They came from different angles: one from behind, three from the sides, one straight ahead. They moved like insects that had learned to be deliberate — their segmented bodies unfolding from dormancy into full extension in the span of a heartbeat, limbs extending, hooked appendages reaching.
[Ghost Blade] painted their trajectories in his mind like lines on glass.
He stepped sideways and forward simultaneously, into the one angle that wasn't covered, shoulder brushing broken plaster, the air moving just behind him as one Xenon's limb scythed through where his spine had been a moment before.
His first cut was horizontal.
He swung Sorrow's Edge in a flat arc at chest height, the blade passing through the torso of the Xenon coming from his front as if the creature's chitinous shell had been paper.
There was no resistance or impact. The sword did not behave like a normal weapon against Xenon material. It translated contact into absence.
The Xenon's body parted in silence.
