The moment the command reached it, Shadow, which had remained concealed in the darkness throughout, stepped out of it.

The moment it did, the atmosphere of the laboratory, already heavy and solemn, became something colder. Something darker.

The workers who had not dared to breathe in the Duke’s presence had seemed relieved by the success of their task. They were already preparing to tidy the space, ready to slip away quietly. They never imagined they wouldn’t even have the time to do so. That something like this would appear before them.

Most of them were ordinary people, but some were F-ranks, and a handful had reached E-rank, placed there as guards more than anything else. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

They were the first to notice the anomaly. It didn’t take long to find its source.

Their gazes landed on the corner where Shadow had been concealed for the entire duration, and the moment their eyes settled there, they felt their souls tremble.

A figure made of black and violet shadow was manifesting before them, like a god of death given form.

It was tall. Imposing. Its presence alone was suffocating but none of that hit harder than what came last. Its luminous eyes swept across the room, and in that single moment, it seemed to have already passed judgment on every soul present.

Shadow’s appearance was all it took.

The moment those luminous eyes settled on the room, something primal rippled through every person present. Not a sound. Not a warning. Just the immediate, bone-deep certainty that whatever had just revealed itself in that corner was not something that could be reasoned with.

The weaker ones began to tremble first. Some took a step back without realizing it. One dropped the instrument he was holding.

"W-what is that thing—"

The silence that followed lasted only a second before it shattered completely.

Chaos.

The room erupted. People scrambled in every direction, knocking into equipment, into each other, into the walls. Screams bounced off the stone ceiling.

Those with no combat ability whatsoever ran on pure instinct, driven by a fear so raw it had bypassed thought entirely.

But the E-ranks didn’t run.

They wanted to. Every instinct they had was screaming at them to do exactly that, to turn, to sprint, to not look back. But they knew. If they stayed, they died. If they fled, the Duke would kill them the moment he returned and found them missing. There was no good option. There was only the one that gave them a chance, however slim.

So they attacked.

Three of them moved simultaneously, positioning themselves with the practiced coordination of people who had trained together. One slammed a palm into the ground and the stone floor cracked and heaved, sending jagged spikes of earth toward Shadow from three directions at once. Another raised both hands and a concentrated burst of wind compressed into a blade, fast and invisible, aimed at the figure’s midsection. The third pulled heat from the air and released it, a short, controlled jet of fire that came in low, designed to cut off movement.

Shadow didn’t move.

The earth spikes hit first. Then the wind blade. Then the fire.

The attacks landed.

And accomplished nothing.

Shadow stood exactly where it had been, unmarked, unbothered, as though the assault had been directed at someone else entirely. The oppressive aura around it hadn’t even flickered.

The three exchanged a look.

"Again! Don’t stop!"

They attacked again, harder this time, faster, throwing more into it. The one with earth abilities drove both fists downward and the entire floor groaned as a ring of stone columns erupted upward around Shadow’s position, closing in. The wind user layered three consecutive strikes, each one tighter and more concentrated than the last. The fire user abandoned precision entirely and simply released, a wide, sustained wave meant to overwhelm rather than target.

The columns closed.

One of them stopped mid-motion.

He didn’t fall dramatically. He didn’t cry out. One moment he was there, arm raised for another strike, and the next there was a single clean motion from Shadow and he was on the ground, still, with no time to understand what had happened.

"...Kael?"

It was the earth element E-rank who spoke, his eyes fixed on his teammate lying motionless on the ground.

The three of them had been a balanced unit, one that reinforced itself in combat. Kael, the fire user, and the wind user were their primary attackers, their elements complemented each other well, generating far more powerful strikes when combined. The earth user’s role was to protect them and pin down the enemy. Yet in this moment he had failed to do either, and now the core of their small group had been eliminated without so much as an effort.

The two who remained looked at each other. Their eyes said everything there was to say about the situation they were in.

The silence that followed was worse than anything that had come before it.

Then the light changed.

It happened gradually at first, so gradually that no one noticed until it was already wrong. The torches along the walls seemed to dim, their light pulling inward as though something were drinking it. The shadows in the corners deepened. The shadows beneath the equipment deepened. The shadows everywhere deepened, stretching and thickening until the edges of the room had become something that light simply couldn’t reach anymore.

And then, from within that darkness, things began to appear.

Eyes first.

Pinpoints of cold light, opening one by one in the black, here, there, along the far wall, near the ceiling, close to the floor. Too many to count. Too many to track. Each pair unblinking, each one carrying the same quiet certainty that Shadow’s had when it first revealed itself.

Then the rest of the bodies followed. Slowly. Deliberately. Shapes pulling themselves free from the dark as though the darkness itself were giving birth to them, each one wrong in a way that was difficult to name, proportions slightly off, movement slightly wrong, presence slightly too heavy for the space they occupied.

The two surviving E-ranks didn’t speak.

One of them turned and ran.

The other lasted another second before doing the same.

It didn’t matter.

The things that had emerged from the shadows didn’t hurry. They didn’t need to.

The screaming started shortly after, and then, one by one, they stopped.

[Read Author’s note ⬇️]