'Véracités.'
They are creatures Born from an event called 'La Fracture d'Âme.' The Véracités are an echo of trauma made flesh. They manifest when a person's Primordial Essence, corrupted by extreme pain or guilt, leaks out and solidifies into reality. They are not mere monsters, but a symptom, the physical manifestation of a shattered soul. Their forms and abilities are a distorted reflection of the suffering that created them. As constantly mutating entities, their extermination is paramount.
The rain fell on a broken city, washing the blood but not the fear.
Oswin ran. His breaths came in ragged gasps, his shoes slipping on rubble and something wetter. The air was a foul mix of ozone, blood, and wet concrete. Every crack of collapsing masonry, every distant scream, sent a fresh jolt of terror through him. He dodged around a crater, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs.
Ahead, a body was sprawled against a shattered wall. Half of it was just… gone. The sight hit him like a physical blow, his stomach lurching. He forced down the bile and ran on, driven by the single, primal goal of reaching his apartment.
From the chaos behind him, gunfire erupted. He risked a glance back. The Véracité, a shifting horror of solidified trauma, absorbed the bullets and reformed in seconds. It lunged, a brutal leap that crushed the shooter, consuming him in a instant.
Then its grotesque eyes locked onto him.
With a wet, tearing sound, long, robust spines shot from its back, zipping through the air.
Oswin threw himself behind a pile of rubble. Concrete dust choked him, a gray cloud hiding the creature momentarily. He crouched among twisted rebar, the sharp pain registering a moment later—one of the spines had pierced his thigh. He clamped a hand over his mouth, biting back a scream.
He was trapped. The world of warm cafés and school corridors was gone, replaced by this nightmare abyss.
"How do I get out of this?" he whispered, his eyes darting between the bleeding wound in his leg and the shifting shadows of the monster beyond the dust.
Oswin could only keep his body coiled tight, his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum. Each step of the Véracité sounded like a mallet hitting the sodden ground. He just wanted to stay hidden, to ignore the chaos shattering the city.
Then a trembling sob cut through the moment.
Ahead, a little boy, no older than seven, cried softly, clutching a soaked soccer ball. A small cut on his forehead stained his brown hair. Oswin's tear-filled eyes lifted, and for an instant, he felt the weight of an impossible choice. The monster was reaching for the child, the smell of ozone and death hanging in the air. His mind split in two:
Save the boy, or preserve what was left of his own life.
His curls swayed in a barely perceptible gesture of hesitation. Then came the decision.
'Idiot!' he cursed himself.
With trembling hands, he grabbed the spine embedded in his thigh and, in a desperate impulse, ripped it out. A choked gasp escaped him, mixed with hot tears streaming down his pale face. He clenched his fists, gathered the little strength he had left, and hurled the sharp fragment at the creature's face.
The projectile struck the monstrous forehead dead-on, forcing the Véracité to recoil with a guttural roar. Spines shot from its back in a frenzy, embedding in the asphalt and surrounding wreckage.
It was the moment he needed. Oswin surged to his feet, grabbed the boy by the shoulders, and whispered, his voice shaky but firm:
"Run! To the alley up ahead! Don't look back!"
As the boy scrambled away, pulling his ball, helicopters circled overhead, their lenses like hungry eyes. Drones buzzed, recording every inch of the horror.
Freed from the attack, the monster now took large, deliberate steps toward Oswin, its advance cracking the asphalt.
And then, Oswin felt something awaken within him—an ancient spark, long dormant. The fear was still there, but something deeper now guided him: an innate instinct to protect, or rather survive. Woven into the very foundations of the Primordial Essence.
His right hand found a twisted metal pipe from a previous implosion, gripping it like a tiller for his life. Simultaneously, a prickling, electric sensation gathered in his left palm. Between his fingers, yellow sparks—raw and unstable—flickered to life, dancing in the charged air...
The manifestation of Oswin Primordial Essence was once an extension of his very nature; a command over atmospheric phenomena limited only by his knowledge and will. That was the theory. That was the boy he had been, almost a decade ago.
But that boy had died in the same incident that killed his parents.
Since the incident, Oswin had imposed a silence upon his own soul. He became a warden to the cataclysm sleeping in his veins. He would die in a ditch, starve, or be torn apart by common thugs before he would ever again dare to call upon that power. His Essence was not a tool; it was a curse, and he would rather be its final victim than its unwilling master.
Yet now, as the breath sawed ragged in his lungs and the monstrous shape of the Véracité blotted out the sky, the calculus of survival underwent a brutal, final shift. The very damnation he had sworn to suppress now stood as his only path to see another dawn. The choice was not between life and power. It was between a swift death at the claws of a monster, or a slow one at the hands of the horror he himself carried.
He had vowed never to awaken it again.
Today, he would break that vow.
The Véracité, sensing the new threat, let out a piercing roar and charged with absurd speed, its distorted body casting jittering shadows on the broken walls. Oswin stood his ground, gaze locked on the creature, the electrified pipe held high like a spear of phosphorescent light. Rain drummed on the metal, making it crackle with live sparks.
The monster lunged with ferocity. Its spiny arms tore through the air like voracious blades. On pure instinct, Oswin threw himself sideways, rolling across the soaked ground as splinters and gravel shredded his clothes. He scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering. The reality of his physical inferiority was inescapable.
He ran.
He sprinted, leaping over rubble, dodging twisted beams. Behind him, the Véracité launched a volley of thick spines, a rain of sharp lances that demolished everything in their path. He reached a semi-destroyed staircase and took the steps two at a time. At the top, he used the charged metal pipe as a weight to swing a powerful kick at the nearest apartment window. Glass exploded inward.
He barely made it inside before the Véracité crashed through the floor behind him, raising clouds of dust. The creature advanced, turning the room into a field of ruins. With a desperate heave, Oswin threw a chair at the invader. It was effortlessly torn in half by a massive, spiny hand.
In that moment, Oswin raised his free hand. Between his index and middle fingers, he generated small, crackling sparks of intense light. The tiny flares danced in the air, illuminating the Véracité's distorted face for an instant. The monster flinched, intrigued by the sudden brightness, and hesitated just long enough.
Seizing the lapse, Oswin bolted for the balcony. The electrical flame within the pipe glowed with old-gold intensity under the rain. Outside, the drop was clear: 10 meters down to the cold concrete street.
A contained gasp escaped him. With no other option, he leaped into the void. The wind roared in his ears. He hit the ground and rolled to dissipate the impact. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest, but there was no time for pain.
Despite the pain, Oswin kept pushing forward even as his body trembled from exhaustion. Behind him, the Véracité plummeted from the balcony, striking the ground with a thunderous crash that shattered concrete into a fresh crater. It rose, imposing and relentless, ready to resume the hunt.
Every muscle screamed in protest, but the urgency of the battle lent him a desperate strength. Spotting a fire hydrant damaged in the fray, he slammed into it with all his remaining might.
A powerful jet of water erupted skyward, arching down in a shimmering cascade onto the twisted form of the Véracité. This was his plan: the water would amplify the conduction of the yellow electrical sparks still dancing along the metal pipe.
Before the moment passed, he hurled the electrified pipe at the creature and scrambled for cover under the cracked eave of a nearby building. A crackling roar erupted as the downpour and lightning converged on the monster, electrocuting it in a spectacular display. A pulsating wave of electricity expanded, illuminating its aberrant body in incandescent flashes. The Véracité groaned in agony, shrinking back as sparks danced across its spines. Finally, its pupils, once fragmented into indecipherable patterns, faded into nothingness, and the current died. For a brief, silent moment, it stood motionless and vulnerable.
Oswin staggered forward, each step a struggle against suffocating fatigue. He knelt, retrieving the metal pipe from the ground, still throbbing with residual energy. Focusing for a heartbeat, he called upon the Primordial Essence within him. A frigid breath emanated from his hands, sheathing the pipe in a translucent coat of rime, the metal groaning as it cooled. The pipe was now an improvised blade.
With a sharp thrust, he broke part of the pipe away, creating a jagged, sharp point. The icy metal gleamed, almost lethal. Holding that fragment felt like clutching a promise of victory. Without hesitation, he charged the regenerating Véracité. In a final leap, he drove the frozen shard deep into the creature's skull, piercing its brain with a dry, definitive impact.
The monster erupted in flames of violet and pink, a burst of matter dissolving into the air in a paradox of destruction and macabre beauty. Within seconds, nothing remained but the echo of its annihilation.
Exhausted, Oswin collapsed onto the wet asphalt, his body finally yielding. The fine rain washed over his face and the dried blood on his forehead, offering a moment of relief. He breathed raggedly, his chest still trembling, incredulous at his own feat.
The rain fell in relentless, icy sheets, washing the blood from the asphalt but not the despair from the air. Each drop hissed against the ruined street, a chilling prelude to the greater horror yet to unfold.
Oswin forced himself to rise, his body screaming in protest. His eyes widened in raw terror. Before him stood another Véracité—taller, broader, a monument of pure calamity given form. Its very presence seemed to distort the light, casting deeper shadows that writhed with unseen malice. This one was different; it felt older, infinitely more dangerous.
He tried to stand fully, to summon any last dregs of strength, but his body betrayed him. A sharp, burning agony erupted from his ribs with every shallow breath. His left arm hung limp and twisted, a clear fracture sending waves of nauseating pain through his system. A choked gasp escaped his lips, a sound lost in the downpour.
Before he could even process a defense, the monster moved.
A blur of lethal intent. It closed the distance in a fraction of a second, its spiny hands seizing his face with crushing force. The world spun as he was hurled through the air like discarded trash. He crashed into a cluster of overflowing garbage bins, the metal buckling and absorbing some of the impact before he slid across the wet ground, coming to a rest in a heap of refuse and pain.
Every fiber of his being was on fire. His ribs creaked ominously, and his broken arm throbbed with a sharp, tingling intensity. Silent tears mixed with the rain on his cheeks as he lay amidst the debris, staring up at the leaden, weeping sky. In that moment, there was only darkness and cold, and the grim certainty that the true storm was only beginning.
The Véracité rose to its full height, its spines bristling like a forest of ready spears. A low, guttural growl rumbled from its core, promising annihilation.
Then, a shift in the atmosphere.
From the veil of rain and destruction, a figure emerged. He walked with an unnerving tranquility, hands tucked casually into his pockets. His movements were fluid, almost lazy, as if the chaos around him were a mild inconvenience. He raised a hand in a casual greeting, his voice a flat, emotionless monotone that cut through the storm's roar.
"Good afternoon."
Before the Véracité could pivot to this new threat, the stranger advanced with the same deceptive calm. In one seamless motion, his free hand shot out, seizing the monster by the nape of its neck. With a dry, decisive crack, he slammed its head into the sodden pavement.
The impact reverberated through the street—a deep, percussive thud that sent jagged fractures spiderwebbing through the asphalt in every direction. The ground itself seemed to groan in response, a testament to the contained fury behind that single, effortless motion.