CHAPTER SEVEN: THE ENTITIES

The city lay in ruins, its outskirts choked with ash and twisted metal. No alarms blared, no authorities rushed to contain the aftermath. No. 9 had left no survivors. 

Yet amidst the devastation, something still moved.

A lone figure stood on the rooftop of a half-collapsed building, watching the carnage below. They were draped in tattered robes, their face obscured beneath a hood stitched with strange, shifting symbols. Their presence was wrong—not in the way No. 9 was wrong, with its shifting flesh and alien hunger, but in the way of something that should not be.

They had been waiting.

No. 9 approached, its form shifting fluidly, tendrils retracting and unfolding as it analyzed this new presence. It had devoured countless humans, stripped them down to base components, learned the mechanics of their strengths and their failings. This one was different.

It felt the difference before they even noticed it.

The hooded figure turned to face it, the tattered fabric parting just enough to reveal pale lips curled into something that might have been amusement.

“I see you.”

The words hung in the air, vibrating at frequencies No. 9 had never heard before. They weren’t spoken in any language it had consumed. They simply were.

It lunged.

A blur—flesh and claw and predatory instinct.

And yet—

It missed.

The Parahuman was still there, standing exactly where they had been, untouched. No. 9 did not process failure the way a human might, but it recognized something unusual. It recalibrated. It adjusted its form, analyzed every possible movement.

And then the Parahuman laughed. A dry, rasping sound. 

It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did.

“You do not understand what you are,” they murmured. “Not yet.”

No. 9 bristled. It had learned much since coming to this world, but understanding was secondary to survival. It did not need riddles. It needed knowledge.

“You are a mimic, a parasite, a scavenger of strength,” the Parahuman continued. Their head tilted, as though listening to something distant. “But you do not belong here. You were not made by them.”

Them.

No. 9 knew of no them. Only prey and predator. Humans and Kaiju. Humans and it. 

“They see you now,” the Parahuman whispered. Their voice was soft, but the words rang through No. 9’s being like a seismic tremor. “The shards. The seeds of something vast and dying. You hunger for power, but you are an intruder in their cycle.”

No. 9’s form rippled, processing the information. It had sensed something else in the humans it consumed, a second presence woven into their flesh, invisible and yet undeniable. It had thought them anomalies—whispers guiding it to Parahumans. But they were pieces.

And it had been devouring them blindly.

“You are not bound by the rules of their kind,” the Parahuman said, watching. “That is why you intrigue them. You are an aberration, but you are not yet a threat.” Their lips curled in that unsettling almost-smile. “Not yet.”

No. 9 reached out—not in hunger, but in something close to understanding.

The Parahuman exhaled, almost a sigh. “You are a mistake. And mistakes—”

A blur.

This time was different. 

No. 9 struck, faster than thought.

Teeth. Claws. Consumption.

The Parahuman barely had time to react before they were inside. Flesh, bone, memory—unraveling, becoming one with the ever-changing mass.

No. 9 convulsed.

And then it saw.

A world of golden light, stretching beyond comprehension. Monstrous forms, vast and ancient, locked in endless motion. A cycle spanning millennia. Creation and destruction intertwined.

And at the center of it all—

Shards.

Living fragments of something greater, sent to infest, to grow, to shape the evolution of a world’s defenders. Guided. Controlled. Observed.

But not by a who.

By a what.

A grand, unfathomable purpose.

No. 9 trembled, its form shifting erratically as it processed the weight of what it had absorbed. The Entities were not gods. They were not beings in the way humans understood. They were processes. Systems designed to continue, to adapt, to endure.

And No. 9 was outside that system.

An aberration.

A mistake.

But mistakes could evolve.

No. 9 straightened, its newly formed limbs bristling with energy, knowledge shifting like a storm within its being. It understood now.

It was not enough to devour the weak.

To evolve—to survive—it would need to consume the strongest.

The sky stretched vast and endless above it. Somewhere, across this world, there were parahumans who held true power. Beings who had touched the edges of the Entities’ design.

No. 9’s ember-like eyes burned.

It would find them.

It would consume them.

And when it was done—

Not even the Entities would be beyond its reach.