He rose from the ruins of his bathroom. His body was now perfected, chiseled and well built. Every muscle line sharp, precise and controlled, with long blood red hair, swaying like it had a life of it's own. He was now 2 meters tall, white pale-skinned, eyes burning with yellow light. He was beautiful, and when he looked in the shattered mirror, he didn't see John anymore.
He saw a god.
The city was being turned into a graveyard as Inkforce had moved on, leaving behind its mutated children, abominations that fed on flesh, radiation, and chaos. Nocthar walked through streets that smelled of blood and ozone, everywhere he went, survivors feared him.
And he fed.
Deborah had been early.
She'd somehow survived the Pollution, barely. Hiding in a basement, half-mad from the screams. He'd found her by the glow of her terror, a beacon in the darkness.
"John?" she'd whispered, seeing what he'd become. Two meters tall. Pale skinned. Terrible and Beautiful.
"Not anymore," he'd said, and smiled with teeth that were no longer quite human.
Her fear had been complex. Layered with guilt, recognition, the crushing understanding of what she'd created. The finest meal of his early years. He'd kept her alive for hours, let her beg, apologize, and promise everything she'd never given him.
Then he'd consumed it. Her blood, life, and essence. Felt her strength become his, her humanity dissolve into his growing divinity. The feeling of consuming the fear of others and gaining permanent enhancement from it was a very intoxicating and pleasureable experience for him.
He'd never looked back nor regretted. The world had made him small, made him suffer, and wish for death, and he had answered by becoming the death others wished for.
A National Guardsman, trembling as he aimed his rifle. Nocthar didn't even kill him, he just stood there, let the terror build, let the man see what he was, and what he represented. The fear peaked, and Nocthar consumed it. The man collapsed, aged decades in seconds, and Nocthar felt the permanent enhancement. Stronger, and faster.
A mutant who'd survived the Pollution with fire powers. She fought him. Burned him. But her fear of his immortality, her growing certainty that he couldn't die, that fear made him exactly that. Ungodly. He broke her neck when her terror peaked, absorbed everything that made her human, and added her strength to his collection.
He lost count quickly.
Four thousand? Five? Six? The numbers blurred. Each one a life, a soul, a story of survival cut short by his hunger. He didn't and couldn't care. John had cared, and John had been a worm. Nocthar was a god, and gods didn't count the ants they stepped on.
He built himself into legend. The fear-feeder. The yellow-eyed demon. The thing that made others have nightmares and wake screaming.
Hendricks had been number forty-two, maybe? Found him cowering in a FEMA shelter, surrounded by the weak and broken. Hendricks had recognized him, impossible, but true, and his fear had been transcendent.
"I'll fire you," Hendricks had babbled, pissing himself. "I mean, I won't, I didn't mean, please—"
Nocthar had made it last. Cultivated the fear like a gardener tending roses. Then consumed it all.
The count had been in thousands.
The early years were a blur of consumption, cities, settlements, and mutant enclaves. Anywhere there was fear, Nocthar fed. He learned to cultivate it, to let his reputation precede him, let the anticipation of his arrival do half the work. By the time he reached a target, they were already terrified, imagining him as something invincible.
And their imagination made him so.
He remembered the strong ones. A mutant who'd seen him as a dragon and so he'd become one, golden scales and all, until the fear faded and the form collapsed. A telepath who'd believed him unstoppable, and so he'd walked through her psychic assaults like they were smoke. The more they feared, the more real their fears became.
He'd stopped counting when the number became meaningless. When the souls blurred together into a chorus of screams that sang him to sleep each night.
He later arrived at this sanctuary. He thought of using his old ways, absorbing all the fear and getting stronger, until he felt the pressure released by the Heat Emperor. He instantly understood the massive chasm between them. He didn't dare to harbour anymore malicious thoughts because he knew that in here, he was still just another ant. Since then, he's been biding his time, getting stronger slowly, with the hope of making a massive comeback. If one or two mutants got missing, it wasn't a problem. In fact, it was pretty common. So, he's been living very carefree since then. Not daring to offend the Heat Emperor and some special abominations. That until now....
The dust settled. The gray sky blurred.
Steven's footsteps had faded. The silent engine of destruction had moved on, leaving Nocthar to die in the rubble.
Was it worth it?
John — the name felt foreign now, a word in a dead language, thought of the cubicle. The fluorescent light. The spreadsheet. The remote control flying toward his face. The ten years of being nothing, being less than nothing.
He thought of the Pollution. The Inkforce tearing him apart, rebuilding him and answering his prayer with a cruelty that felt almost loving. The first taste of fear-power. The first time he'd been strong .
He thought of the thousands. The faces he couldn't remember. The screams that had become his lullaby.
"Yes," he whispered, though no sound came. The blood in his throat was too thick.
It had been worth it. Every soul. Every scream. Every moment of playing god in a world that had made him a worm. He'd rather burn as a star than live another day as dust.
He saw Steven's face — empty, black-eyed, inhuman. The perfect predator. The thing with no fear because it had no self to lose.
You were always going to win, Nocthar thought. Because you were never really alive. And I... I wanted to live too much.
The golden light flickered and Dimmed.
For a moment, just before the end, he was just John again. Small. Scared. The man at the bathroom mirror, wishing for the world to fear him.
I got my wish, he thought. Thousands of times over. I got my wish, and it still wasn't enough.
The Inkforce had answered his prayer. Had made him into a vessel of terror. And now, at the end, that same power was leaking into the concrete, returning to the void that had birthed it.
The light went out.
Nocthar — John Hale, former office worker, husband, victim, and former god — lay still in the rubble, and was no more feared than the concrete dust settling on his open eyes.
Somewhere, distant, the Inkforce churned. Waiting. Hungry.
Always hungry.