aorta and vena cava. Bracing one foot against her shattered ribs for leverage, Voyage slowly pulled. The elastic vessels stretched, resisting his strength for a tense second before finally severing with a violent, hollow pop, releasing a final, heavy pool of dark blood into the base of her chest. Holding the dense, dripping weight in both hands, he brought it to his mouth.
Voyage put the heart above his mouth as he squeezed, savoring the fresh taste of blood on his tongue, some falling on his bloodied cheeks and falling down his neck.
He took out more of his crimson Aura as he squeezed harder, drinking until the heart was inflated like a balloon, before shoving the heart back in his mouth. Unlike the lungs, the heart was pure, tightly packed muscle; eating it required more of his jaw strength and effort, but he chewed through it. The wet sounds resonated around the entire alleyway.
He continued to bypass the rest of the upper torso with unhurried efficiency. With a few careless, practiced slashes, Voyage pulled aside the slick maze of the intestines and the heavy mass of the stomach, spilling them out of the way to clear his path to the deepest recess of her abdomen. Eating them like spaghetti.
"Now, it is time to consume the main course." Voyage chuckled, already looking like a thirteen-year-old, his head covered by a layer of crimson red hair.
Voyage slowly reached deep into the rigid, narrow bowl of the pelvis, his forearms submerging into the heavy crimson pool that had settled against the lower spine. The spaciousness of the upper thoracic cavity was gone, replaced by the cramped, unyielding confines of the skeletal frame.
Eric's mouth went drier as he realized what Voyage gonna do.
Voyage reached the pelvic area as he cleared away the surrounding tissues with impatient, sweeping motions, tracking his fingers down to the dense, smooth mass of the uterus wedged firmly behind the pelvic bone, followed by constant wet echoes. He gripped the top of the organ, but it refused to budge. Unlike the airy lungs, this was anchored by the thick, leathery sheets of the broad ligament and the cord-like bands of the round ligaments—fibrous anchors designed to withstand immense pressure.
Voyage braced his knees against the cold ridges of her hip bones, seeking maximum leverage. He channeled his crystallized aura into his fingertips, digging them like iron wedges into the connective tissue. With a heavy, grounding exhale, he threw his weight backward.
The ligaments stretched taut like thick rubber lines, resisting his thirteen-year-old frame for a tense, strained moment before fraying and snapping one by one with a sharp, hollow resonance. Finally, with a twisting, violent wrench, the dense smooth muscle of the cervix tore free from the top of the vaginal canal. He tumbled back slightly, lifting the heavy, pear-shaped knot of pure, dense muscle into the dim light, its thick walls dripping with the dark, vascular remnants of the inner lining.
Voyage looked down at the extracted organ, his gaze a jarring mix of clinical coldness and predatory hunger. For a Birth Pathway Walker like him, this was the ultimate prize—the literal crucible of creation, the most potent source of essence he could consume.
Yet, as his fingers tightened around the heavy, dense muscle, an unbidden image flickered in his ancient mind. He envisioned the life this womb was meant to shelter years down the road. He imagined the quiet warmth of a future pregnancy, the soft flutters of a growing child, and the gentle, breathless joy Marie would have felt holding a new life in her arms. But the hollow emptiness of the alleyway snapped him back to reality. The womb in his hands was not a cradle for a future child; it was merely sustenance. Marie lay beneath him, ruined and forever silent, the promise of her motherhood cut short and reduced to a grotesque feast.
Voyage let out a deep breath as he nodded at Eric, as if getting ready.
He detached the small, almond-shaped ovary from the side of the uterus, holding the firm, pale nodule up to the dim light. To his ordinary senses, it was just a tiny scrap of tissue, but to his perception as a Birth Pathway Walker, it vibrated with a concentrated, latent essence. It was the very vault of her unfulfilled potential, holding thousands of microscopic blueprints for lives that would now never exist.
Without hesitation, he brought the small organ to his lips. When his teeth closed down, it gave way with a distinct, firm snap, bursting with a metallic, highly concentrated warmth. A low, deep rumble resonated in his throat as the energy rushed through him. The sheer potency of the vital essence immediately triggered his anatomy to react; the skin across his arms tightened and shifted, his bones lengthening by fractions of an inch as his body eagerly metabolized the raw, stolen blueprint of life. He chewed deliberately, swallowing the small remnant before turning his dark, unblinking gaze down to the heavy, dense muscle of the womb itself.
With the ovaries gone, Voyage turned his attention to the womb itself—the thick, dense crucible of pure muscle. He didn't tear it apart like the spongy lungs; instead, he drove his teeth directly into the tightly woven layers of the myometrium. The tissue was incredibly resilient, offering a heavy, fibrous resistance that required the full force of his jaw to crush and masticate. But with every thick, metallic mouthful he swallowed, the stolen essence of the Birth Pathway flooded his system like liquid fire.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent.
His thirteen-year-old body began to warp and expand in real-time, the stolen vital energy forcing a brutal growth spurt. The bones in his arms and legs lengthened with loud, sickening cracks as the joints snapped forward into new proportions. The smooth, soft contours of childhood melted away, replaced by the sharp, lean definition of an adolescent approaching his early teens. His skin stretched and tightened across his expanding chest, his lungs expanding to fill his newly broadened ribcage as his voice box dropped, his breath releasing in a deeper, heavier exhale. By the time he swallowed the final, dense remnant of the organ, the transformation slowed, leaving him sitting amidst the ruin, staring down at his newly elongated, powerful hands with a cold, satisfied grin.
With the internal organs completely hollowed out, Voyage turned his unblinking gaze to the final, substantial remnants of Marie's body: her legs. He moved with the practiced efficiency of an apex predator. Utilizing his crystallized aura to cleanly cleave through the heavy joints, he began to consume the dense, deep muscle groups of the thighs and calves. Unlike the complex, specialized textures of the internal organs, this was pure, heavy skeletal muscle. He ate with an unhurried, mechanical rhythm, tearing the thick meat from the bone. Each swallow acted as fuel for the final, explosive stage of his metamorphosis.
The stolen vitality surged through his veins like boiling pitch. His body violently buckled as the accelerated evolution tore through his frame. The bones of his legs and spine elongated in a rapid, overlapping cadence of deep, splintering cracks, forcing his height upward foot by foot. His chest broadened into the hard, lean contours of a young man, the childish softness completely evaporating from his jawline as his facial features sharpened into striking, aristocratic angles. Thick muscle fibers wrapped tightly around his expanding skeleton, his skin stretching taut to accommodate the sudden influx of mass.
By the time the final bone was picked clean, the violent shifts subsided. Voyage slowly stood up, testing his new center of gravity. He was no longer a helpless infant or a growing child; he stood fully formed as a tall, powerful eighteen-year-old man. He looked down at his long, unblemished hands, then rolled his broad shoulders, a deep, resonant chuckle vibrating in his newly matured chest as he stepped away from the hollow skeletal ruin left on the floor.
Voyage looked down at the hollow dead body. "Hmm... It would be too much of a waste to waste such a good meal." Voyage said as he rubbed his chin and signaled Eric.
Eric understood what Voyage wanted; he raised his right hand. Pink gravitational aura with flowing black particles emerged. He willed it, and Marie's body floated upward, inverted. He slowly clenched his fist, causing cracks to spread across her corpse. Blood poured down like a fountain onto Voyage.
Voyage closed his eyes, bathing in the crimson shower with a calm, almost serene expression. He released more of his aura, converting half the blood into amniotic fluid, then licked the blood from his lips.
The blood on his body and the ground was gradually absorbed through his skin as his body continued to grow.
Marie's corpse had thinned dramatically. There was almost no blood left.
Eric clenched his fist fully. Her body compressed further until it became a small, dense cube of meat and crushed bones.
The meat cube fell into Voyage's hand. He opened his mouth wide and tossed it in, swallowing it in one gulp.
Voyage's face was no longer cute. It had become more defined and handsome — above average, though not on the level of Eric or Max.
He stood there completely naked but unconcerned.
He looked down at his newly grown body, particularly between his legs, and nodded happily.
"Good, good, good. This little brother is the biggest among the twelve others I've had in my previous twelve lives. Hahah!"
He burst into laughter.
Birth Pathway aura users naturally possessed superior reproductive organs and abilities, so such a difference was normal.
His voice had also deepened significantly due to the development of his larynx.
Eric remained expressionless, staring at Voyage with cold eyes. He subconsciously took a step back, his gravitational aura ready.
Voyage noticed and stopped laughing. He turned to Eric.
"I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You helped me a lot today, Third One. My organization will grant you a huge number of contribution points for this."
"Since I'm in a good mood, I'll tell you another aspect of my aura. You must have felt a premonition when you were near me at the nursery, right? Making House pick me up was a wise choice. I have a passive ability: within one year of my rebirth, anyone who touches me with harmful intentions will get pregnant and implode. It was very fortunate you didn't take the risk."
Voyage turned around as golden Meditation Aura enveloped him.
"With this, the mission is complete. I shall take my leave. Goodbye, Third One. May we have an even greater cooperation next time we meet."
Saying this, Voyage teleported away, leaving Eric alone in the blood-soaked alley.
Eric didn't stay in the alleyway; he quickly turned around and got out, his expression cold, as if the one who just witnessed the gruesome scene wasn't him.
...
The sinking sun draped Paris in a heavy veil of molten gold, stopping many people just to witness it.
While the beautiful sunset was taking place. Someone's life was falling apart.
"Marie! Where are you!?" In the streets of Paris, a bulky man ran around, desperately looking for his daughter, asking people and showing them her photo.
He had already gone to the school and asked all of her friends he knew existed about her.
He had only been worried a little about her at first, thinking she might have gone to some shop to buy something.
However, hours passed, and she still didn't return home. Every passing hour made his heart beat faster until he couldn't bear it anymore and went out to look for her.
But no matter how much he looked for her, he just couldn't seem to find her.
He turned around without looking, his forehead filled with cold sweat, as he bumped into someone tall.
"I-I am sorry, sir. Are you okay?" The man asked politely despite being worried sick about his own daughter.
Eric, in his Mike Jackson persona, looked back, the Imperator's Cross jingling brightly in his left earlobe