A man stood in silence, watching the aftermath of the battle—his armor glistening, visor glinting against the sweep of searchlights. All around him lay ruin, the ground carved into a massive crater the size of an island, still smoking. Rain poured over his matted hair, sliding down his armor only to hiss into steam as it touched his skin. His name was Hiro Takeyama—known in the public eye as Hypersonic, a mid-tier hero lauded for rescue efforts and speed-based maneuvers.
But this wasn't a rescue.
This was ground zero.
He walked through the scorched remnants of what once was home, now a smoldering monument to power unchecked. Collapsed rubble, twisted steel, and blackened bones. As his visor retracted, folding into his headpiece, Hiro's eyes widened in horror. His stomach turned. Beneath a fractured support beam, he found what remained of his family—crushed, scorched, unrecognizable.
He knelt.
Tears poured from his eyes, mixing with the ash that clung to his armor like soot on a dying furnace. Shaking fingers reached into the rubble, retrieving the singed wedding rings of his wife and the broken bands worn by his parents—somehow still intact. He held them like relics.
And still—no response.
No dispatch. No backup. No cleanup crew.Radio silence.As if the area had been quarantined. Forgotten.
But the heat lingered.
A low radiation of raw, unfiltered power still sizzled in the soil, leaving behind residual signatures—the kind left behind by the Pinnacle's elite. He could feel it in his bones: the overkill. The collateral. The utter disregard.
"Did none of them learn to localize their power?""Did any of them care?"
His feet picked up speed. Bits of ruined cloth and shattered armor told the story: Heimdall. Urus. Proxima. Arrant. Solarize. Upper-rank Pinnacles. All present.
And then—something else.
At the heart of the crater, shielded by a dense, charred wall, he found her: a villainess. Light lavender skin darkened by soot and burns. Limbs gone. One eye missing. Barely breathing. A mangled symbol of the fight's so-called target.
She lay in silence, until her lips twitched—mumbling faint, broken words. Hiro leaned in. And in that moment, grief collapsed into rage.
His Quicksilver augment flared, a silver aura wrapping around him as he charged a killing blow, seeking justice, vengeance—anything to make sense of what was lost.
But the strike never landed.
The villainess raised a bloodied hand, deflecting the attack with barely a movement—mocking his weakness. She chuckled. Ghostly white irises blinked from her ruined face.
She whispered something again.
This time, he heard it.
"You're still playing the part… of a hero."
And then she coughed up more blood, her fingers dragging a jagged trail across her open palm—inscribing a symbol Hiro didn't recognize.
She lay dying—broken, mutilated, and soaked in blood. Yet her voice cut through the silence like a dagger.
"They cleansed us," she rasped."Ethnic purging. Entire bloodlines erased... all under Corvezant's rule. All under the Vitruvian."
Hiro froze.
The weight of her words burned heavier than the crater's heat. His fists clenched around the wedding ring he held—a symbol of everything he'd lost. She continued, her one eye locking onto his.
"Arrant isolated our fight. Not to contain me... but to erase the evidence of what was buried beneath this city.""You think this was just a battle?""No, hero. This was an execution site."
Her voice softened when she saw the rings.
"You lost everything, didn't you...?""Then don't resist."
Suddenly, she lunged.He reacted too slow.
Despite her injuries, she wrestled him to the ground, straddling him with what strength remained. Her blood smeared across his armor as her regenerated arm rose. But her eyes weren't vengeful now—they were grieving, resigned.
"My name is Hellshroud," she said."And you deserve the truth."
Then pain bloomed through his skin.
Her fingers carved sigils into his chest—not with a weapon, but with her power, burning symbols of memory into his flesh. He tried to scream, but his voice choked. Glyphs, glowing and ancient, spread over him like living circuitry.
"I'm not killing you," she whispered."I'm making you a witness."
She pressed her forehead to his as her body dissolved into radiant energy, pouring into him.Transference.
He convulsed—arching back—his augment surging out of control. Silver turned to black-violet flame, electricity racing across his limbs as the sky screamed above them.
His armor regenerated, but different now. Spectral. Etched with runes.
A shadowed variant of Hypersonic's original suit—but taller, heavier, humming with dark resonance.
From beneath his new helm, ghost-white irises glowed in violent violet sclera. The rings he had clutched were now fused into the armor's chest plate—his reason for surviving now embedded in his rebirth.
Hellshroud's voice echoed within his mind.
"Now you carry my memories. Our scars. Our truths.""But know this, Hiro Takeyama... with this power, comes the cost.""Every time you draw on it... you draw closer to death."
He snarled, feeling the raw surge of energy tear through him.It felt like running faster than light through broken glass.
And yet he stood—the crater's lone specter.
A new kind of hero.One the world wasn't ready for.A living archive of atrocities.
"The world loved its champions," he muttered."But now... they'll know their ghosts."
Burned into Hiro's new spectral armor, the rune ᛟ glowed faintly beneath the glyphs — a symbol not of honor, but of ashes. His legacy now was not one of salvation, but of vengeance born from the dead.