Kane hit the lunar surface not like a man, but like a kinetic bombardment.
The shockwave pulverized the regolith for three miles, sending a plume of grey dust into the black vacuum. As the dust settled, Kane stood in the center of a new crater, his Void-Archon armor bleeding violet smoke that hissed against the cold, dead rock.
"Come out!" Kane's voice didn't need air; it vibrated through the very crust of the moon, a Rank 9 roar that made the lunar mountains tremble. "You didn't come across the Great Dark to hide in the shadows!"
From the center of the bone-towers, a figure drifted forward. The First Reaper didn't walk; he glided, his rags of nebulae trailing behind him like the ghost of a dead galaxy. In his hand, a staff of bleached bone hummed with a frequency that made Kane's teeth feel like they were vibrating out of his skull.
"Sol-Lot-04E," the Reaper whispered, his voice echoing directly in Kane's mind. "You have tasted the code of an Arbiter. You have played with the toys of the Consortium. You think you have found the 'Hunger.' But you are merely a child playing with a candle in a forest of dry wood."
"I'm the fire that's gonna burn your forest down," Kane hissed.
He didn't draw his axes. He raised his hand, and the Void-Hunger erupted. It wasn't a beam; it was a localized collapse of space. The air—what little there was—turned into a screaming vortex, trying to pull the Reaper into a singularity.
The Reaper didn't flinch. He simply tapped his staff.
CLACK.
The vortex didn't explode. It inverted. The gravity Kane had pulled toward the Reaper suddenly pushed back with ten times the force. Kane was hurled backward, his obsidian armor cracking as he slammed through a lunar ridge, shattering the rock into fine powder.
[WARNING: REALITY-OVERWRITE DETECTED] [OPPONENT RANK: 10 - THE REAPER OF AEONS] [VITALITY: 89%]
"Your 'Hunger' is a glitch in the software," the Reaper said, drifting over the crater. "I am the hardware. I am the physical constant that says all things must end. You cannot consume the End, Little Fish."
Kane stood up, his white hair whipping in the static discharge of the moon's new atmosphere. He didn't look afraid. He looked insulted.
"The End?" Kane laughed, a jagged sound that sent a crack running a mile deep into the moon's crust. "I'm the guy who's gonna make you redundant."