The air outside the warehouse didn't just feel cold, it felt brittle, as if the sheer pressure of what was standing in the gravel parking lot was enough to make the molecules shatter. Darien didn't pull up with a fleet of armored SUVs. He didn't bring a small army of mercenaries or the tactical precision of a SWAT team. He arrived in a single, blacked-out vehicle that roared like a dying god, and when he stepped out, the silence that followed was more deafening than the engine.
He stood there for a heartbeat, his silhouette framed against the sickly yellow glow of the perimeter lights. He looked... wrong. Not in a physical sense, but the energy radiating off him was no longer human. It was something older. Something that had been sleeping under the tectonic plates of his soul and had finally decided it was time to wake up.
