They hit the distant blocks with dull, heavy thuds. Nothing spectacular like an explosion. Just impacts that made the ground give a tired shiver.

  A few people still flinched. Most didn’t anymore.

  A kid perched on a pallet counted under his breath.

  “Seven…eight…nine…”

  His mother stared upward, and in the middle of the counting she realized something about herself that made her feel sick. She wasn’t jumping at the sound of the impacts anymore.

  A rail gunner took a sip of coffee during one of the thuds and only noticed afterward that his hands weren’t shaking. The normalcy bothered him. Like his body was getting used to the end of the world.

  The man with the bandaged shoulder almost smiled when one landed somewhere behind the strip mall. The thought scared him, and he swallowed it fast.

  Keller watched his men more than he watched the sky. The Illuminated on the corners stood too loose. Too calm. Too accustomed.

  Fearlessness turns into recklessness. Recklessness kills squads.

  The wave built.

  Farther out, rail teams crippled the first arrivals and the Illuminated finished them clean. A few broke into melee range anyway, fast and twitchy, and Dorian and Kesi erased the problem without ceremony. Quick cuts. Quicker to ash. Orange Remnants bagged and delivered to Keller’s tent.

  Twice, Fiends dropped within sight. One was bristled in hooked spines. One was heavy-armed and broad.

  They tried to gather lesser Starspawn and rush the lot as a group.

  Dorian and Kesi hit them before they finished forming.

  No theatrics. Their dexterity far outmatched a Dormant Fiend’s ability to dodge and block and were overwhelmed quickly.

  The Remnants were quickly scooped up by tongs and placed into bags.

  Then the sky brightened and darkened at the same time.

  More streaks. Closer.

  Someone by the water drums whispered, “that’s too many.”

  Four meteors came in wrong.

  They didn’t fall in a long arc. They didn’t miss by a large distance. Just four fat streaks knifing straight down at the parking lot.

  “Inside!” Keller bellowed. “Move!”

  People ran for the mall doors, dove behind trucks, hit the ground. The four lines got big fast, like the sky was dropping spears.

  Dorian didn’t think.

  He shoved Will into his legs and jumped.

  The world fell away. His knees screamed with needle pain and went purple almost instantly. He didn’t care. He met the first meteor above the lot and hit it like a battering ram.

  Like a star burst of ash it exploded. The Starspawn inside barely had time to unfurl itself before it went to dust.

  Kesi burned Thought Acceleration and the world stretched thin.

  Four lines. No, three left.

  He picked a path and spent hard.

  One step off a hood that dented. Second off a light pole. He went up at an angle and tore through the second meteor on the way past, then the third on the downswing, then twisted into the fourth hard enough that his shoulder popped out of place and his teeth clicked.

  All four broke before they reached the lot.

  Chunks still fell. Remnants still fell.

  Debris hammered the camp. A truck hood crushed in. Glass blew out. People who didn’t clear fast enough went down with cuts, broken bones, ringing ears.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  A half-formed Fiend hit the asphalt hard enough to crack it before it finished disintegrating. An orange glow rolled free and clinked against the broken pavement.

  The man with the bandaged shoulder saw it first.

  His mind wasn’t his own.

  He bolted.

  “Hey!” someone yelled, but nobody was close enough to grab him.

  He reached the crystal, scooped it with both hands, and dragged it to his chest like it might try to escape his grasp. Orange light jumped under his skin.

  He screamed. But many people were screaming at the horrific scene.

  The veins in his neck went bright, and something in his posture changed in the span of a breath. Taller. Tighter. Like a wire pulled taut.

  Dorian and Kesi landed and didn’t see him at first. They were scanning the lot, reading the damage, checking the perimeter. Kesi infused a massive amount of Will and his shoulder re-socketed itself while Dorian was infusing Will into his legs, bruises fading at a visible pace.

  The man’s eyes snapped open. Wrong.

  Empty.

  Hungry.

  He turned toward the nearest person, a woman still getting up from behind a crate, and hit her hard enough to fold her in half against a truck.

  People screamed.

  Kesi was the first to notice. For one stunned heartbeat he just stared, like his brain refused the image.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  The man grabbed another civilian by the throat and squeezed.

  The neck popped.

  The sound was small, and that made it worse.

  The man’s face looked almost relieved. Like he’d found food. Like killing a person lit something in him that the Remnant never gave.

  Dorian didn’t hesitate once he saw what was happening.

  He came in from the side, blades already out, and cut at the base of the skull.

  Clean. One hit. Spine severed.

  The body dropped.

  For half a second, the lot went dead quiet. Like even the smoke stopped moving.

  Then a scream ripped through it.

  “NO!”

  A teenager shoved past two adults and dropped to his knees beside the body. His hands hovered over the neck like he could hold the cut together with Willpower alone.

  “Dad?” His voice broke. “Dad, get up. Dad, please. You’re Illuminated now. You’re a hero like you wanted.”

  Blood soaked the collar and pooled under the man’s cheek. Nobody moved. Nobody touched them. People stared like the scene was contagious.

  Kesi’s jaw worked.

  “We have to move the body,” he said low. “Get him clear. Get the kid out…”

  The man’s fingers twitched.

  Just a little. Nobody noticed.

  Dorian’s head looked upwards.

  “Kesi,” he said, sharp. “Wave isn’t over.” He talked like he didn’t just kill someone, straight back to defending people from Starspawn.

  The wound at the base of the man’s skull pulled together, hidden under the blood.

  Skin knit. Bone set. The cut line vanished, clogged red for a heartbeat, then gone.

  The boy didn’t see it. He was crying too hard.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Why…”

  Suddenly, his father’s eyes opened.

  They weren’t the normal brown color.

  They were flat. Starving.

  “Dad?” The boy leaned closer, hope stabbing through panic. ‘Hey, hey. It’s okay, we can…”

  The man’s hand snapped up and closed around his son’s throat.

  He lifted him like he weighed nothing., standing with an unnatural, smooth speed.

  The boy’s feet kicked. His hands clawed at the grip. No use.

  “Let him go!” someone screamed.

  Two civilians lunged, desperate, and bounced off of a field of dark red Will.

  Kesi moved before the scream finished.

  Dorian was already there.

  The man didn’t look at them. He stared straight through his son like the boy was a container hiding something valuable inside.

  There was a crack.

  Short and ugly.

  The boy went limp.

  Kesi hit the man from the side with everything he had, yellow Will flaring as his strike shattered the thin red barrier and drove the man into the asphalt.

  Dorian tore the boy’s body free and shoved it away, then pinned the man down, knee in the spine, arm locked.

  Red and blue Will sparked where they touched. Thick, white-hot plasma hissed into the air where Wills collided, scorched the asphalt, then evaporated like the world couldn’t stomach its existence.

  “How is he still alive?” Kesi shouted, breath ragged. “You cut him!”

  “It healed,” Dorian snapped. “He’s overflowing with Will. Or something else. Doesn’t matter!”

  A ragged circle of spectators had formed around them. Every eye on Dorian’s blades. On the dead boy. On the thing wearing the boy’s father’s face.

  The man bucked under Dorian’s knee, still trying to reach for anyone close enough to grab.

  “Look at me!” Dorian yelled.

  The man twisted, snarling. No recognition. No grief. Nothing human left to appeal to.

  Dorian held his gaze for one beaat.

  Then he stood and did it right.

  One clean cut took the head off.

  A second thrust drove straight through the heart and pinned the body to the pavement.

  Both wounds glowed for a heartbeat, then went dark.

  This time, nothing healed.

  Dorian staggered back, breathing hard.

  Something warm and wrong slid into his soul, not like a Remnant. It wasn’t a burn. It was alive. It filled him with power in a way that felt intimate and disgusting. He was unwilling but it didn’t ask to be absorbed, it just did.

  It felt forbidden, and…grossly enticing.

  For one flicker of a moment, his eyes tracked the crowd like they were…options. Food, more souls for him to consume like he did when he killed the man. He understood him for a moment. The man wanted power. He got it, but it only amplified his want, he saw the souls people possessed and knew it was power, like a Starspawn. Dorian didn’t understand these feelings but they were powerful and dangerous.

  He blinked hard and focused, shoving himself back into his own skin.

  He hadn’t realized how long he’d been contemplating.

  Kesi had already taken the teenage boy in his arms, tears forming at the edge of his eyes.

  The crowd was quiet and fearful.

  Someone prayed under their breath, fast and frantic.

  Keller’s voice cut through from somewhere behind, cursing, barking for medics, for space, for everyone to keep moving.

  Dorian stood there, blades dripping red, and felt sick in a way he’d never experienced. Like there was saliva in the back of his throat threatening to choke him if he didn’t throw up. It wasn’t even killing another human that rattled him, that was just an enemy at that moment, but absorbing the soul, was something else. He shuddered and shoved the thoughts deep away. The wave was not over.