Kyle was lost in thought when sudden warmth trickled from his nose. Kyle touched it and stared at the smear of red on his thumb. Drops of blood splattered the photo.
He sighed, wiping it away, then crossed to the nightstand and pulled out an injector.
Without hesitation he drove the needle into his chest. Within seconds, the bleeding stopped leaving only faint irritation.
"Almost forgot today's shot, Last month's experience sucked."he muttered with a small grin. Recolling the pain he experienced last month after forgetting his monthly dose, he would hate to experience that again
A sharp buzz of his phone cut through the silence. Kyle groaned as he glanced at the screen. Locks.
He ignored it and went to rinsed his face. when he returned, the phone was still buzzing its vibrations drumming insistently against the wood.
"Hey," he said at last, answering. "I'm not one of your bedtime flings, asshole. Why are you calling me this late?"
"Don't flatter yourself," came the reply. "This beautiful spaceman isn't into men. I have to say no, but thanks."
Kyle gritted his teeth, imagining the smirk on Locks face. "Who said I was asking, fool?"
Locks was Kyle's best friend, a charming menace and a certified troublemaker. He was the kind of guy parents warned their kids to stay away from.
If he wasn't pranking someone, he was probably drunk, or caught up in something shady that somehow always seemed to work out in his favor. Trouble followed him like a loyal shadow, and yet, he carried it all with a kind of reckless confidence that made it hard to stay mad at him for long.
Kyle had known him long enough to recognize the pattern. So when his phone rang and Locks's name flashed across the screen. He already knew what to expect, chaos, laughter, or another one of his ridiculous schemes.
He sighed, shaking his head as he picked up the call. Whatever this was, it was probably just another of Locks's antics
"While you're tucked under your blanket, the upper class of Mau are in chaos," Locks said. "The patriarch of the Ithara family has been found dead in his basement. Himself and eleven others. Their bodies were withered, skin cracked, pale like decades of life got sucked out in seconds. They were found with symbols carved into their flesh. Each victim a different symbol from the other."
Kyle's brow furrowed as he listened, his expression darkening with each word. He eyes narrowing slightly. The Itharas were one of the Seven Kings of Mau City, an ancient family with roots that ran deep into both politics and power.
This are families that underworld syndicates and even the government would avoid any conflict with.
If someone could infiltrate their estate and wipe out a dozen people without raising a single alarm, that meant whoever did it wasn't just powerful they were untouchable.
He exhaled slowly, disbelief creeping into his tone. "You're saying someone attacked one of the kings of Mau City, killed their patriarch and a dozen others, and no one noticed? Not the authorities, not the other families?"
He gave a dry, humorless chuckle. "Maybe you should check into Mau Asylum. Compared to you, the patients there are sane."
"Did I mention it was a ritual or something like that? There was an altar in the basement… and the rest of the family is missing. I think whoever did it is the real deal," Locks said.
"A ritual? To the devil?" Kyle scoffed "You're definitely off your meds." Without waiting for a response, he ended the call with a sharp tap.
He tossed the phone onto the table and ran a hand over his face.
"This guy," he muttered under his breath. "Would he die if he went a day without pranking anyone? That was the worst so far… what even made him think I'd fall for it?"
But despite his irritation, a faint unease lingered in his chest. Locks' jokes were usually more elaborate, full of laughter, background noise.
His phone buzzed again. This time, it was a message with photos and a video.
Kyle opened them and froze.
It was exactly as Locks described. A pentagon drawn in red sprawled across the floor, the lines thick and uneven, as if painted in haste or with trembling hands. Symbols were scrawled at each corner, identical to those carved into the victims skin. The floor around the pentagon was smeared with dark stains that trailed outward like veins.
The bodies lay within the circle. Their faces were shriveled, eyes hollowed, expressions twisted in terror. Every muscle seemed locked in the moment of their final scream. Their skin clung tightly to bone, drained of color, like mummified remains. They looked as though they'd aged a century in seconds. The stillness in the room was suffocating an unnatural quiet that even through the screen made Kyle's stomach twist.
In this world where humans could cultivate their will until the limit of the body was all that restrained them, Kyle had seen all kinds of strange abilities, flames that could melt steel, shadows that devoured light, even minds strong enough to crush weaker wills into submission. But never one that could make people age so rapidly.
No one, not even the elders from ancient clans and families, possessed such an ability.
To strip life away so completely, to reduce a person to a husk in mere seconds, that defied the natural order.
There was only one person in the entire world who might be capable of something like this. The Mau Devil. His very name stirred unease among those who knew the his stories. Under the right conditions, perhaps he could pull off such a feat. His methods were said to twist the essence of life itself, feeding on fear, despair maybe even time.
"Huh..."
He was about to give Locks a call when the thought crossed his mind, but before his fingers could even reach the screen, a searing light flooded Kyle's vision.
His chest tightened as a foreign, invasive energy forced its way into his body. For a heartbeat he couldn't breathe.
Then came the dizziness and the sense that gravity itself had vanished.
Then followed by a single, deafening moment of silence.