The sprawl from West City F to the center was a landscape of jagged ruins. The heart of the city was a charnel house, the skyscrapers not just shattered, but painted in the viscera and black wool of the Gigax Aries. The meteor's impact had left behind a heavy, metallic silence, broken only by the settling of dust.

  As the survivors emerged from the bunkers, the relief was short-lived. Shinobi, Titan, and the local hero corps were immediately placed under arrest within the Federation’s regional headquarters. The Mayor, seeking a scapegoat for the destruction, had filed a motion of censure against the City F branch. The very people who had held the line were now being processed like common criminals.

  Inside the building, the atmosphere was stifling. While the junior heroes trained frantically to keep their anxiety at bay, Shinobi sat in a cold, metal chair, staring at the floor. He had unmasked the Federation’s corruption, but at a cost that made the victory taste like ash. He had saved the people, but lost the narrative.

  Titan approached him, his face pale with a new kind of terror.

  "Shinobi! Allen... look at the screen! Look at Allen!"

  Shinobi’s head snapped up. On the surveillance monitors, a figure in a somber gray suit was standing in the middle of a street, surrounded by police tactical units. In his hands, he held a massive, liquid-black scythe.

  After the meteor strike, Allen had wandered the ruins like a ghost. He kept his hand pressed against his chest, right over his heart, as if trying to hold the organ together.

  "Why...?" he whispered. "Why does it hurt so much?"

  His eyes were wide, and thick, hot tears carved tracks through the soot on his cheeks. "What is the point of any of this... if she isn't here to see it? If I'm always alone?"

  Allen collapsed to his knees, a guttural scream tearing from his throat. In his pockets, the remaining stones began to vibrate with a violent, erratic frequency.

  A nearby slab of concrete shattered as a black sphere—the Onyx of Despair—drifted toward him. Allen reached out, his hand trembling, his eyes clouded with grief.

  "Is this the only way?" he asked the void. "Is hatred and pain the only fuel I have left to move forward?"

  As his fingers closed around the Onyx, a pillar of absolute darkness erupted. His wooden staff splintered into toothpicks, and the vibrant colors of his other stones faded into a dull, dead gray.

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  When the light of the void dissipated, Allen stood in a stark gray suit. The tears on his face had turned into black ichor, staining two permanent lines down his cheeks.

  "Knight of Sorrow Style..."

  He raised his hand. A black, viscous fluid surged from his palm, extending into a jagged, terrifying scythe. He gripped the shaft, and the weapon solidified into obsidian.

  "Weapon of Hated Sorrow."

  As he walked, every repressed emotion surged to the surface. He felt a searing self-loathing, a cold fury toward Calibur and Aegis, and a total indifference toward his own life. But beneath it all was the foundation: an infinite, suffocating sadness.

  He rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a police line. An officer leveled a rifle at his chest, his hands shaking. Allen looked at him with hollow, dead eyes.

  "Are you going to shoot?" Allen asked, his voice a flat monotone. "Go ahead. I can't change the fact that I fall in love too easily. And I fell for someone I never should have."

  The officer fired. In the next heartbeat, the man’s upper and lower body slid apart. Allen stood past him, the blade of his scythe dripping with fresh blood.

  "She was supposed to be different... I thought she would accept me... but I was wrong."

  Something inside Allen’s chest finally snapped. His heart began to beat with a violent, rhythmic thud that caused him physical pain. He clutched his shirt, gasping.

  Please... I only wanted someone to understand...

  ?Everyone hurts you,? a voice hissed in his mind, cold and serpentine. ?They lie, they hide, and they will never accept you for what you are.?

  A single black tear floated from his eye, levitating in front of his face. It radiated a dark, pulsing light.

  ?Do it! No one changes! They will always hurt you! They will never see you!?

  Allen’s right eye turned pitch black, the iris a pinprick of glowing red. He raised the scythe high above his head. The blade took on a sickly violet hue, humming with a negative energy that sucked the light from the air.

  Allen’s lips curled into a forced, jagged smile.

  "Major Star Explosion."

  The wind stopped. The world went silent. As Allen’s blade cleaved through the levitating black tear, a silent, white-hot explosion expanded outward, swallowing the entire city.

  That day marked the birth of a new S-Rank villain in the Federation’s database. It was also the day City F was erased from the map with a single blow.

  To Aegis, the loss of life was irrelevant. What interested him was the anomaly. He ordered Allen’s immediate capture, but when his teams arrived at the coordinates, they found nothing. Allen, Shinobi, Titan, the heroes, and even the civilians had vanished.

  Aegis arrived at the site hours later. Clad in ornate white armor with gold accents, he stood at the edge of a massive, perfectly circular abyss that stretched for hundreds of miles.

  "He's maturing," Aegis whispered, a cold fascination in his voice. "The evolutionary gene is forcing his growth."

  He reached down and touched the edge of the crater, sensing the residual energy.

  "I see. He unleashed so much raw power at once that he tore a hole in the fabric of space. A wormhole. He took the whole city through it."

  Aegis stood up and pulled out his phone, a predatory smile crossing his face.

  "Allen has jumped through space. I want five of you to track him. Capture Allen alive. Do whatever you wish with the other heroes and civilians. Elisse, you are in command."

  He let the phone drop into the abyss and walked away, his cape billowing in the radioactive wind. The hunt had moved beyond the stars.