Nothing as in something

Chapter One.

Three Years From Now.

Should I be born?.

"Everyone said when a star falls,

A new one comes,

As the lava of crimson and star burst orange,

as if mixed by the painter, like us,

burst open from the star, in its fall,

a company, a destructor, dragging to the drag,

Legends say, the eternal couple,

life and death,

meet then, only then,

in life, in death,

a moment,

should I born,

but everyone says I'm already'Born',

yet I know otherwise,

should I die,

life and death,

An eternal couple, for a moment,

I be the death, life, come meet me." Ray's voice rang from deep inside planet without his sight.

The planet was dying not the way stars die — dying at the speed of self destruction, hurried, and without mercy.

Amara watched the dying planet from the viewport of the space ship, which Jay is carrying the people of this Planet. The space ship is transparent without chairs, Jay didn't have time to prepare, no, the dying planet didn't give them any time to do so.

People in the space ship along with Amara and Adrian all stood silent watching the same dying planet, eyes fixed on it, hands frozen. Their entire being is. Some are crying without a sound, as they did their nerves bulged at the sides of their throat. Their eyes became red, yet the planet stopped at nothing to not to die.

Her hands still at her sides, her face giving nothing. The surface folded inward in slow, agonizing increments, dust becoming light, becoming–becoming nothing.

The collapse that made Amara and Adrian who looked at the void not far away from the planet in the void. The void which usually looks grey or dark, now filled with the colors of rainbow—as if to mourn the dying planet.

The space surrounding them, and the one the transparent space ship in motion, kept glitching with the fiction of the Planet Niho—whose name Adrian and Amara once didn't know. The planet which, once, was patient, too patient.

"We must go," she said. Yet her eyes couldn't look away from the dying planet.

Adrian stood beside her. His voice, when it came, was quieter than she expected. "What about Solen? And… Ray?"

"Solen is on the way." Amara paused, she doesn't know, she just hoped—she, known for being the most cold-blooded hunter—hoped that's how it is. And hoped that's what is true.

The light from the collapsing planet caught the ends of her snow white hair and turned them faintly gold. "Ray — we don't know."

"Then we go find them." His voice sharpened, once it came out from his throat, it cracked. His throat burned as the tear welled up in his left eye. "I'm going crazy standing here."

Amara didn't answer immediately. She let her gaze move from the viewport to Jay's silhouette at the helm, scanning coordinates for a new planet, then back to the dying one — to the part of it where Solen still was. Or had been.

Solen's words, her posture, the way she couldn't control herself, when she proposed to Amara. And the way Solen admitted that she couldn't control herself. And that she is going to not act on what she couldn't control. Rose in her chest before she could stop them.

"Remember how we met. We fought each other to the death.” Solen said her eyes filled with moisture, she moved closer and lifted her hand but withdrew it. Amara knew, knew what Solen wanted to do, but she didn't act on it. They just sat facing each other, as Solen continued,

“Then we moved to fighting enemies to death together." Her voice cracking just at the edge of it.

"I hope we can be together. I hope I can call you my wife. I hope you can call me your love. I hope we can live somewhere that doesn't need us to bleed for it. Until then — I know you can't settle. Neither can I."

Her hair was shifting. Amara could feel it before she saw it in the reflection of the glass — the white going red at the roots, her emotions rarely became unmanageable. Not for everyone. She pressed it down. She pressed everything down.

"Promise me you won't carry all of it alone." Solen's last words hit harder.

"Sister." Adrian's voice broke through. "We have to go. You know Ray. He won't stop until he's burned down every corrupt system on that planet. My blood is burning, thinking about it."

"Admit it's not just strategy that has you burning," Sam said inside their system space.

"Not the time, Sam."

Before Sam could respond, before Nine said whatever Nine was holding silently in Nine's chest, Amara turned from the window.

She looked at Adrian. He looked at her.

One nod. Then another.

They folded their hands. Their body liquidised, like the violet color in the rainbow, they became quantum of time and space and seeped through the transparent space ship.

They walked into the collapsing planet.

Present.

The Five Million Dollar Scream.

“Oh, no, Damn it.” Adrian muttered, while an empty space is all that greeted the outside World. “How the hell did I entangle myself in this mess?” A blue translucent screen greeted him, inside his eyes, suspended in mid-air like a ghost. Along with the text, a voice that sounded like a synthetic harmony of male and female spoke inside his skull.

[Objective: Expose the Anchor Lie.]

[Reward: Five million dollars.]

[Failure Penalty: Death by Demon Consumption.]

“Death by what?” Adrian whispered, his throat suddenly gone dry. He read it again. It didn't change. The screen lingered, refusing to disappear.

13 Minutes Earlier

‘Damn this Grand Scot ballroom, it’s glittering like it can own everything of me, at once, that too gosh, infinitely times.’ “Don’t think in your head Adrian boy. It’s noisy.” a voice said, which didn’t reach Adrian’s processing mind. Adrian’s eyes travelled across the place, below the crystal chandeliers, the city’s elite circulated like predators — tailored silk and fluid cuts, edges like the edges of river tributaries.

“Huh. They laugh more like partners in crime.” The voice said Adrian's eyes watched a woman accept a glass of champagne without looking at the hand that offered it. He watched a man touch another man's shoulder and smile at someone else entirely. “So noisy. Kid, get the hell out of this place. Kid, are you still unable to listen to this great great system’s voic…”

Before the voice could finish — “Keep the tray level, man,” the floor manager hissed into his earpiece. “And smile. Remember the money you’ll receive after this. Move like your survival depends on this.” Three dollars. That was his current bank balance.

At home, his mother's medical bills lay on the kitchen table like death warrants. The landlord had slipped the final eviction notice under the door this morning, and Adrian had stepped over it on the way out because he hadn't been ready to pick it up yet.

Thinking about it Adrian thought: it does, his survival does depend on this, then he forced the corners of his mouth up as he navigated the sea of expensive perfume.

DING.

A sudden, excruciating pain crashed through Adrian’s skull like a gravitational hammer. He winced, nearly dropping the tray. This wasn’t a migraine. It was a digital chime resonating directly within his cerebral cortex.

[System Integration... Complete.]

[Welcome, User Adrian.]

[Haha finally.]

[Now. Scan Initiated.]

Adrian stumbled, champagne sloshing dangerously close to the rim of the flutes. “What’s happening to me?” he whispered, his heart beating like the war drums of the battle between Monarch Markus and Demon Dylan.

Before he could process the intrusion, luminous blue text began floating above the guests’ heads. He looked at a famous actress by the buffet table.

[Subject: Meera.]

[Hidden Truth: Meera cheated on her wife. With another woman. That woman is married to the wife of the woman Meera’s wife is cheating with.]

“Oh. Classic,” Adrian muttered. “Wait. How do I know this. Where am I seeing this. Was this a hallucination? Stress-induced psychosis? I’m twenty-one. Nobody awakened a System at twenty-one. Didn’t everyone say that I was destined to remain invisible. A nobody.” His panic was cut short when the double doors swung open. The room fell into a reverent silence.

“Mortals of the Sean planet,” the announcer boomed. “Please welcome the Savior of the Slums. The Philanthropist of the Year… Anay!”

Thunderous applause erupted. Through the crowd strode a distinguished man in a fluid charcoal seo-neo the enhanced wear. His face radiated warmth, and his smile… that disarming, trustworthy smile… thaaat could charm a cobra.

The kind that made the whole room lean slightly forward without knowing it had. But as Adrian looked at him, the blue text turned a violent, dripping crimson, followed by the same voice.

[WARNING. Destroy-Class DEMON DETECTED.]

[Target: Anay.]

[Species: Gluttony Demon, Rank Three.]

[Mask Integrity: 100%.]

[Anchor’s Lie: “I built five orphanages to save children.”]

[Real Truth: He built them to harvest the children.]

The tray in Adrian’s hands trembled like a leaf in a storm. Twenty feet away, leaning against a marble pillar, Amara adjusted her fluid black evening appearance, with designs of gold and white. The fabric was tight. She sipped her water, her eyes scanning the room. Center. Flank. Exits.

“Any readings, Control?” she murmured, barely moving her lips, while glancing at the whole venue, which looked nothing amiss, yet her instincts of a cold-blooded hunter says otherwise.

“Negative, Captain Amara,” a voice crackled in her hidden earpiece. “Scanners are clean. But thermal variance suggests a Rank 3 is in the building. Be careful. You strike a civilian, and you’re done.”

Amara gritted her teeth behind her practiced smile. Demons had evolved. They wore “mortal Skins” that fooled even the best tech. Unless she caught one feeding, her hands were tied. Her gaze landed on Anay. He fit the profile. Rapid rise to wealth.

Unexplained disappearances in his district. But she needed proof. If she cut him and he didn't retaliate, or even showed the signs of a demon, she would be in prison by midnight, according to the Regulations of Demons and Hunters Protection Act.

She continued her sweep until her eyes stopped on a waiter near the entrance. Unlike the other staff, who kept their heads down, this boy was staring directly at Anay with undisguised horror. Adrian’s lungs narrowed, at his forehead and jaws, sweat started turning into water droplets.

[Mission Issued: Expose the Anchor Lie.]

[Reward: Five million dollars.]

Five million. The number blazed in his mind. It was enough for surgery. Rent. Enough for a life. But he is a rank three Demon, Adrian thought. I’m just a waiter.

If I speak, security will crush me, before something even be, something. “And so,” Anay began, his voice booming over the microphone, “when I look into the eyes of those hungry children, I don’t see strangers. I see my family.” The crowd released a collective “Awww.”