Chapter 01

Chapter 01

The Air That Kills

The gas never slept.

It drifted low over the Outerlands like a living thing—greenish, oily, breathing with the earth. By night it thickened, curling between broken shacks and rusted vehicles, seeping into cracks in the ground where old mines once swallowed men whole. By day it thinned just enough to remind everyone that survival was temporary.

Nii Boye tightened the straps of his gas mask, the rubber pressing hard against his cheekbones. The filter clicked into place with a familiar sound—comforting, like the cocking of a weapon. Around him, the construction site hummed with nervous life. Floodlights stabbed through the smoke, their beams scattering against drifting ash. Half-built concrete pillars stood like dead giants, marking the future edge of Songo’s expansion.

Beyond the fence, the slums burned.

Small fires dotted the horizon where the Outerlands stretched endlessly southward—collapsed zinc roofs, twisted iron rods, rubbish piles smoldering under the poisoned sky. People moved through the haze wrapped in layers of cloth, shirts pulled over noses, scarves tied too tight around mouths. They looked like ghosts choking on borrowed air.

Nii Boye watched them from his post.

“Shift just started and you’re already staring,” came a voice behind him.

He turned. Marius Lavan, site supervisor, stood with a polished respirator hanging loose around his neck. Songo-made. Clean. Expensive. The kind that didn’t clog after a week.

“Just checking the perimeter,” Nii Boye replied.

Marius snorted. “Nothing out there but thieves and beggars. Keep your eyes on the equipment.”

Nii Boye said nothing. He had learned long ago that silence survived longer than truth.

The wall of Songo loomed in the distance, barely visible through the haze—smooth stone reinforced with steel, glowing faintly under embedded lights. Border patrol vehicles cruised along its base like insects guarding a carcass. Inside those walls, people breathed clean air. Children ran without masks. Water flowed without filters.

Out here, air was currency.

A low vibration rolled through the ground beneath Nii Boye’s boots.

He froze.

The vibration came again—stronger this time. The floodlights flickered.

Nii Boye slowly reached behind his back and gripped the hilts of his twin swords, wrapped in neon-green fiber that faintly glowed even through the smoke. The blades were hidden beneath his reflective security vest, relics passed down through generations of protectors his grandmother used to speak about in whispers.

Watch the ground, she had always said. The earth speaks before it screams.

The soil near the fence began to move.

Cracks split open like wounds, coughing up dust and glowing gas. Workers shouted. One tripped backward, scrambling to pull his mask tighter. The vibration became a roar.

Then it came.

A massive Agama erupted from the earth—its scaled body scraping against concrete as it rose. The thing was the size of a watchtower, eyes glowing dull amber through layers of mutated flesh. Its tongue flicked, tasting the air, locking onto the nearest human.

Panic exploded across the site.

“AGAMA!” someone screamed. “RUN!”

The creature lunged.

Nii Boye moved before he thought.

His gas mask fogged for a second as adrenaline surged, then—without understanding why—the world sharpened. Darkness folded away. Smoke became transparent. The night opened its eyes to him.

His pupils burned neon green.

He drew both swords in a single motion. The blades hummed softly, silver catching the floodlights as if alive.

The Agama’s claw came down where he had been standing.

Nii Boye rolled, boots skidding across poisoned soil, then leapt forward—farther than he should have been able to. He slashed upward, blades biting deep into scaled flesh. Green light flared.

The Agama screamed.

The sound shook the slums.

With practiced instinct older than memory, Nii Boye climbed the beast, striking joints, tendons, weak seams in its armored hide. The gas swirled violently around them, but his eyes cut through it like fire through fog.

One final strike.

Both swords plunged into the base of the creature’s skull.

The Agama collapsed, its massive body crashing into the dirt, shaking the construction site to its bones.

Silence followed—thick and heavy.

Slowly, figures emerged from the slums beyond the fence. Men, women, children—faces wrapped in cloth, eyes hollow but hopeful. They stared at the fallen monster, then at the man standing atop it, neon blades dripping glowing blood.

Whispers spread through the smoke.

“Neon eyes…”
“Twin swords…”
“A protector…”

Nii Boye stood breathing hard behind his mask, the weight of something ancient settling onto his shoulders.

Beyond the wall, Songo remained untouched.

But in the poisoned Outerlands, a new name had just been born.

Neon Nii Boye.