THE CHIP:ETERNAL NEAP

From out of the black hole that hung too close way too damn close to Earth, a man stepped forth. Not walked, not fell: stepped, like he'd been waiting on the other side of a door his whole life. Skin the colour of wet coal, eyes like someone had scooped out the night and poured it in sockets. When he opened his mouth the sound wasn't words at first, just a low tearing noise, the way canvas rips under a slow knife.He looked down at the blue marble spinning below him and said one thing, calm as a bailiff reading sentence: "Time to eat."Lindron felt it before anyone saw him. Streetlights popped like overripe fruit. The Thames flinched, water piling up against the embankments then slopping backward. People on the South Bank dropped phones mid selfie; birds simply stopped flying and dropped straight down, wings limp. Big Jake tower's hands froze at ten past three and never moved again.Cassian Veyle was on the roof of the old Blackthorn warehouse in Wapping when the sky tore. Thirty-eight years old, scarred across the knuckles and the heart, once a para, now something else something that carried a sword longer than regulation and answered to no one except the oath he'd sworn at nineteen. Beside him his uncle Thorne, sixty-four and meaner than the river in winter, leaned on an axe that had belonged to Thorne's grandfather and probably killed more men than the Somme.They watched the dark man drift down like ash from a bonfire. "hecking hell," Cassian muttered. Thorne spat. "Told you the old books weren't joking."The thing landed in the middle of Leadenhall Market. Glass roof shattered inward. Marble cracked. Traders and tourists who'd been buying overpriced coffee and tourist tat became red mist in less than three seconds. He didn't even lift a finger properly just flicked his wrist once and bodies unzipped themselves from groin to throat. Guts slopped onto cobbles still steaming. A woman's scream ended halfway through when her jaw unhinged itself and kept going backward.Cassian was already moving. "Order! To me!" he bellowed.Twenty-three men and women answered some in suits, some in hoodies, two in hi-vis they'd never taken off after a night shift. Every one of them carried something sharp and old. No guns. Guns were useless against this; the books had been very clear. They came down Cornhill at a dead run, boots pounding, blades glittering under the sick orange streetlight.The dark man turned. Smiled. Teeth like obsidian fishhooks. "Little soldiers," he said, voice coming from everywhere at once. "How quaint."He clapped once. The clap became a blade-rimmed hurricane fifty metres wide. It caught the front rank of the Order and turned them into ingredients. A boy named Rafe barely twenty-one, still smelled faintly of his mum's laundry lost everything above the navel in a single pass. His lower half took two drunken steps before collapsing. Another woman, Siobhan, got her sword halfway raised before the wind opened her from right shoulder to left hip. She didn't even have time to fall properly; the pieces just tumbled separately.Cassian vaulted a stone bench, clearing the worst of it. He landed sliding on blood-slick cobbles and rammed his longsword straight through the dark man's chest up to the crossguard.For a heartbeat nothing happened. Then black poured out around the blade—not blood, something thicker, hungrier. It burned Cassian's gauntlets, ate holes in the leather, started on skin. He gritted his teeth and twisted.The dark man laughed, a sound like someone strangling a thunderstorm. He grabbed Cassian's throat one-handed and lifted him clean off the ground. "You think metal hurts me, little man?"Thorne came in low and fast. The axe took the dark man's left forearm off at the elbow in a single chop. No spray of blood—just a stump spitting black vapour that hissed when it touched the ground. The severed arm hit the pavement, fingers still flexing, crawling toward Thorne like a dying spider.The dark man howled and backhanded Thorne so hard the old man flew twenty feet, crashed through the window of a closed pub, and disappeared in a fountain of shattered glass and splintered wood.Cassian used the moment. He yanked his sword free, dropped, rolled, came up behind, and hacked deep into the thing's spine. Bone—or whatever passed for bone—cracked like dry slate. More black poured out. The smell was burning hair and old pennies and something far worse.The dark man spun. His remaining hand shot out, fingers splayed. Cassian felt ribs give way before the blow even landed. He flew backward, hit a pillar, felt something important tear inside his chest. Blood flooded his mouth, copper and salt.The monster advanced, stump already sprouting new black tendrils, knitting into a fresh arm. "I will open you slowly," it promised. "I will wear your face while I finish this world."Cassian pushed himself up on one elbow. Laughed once, wet and ragged. "Not tonight, you cunt."Somewhere in the distance—impossibly distant yet clear as a gunshot—the great bell of St Paul's tolled. Once. Twice. A third time. No one had rung it in living memory. No one was supposed to be able to.The dark man froze. Cassian grinned through bloody teeth. "That's the sound of the old oaths waking up."Thorne crawled out of the wrecked pub, one arm hanging useless, axe still clutched in the other. He staggered forward until he stood shoulder to shoulder with his nephew.The dark man looked between them, then up at the sky where the black hole still yawned, patient, waiting."This is only the greeting," it said. "The feast comes later."Then it simply stepped backward—into nothing—and was gone, leaving only the stink of ozone and slaughter.Cassian sank to one knee. Thorne dropped beside him. For a long minute neither spoke. Just breathing. Bleeding. Listening to London groan under its fresh wounds.Finally Thorne rasped, "We're fucked, aren't we?"Cassian wiped blood from his lip. "Always were. Difference is… now he knows our names."High above, the black hole pulsed once, like a heart deciding whether to beat again.