THE WHISPER IN THE ASHES 

They always start with laughter. 

It's never the fists that break you first—it's the sound. The way their snickers twist into hyena-cackles, the way your *name* becomes a punchline. I don't even remember what I did. Maybe I looked at him wrong. Maybe I breathed too loud. Maybe I existed in a space he wanted empty. 

Doesn't matter now. 

Crunch.

A steel-toed boot collided with my kidney. I folded like origami, my spine kissing the cold factory floor. Six of them tonight. Always six. Their shadows danced on the walls, grotesque and elongated in the sickly orange glow of dying sodium lights. 

"Look at him squirm!" 

"Like a roach in a microwave!" 

"Finish him, Ren! Do it!" 

Ren. The ringleader. His smile was a straight razor—all edge, no warmth. He crouched, gripping my hair, forcing me to meet his eyes. They were the color of stagnant pond water. 

"You're exhausting, Kaz," he hissed. "Why do you keep getting back up? Huh? You think someone's coming to save you?" 

I didn't answer. Answers were excuses. Excuses were kindling. 

He slammed my head against the floor. Stars exploded behind my eyelids. 

---

Then—silence.

Not the absence of sound, but the kind of silence that pulses. The lights flickered. Ren's grip loosened. 

"Pathetic."

The voice wasn't theirs. It wasn't mine. It came from everywhere—the rusted pipes overhead, the cracks in the concrete, the marrow of my bones. Feminine. Ancient. Amused. 

Ren staggered back. "What the hell…?" 

The temperature plummeted. Our breaths hung in the air like ghosts. 

"You mistake resilience for weakness, little wolf," the voice crooned. "This one has claws you cannot see." 

A shadow detached from the wall. No—became the wall. It pooled forward, liquid and alive, resolving into a figure. 

Her.

She wore a funeral shroud of shifting smoke, her face half-hidden beneath a hood. The visible half was porcelain-pale, etched with glowing indigo runes. Her left eye was normal—amber, almost human. Her right eye was a black hole, swallowing the light. 

Ren's gang edged backward. Smart. For once. 

She tilted her head, studying me. "You've been marked by the Void, Kazuo. It sings in your blood. Let me… amplify it." 

Ren found his courage. "This some ARG shit? I'll end you, cosplay freak!" 

He lunged at her. 

Bad move. 

Her shadow moved. Tendrils of darkness snapped his ankles, his wrists, his jaw—crack, crack, crack—before suspending him midair like a broken marionette. His scream died in his throat as the shadows slithered into his mouth. 

"You'll do no such thing," she murmured. 

The others fled. Cowards. Always cowards. 

She knelt beside me. The factory's decay vanished—suddenly, all I smelled was jasmine and blood. 

"They'll keep coming," she said. "Unless you become something… hungrier. But hunger demands sacrifice. Will you pay it?"* 

I spat blood. "What… are you?" 

Her smile split her face like a seam. "The echo of what this city buried. The scream it silenced. You may call me Nox."

Her hand hovered over my chest. My ribs glowed faintly blue beneath the skin, veins mapping constellations of pain. 

"Say yes, Kazuo. Let me unmake you."

The world narrowed to her outstretched hand. To the void in her eye. To the part of me that wanted to bite back. 

I gripped her wrist. 

Yes.