The salt spray tasted like regret. Rain lashed the chrome towers of New Aethelburg, a city built on the bones of old Atlantic City, a place nobody remembered rightly. Below, the fractured boardwalk—more glass and bioluminescent algae than wood—reflected the neon smear of hovercars. Six figures stood silent, the masks seamless, shifting—a flicker of raven’s wing, the glint of shark’s tooth, the cold curve of a serpent’s scale. They weren’t kids playing hero. They were consequence.
“He’s coming,” Kai murmured, voice tight, the mask momentarily resolving into the hawk’s fierce eye before dissolving back into abstraction. He didn’t *look* at the others; they all sensed it—the ripple in the city’s energy, the tightening of the rain.
“About damn time,” Lena countered, hands flexing, the mask’s surface mimicking the chitinous plates of a beetle. She didn’t bother glancing at Kai, her gaze fixed on the monolithic structure ahead—the Obsidian Spire, home to the man they called Silvanus.
“Don’t start, Lena,” Rowan cautioned, the wolf’s muzzle of her mask subtly shifting, baring phantom teeth. She adjusted the grip on the electro-staff humming at her side. “Remember the plan.”
“Plan, schman,” Jax scoffed, the jackal’s mask barely containing a smirk. He bounced on the balls of his feet, radiating restless energy. “We go in, we mess things up, we get out. Simple.”
“Simple for *you*,” Maya pointed out, her mask displaying a fleeting, ethereal jellyfish bloom. She traced the pattern of glowing fissures in the ruined pavement with a booted foot. “You’re the distraction.”
“Someone’s gotta be,” Jax retorted, then fell silent as a black, aerodyne vehicle descended, a predatory insect against the bruised sky.
“Silvanus,” Nico confirmed, the snake’s mask—smooth, almost liquid—never wavering. His voice was a low thrum, barely audible above the storm.
The vehicle settled on a landing pad of polished obsidian. A figure emerged—tall, impossibly elegant, radiating an aura of icy power. He didn’t seem to notice the six looming figures, his gaze fixed on the rain-streaked cityscape.
“Still pathetic, isn’t it?” Silvanus’s voice carried on the wind, a silken rasp. “These shimmering cages they build. They chase immortality, yet they forget what it means to *live*.”
Lena stepped forward, her beetle-shell mask clicking softly.
“You mean forget what it means to feel?”
Silvanus turned, his expression unreadable.
“Sentiment. A weakness. You’ve been…modified, haven’t you? A little bit of the old world bleeding into the new. Amusing.”
“We remember enough,” Rowan snapped, raising her electro-staff. A blue arc crackled between its nodes.
“Remember what?” Silvanus countered, a hint of challenge in his voice. “The decay? The loss? The inevitable end? I offer them transcendence, a way out. And they flock to me like moths to a dying star.”
“You drain them,” Maya said, her voice barely a whisper. “You offer life, but you steal it. You build your empire on their fading echoes.”
Jax grinned, the jackal’s teeth flashing.
“Sounds like a pretty lousy business model to me.” He launched himself forward, a blur of motion.
Silvanus didn’t flinch. He raised a hand, and a wave of energy slammed into Jax, sending him sprawling.
“A little…enthusiastic,” Silvanus observed, as if swatting a fly. “Such a waste of potential. You could have been *more*.”
Kai moved then, a swift, silent strike. His hand blurred, and a shimmering blade materialized, aimed for Silvanus’s throat.
Silvanus didn’t react, but the blade stopped inches from his skin, held by an invisible force.
“Impressive reflexes,” he said coolly. “But you misunderstand. I don’t fear death. I *collect* it.”
Nico finally spoke, his voice a cold whisper.
“You don’t collect death. You hoard life. And you’re suffocating us all.”
The rain intensified, washing over the city. The fight was about to begin. It wasn’t a battle for justice, or even for hope. It was a fight for breath. A fight against being consumed. And these six—these broken, shifting things—were all that stood between the city, and a darkness that had been building for centuries.
