Novalis District, First Prison.
Eren Kai walked down the narrow, sealed corridor, flanked by armed guards on both sides.
Overhead, fluorescent lights flickered past in rigid sequence, casting a broken rhythm of light and shadow across his face as he moved.
His eyes were empty—like a well long since dried out, devoid of reflection or depth.
---
The judge's voice lingered in his mind, calm and precise, stripped of emotion—
"The defendant, Eren Kai, having cruelly murdered thirty-seven individuals and sexually assaulted one, with evidence conclusive.
Sentenced to death. Execution immediate."
When the words had fallen, the courtroom barely reacted.
The atmosphere remained muted; only a few restrained exhales slipped quietly into the air.
As if something excessive had finally been removed.
---
Cold manacles locked around his wrists and ankles.
With every step, metal struck stone in a steady, unforgiving rhythm, echoing down the corridor.
A metronome, counting what remained of his life.
The process was fixed, rehearsed, unremarkable: an escort, a final confirmation, the execution chamber at the corridor's end.
If nothing went wrong, it would be over in less than ten minutes.
---
Then—
A scent cut through the sterile air.
It was not smoke or disinfectant.
Something thick and bitter, like rust ground fine and mixed with old blood, heavy enough to cling to the breath itself.
Eren's step faltered for only an instant.
Deep within the prison, something shifted.
From hairline cracks in the walls, from ventilation grates, from the seams of iron doors sealed decades ago, black mist began to seep outward.
It did not rise. It crawled—sliding along metal and concrete, coiling around railings, spilling across the floor with deliberate patience.
The inmates were the first to break.
One screamed without warning, hands clawing at his own throat as if something unseen had seized him from within.
Another collapsed, clutching his head, whispering names long forgotten, repeating them until they dissolved into incoherent sounds.
A third began to laugh—high, fractured, spiraling into choking gasps before cutting off entirely.
The mist thickened, then changed.
No longer drifting aimlessly, it drew inward along the corridor, streams converging as if answering a silent summons.
It curved around guards, slid past raised weapons, avoided gun barrels with unsettling precision.
Everything led to one point.
The far end of the transfer passage.
Toward Eren Kai.
---
In the control room, Officer Aveline Ward snapped her head up.
Surveillance monitors flickered once—twice—then collapsed into blinding static. A shrill electronic screech tore through the room, sharp enough to make several officers recoil.
"All signals down?" someone shouted.
Aveline's hand was already slamming the alarm.
Red lights flooded the room.
"Emergency protocol! Full alert! Seal all passages!"
The command rippled through the facility.
Down in the corridor, the execution detail reacted instantly. The guards escorting Eren forced him to a halt, weapons snapping up, fingers tightening on triggers as they trained every barrel on him at once.
---
The black mist did not slow.
Like a tide drawn by something deeper than gravity, it swept past every barrier and closed in on Eren.
It struck all at once—heavy, cold, pressing against him. Dense enough to feel almost solid, carrying a nausea that tightened his stomach and hollowed his chest.
By an instinct he did not recognize as his own, Eren closed his eyes.
It was not prayer.
It was not resistance.
It felt more like reaching for a rhythm buried beneath the chaos.
He became aware of his breathing.
In.
Out.
Air filled his lungs, then drained away slowly. His chest rose and fell steadily, even as alarms screamed somewhere beyond his awareness and distant voices broke apart.
Those sounds faded.
Until only one sensation remained.
Weight—inside him, not on his throat.
And with sudden clarity, Eren understood—
This was not suffocation.
It was an influx.
Desecration.
Violence remembered too clearly.
Plunder.
Betrayal left unnamed.
Sins never absolved.
They pressed against his skin, seeped through his pores, ran backward through his veins.
Cold—and within it, a searing heat, like corroded metal forced into living flesh.
Something in his mind recoiled, resisting instinctively.
His body did not.
The mist churned, then folded inward, collapsing under its own weight until no boundary remained between it and him.
And then—it was gone.
Not dispersed, but taken.
Eren became aware of the change almost immediately.
—somewhere inside him, in a place that had always been empty, something now existed.
It was not a thought, not a voice.
It had weight.
He could not name it, nor explain why the mist had come, or why it had chosen him alone.
There was no revelation—no sudden understanding.
Only the certainty that whatever had entered him had not faded.
It had not passed through.
It had settled.
---
Silence fell without warning.
The overhead lights flared back to full brightness.
The corridor stood unchanged.
Iron doors remained straight, unwarped.
The floor was clean, with no trace of blood.
Eren stood where he had been halted.
Breathing evenly, weight balanced, muscles steady beneath the restraints.
Alive.
Around him, the guards remained frozen in place.
Weapons were still trained on his body, but their breaths were shallow, uneven. One man's hands trembled so badly he barely registered it.
"The... the mist?" a young officer asked, his voice barely holding together.
No one answered.
The black tide that had flooded the corridor was gone, leaving the air clear, yet cold in a way that refused to fade, like the empty shell of something forcibly removed.
"Feeds back up?"
"Systems are online, but—the last few minutes are missing."
"Missing? That's not possible. An event like that doesn't just vanish from the logs."
The muttered exchanges spread, tense and disordered, but no one lowered their weapon or looked away from Eren.
Nothing about him had changed—at least, nothing visible.
No restraints broken. No sudden movement. No violent resistance.
He simply stood there, as though the anomaly that had seized the entire prison had passed around him rather than through him.
And yet everyone present knew what they had seen.
In the final instant before the mist vanished, every last strand had flowed into his body.
"Fall back," someone murmured.
Boots scraped against the floor as several guards took an involuntary step back, tightening their formation even as they retreated. Their weapons remained raised.
They were no longer regarding a condemned prisoner—they were calculating, assessing whether the figure before them still belonged within the limits of containment.
Then footsteps echoed down the corridor—measured, deliberate.
The guards parted.
Aveline Ward walked through the opening they formed.
Her complexion was pale, but her posture composed, every movement controlled. She did not glance at the walls, the floor, or the shaken men around her. Her attention went straight to Eren.
As if he were a file pulled from one category and placed into another.
There was no fear in her eyes. Only evaluation.
"You can devour the black mist," she said.
It was not a question. It was a conclusion.
The corridor sank into absolute silence.
The scheduled execution was suspended.
And Eren understood—
What awaited him next was not mercy.
It was examination.
The real trial had only just begun.