The rain in Oakhaven didn't just wash the streets; it drowned them. It was a heavy, industrial downpour that smelled of ozone and wet concrete, slicking the rooftops of the docklands into mirrors that reflected the neon bleed of the city skyline.
Kaelen Vance sat on the edge of a rusted crane, three hundred feet above the harbor. To anyone watching from below, he would have been a smudge of shadow against the bruised purple clouds.
He wasn't watching the view. He didn't need to look to see it.
Behind the wrap-around, opaque black blindfold that covered the upper half of his face, his eyes—The All-Seeing—were processing the world in a stream of agonizingly high-definition data. He saw the thermal bloom of a rat scurrying across the pavement below. He saw the structural stress fractures in the crane he sat on. And, most importantly, he saw the jagged, sickly-green aura of illicit mana leaking from Warehouse 4.
"Three guards at the north entrance," Kaelen murmured, his voice distorted by the mana-weave cowl pulled up over his nose. The cowl didn't just muffle his voice; it vibrated the air around his jaw, turning his baritone into a staticky, genderless growl. "Two snipers on the catwalks. And inside... twenty-four heat signatures clustered in a shipping container."
He stood up, stretching his arms over his head. His spine popped.
"And I have a staff meeting in forty-five minutes. Elena is going to kill me."
He stepped off the crane.
He didn't fall so much as descend. Gravity tugged at him, but Kaelen simply refused to acknowledge it fully, manipulating the space between himself and the ground to slow his descent to a feather-light landing in the center of the warehouse loading bay.
The splash of his boots hitting a puddle was the only warning the guards got.
"Hey!" one of them shouted, raising an assault rifle. "Who the—it's him! It's The Hollow!"
The fear was delicious. It smelled like cold sweat and burnt copper.
"Gentlemen," Kaelen said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his long, dark tactical coat. "You're working late. Overtime pay in this economy? I'm impressed."
The guard didn't laugh. He squeezed the trigger.
The muzzle flashed, a strobe light in the gloom. The bullets tore through the air at supersonic speeds, aiming straight for Kaelen's chest.
And then, they stopped.
Six inches from his coat, the bullets hit an invisible wall. They didn't bounce off; they simply slowed down, infinitely dividing the space between the tip of the bullet and Kaelen's body until they lost all kinetic energy. They hung there, suspended in the air like mosquitoes trapped in amber.
Kaelen tilted his head. "Standard 5.56 rounds. Boring."
He flicked his finger. The invisible barrier expanded outward in a violent pulse. The bullets reversed trajectory, pinging harmlessly off the concrete around the guards' feet, terrifying them into a stumble.
"What the hell is he?" the second guard screamed, fumbling for a radio. "Code Black! We need the Mage-Killer!"
"No need for names," Kaelen sighed. He raised his right hand, index and middle finger crossed.
Reversal: Crimson.
A small, red orb of concentrated mana coalesced at his fingertip. It wasn't fire; it was pure repulsive force. He flicked it toward the heavy steel doors of the warehouse.
The orb traveled slowly, almost lazily, until it touched the metal.
BOOM.
The doors didn't just blow open; they were erased from their hinges, twisted into scrap metal and hurled backward into the warehouse with the force of a freight train. The shockwave knocked the guards flat on their backs.
Kaelen stepped over them, walking through the twisted wreckage of the entrance.
Inside, the warehouse was a cavern of shadows and stacked crates. A dozen armed men in tactical gear were already scrambling into position, flanking a large, runes-etched shipping container in the center. Standing in front of it was a man in a pinstripe suit, holding a glowing cane—a low-level Warlock.
"Stop right there, Hollow!" the Warlock shouted, pointing the cane. A bolt of necrotic green energy surged toward Kaelen.
Kaelen didn't dodge. He kept walking. The green energy hit the invisible barrier around him—his Infinity—and sizzled out, unable to cross the infinite distance between it and his skin.
"You guys really need to diversify your portfolio," Kaelen deadpanned. "Human trafficking? In my city? It's tacky."
"Open fire!" the Warlock screamed.
The warehouse erupted in noise. Bullets, fireballs, and jagged shards of ice filled the air. It was a storm of lethal intent.
Kaelen yawned.
He walked through the barrage, the attacks fizzling out inches from his body. To him, it was like walking through a light drizzle. He could feel the intent behind the attacks, the desperate calculations of the men trying to kill him, but the attacks themselves were meaningless.
He stopped ten feet from the Warlock. The shooting stopped. The men were panting, their magazines empty, their mana reserves drained.
Kaelen stood untouched. Not a speck of dust on his coat.
"My turn," he whispered.
He lowered his blindfold just an inch, exposing one eye—a piercing, crystalline blue that seemed to contain the sky itself.
The pressure in the room dropped. The Warlock fell to his knees, vomiting as the sheer density of Kaelen's mana presence crushed the air out of his lungs.
Kaelen pointed at the Warlock, then dragged his finger to the left.
Lapse: Azure.
Gravity obeyed. The Warlock was yanked violently sideways, slamming into a stack of crates with a bone-crunching thud. The other thugs dropped their weapons, their morale shattered by the casual display of godhood.
"Leave," Kaelen commanded. His voice wasn't loud, but it resonated in their skulls. "Or I stop being gentle."
They ran. They didn't look back. They scrambled over each other to get out the back exit, leaving the Warlock groaning in the debris.
Kaelen walked to the shipping container. He placed a hand on the heavy iron lock. With a thought, he twisted the space inside the mechanism. The lock snapped like a twig.
He slid the door open.
Inside, huddled in the darkness, were twenty young women. They flinched as the light hit them, terror etched into their faces. They expected a monster.
Kaelen pulled his cowl down, though he kept the blindfold on. He softened his posture, leaning against the doorframe to appear less imposing.
"It's okay," he said, his voice returning to its natural, smooth tenor. " The door is open. The police will be here in five minutes. Do not go out the back; go out the front, towards the main road."
One of the girls, brave despite the trembling, stepped forward. "Who are you?"
Kaelen smirked, a fleeting expression beneath the shadows. "Just a concerned citizen."
Sirens wailed in the distance. Blue and red lights began to flash against the high windows of the warehouse.
Sera.
She was early. Of course she was. Detective Seraphina Cross never missed a beat.
"Go," Kaelen told the girls.
As they ran past him toward freedom, Kaelen dissolved. He didn't vanish; he simply warped the space around him, compressing distance until he was standing back on the rooftop of the adjacent building.
He watched from above as the SCU cruisers screeched to a halt. He saw a woman in a leather jacket kick open her car door, her gun drawn, her blonde hair plastered to her face by the rain. She looked furious.
"Too slow, Sera," Kaelen whispered.
He checked the cheap digital watch on his wrist.
8:48 AM.
"Shit."
The god-like entity known as The Hollow vanished. In his place was a frantic, under-caffeinated archivist who was about to be very, very late.