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The mist did not roll in naturally.
It arrived all at once—thick, sound-devouring, metallic in smell—smothering the battlefield like a living thing. Gunfire died mid-echo. Radios screamed static. Shapes vanished ten feet away. Even the Lawson men, hardened and trained, froze.
Luna felt it first.
Her vision blurred, veins in her temples burning as if something ancient had pressed a hand against her skull. The air felt wrong—not cold, not hot, but hollow. Like the world had been scraped thin.
Zane raised his weapon. "This isn't smoke."
"No," Luna whispered. "This is… him."
Sixteen minutes.
That was all it took.
By the time the mist began to thin, 389 military personnel were dead.
Some were torn apart—limbs twisted backward, rib cages cracked open like doors forced too hard. Others were crushed into the ground, bodies flattened as if gravity itself had turned against them. A few remained standing, faces frozen in terror, spines snapped clean through.
No gunshot wounds. No explosions.
Just violence—raw, personal, and merciless.
Asuka stumbled over a body, bile burning her throat. "What… what did this?"
Pluto checked his scanner. It screamed with impossible readings before dying entirely. "Something that doesn't care about physics."
Devon already knew.
He stood at the edge of the clearing, fists shaking, staring at the shape emerging from the mist.
Richard Solace walked forward.
Or what remained of him.
His clothes were shredded and blackened with blood that wasn't all his own. Veins crawled darkly across his neck and face like ink under skin. His eyes—once sharp, observant, human—were now wrong. Too bright. Too empty. As if something vast looked out through them and found the world disappointing.
His broken leg was whole.
His ribs were healed.
His presence bent the air.
Nekros had finished with him.
Richard had survived all the trials.
And whatever crawled back was no longer just a boy.
Luna staggered forward instinctively. Power surged in her veins, silver hair lifting as invisible pressure radiated from her body. Blood trickled from her eyes, but she didn't wipe it away.
Only she could feel it fully.
The curse.
Nekros' mark wrapped around Richard like chains no one else could see.
"Richard," she said, voice trembling. "Stop."
He turned.
The moment his gaze locked onto her, the air exploded.
Trees ripped out of the ground. Vehicles lifted and slammed sideways. Luna was thrown back, telekinesis flaring violently as she fought the crushing force pressing down on her chest.
Richard roared.
Not a scream. Not words.
An animal sound.
He launched forward, moving faster than sight, cracking the ground beneath him. Luna slammed her hands out, telekinetic force colliding with his charge like a wall meeting a meteor.
The shockwave flattened everything nearby.
Telekinesis versus something beyond human—raw, relentless strength.
It felt like fighting a god that bled.
Luna screamed as her power strained. "Richard—listen to me!"
He didn't.
Bloodlust burned in his eyes. Nekros' curse fed on it, twisting pain into fuel. He punched through her telekinetic barrier, sending her skidding backward through dirt and debris.
This was not a fight.
It was a massacre waiting to happen.
"RICHARD!" Devon shouted, running forward without thinking.
Siara moved faster.
She stepped between them.
Her face was stone.
No tears. No hesitation. No love.
"Enough," she said coldly.
Richard froze.
Not because of power.
Because of recognition.
His breathing hitched. His fists trembled. The bloodlust faltered, cracking like glass under pressure.
"Siara…" His voice sounded wrong—too deep, fractured, echoing with something else. "You're alive."
She didn't soften.
Didn't run to him.
Didn't reach out.
"I buried you," she said flatly. "I moved on."
The words cut deeper than any blade.
Devon stepped beside her, eyes red, voice breaking. "You don't get to come back like this and tear the world apart."
Richard staggered.
The curse screamed inside him.
For a moment, it looked like he might collapse—or kill them all.
He raised his weapon
Then he dropped to his knees.
The mist began to fade completely.
The Richard inside was fighting
Was EVOLVING
Children's screams echoed in the distance—new abductions, new vessels taken by Plagued and Collectors while the world burned.
Richard pressed his hands into the dirt, shaking.
"I didn't die," he whispered. "I escaped."
Above them, unseen and watching, three Collectors turned their gaze.
And far beyond them all, in a hollow void without form or mercy, Nekros waited, amused.
The king of kings had not lost his chosen.
Not yet.