I've always seen them. The scar-stitched thing that clung to the ceiling above my father's chair, its too-many legs tapping a silent rhythm only I could hear. The weeping, faceless woman who drifted through the night market, her sorrow pulling at the warmth of every passerby. I called them Phantoms. Monsters. I warned people. My parents took me to therapists. My friends edged away. Crazy David Osayi, who saw monsters in the shadows.
The cruel joke? They saw me, too. And they were always, always hungry.
My escape was the only thing that felt real: my manga. Panel by panel, I poured the nightmares onto the page, giving them form and, in a way, an exorcism. It was more compelling than the mechanical engineering textbooks gathering dust on my desk—a course I never wanted, paid for by parents who just wanted their son to be "normal." A tuition fee that felt like a prison sentence.
If I was going to be a failure, I'd fail on my own terms, drawing the horrors only I could see.
Earlier That Day: The Whisper in Daylight
The University of Benin campus hummed with its usual midday chaos. I was tucked in a secluded corner of the library annex, my sketchbook open. Today's subject: a spindly, glass-like creature I'd seen wrapped around the streetlight outside the dorm. It was sucking the vivid green from the leaves of an almond tree, leaving behind a brittle, grey husk.
My pencil flew, capturing the eerie elegance of its predation.
"You see it too, don't you?"
The voice, calm and low, came from my right. A guy stood there, looking like he'd stepped out of a high-fashion catalogue that exclusively featured solemn, handsome men. He wore casual wear—dark jeans, a simple tee—but carried himself with a soldier's stillness. His eyes, a sharp, intelligent blue, weren't looking at me. They were fixed on the window, on the exact spot where my phantom fed.
My heart slammed against my ribs. Play dumb. Always play dumb. "See what? The tree? Yeah, it's looking pretty dead."
"The Phobia," he said, turning his gaze to me. The word landed with the weight of a formal diagnosis. "It's called a Phobia. They manifest from collective fear, feed on specific emotional energy. That one is a 'Chlorophobia'—fear of plants, or the color green. Rare."
I stared, my carefully constructed denial crumbling. No one had ever named one before.
"My name is Jonathan," he continued, offering a hand that looked like it could crush stone. "The people I'm with… we deal with them. You're a Sensitive. You have the Sight. And right now, there's something much worse hiding on this campus. We could use your help to find it."
A hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat. "Help? You want me to point at the scary thing? That's all I've ever done, and it only ever got me labeled a lunatic. No thanks."
A young woman materialized beside Jonathan as if from the shadows themselves. She had a gentle face, but her amber eyes held a piercing, unnerving focus. "Please," she said, her voice softer. "My name is Praise. It's not just about seeing. They grow bolder. They will start to notice you actively, not just as a witness, but as a threat. Or a target."
Before I could answer, a third figure approached—taller, broader, with a smile that didn't quite reach his weary eyes and a scar that traced his cheekbone. He clapped a heavy hand on Jonathan's shoulder. "The kid's spooked, Jon. Can't blame him." He looked at me. "Marcus. We're just asking you to come with us to a quieter spot. We'll explain. If you say no, you walk away. Scout's honor."
It was the worst decision of my life, but for the first time, I wasn't alone in seeing the world's rot. Curiosity, that ancient killer, won out. I nodded.
We met two other students in a deserted courtyard behind the engineering block—a jittery girl named菲菲 and a quiet guy, Chidi. They were Sensitives too, recruited just hours before. Their eyes were wide with a mixture of terror and exhilaration. We were a sorry bunch of scouts, led by three soldiers who walked like they were expecting the ground to open up.
"The Phobia we're tracking is powerful," Jonathan explained, his voice barely above a murmur. He held up a small, ornate compass that shimmered with a faint internal light. "It's a 'Logizomechanophobia'—a fear of logic, of machines. In a university, it's gorging itself. It's why the central generator keeps failing, why computers in Block C keep corrupting data. It creates zones of irrational chaos."
"And we're just bait?" I whispered back, my sketchbook feeling absurdly fragile in my hands.
"You're observers," Praise corrected gently, her hand resting on a small pendant at her neck. "We are the Vanguard. The Faithful."
The air in the courtyard grew thick and cold, the bright afternoon light leaching away into a dull, copper haze. The sound of distant traffic melted into a distorted, metallic screech.
It was here.
The Fracture
The Phobia didn't descend from the sky; it unfolded from the architecture itself. The brick wall of the engineering block shimmered, its straight lines warping, its right angles dissolving into impossible, non-Euclidean shapes. From that geometric nightmare, it emerged—a towering construct of rusted gears, shattered circuit boards, and writhing copper wires, all orbiting a central, pulsing core of darkness that seemed to swallow light and reason. A single, lidless eye, the color of a dead monitor, swiveled to look at us.
菲菲 screamed. Chidi froze.
"Vanguard, engage!" Jonathan's voice was a crack of command. He wasn't asking anymore.
He slammed his fists together. From his forearms to his knuckles, intricate plates of shimmering, cobalt-blue energy manifested with a sound like shattering ice, forming massive, brutal Tremor Mauls around his hands. The air vibrated around him.
Praise dropped into a crouch, a gesture so fluid it was like a prayer. Golden light spun from her outstretched hands, coalescing into a sleek, elegant Crossbow made of pure, solidified sunlight. She didn't aim; she simply knew her target.
Marcus gave a fierce grin, and from his palm, light erupted—not blue or gold, but a pure, brilliant white. It stretched and solidified into a sleek, deadly Short Sword, its blade resembling a fang of polished moonlight. "Alright, you ugly calculator," he growled. "Let's recalibrate you."
The fight was a blur of terrifying light and overwhelming noise. Jonathan moved with brutal efficiency, his mauls slamming into the ground, sending waves of concussive, blue force—Shattering Impact—that cracked the pavement and staggered the creature. Praise was a statue of perfect focus, her crossbow snapping again and again, golden bolts of Unerring Accuracy streaking out to pierce the Phobia's core from impossible angles, each shot buying the others a second.
Marcus was a whirlwind, his white blade a blur as he danced in close, carving chunks of rust and wire from the creature's form. "It's not enough!" he shouted over the din. "Our Faith can hurt it, but we can't land a killing blow! We need to find its weakness!"
It was then that the Logizomechanophobia adapted.
A wave of distorted reality pulsed from its core. My mind recoiled. 2+2 no longer equaled 4. The concept of 'up' became questionable. In that wave of irrationality,菲菲 and Chidi, who had been huddled together, suddenly looked at each other not with camaraderie, but with the primal, illogical fear that the Phobia fed on. The creature lashed out with a whip of molten cabling.
It wasn't aimed at the Vanguard.
The cable speared through菲菲's chest, then through Chidi's in a single, sickening motion. There was no dramatic scream, just a terrible, wet silence as the light in their eyes was snuffed out, their bodies dissolving into motes of grey ash that were sucked into the Phobia's core. It fed.
"NO!" Praise's cry was raw agony.
The distraction was all the monster needed. A massive piston-arm, assembled from broken machinery, shot out and caught Marcus square in the torso. There was a crunch, the sound of a tree branch snapping. He was flung across the courtyard like a ragdoll, his white sword flickering out, and he didn't move.
Jonathan roared, a sound of pure fury and grief, his mauls flaring brighter. But the Phobia, strengthened by its feast, swatted him aside with a casual backhand of force. It turned.
Its dead-monitor eye fixed on me.
The last observer. The one who was just here to see.
Every instinct I'd honed over a lifetime of running screamed at me. I turned and fled, my sketchbook falling, pages scattering. I heard Praise shouting my name, Jonathan's guttural commands, but it was all white noise. I burst out of the courtyard and into a deserted service road, my lungs burning.
A glance back. It was following. Not with legs, but by warping the space behind me, the road elongating, the walls bending to guide it toward its prey. It was fast. So fast.
The fear wasn't abstract anymore. It was in my throat, in the acid taste in my mouth, in the memory of菲菲 and Chidi turning to ash. It was the sight of Marcus's still body. This was the "getting noticed" Praise had warned about. I was no longer a witness. I was the next meal.
The creature loomed, a tower of meaningless, hungry machinery. A cluster of sharpened rebar, dripping with spectral oil, aimed at my heart.
Something inside me broke. Not in fear, but in a final, furious rejection.
No.
I have spent my whole life seeing your kind. I have drawn you. I have been cursed for you. You do NOT get to end my story here!
A heat, unlike anything I'd ever felt, erupted in my chest. It wasn't fire; it was certainty. It was the solid, unshakable truth of every line I'd ever drawn, every monster I'd given form on a page. This was my sight, my curse, my Faith.
Silver light, the color of graphite under moonlight, exploded from me. It wasn't controlled or shaped like the others'. It was wild, a defensive nova. The Phobia recoiled, its logical-destroying aura screeching against this new, solid presence.
In that perfect, crystallized moment of defiance—my mind, my body, and this roaring, newfound Faith aligning in absolute harmony—I did not just push back.
I understood.
My hand moved without thought. The silver light coalesced, not into a weapon, but into a single, perfect, sweeping line in the air—a stroke of manga ink made real. It sliced through the Phobia's central core.
CRACK-BOOM.
The sound was physical and spiritual, a thunderclap of profound connection. The Communion. The creature' entire form shuddered, gears freezing, wires turning to dust. It let out a silent scream that vibrated in my teeth and then imploded into a shower of harmless, grey data-ash.
I stood there, panting, silver light dancing over my skin like static, my hand still outstretched. The service road was just a road again.
"Well," a new, deep voice said from the shadows of a nearby alley. "That was a hell of an opening statement."
A man stepped out. He was tall, handsome in a rugged way, with skin the color of dark earth and a calm, authoritative presence that made Jonathan seem like an eager lieutenant. He wore a simple black uniform, but the way it sat on him spoke of command. He looked at the fading silver light around me, then at the spot where the Phobia had died, a flicker of deep respect in his eyes.
"My name is Jaron. I lead the Covenant in this region. And you, David Osayi, have just declared war on a battlefield you never knew existed. Come with me. We have much to discuss, and your friend Marcus needs more help than we can give him here."
Epilogue: The Offer
The "base" was a sleek, modern apartment atop a high-rise in GRA, not some dank cellar. The walls were lined with data-screens tracking "Aberrant Faith Signatures" and "Phobia Manifestation Probabilities." It looked like a tech startup, not a cult's hideout.
Jaron handed me a glass of water. "Before you say anything, kid, let's get this out of the way: this is not a cult. We don't chant, we don't worship alien gods, and the only thing we want you to drink the Kool-Aid of is self-preservation. We're more like a very specialized, very secret pest control service for metaphysical infestations. The 'Covenant' is just a fancy word for 'people who made a promise to fight back.' The 'Faithful' are the ones who keep it."
Praise entered the room, her eyes red-rimmed. She didn't look at me. She went straight to Jaron and whispered something. His strong shoulders sagged, just for a moment. The scar on his face seemed deeper.
He turned back to me, his expression grave. "The Phobia's attack caused catastrophic spiritual feedback. Marcus's Faith… couldn't stabilize his wounds. He didn't make it."
The news landed like a stone in my gut. The grinning guy with the white sword. Gone. Because of a mission I'd inadvertently been part of.
Jonathan walked in next, his blue mauls gone, his face a mask of controlled storm. "Two civilians and one Vanguard lost. Because of an unprepared engagement." His eyes cut to me, not with blame, but with intense focus. "This is the war, David. You can see it. You have the Faith. You even achieved a Communion on your first awakening. That's… unprecedented."
"So phobias are the name of these creatures, you say?" I finally managed, my voice hoarse.
"Yes," Jonathan nodded. "And we are the only ones who can permanently put them down."
I took a deep breath, the image of my father writing another tuition check flashing in my mind. "Well, I'm not interested in joining your hero team. I barely left with my life today from one actually attacking me because of your teammate. And I may not like my course, but my parents pay my fees. You get, na?"
Praise finally looked at me, her empathy now tinged with desperation. "Please, consider it. Now that you've actively used your Faith, you're a beacon. They will come for you. Not just see you. Hunt you."
I shook my head, a bitter laugh escaping. "I could see them as long as I could remember, and they've never attacked me before today. What about the other guy? Marcus, or what was his name?"
It was a low blow, and I saw Jonathan flinch. Both he and Praise shed their casual wear jackets, revealing the sleek, black uniforms beneath—different in style (his tactical and angular, hers streamlined and graceful), but unmistakably part of a whole. The Covenant.
Jaron, the leader, simply sighed. He walked over and placed a black business card on the table next to me. It was blank except for a single, silver phone number.
"No probs, kid," he said, his voice a low rumble. "We don't conscript. The Faith has to be willing, or it's worse than useless." He met my gaze, and in his eyes, I saw the weight of countless losses, of a war waged in the shadows. "But know this: you're in the ledger now. On both sides. Take the card. Please. Contact us if anything… illogical… decides to follow you home."
I stood up, my legs shaky. I didn't touch the card. I just walked out, leaving the sleek office, the grief, and the war behind.
The night air outside was normal. Warm. Quiet. I pulled out my phone, my thumb hovering over my home screen—a background image of my own manga art.
For the first time, the horrors I drew didn't feel like an escape.
They felt like a premonition.