The cold night air flashed past a figure maneuvering through the sky.
Below him, the dim lights of the massive cityscape reflected off polished dark-gray armor as he moved through the shadows cast by the towering buildings. He kept himself out of sight, though there was little reason to believe anyone would have noticed him in the first place.
Who would think to look up?
Even with the occasional aircraft passing overhead at the legal altitude, the skies above the city were largely ignored.
The figure moved with practiced precision.
Every shift of his body was deliberate. Every change in direction was executed with movements honed through countless life-or-death situations.
After all, what was the Noirwraith if not the sum of his experiences?
His muscular frame guided itself through the air with unnatural efficiency. His eyes glowed a dull silver beneath the darkness, the color standing in stark contrast against his dark skin. Black hair cascaded across his face, a single long bang falling over the right side.
He had crossed the city limits in less than ten seconds.
A considerable feat.
Especially considering that the Noirwraith possessed no natural Augment.
No.
The Noirwraith was artificial in almost every sense of the word.
Biologically, his body had once been no different from that of an ordinary human. It had been conditioned to the peak of natural physical performance, then subjected to something far beyond conventional augmentation.
Norvanite.
The organization responsible for his creation had infused his body with the anomalous, energy-based living metal.
Norvanite's most immediately visible effect had been the alteration of his eyes. Their natural color had been replaced by an unnatural silver, occasionally glowing depending on the concentration of unbound Uratsu within his immediate surroundings.
But the eyes were only a symptom.
Norvanite's true function was far more dangerous.
The compound allowed the Noirwraith to accumulate energy released by the deceased whether from biome creatures, humans, or any of the other derivative species that inhabited the world.
When active, the absorbed energy manifested through his body.
The silver of his eyes shifted toward cyan.
His speed increased.
His strength increased.
His durability increased.
Even his stamina was enhanced beyond the already extraordinary baseline granted by Norvanite.
The process was simple in principle.
The energy of the dead became fuel for the living.
There was, however, one fundamental flaw in Norvanite.
It drained energy.
Completely.
During the organization's earliest infusion trials, every living subject subjected to the compound suffered catastrophic energy depletion.
The reason was simple.
According to the research conducted by the Amaterasu Organization, all living beings possessed URA-type energies essential to maintaining biological function.
Norvanite consumed that energy.
A normal human body could not survive the process.
Only one known subject had.
Subject NAR-97.
Designated name:
ARC.
ARC had survived the procedure because his genetic makeup was abnormal.
He had been a failed clone, stolen from its creator by the organization known as the Amaterasu. His genetic structure had been derived from the now-MIA ORDERCLASS Knight, Akhuta Kodonaki, combined with additional genetic material obtained from another missing individual Kie Aturan, who was none to be in relations with the man before she to vanished .
The resulting genetic instability had nearly made ARC unusable.
Instead, it had made him compatible.
The Noirwraith was born.
Tonight, however, his objective had nothing to do with his origins.
He had just broken into a highly protected research facility and stolen an anomalous material from state custody.
Avaron-steel.
A highly potent enhancer whose true purpose remained unknown to the organization he had stolen it from.
They did not know that Avaron-steel was a fundamental component in the refinement process required for Norvanite's tandem operation within the Noirwraith's body.
They had no idea what they had lost.
And the Noirwraith had no intention of giving it back.
He continued across the city.
Then something changed.
The sensation was almost imperceptible at first.
A pressure.
A disturbance in the air.
His movement slowed.
His eyes shifted toward the horizon.
Something was wrong.
Below him lay a region of the city that had remained largely untouched for centuries a hidden biome buried within the urban landscape.
It had gone unnoticed for generations.
Its URA output had been so weak that the Biome Overseers Association, or B.O.A., had never considered it a significant threat.
Until now.
The biome had almost reached its threshold.
Then, without warning, its energy output began to rise.
Rapidly.
Something deep within the biome had awakened.
A structure buried within the ruins of an abandoned monument began to fracture.
Energy erupted from within.
Black.
Crimson.
Violent.
At the center of the phenomenon, a sphere of concentrated energy rose from the ground.
The Genesis Core.
It fired upward.
Directly into the path of the Noirwraith.
He had barely enough time to react.
The Genesis Core struck.
The resulting wave of energy expanded outward in a rapidly moving circular shockwave.
The Noirwraith was caught in its center.
For the first time that night, his carefully controlled movement failed.
His body was hurled violently through the air as the energy consumed him.
The biome awakened.
Reality began to distort.
The landscape twisted beneath the expanding field as the Genesis Core released an immense quantity of unstable energy.
And the Noirwraith was not the only one caught within it.
Four knights standing within the nearby town square were engulfed by the expanding field.
So was an otherwise inconspicuous man who had been passing through the area.
The crimson aura swallowed them all.
Then the world disappeared.
From outside the affected region, nearby residents could only stare in disbelief as a towering dome of opaque crimson energy rose over one of the city's industrial sectors.
The structure rotated slowly, its surface crackling with black and vermillion sparks.
The energy continued expanding.
The streets surrounding the sector emptied almost immediately.
People ran.
Emergency systems activated.
Warning sirens echoed throughout the district.
Something had happened inside the city.
Something that should not have been possible.
The B.O.A. had strict regulations governing the areas selected for settlement. Every known biome was monitored, catalogued, and continuously assessed for fluctuations in URA output.
Spontaneous materialization was virtually unheard of.
Yet the readings were unmistakable.
A biome had awakened.
And its energy output was increasing by the second.
The first alarms were raised almost immediately.
Then the central monitoring systems detected the spike.
It was not a natural fluctuation.
It was an Anomaly.
And at its center were six individuals who had been caught inside the Genesis Core's expanding field.
One of them was the Noirwraith.
None of them would emerge from the biome unchanged.