The chamber was still humming, crackling with leftover arcs of black energy from the shattered core crystal. The alarms had stopped—but only because the system gave up trying to classify the impossible.
Kaelor Vantheon moved slowly, almost reverently, as if afraid his movements might set Drax off by accident.
He opened a reinforced drawer in the pedestal, one sealed with thirteen layered enchantments and a biometric lock.
Inside lay a single card.
Pitch black.
Edges lined with shifting silver glyphs.
In the center: nothing.
No rank.
No class.
Just a void—like the card itself refused to be understood.
Kaelor held it out.
"Drax Magna," he said softly, "this is… your official identification card."
Drax eyed it. "Doesn't look like the others."
"It isn't." Kaelor swallowed.
"It can't be."
He turned the card so the back faced them.
Letters glowed.
RANK: 0
CLASS: UNCLASSIFIED
DESIGNATION: NON-MEASURABLE ENTITY
LIMITER: NONE
AUTHORITY LEVEL… ABSOLUTE
Isis blinked. "Absolute? Isn't that reserved for—"
"No one," Kaelor said.
"It's reserved for no one. Because nothing like this has ever existed."
He offered the card again.
"Take it. And know this: with this card, you're not under our control. Not under our rules. Not under any known system."
Drax took the card between two fingers like it was nothing more than a piece of scrap paper. He slipped it into his pocket with a shrug.
"Alright," he said. "We done here?"
Kaelor exhaled through a weary smile. "Yes. And no. But for today… yes."
Isis bowed politely.
Drax didn't.
He simply turned and walked toward the exit as if he hadn't just broken the highest-ranking artifact in the building.
The heavy doors opened for them.
They stepped into the elevator.
Disappeared.
The doors sealed shut behind them.
And for a long, moment stretched silence filled the core chamber.
A silence that felt unnatural.
Expectant.
Watching.
Kaelor stood alone, hands clasped behind his back, the fractured crystal dust swirling at his feet.
Then—
the air bent.
Not warped.
Not distorted.
Bent.
Like a shadow folding in on itself… and then unfolding into a man.
A figure stood exactly where the light refused to reach.
Tall.
Broad-shouldered.
Wrapped in a long coat stitched with ancient sigils.
A hunter's badge hung from his hip—one unlike any other, carved from obsidian with a blood-red insignia.
The strongest hunter on the planet.
A myth even among myths.
The Abyssal Apex.
He said nothing.
Just watched the elevator's direction with eyes that glowed faintly in the dark, the same way a predator studies a new animal it doesn't understand yet.
Kaelor didn't turn around immediately.
He waited.
Only when the chamber lights flickered back to normal did he finally speak.
"…You saw him."
The figure didn't answer.
Kaelor's voice dropped to a whisper.
"What did you think of him?"
The silence deepened—thick, heavy, dangerous.
The figure finally shifted his head…