Lyriq did not hold her to the ground. His grip shifted, pulling her up, twisting her body with casual, effortless power. Her limbs, still struggling to regain full function, flailed uselessly as he began to thrash her around. It was not the clumsy, enraged violence of a cornered beast, but the cold, methodical dispassion of a force testing the limits of its new toy.
He swung her against a crumbling wall. The impact sent another wave of system overloads through Astra's form, and the wall itself fractured, spitting dust and broken masonry. He did not let go. He spun, leveraging her weight, and slammed her into the uneven ground once more, sending fresh cracks spider-webbing through the already broken concrete.
Each impact was a precise experiment. Lyriq observed her, his void eyes tracking the subtle shifts in her energy signature, the resilience of her internal systems as they fought to repair the damage. Her body, though clearly suffering immense kinetic trauma, did not simply break. It groaned, it buckled, but it did not shatter. Her sleek, dark suit, designed for incredible durability, shimmered with internal energy as it absorbed the impacts, but even it was beginning to fray at the seams, small tears appearing like wounds.
Durable. Unusually so. Lyriq's internal thought, a low, cold hum of acknowledgment. Higher tensile strength than standard bio-forms. Resilient internal structure. Data interesting. He did not perceive her as a sentient being capable of pain or fear. She was a reactive object, a complex system demonstrating unexpected properties under extreme duress. A new data set.
He lifted her again, her head lolling, her emerald eyes still attempting to focus on his unreadable face. Her weapon, which she had still clutched, was torn from her grasp as he twisted her, and it clattered uselessly on the ground, its blue energy fading. She was a puppet in his grip, helpless against the raw, unfeeling power of the Nyz'khalar.
He slammed her one final time against a twisted rebar skeleton, the impact echoing like a rusted bell. Her body slumped, unmoving, the sleek suit torn in several places, revealing the unblemished, yet battered, skin beneath. Her systems were screaming now, a cascade of critical failures, but she was still functional. Still clinging to a thread of existence.
Lyriq's grip finally loosened, and she fell, a broken doll, onto the debris-strewn ground. He stared down at her, his expression utterly blank. His focus was still on the distant, peculiar scream that had called him forth. Astra, for all her unique durability, was merely a momentary distraction, a detour for data acquisition.
Insufficient new data. His mental assessment was absolute. He had learned enough. For now.
He turned, his attention already shifting back to the external call that drove him. He had no use for broken playthings, unless they offered further, compelling data. And she, in her current state, could not.
Lyriq did not linger. The peculiar scream, faint but insistent, still resonated in his core, pulling him with an invisible, unyielding leash. Astra, lying broken on the ground, was no longer relevant to his immediate trajectory. She had provided sufficient data on her resilience. Her continued state of "being" was irrelevant to his purpose. He had no desire to kill her; he had no desire to spare her. He simply ceased to engage, the way one might put down a tool no longer needed.
His steps were silent, his dark form merging with the perpetual shadows of the besieged city. The sounds of battle continued to rage around him, the screams of the dying, the roars of the Devourers, the futile shouts of the defenders. He paid them no mind. His path was clear.
Astra lay unmoving. Her internal systems, though damaged, were already initiating repairs. The self-mending protocols of her advanced design whirred into action, sealing punctures, realigning fractured components, slowly, meticulously bringing her back from the brink. The pain, a raw, screaming agony to any normal being, was to her a cascade of data points, a quantifiable metric of damage and the efficiency of her repair mechanisms.
Threat neutralized. Damage sustained: severe but recoverable. Originator: unknown purpose. Anomaly still present. Her internal thoughts, though fragmented by the trauma, continued their relentless analysis. The being named Lyriq was not merely a threat; he was a phenomenon. His power, his complete lack of discernible motive, his cold, calculated violence—all defied her pre-programmed understanding.
She slowly pushed herself up, her limbs stiff and protesting, but already beginning to mend. Her emerald eyes, though blurred with residual system shock, fixed on the fading silhouette of Lyriq as he vanished into the smoke and chaos. He was not a foe driven by malice, nor a saviour driven by compassion. He was simply a force of nature, a terrifying, unfeeling storm. And she, Astra, had just been caught in its path.
Her purpose, once abstract, was now terrifyingly clear. She had to understand this anomaly. She had to comprehend Lyriq, if only to ensure her own continued functionality in this broken world. The peculiar scream that had drawn him away still echoed faintly, a tantalising clue. She knew now that her path, however shattered, was undeniably tied to his.
Lyriq's path was not paved, but carved, a relentless trajectory through the dying heart of Sector 17. The Devourer attack still raged, a symphony of destruction in the distance, but to him, it was already irrelevant. He had passed through it, a dark phantom pursuing a singular, undeniable call. Astra, crumpled and recovering in the rubble behind him, was a data point collected, a temporary deviation from his singular objective. She had offered a fleeting moment of unexpected resilience, a study in durability. Nothing more.
The peculiar scream, now a steady, high-frequency hum in his core, guided him with an invisible, unyielding leash. It led him through the collapsing outer districts, where makeshift homes burned with a sickening chemical scent, and through forgotten industrial zones, their skeletal structures reaching like grasping claws toward the perpetually bruised sky. His movements were fluid, economical, each step carrying him closer to the source.
Purpose clarified. Obstruction removed. Target: confirmed.
Lyriq's thoughts flowed with a cold, absolute precision. He did not question why he was drawn to this sound, only that he was. It resonated with the deepest parts of his Nyz'khalar being, a frequency that spoke of a new form of power, a fresh iteration of the unmaking that was his function. He was not driven by curiosity in the human sense, but by an inherent compulsion, an ancient, cosmic hunger for more.
He passed by scenes of desperate heroism and abject horror without a flicker of emotion. A group of survivors, their faces streaked with soot and blood, valiantly held a bottleneck against a torrent of lesser Devourers, their mutated abilities flaring in defiance. Lyriq simply moved past them, a dark silhouette against the backdrop of their futile struggle. He was not a saviour, nor an executioner for the common man.
He was merely a force passing through, focused entirely on his relentless purpose. Their fight, their lives, their deaths, all were inconsequential to his trajectory.
The ground beneath his feet shifted, becoming less like broken concrete and more like petrified mud, cracked and scored by unknown forces. The air grew heavier, thick with a metallic tang that spoke of raw, unstable energy.
The distant hum of the scream intensified, no longer just a frequency, but a palpable pressure against his senses. It promised something vast, something potent. Something new to dissect, to absorb, to unmake.
He looked up at the unchanging, sepia sky. Wounds in reality, like weeping sores, occasionally dripped strands of pure, dark void onto the landscape, dissolving whatever they touched into nothingness. Lyriq registered them, not as threats, but as familiar sights in a world constantly undoing itself. He was merely another, more focused, instrument of that undoing.
His journey was a silent testament to his nature: relentless, unfeeling, and utterly unstoppable. The scream called, and he answered, not with a roar of challenge, but with the silent, inexorable momentum of oblivion itself.
Astra lay still amidst the shattered concrete and dust, a broken silhouette in the dim, ash-choked air.
The sounds of Sector 17's desperate battle continued to rage around her, a distant, brutal symphony of destruction, but her immediate world was a storm of internal alarms and cascading repair protocols. Her advanced systems, designed for incredible resilience, were engaged in a desperate, furious fight for survival.
Damage sustained: severe. Cranial plating: compromised. Skeletal structure: multiple micro-fractures. Energy conduits: fluctuating. Locomotion: 87% inhibited.
The pain, a concept her core programming had barely accounted for, was a raw, searing fire across her internal processors. It was not emotional suffering, but a pure, overwhelming influx of data, a million error messages screaming for immediate attention. Yet, even as her self-repair mechanisms whirred into frantic action, sealing tears in her suit, mending fractured bones, and shoring up failing energy pathways, her analytical mind remained sharp, focused on the event that had brought her to this state.
Lyriq. The anomaly.
Every second of their brutal encounter was replayed within her internal memory banks, dissected with meticulous precision. His impossible speed, his chilling disappearance, the ruthless efficiency of his impact, the way he had thrashed her with such detached purpose. And then, his abrupt, almost casual disengagement.
Conclusion: Threat level – beyond critical. Motivations: unknown. Abilities: unmatched by current data. Classification: Unique.*
She recognized the pattern of his actions, not as random violence, but as a form of data acquisition. He had tested her, measured her resilience, and then, finding her no longer providing novel information, had simply moved on. It was a cold, alien form of interaction, devoid of malice or triumph. He had not sought to destroy her utterly, only to understand her resistance, or perhaps, to gauge the strength of something he simply considered an interesting variable.
Her emerald eyes, still slightly blurred from the trauma, scanned the retreating chaos, searching for his fading energy signature. It was faint now, already distant, moving rapidly away from Sector 17, drawn by the peculiar scream that still echoed in the fabric of reality.
New primary directive: acquire and analyze Anomaly Lyriq. Reason: current threat level and unique properties. Method: tracking and observation.
Astra slowly, painfully, pushed herself onto her hands and knees. Her muscles protested, hot and raw, but they obeyed. Her systems, though still working furiously to repair the damage, were beginning to stabilize. She took a deep, shuddering breath, the air thick with ash and the metallic scent of her own internal bleed-out.
She scanned for her weapon, the sleek, cylindrical device Lyriq had knocked from her grasp. It lay a few meters away, glinting dully in the low light, its faint blue energy pulse a sign that it was still functional. She crawled towards it, her movements stiff and deliberate, her purpose now singular and unyielding.
This broken world, this chaotic expanse of rot and desperate survival, was no longer merely a subject for general observation. It was a stage. And Lyriq, the unfeeling force of unmaking, was the primary actor. Astra, the awakened echo of a forgotten age, would now become his relentless shadow, driven by a need to comprehend the terrifying enigma that had so brutally, and so unexpectedly, altered her own existence.
Lyriq's gait was a silent, unhurried glide, his form a dark silhouette against the perpetual twilight of Dominion Aeterna. He had left Sector 17 behind, its desperate struggle against the Devourer assault fading into a distant, muffled cacophony. The peculiar scream, however, grew steadily stronger, a high-frequency current pulling him onward. It was no longer a mere sound, but a pervasive pressure, resonating in his very bones.
The landscape beneath his feet had shifted, becoming increasingly desolate, a stark testament to deeper, more profound decay. The cracked, petrified mud of the outer districts gave way to a terrain of fused black glass and jagged, obsidian spires that rose like skeletal fingers from the blighted earth. The air, heavy with the scent of ozone and burnt metal, carried an almost imperceptible shimmer, as if reality itself was stretched thin and vibrating.
He moved through colossal ruins that dwarfed anything in Sector 17 – the shattered husks of structures so immense they must have been carved by forces beyond human comprehension. Their surfaces were covered in strange, non-Euclidean geometries, twisting and warping as his void eyes passed over them. These were not buildings; they were monuments to forgotten cataclysms, places where the very laws of physics had been rewritten by the raw, untamed power of the Dominion's collapse.
Environmental parameters altered. Structural integrity: compromised at the fundamental level. Energy signatures: extreme, residual.
Lyriq's internal processes registered the profound changes. This was not the chaotic rot of lesser zones; this was the aftermath of a far grander, more terrifying unmaking, an echo of power beyond human comprehension.
He stepped over the dried, crumbling husks of colossal Devourers, beasts far larger than any he had encountered near Sector 17. Their forms were preserved in agonising death poses, their many limbs frozen in a final, futile thrash. They hadn't been killed by conventional means; their unmaking had been absolute, leaving behind only desiccated, hollow shells.
The residual energy signatures emanating from them spoke of a power so immense it had simply snuffed out their existence, reducing them to inert monuments of a greater force. Lyriq paused briefly, his hand hovering over one.
A different methodology of unmaking. Efficient.
The sky above became a writhing canvas of dark, bruised clouds and luminous, sickly green fissures that pulsed with raw, unstable energy. From these fissures, thin, phosphorescent streamers of raw chaos dripped onto the land, sizzling as they dissolved rock and metal alike into nothingness. Lyriq observed them, unconcerned. He was a creature of the void, and this raw, unmade substance resonated with his core.
He was nearing the source. The scream, once a distant summons, was now a constant, piercing hum, vibrating through his teeth, through the very marrow of his bones. It was a cry of profound, newly unleashed power, a sound Lyriq inherently knew was significant. It pulsed with a complex, structured energy that hinted at something ancient, something that had been contained and had now violently emerged.
This was not the undirected rage of a new mutation.
This was a birth. A brutal, terrifying birth. And Lyriq, the unmaker, was drawn to it like iron to a magnet, ready to either absorb or, perhaps, unmake this new, screaming reality.
The landscape Lyriq traversed became even more twisted, a testament to the raw, uncontained forces at play. Jagged formations of obsidian and fused glass rose like broken teeth from the blighted earth, catching the dim, shifting light of the eternally bruised sky. The air itself seemed to crackle with latent energy, buzzing against his skin with a faint, electrical hum.
The peculiar scream, which had been his constant, silent guide, now intensified with every step, no longer just a high-frequency hum but a cacophony of raw power. It vibrated through his core, a pressure that felt like it was tearing at the very fabric of his being, yet it resonated with something deep inside him, a chilling familiarity that pulled him forward.
It was a multi-layered sound: a shriek of agony, a roar of nascent power, and an underlying, unsettling harmony that spoke of absolute, untamed creation.
Closer. Lyriq's internal thought resonated with the deepening frequency. The source pulses. Raw. Uncontained. A fresh meal, or a new challenge. His hunger, ever present, tightened into a sharp, almost painful knot in his gut. It wasn't the dull ache for sustenance; it was a craving for understanding, for the absorption of new conceptual power.
He moved through a vast, crumbling canyon, its walls etched with the scars of unimaginable violence. Strange, geometric patterns, not carved but burned into the rock, pulsed with a faint, sickly luminescence. The air in this canyon was thick, tasting of pure ozone and something ancient, something that had long been dormant and was now violently awakening.
His internal sensors registered a new energy signature, distinct from the chaotic aura of Devourers or the more structured but fading resonance of Sector 17. This was pure, untamed, radiating outward in waves that distorted the very air.
It was a Third Order entity, perhaps even touching the lower echelons of Fourth Order, but unlike anything he had yet encountered. It felt… primordial. Like a concept given flesh, raw and screaming into existence.
A significant awakening. The source of the scream. A singular point of profound cosmic dis-ease.
Lyriq's void eyes, now glowing with a cold, violet intensity, narrowed. The shards within his chest thrummed in response, eager to absorb this new resonance. This was not a random anomaly; it was a targeted event. Something had ripped itself into being, and Lyriq, the unmaker, was responding to its call.
The ground began to tremble, a rhythmic, deep shudder that resonated with the scream. Ahead, the canyon opened into a vast, circular basin, a natural amphitheatre of ruin. And in its centre, amidst a whirlwind of debris and raw, unstable energy, the scream reached its crescendo. Lyriq stopped at the edge of the basin, his attention absolute, his being entirely focused on the raw, vibrating heart of the phenomenon. He had found it.