54: Reclaiming Hope (11)

A man walked through a pitch-black exhibition hall.

Beneath his feet lay some grit, or something similar. Its texture was fine, its color somewhere between pale white and a faint shade that was difficult to distinguish.

It caught his attention, so he lowered his head to inspect it. Apparently finding that insufficient, after staring for several seconds, he even crouched halfway down and reached out to touch it.

He appeared utterly unguarded, and the overly slender back beneath his shirt proclaimed his harmlessness.

So something moved in the darkness.

Without warning, one of its scythe-like claws tore through the silence, sweeping toward the man's neck with the faintest whisper of wind.

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It was an apex predator, capable of occupying the top of the food chain in any natural environment. This strike should have severed the man's head from his body without question—but things did not unfold that way.

The man used only two fingers to stop the meter-long claw. The immense force carried behind it vanished completely into those fingers, which did not so much as tremble.

The absurd sight of a tree branch catching a meteor left the predator's highly developed nerves unable to react for a full second.

And the man did not counterattack.

He merely stood up. In that brief but lethal second, that was the only thing he did.

He looked at the predator.

"Trazyn's collection truly is extensive," he said.

The predator's consciousness was cut off. All its senses went dark as a smooth yet deeply carved arc completely separated its head from its body.

It took several more seconds for its body to belatedly realize what had happened.

Gravity dragged the heavier portion of its body sharply downward. Muscle fibers snapped one by