Odium

It was darkness. Cool and comforting. Like diving into a pool on a summer's day. There was no sound to overwhelm him. No visions to haunt him. No iron on his tongue. The feel of blood dripping from his fingers...
It was Death.
He didn't want it.
An avian cry, and the heat... That unbearable heat. Neither good or evil, neither kind or cruel. It was just alive. Simply and purely, against all odds and reason, it raged against stillness. Against complacency. It was the soul of the phoenix, and it burned within him. Ash became bones, and bones grew flesh, and skin grew to cover it. It was heat and pain and flame all over, but it was life. There was something else there too... Ah. That old friend.
Odium.
Chamas woke, his body reaching out instinctually, like a puppet without strings. He found himself gripping a shard of broken glass, but it didn't slice his hands. His hands were... Ebony. A matte blackness, a color that consumed his skin and fingernails.
Jun Zhao was dead.
While he had missed the backlash of the Hunter, Odium shared this truth, and the two revelled in it... But not for long.
Chamas perked up -- a familiar sound. Boots on broken glass. Broken glass... He was in... He was in a medical vat. Four Lashunta soldiers came storming in to the dusty room, which Chamas took in all at once. He recognized this place, but not as it was. As it used to be, over a decade past. Without all the dust and grime, and the aura of abandonment. He recognized the soldiers too. Project 9.
Fear filled Chamas, his body shaking. Odium ate that fear.
The first soldier leapt on Chamas' arm, attempting to pin him down. Odium cackled, and Chamas lanced out, swatting downward with his hand. He'd meant to push the man away... Instead, his head caved into his ribcage. Another figure, this one wearing a medical badge, tried to ram a thick syringe into Chamas' neck. The needle broke in half when it hit that ebony skin, and the glass vial shattered, spreading the sleeping draught all over the ground.
Odium grinned.
Chamas grabbed the doctor's face, and hurled him into one of the remaining two soldiers, who were raising the barrels of their guns. There was a satisfying crunch as the two bodies met, and then a hailstorm of bullets collided into Chamas. It hurt... But it hurt like being hit with a pellet gun without padding. It didn't even break the skin.
Chamas stepped inside the soldier's melee range, guided by the war drums of Odium, and delivered a single punch to the sternum. The Lashunta's chest buckled, and the man went flying backward, through the archway and the rotting wall across from it. Chamas followed the body, but stopped in the hall, as he was immediately pelted by bullets from both sides. Two more squads, each with a doctor... They were here to take him alive.
Rather than engage, Chamas ran straight through the broken wall, and the metal folded away from him, rusted welds screeching as they stretched and popped. He remembered this place... Qabarat. He was back on Castrovel. But this wasn't his birthplace.
Or was it?
Chamas grimaced as he passed into an adjacent hallway. The paint was old and peeling, but he could still make out the text on the wall -- "Warchief Program". Not his biological birthplace... But a birthplace all the same.
He punched through that wall too, and another, the angry shouts and boot stomps of soldiers following him along conventional paths. They were afraid to engage him directly. Odium was pleased. But Odium was tiring... Whatever this form was, he couldn't keep it up for very long. He felt his skin growing softer, his complexion lightening. He needed to get out of here, and fast.
Pushing away from the metal scraps of the final barrier, Chamas strode out into an open chamber. It was seven stories tall, decorated like the lobby of an office building, but the only windows were up top, as the entire structure was underground. It was late evening, judging by the stars he could see... How long had he been dead? A slap of gunfire hit Chamas in the back, and so he fled to the center of the chamber, where a central elevator shaft would take him to the surface.
A harsh voice echoed unnaturally across the lobby, as soldiers emerged from their hiding places all over the clearing, led by a sickly Human in black robes. Chamas' muscles tightened as the cultist rattled on in Aklo. Thankfully, Chamas understood him.
Cultist: "In the name of the Crawling Chaos, I bind you. By the--"
Chamas' right arm roiled and flexed. Odium cooed. It did not hate the secrets burned into his flesh... Secrets were another kind of power. Another weapon to destroy. Chamas responded in the cultist's language -- the language of the Outer Gods.
The cultist gasped, his robes caught aflame, and the spell on Chamas vanished.
He reached the next group of soldiers a second later, the cost of the spell needling into his mind. To Chamas, it were as if the men were made of glass. With a backhanded effort they shattered, and then splattered on the floor like water balloons. He knew the sight of it should bother him... That the begging should unnerve him. It didn't. Not anymore.
Chamas lifted a grenade off one of the corpses, and chucked it into a swarm of agents who had gotten too close to each other. There was a thump as ball bearings exploded into the lobby, and the pathway to the elevator opened.
???: "Now!"
Invisible force smacked Chamas like a freight train. He was thrown in reverse, his back sliding on the mess he'd left behind, slamming into a concierge's desk not far from his entry point. His ears were ringing, his skin fading to its original color... Only then did he realize he was still wearing his gala suit. It was ruined.
Odium surged, and Chamas stood.
And then he froze in his tracks.
He didn't care that he was surrounded, or that over a dozen guns were pointed at his vitals. He ignored the drone that cast a spotlight on him, and the machine gun hanging ominously from its underbelly. His focus was entirely on the woman in front of him. A woman he had thought dead...
His sister.
Chamas: "Annwen?"
Something crashed into the back of Chamas' skull, and the world vanished.