Erin Volter stood paralyzed at the living room window, her fingers clutching the curtains so tightly her knuckles turned chalk-white.
Outside, barely twenty yards from her front porch, the atmosphere had split wide open. A bruised-purple dimensional tear hovered in the air, pulsing like a festering wound and disgorging waves of cold, metallic ozone and corrupted dark mana.
Then came the beasts.
First, tens of smaller Calamity Beasts poured onto the asphalt. They were twisted, multi-limbed abominations covered in jagged chitin and dark fur, their featureless heads snapping erratically in every direction as they tested the air. Their eyes burned with a feral, unholy red light—hungry, angry, and frantic. Because of the thick walls and light-dampening curtains, the smaller creatures couldn’t see Erin, and their instinctual fear of enclosed human structures kept them prowling the street.
But then, the gate expanded with a sickening, wet tear.
Larger beasts stepped through the threshold. They were monstrous, grotesque entities whose sheer physical density made the air itself hum with pressure. Unlike the mindless minions, these larger beasts possessed a predatory intelligence. They didn’t just roam; their glowing red irises scanned the surrounding residential blocks with deliberate, bloodthirsty intent.
Erin’s breath caught in her dry throat. Hide!
Gritting her teeth against the rising wave of terror, Erin spun on her heel and sprinted toward the staircase to reach her twelve-year-old son’s bedroom.
BOOM!
Before her foot could hit the third step, a catastrophic impact detonated against the front of the building. The entire residential structure violently lurched. The wooden floorboards buckled, and Erin lost her balance, falling hard down the flight of stairs. She crashed heavily onto the landing, the breath exploded from her lungs in a ragged gasp as sharp pain radiated through her ribs.
Groaning, Erin forced her arms beneath her, struggling to push herself up. But as she turned her head, every drop of blood in her veins turned to ice.
The front wall of her living room had been completely pulverized into splinters and concrete dust. Standing in the jagged breach, looming over the ruined entryway, was one of the larger beasts. It was a terrifying, six-foot-tall bipedal monster resembling a massive, broad-shouldered iguana. Its thick, spiky scales gleamed like dark iron, and its unhinged jaw dripped with corrosive saliva as its bloodshot red eyes locked dead onto Erin’s prone body. Crowding behind the reptilian behemoth were several of the smaller feral beasts, snapping their fangs in eager anticipation.
Erin’s world crumbled right before her eyes. The peaceful life she had carefully built for twelve years, the quiet sanctuary of Area 17, and the solemn promise she had made to Hide—that she would never let monsters reach him—was on the verge of being utterly destroyed.
Yet, looking into the jaws of death, Erin didn’t cower. Instincts, fierce and unyielding, ignited like a roaring furnace in her chest. For her son’s life, she would stand against the abyss itself.
She was an Awakened human. The dark mana core she had received on Rilth started accumulating mana. Because the dimensional tear had opened barely yards away, the room was heavily saturated with dense, corrupted dark mana. To a normal civilian, the atmosphere was toxic, but to Erin, it was pure fuel.
She pulled the surrounding energy into her circulatory system, her green eyes igniting with a sharp, desperate glow. I can fight them, she resolved, digging her boots into the carpet. I have to!
She pushed herself to her feet, raising her hands to channel a barrier of dark mana. But reality was a cruel master. Erin was a researcher, an Oracle—she had spent her life analyzing spatial equations behind a desk, not swinging blades. She had never fought a Calamity Beast in her life. And the two-legged iguana before her was no fragile F-Rank or G-Rank creature; its dense mana signature sat comfortably at the E-Rank threshold.
The iguana beast let out a deafening, metallic bellow and lunged, raising its massive, clawed gauntlets to crush her skull.
Erin braced herself, closing her eyes—
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
Blinding flashes of elemental fire and high-caliber gunfire suddenly tore through the shattered wall!
A four-man vanguard response team from the local National Exterminator Agency burst into the smoke-filled room. Wind blades and compressed fire-balls slammed directly into the iguana beast’s chest, driving the E-Rank monster back into the street with a screech of agony. The Exterminators moved with military precision, swiftly neutralizing the smaller beasts crowding the porch.
"Area secure! Citizen located!" the lead Exterminator shouted, stepping over the smoking debris toward Erin. He reached out, offering her a firm, reassuring grip. "Ma’am! Are you alright? Stand up, we need to evacuate you—"
SHLUK! SHLUK!
The Exterminator’s sentence died in his throat.
Before his fingers could even brush Erin’s shoulder, two pale hands—edged with razor-sharp, talons—punched cleanly through the backs of both lead Exterminators. The strike was instantaneous, silent, and horrifically precise, shattering their ribs and exploding through the center of their chests in a fountain of bright crimson blood.
Erin gasped, her eyes widening to pinpricks as the two elite soldiers collapsed lifelessly onto the floorboards right in front of her. Hot, thick human blood splattered across her face, pooling rapidly around her knees on the ruined carpet.
From the doorway behind the fallen guards, a cold, elegant, and dual-layered voice echoed through the quiet room, dripping with disgust:
"You don’t get to touch her with your filthy hands. Damn humans!"
Erin sat frozen in absolute, soul-crushing horror.
The stench of iron... the pool of crimson spreading across the floor... the shadow looming over the corpses...
Suddenly, a violent spike of psychic agony detonated behind Erin’s eyes. The forgotten memories of the erratic, terrifying visions of the future she had suffered as an Oracle—flooded back into her consciousness.
The vision... her mind shrieked in silent hysteria. The vision of my death!
She had seen this exact moment years ago. She had seen the blood on the floor, the dead Exterminators, and the shadow stepping out of the dark. She tried to speak, to scream, to draw air into her lungs, but her vocal cords completely failed her. She could only stare in helpless, breathless terror.
She slowly lifted her gaze to the killer.
Standing amidst the bloody carnage was a tall, lean figure dressed in immaculate, high-end formal attire. Resting over his face was a porcelain Joker mask, painted with sharp, mocking diamond eye-holes.
The remaining Calamity Beasts outside—even the towering E-Rank iguana—instantly stopped their snarling. The monsters whimpered pathetically, bowing their heads and scrambling backward into the dark street, trembling in terror of the entity standing before them.
Erin wanted to ask who he was, why he was doing this, but her throat remained locked.
The Joker casually stepped over the dead Exterminators, stepping into the living room. He lowered himself, crouching down on his boots directly in front of Erin until they were at eye level.
Slowly, deliberately, he raised his gloved fingers to the side of his face and unlatched the porcelain Joker mask, setting it aside.
Erin’s heart nearly stopped beating. Her entire body shuddered violently.
Beneath the mask was the strikingly handsome, charming face of a young boy. He possessed fierce, brilliant green eyes and fine, soft silver-white hair—an exact, undeniable mirror of Erin’s own features.
The boy looked down at her pale, blood-smeared face, a soft smile curving his lips.
"Hello there, Mom!" he said smoothly.
Erin stared at him in utter, paralyzed disbelief, her lips trembling as tears spilled silently down her cheeks. Rosh...?
Seeing her complete silence and the unmitigated horror in her eyes, the boy’s smile faltered. He stood up straight, his brow furrowing in annoyance.
"Huh? You are my mother, I am sure," the boy muttered, tilting his head as he examined her. "What? Don’t you recognize me?"
He paused, staring at his own hands before clapping them together as if hit by a sudden, obvious realization.
"Ahh... of course you don’t recognize me," he chuckled softly.
Snap!
He snapped his fingers.
Instantly, the human skin, the charming face, the silver hair, and the formal suit covering his frame dissolved into thin air like dissipating mist. Revealed in its place was his true, void-born entity—a shifting, non-Euclidean silhouette of pitch-black darkness and swirling cosmic starlight, an anchor of pure spatial authority made manifest.
The Void-born entity tilted its featureless head toward Erin, its voice echoing with a hollow, cosmic resonance:
"Now... it should be better."
Before Erin could process the staggering revelation of her lost firstborn son, a small, trembling voice broke through the suffocating silence from the top of the stairs:
"What... what is happening...?"
Erin and the Void-born entity both snapped their heads toward the staircase.
Standing near the top landing, clutching the wooden banister with shaking, white-knuckled hands, was twelve-year-old Hide. Tears streamed down the boy’s pale face as he looked down in pure, helpless terror at the blood-soaked living room, the dead Exterminators, and the pitch-black monster standing over his mother.
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