Inquisitor Tyro Legatus wanted nothing more than to usher in the end this world as an offering to her god “Deus Nihili” in the hope that they would remake reality in his unknowable image. Inquisitor Tyro Legatus could not begin however until she found one necessary component in the form of a runaway girl. She stood in the empty concrete cell where the girl had been kept. Her white scales caught the harsh light. Her tail traced the bars of the iron door. Somewhere out there hid Patient 9, and without her the great unmaking would never start. The metal sphere hovered near Tyro's shoulder. A black gothic nine marked its surface. It pulsed a faint field that swallowed the room's light in slow waves. "Patient 9 believes itself to be more than a tool to be used," Tyro said to Objekt-9, the device logging her every word for her investigation notes. "That is its mistake, thinking of itself as a person." The device drank the light around a crack in the far wall. There the darkness ran thin, as if something had slid through a crack in the world. Patient 9 had moved through the darkness, like walking through a door, Shadow Walking it was called. Tyro could smell the sharp scent of ozone Shadow Magic left behind. She pressed her claw into the crack and felt the cold beyond. A sound crawled behind her. Tyro turned. A hunter crouched in the corridor. Cold gray metal wrapped a dead man's frame. Its jaw hung open with teeth. Cables trailed from its spine. It waited for her word, lobotomized and loyal. "Track her," Tyro said. The biomechanical hunter dropped low and ran. Tyro followed, coat snapping behind her heels. They crossed the facility's iron halls and burst into the woods beyond the concrete walls. The hunter's head swung side to side. It found the scent and lunged forward with Tyro close behind.