Death did not always descend with overwhelming force. Sometimes, it came without a sound.
One second, every bodyguard's attention was fixed on the open elevator doors, like the maw of hell, their nerves stretched to the breaking point.
The next, an icy chill that seemed capable of freezing their souls spread without warning from the shadows behind them.
There were no footsteps, no movement of air, not even the slightest warning. It was as though darkness itself had taken physical form and silently risen to its feet.
Then came Curze's low voice, carrying an inhuman resonance, as though it sounded directly in the depths of everyone's eardrums.
It was not loud, yet it instantly drowned out every breath and scrape of equipment, reaching each bodyguard's brain with perfect clarity.
The instant his voice fell silent, a storm of destruction erupted at the rear of the formation.
Curze's figure seemed to coalesce from the shadows. The spectral blue light traced by his Arm Blades no longer formed cutting lines, but fans of death.
Several bodyguards with their backs to him never even had time to turn. Their bodies seemed to burst from within under some invisible, immense force. Their flak armour and the flesh beneath disintegrated in an instant, exploding into fragments of metal and scarlet tissue like punctured balloons filled with blood!
Scalding blood and fragments of entrails splashed over their nearby comrades' bodies and faces, leaving them momentarily stunned before an even deeper terror set in.
Rrrip!
Another tearing sound set their teeth on edge.
Curze's left Arm Blade plunged precisely into the back of a bodyguard who was trying to raise his gun, its tip bursting through his chest.
But the slaughter did not stop there. The Arm Blade twisted violently in a way that defied anatomy, then