Shattered Blade

The academy day had finally ended. Hwak's muscles ached from exertions both voluntary and forced as he made his way home through the gathering dusk. The divide between Neonspire's pristine campus and the industrial sprawl surrounding his settlement grew starker with each step. Polished stone gave way to cracked concrete, then to packed dirt littered with technological detritus.

As he walked, Hwak replayed the day's events in his mind—Principal Vora's calculating gaze, Ramon's false friendship, Leena's unexpected kindness. So absorbed was he in these thoughts that he barely registered entering the outskirts of his settlement, where mountains of electronic waste formed a labyrinthine border between worlds.

The screech of tires shattered his reverie.

A matte black Panamera electric swerved around the corner, its sleek contours incongruous among the rusted heaps of discarded machinery. The car fishtailed, sending sparks flying as its undercarriage scraped against a pile of metal scraps before skidding to a halt thirty meters ahead of Hwak.

The driver's door swung open.

A boy emerged—perhaps Hwak's age, perhaps slightly older. His black suit was immaculate, matched with a silk muffler that caught the dying sunlight. Light brown hair, artfully styled, framed a face that stopped Hwak's breath. It wasn't the boy's beauty that arrested him, but the emptiness in his eyes—pools of absolute nihilism, devoid of hope or fear or anything resembling human emotion.

Before Hwak could process this apparition, three more vehicles rounded the corner in pursuit, their engines growling like predators. They surrounded the Panamera, boxing it in against a wall of discarded refrigerators. Twenty men poured out, each dressed in identical white suits adorned with a crimson emblem—a stylized eye with three stars above it and four circles below. They carried an assortment of weapons: steel batons, curved swords, metal rods wrapped in barbed wire.

The settlement grew quiet. Windows slammed shut. Doors locked. The unspoken rule was clear—witness nothing, remember nothing.

Hwak pressed himself into the shadow of a gutted vending machine, heart hammering against his ribs. Run, a voice in his head urged. But his legs refused to obey.

The apparent leader of the white-suited men stepped forward, twirling a spiked baton. "Playtime's over, boy," he called, voice carrying in the sudden silence. "Come with us peacefully and you might see tomorrow. Resist, and embrace death tonight."

The boy in black stood motionless, one hand casually slipping into his pocket. His response, when it came, was soft yet somehow audible across the distance, each word precisely enunciated.

"Death would be a comfort," he said, the corners of his mouth lifting in what might have been a smile on another face. "It's life that brings suffering." His empty gaze swept across his attackers. "I'd welcome the end, truly. But there are... tasks I must complete. People who need me. So death must wait a while longer."

One of the white-suited men lost patience. With a guttural cry, he charged, sword raised high for a killing blow. Hwak's eyes widened, certain he was about to witness a murder.

What happened next seemed to defy physics.

The boy in black pivoted slightly—a minimal adjustment, almost imperceptible—his hand shooting up to intercept not the sword but the attacker's face. Fingers closed around the man's jaw with mechanical precision. Then, with a single fluid motion, the boy drove the attacker's head into the ground.

A cloud of dust erupted on impact. When it settled, a crater had formed in the packed earth, the attacker's body limp at its center.

The remaining men took an involuntary step back.

"You don't know where I come from," the boy in black said, voice still eerily calm. "Yet you thought this pathetic force would be enough? There's still time to leave. Don't make me stain this ground unnecessarily. I've seen enough blood to last lifetimes. Rivers will flow in days to come, but they need not include yours."

A tense silence followed, broken when a man with an eyepatch stepped forward. A massive sledgehammer rested on his shoulder.

"Brave words for a dead child," he snarled. "Kill one man and think yourself invincible?"

With shocking speed for his size, the man charged, swinging the sledgehammer in a devastating arc aimed at the boy's skull. The weapon's passage displaced air with an audible whoosh.

The boy leaned backward—just enough for the hammer to miss by millimeters. As momentum carried the attacker forward, the boy planted one foot firmly on the ground and drove his knee upward in a precise strike to the man's face.

Bone cracked with a sound like branches breaking in winter. Blood and teeth sprayed in an arc as the attacker crumpled, his sledgehammer embedding itself in the earth where he fell.

"I warned you," the boy in black said, a crimson droplet sliding down his cheek.

The remaining men attacked as one, a coordinated assault from all directions. Hwak watched, transfixed by the lethal choreography that followed.

The boy moved like water through their midst—never where a blow landed, always where an opening presented itself. A punch to the sternum collapsed one attacker's chest. A leg sweep sent another sprawling into the path of a comrade's sword thrust. When a blade grazed the boy's arm, drawing a thin line of blood, his expression didn't change; he simply caught the wrist holding the weapon, twisted until tendons snapped, and claimed the sword as his own.

The blade sang through the air, describing perfect arcs of crimson. Fingers fell. Then hands. A leg severed at the knee. A head tumbled, eyes still blinking in confusion.

Hwak pressed a hand against his mouth, stifling the scream building in his throat. The scrapheap had transformed into an abattoir, the ground darkening with spreading pools of blood. The black Panamera, once pristine, now wore a spattered coat of red, as though it had been driven through rain of a different kind.

When it ended, the boy in black stood alone among the carnage, his suit now a mottled canvas of crimson and obsidian. Bodies lay scattered like broken dolls across the killing ground, some still twitching, most terribly still. He surveyed his work with the dispassionate gaze of an artist assessing a canvas—neither pride nor remorse visible in those empty eyes.

With mechanical precision, he extracted a cigarette from an inner pocket and lit it, the flame briefly illuminating his blood-spattered face. He then settled onto the hood of his car, legs crossed casually at the ankle.

Smoke curled upward from his lips, dissipating into the darkening sky like departing souls rising from the underworld. Below, the devil himself sat in elegant repose, having granted final release to those who had challenged him.

Hwak remained frozen in the shadows, afraid even to breathe. His world, already upended by Neonspire's wonders, tilted further on its axis. Who was this harbinger of death? What powers did he possess to move with such inhuman speed and precision?

The boy took a final drag from his cigarette before flicking it into a puddle of blood, where it hissed and died.

"I know you're watching," he said suddenly, gaze fixed on Hwak's hiding place. "You might as well come out."

Hwak's heart stopped. Then, as though his body no longer belonged to him, he found himself stepping into the open.

The boy in black studied him with those empty eyes, head tilted slightly. "Academy uniform," he noted. "Neonspire?"

Hwak managed a nod.

"Interesting," the boy said. "They're recruiting from the settlements now? Times change." He slid off the hood and approached, footsteps leaving red prints behind him. "What's your name?"

"H-Hwak," he stammered.

The boy extended a blood-soaked hand. "Damien."

Hwak stared at the offered hand, unable to bring himself to take it.

Damien smiled—a movement of lips that never reached his eyes. "Wise instinct. Blood is difficult to wash away." He withdrew his hand. "You saw nothing tonight, Hwak. Nothing worth remembering."

"Who were they?" Hwak asked, the question escaping before he could stop himself.

"The White Eyes," Damien replied, glancing at the bodies surrounding them. "A gang that controls most of the city's underground biotech. They're particularly interested in unregistered Evolans." He studied Hwak for a moment. "The academy will protect you from them, mostly. But remember—the walls between your world and this one are thinner than they appear."

Damien turned back toward his car, then paused. "You have potential, settlement boy. I see something in you that you don't yet see in yourself."

"What?" Hwak asked, voice barely audible.

Damien's lips curved again in that bloodless smile. "The capacity for necessary violence." He opened his car door. "We'll meet again. When you understand what you truly are."

The Panamera's engine purred to life. Damien reversed smoothly, maneuvering around the bodies with practiced ease, then accelerated away, leaving Hwak alone among the dead.

In the distance, sirens wailed—too late, as always, for the settlement's troubles.

Hwak looked down at his shoes, now splattered with other men's blood,