BOOM!
The explosion tore through the orphanage like the wrath of an angry god, shattering the eternal silence that had cloaked the City of Silver for countless years.
Windows burst outward in showers of crystalline fragments, and the inpenatrable stone walls cracked underneath the tremendous force of the inferno. The sound echoed through the empty streets, reverberating off the towering structures that stood like silent sentinels in the perpetual darkness.
Screams erupted from within the building as the women of the orphanage staff scrambled in panic. Their voices, high and shrill with terror, pierced the night air like knives. "Fire! There's a Fire!" they cried, their words nearly drowned out by the roar of flames that had already begun to consume the upper floors.
The children's wails joined the cacophony—dozens of young voices raised in fear and confusion as they were roused from their beds by the chaos. The smaller ones sobbed uncontrollably, while the older children tried to help shepherd their younger companions toward safety.
For the first time in memory, the City of Silver was illuminated by something other than the feeble glow of oil lamps, candles, and lightning storms. The fire cast dancing shadows against the surrounding buildings, its orange light flickering against the perpetual storm clouds overhead. The sight was both beautiful and terrifying—a violent splash of color in a world that had forgotten warmth and brightness.
Through the smoke and flames, a figure came crashing through one of the upper-story windows. The orphanage head—a stern woman in her fifties who had run the institution with iron discipline—tumbled through the air, her arms windmilling helplessly as she plummeted toward the cobblestones below.
She struck the ground with a sickening thud, her body contorting at an unnatural angle. Blood pooled beneath her head, dark against the gray stones, and her eyes stared sightlessly at the storm-torn sky.
Within moments, bystanders began to gather around the fallen woman. Citizens emerged from their homes, drawn by the unprecedented commotion. Someone in the crowd shouted, "Get the patrol team! Hurry!"
The flames continued to rage for hours, sending acrid smoke billowing into the night sky. The patrol team worked tirelessly to contain the blaze, forming bucket brigades and using their beyonder abilities to manipulate water and suppress the fire. It was a losing battle at first—the flames seemed to have a life of their own, spreading with unnatural speed and intensity.
When the last of the flames finally died out, the orphanage stood as a blackened husk of its former self. The nun-like women who served as caretakers gathered the surviving children in the courtyard, their faces streaked with soot and tears. They began the grim task of taking roll call, their voices hoarse from smoke inhalation.
"Sean... Marcus... Beth..." The names were called out one by one, each child stepping forward when their name was spoken. But as the list grew longer, so did the silence between responses.
"Where's Philip?" asked one of the nuns, her voice rising with panic. "And Claire? Has anyone seen Claire?"
"Two of the Madames have also mysteriously disappeared!"
The realization hit them like a physical blow. Three children were missing, along with two members of the staff. The women frantically called for the patrol team members who had been fighting the fire, begging them to help search for the missing.
Valer stepped forward from the group of exhausted patrol team that were acting as firefighters. The Dawn Paladin stood over two meters tall, his imposing figure casting a long shadow in the dying light of the flames. His grayish-blue skin marked him as a member of the Twilight Giant pathway, while his black eyes and hair marked him as kin to the giants themselves. His strong physique was both a product of his pathway and the beyonder characteristics passed down through his family line.
"What's the situation?" he asked, his voice carrying the authority of someone worthy of his power.
Madame Irene, one of the surviving staff members, quickly explained the dire circumstances. "We're missing three children and two of our caretakers. They were last seen in the east wing before the explosion."
Valer nodded grimly and activated his spiritual vision, entering a state of cogitation. The world around him took on a different quality—spiritual auras became visible, and the residual traces of supernatural activity glowed faintly in his enhanced perception.
"Baldur!" he called to his assistant squad leader.
The younger man approached quickly. Standing just under two meters tall, Baldur possessed the more normal skin tone of someone still progressing through the pathway. His blonde hair contrasted sharply with his black eyes, and his physique marked him as a Sequence 8 Gladiator.
"Yes, sir?" Baldur responded, also entering his cogitation state.
"We'll split up to cover more ground. You take the northwest direction, I'll head northeast. Look for any spiritual traces or disturbances that might indicate where they've gone."
Both men nodded to each other before setting off in their respective directions, their enhanced senses attuned to any supernatural anomalies.
Valer sprinted through the ruins of the city's outskirts, his enhanced vision scanning the spiritual realm for any signs of the missing persons. The storm overhead continued to rage, lightning illuminating the landscape in brief, stark flashes.
As he moved through the northeastern sector, he detected something that made his blood run cold. Far in the distance, he could perceive the outline of a person's spiritual form—but it was wrong. The aura was corrupt, twisted into something that barely resembled human consciousness. Beside it, however, was a smaller, purer soul signature that pulsed with the innocent light of childhood.
"Found them," he muttered, activating his beyonder ability.
'Sunrise Gleam: Light of Dawn'
Silver light erupted from Valer's body, extending outward in a sphere that reached nearly forty meters in radius. The divine radiance cut through the darkness like a blade, illuminating the twisted landscape around him. With this supernatural silver illumination to guide him, he accelerated his movement, his legs pumping with an inhuman speed.
In a burst of motion that would have been impossible for any ordinary person, Valer launched himself forward at speeds approaching that of the top limit of a bullet train. The landscape blurred past him as he covered the ten-thousand foot distance in mere seconds, coming to a stop just a few meters from the two figures he had detected.
What he found there, made the hairs on his neck stand up and his killing intent leaked out.
The larger figure was no longer human—if it ever had been. The creature before him stood nearly three meters tall, its grotesquely muscled form resembling some nightmarish fusion of goblin and ogre.
Its skin was a sickly green color, mottled with patches of darker discoloration that seemed to pulse with their own malevolent life. Most disturbing of all was the heavily deformed face embedded in its chest, the features twisted into an expression of perpetual agony and rage.
The monster was completely naked, yet possessed no discernible gender characteristics—as if the transformation had stripped away not just its humanity, but its very identity. In its massive hands, it clutched a small, terrified child who whimpered softly.
"Release the child!" Valer commanded, his voice carrying the authority of his pathway. The Light of Dawn began to intensify, its silver radiance eating away at the monster's corrupted flesh like acid.
The creature's response was immediate and violent. It hurled the child aside with casual brutality, then charged at Valer with surprising speed. Despite its enormous size, the monster moved with the desperate fury of a cornered animal.
But Valer was no ordinary opponent. His enhanced reflexes, honed by years of training and empowered by his beyonder abilities, allowed him to read the creature's movements with perfect clarity. As the monster's massive fist swung toward his head, he leaped over the attack with fluid grace, his body twisting into a somersault mid-air.
'Twilight Giant Sequence 6: Weapon Creation'
A blade of pure twilight materialized in Valer's hand—not quite light, not quite shadow, but something that existed in the space between. The weapon hummed with supernatural energy as he brought it down in a devastating overhead strike.
The blade met no resistance as it cleaved through the monster's corrupted flesh. The creature was bisected cleanly, its two halves falling away from each other with wet, meaty sounds. But Valer didn't stop there—he spun in a fluid motion, his twilight blade tracing deadly arcs through the air as he dismembered the fallen creature completely.
The twilight energy infused in his weapon had a purifying effect, dissolving the corrupt flesh and spirit until nothing remained but fading wisps of dark energy.
Rushing to the child's side, Valer knelt and gently helped the boy to his feet. "Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice soft despite the urgency of the situation.
The child—no more than ten years old—looked up at him with wide, traumatized eyes. "The... the ladies," he stammered. "Miss Sarah and Miss Catherine... they turned into monsters. They took me and Claire away from the others."
Valer's expression grew grim. If the staff members had been transformed into creatures like the one he'd just destroyed, then the situation was far worse than anyone had imagined. There had been numerous reports of monsters showing up in the city which had been strange in itself. Usually, no creature passed the borders of the town.
But if the inhabitants of city were somehow being corrupted...
He quickly examined the child for injuries, finding only minor scrapes and bruises on him.
"What's your name?" he asked gently.
"Tommy," the boy whispered.
"Well, Tommy, you are safe now. But I need you to hold on tight—we're going to move very fast."
Valer carefully positioned the child on his back, then retracted his Light of Dawn ability, condensing it into a smaller but more intense sphere of aura that surrounded both him and Tommy. This concentrated radiance would provide stronger protection against any evil spirits or monsters they might encounter on the way back.
"Hold on tight," he instructed, then took a deep breath and launched himself back toward the orphanage.
The journey back was a blur of motion, Valer's enhanced speed carrying them across the landscape at hypersonic velocity. The child clung to his back, too stunned by the night's events to do anything but silently hold on.
Meanwhile, in the northwestern sector, Baldur was conducting his own search. Unlike his superior, he lacked access to the more advanced abilities of the Dawn Paladin sequence. Instead, he carried a silver sword inscribed with protective runes—a weapon that would corrode and exorcise evil spirits or monsters upon contact.
Still maintaining his cogitation state, Baldur moved carefully through the dense, overgrown forest that bordered the city. The lightning overhead cast eerie shadows between the gnarled trees, and every sound seemed magnified in the oppressive darkness.
He was beginning to wonder if he was searching in the wrong area when a sound reached his ears—the unmistakable crying of a young girl, echoing through the trees ahead of him.
"Hang on!" he called out, breaking into a run. "I'm coming, but you need to stay right where you are!"
His spiritual vision detected the outline of a child's spirit to his right, and a smile of relief spread across his face. Finally, some good news in this nightmare.
Baldur sprinted toward the spiritual signature, crashing through the underbrush with single-minded determination. The girl's sobs grew louder as he approached, and he could make out her small form huddled against a tree trunk.
"It's okay!" he shouted. "I'm with the patrol team! You're safe now!"
He was perhaps ten meters away when something whistled through the air beside him. The attack came so fast that he barely had time to register it before agony exploded all throughout his left arm...or what was left of it.
Baldur's scream of pain echoed through the forest as his severed limb fell to the ground in a spray of blood. The wound was cleanly cut, as if made by something too impossibly sharp for this world. Blood gushed from the amputated stump, and he staggered backward, his vision blurring from both shock and pain.
Through the haze of agony, he caught sight of his attacker, and his warm flowing blood turned to stagnant ice in his veins.