Witchblade: Savage Grace by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Witchblade-Savage-Grace-1309166917

Witchblade: Savage Grace ANIMATION

The Pulse of Dead Neon

Detective Sara Pezzini struck the corpse with the heavy steel casing of her flashlight, and the young man's flesh rang like a hollow cathedral bell. The sound echoed down the rain-slicked alleyway, a terrible, resonant chime that belonged to struck porcelain, not human tissue. He was perfectly preserved, trapped in a breathless rictus of sheer agony, his hand reaching toward a fire escape he would never touch. He was devoid of motion down to the subatomic level.

Above them, the beating heart of the entertainment district had been ripped out. Every neon sign, every glowing marquee, every buzzing advertisement within a three-block radius had been brutally murdered. The brilliant argon, the glowing phosphorus, and the vibrant neon gases had been entirely drained of their radiant plasma. What remained were hollow, gray glass veins clinging to the damp brickwork like the webs of a dead spider.

"It is as if something drank the electricity," her partner, Jake, murmured. He shivered, though the night was remarkably humid. He held up a digital thermometer, but the liquid crystal display glitched and died the closer he brought it to the victim's chest.

"Not just the electricity," Sara replied, pulling her trench coat tighter against a chill that was entirely unnatural. Her right wrist throbbed with a low, predatory heat. The heavy, ornate silver gauntlet resting against her skin—the Witchblade—pulsed in rhythm with her accelerated heartbeat. "It drank the friction. The heat. The movement."

The ancient artifact shifted beneath her sleeve. Metallic tendrils, microscopic and warm, uncoiled slightly, tasting the residual aura clinging to the alley. The Witchblade communicated not in words, but in primal emotions. It projected a wave of profound disgust into Sara's mind. It had sensed an apex predator, but a perverted one. A creature of absolute, horrifying stasis that fed greedily on the chaotic dance of energy.

Leaving the forensics team to their futile attempts to process a crime scene that broke the laws of thermodynamics, Sara stepped out of the alley. She let the Witchblade guide her. It did not track muddy footprints or the scent of blood; it tracked the absence of vibration.

The neon metropolis was a sprawling leviathan of light, sound, and constant friction, but the killer had left a visible wake of dead space. Sara walked down an avenue where the rain fell differently. The heavy droplets did not splash when they struck the asphalt. They simply stopped. Their kinetic energy was instantly absorbed into the pavement, leaving bizarre, perfectly silent puddles. The ambient hum of the city traffic felt muted here, swallowed by an invisible vacuum.

She looked up through the deluge. A towering spire of commercialism, an old radio broadcasting building wrapped in a cocoon of colossal neon advertisements, stood defiant against the bruised, low-hanging night sky. But the lights on the upper floors were flickering. It was a steady, rhythmic dimming, like a colossal heart struggling against a fatal arrhythmia.

"Up there," Sara whispered to the empty street.

The Witchblade responded with a sharp thrill of metallic adrenaline injected directly into her bloodstream. It wanted the hunt.

Sara bypassed the lobby elevators. They were too risky, likely already drained of their mechanical momentum. She took the service stairs. Empowered by the symbiotic strength of the artifact, she ascended sixty flights of concrete steps in absolute silence, her breathing barely elevated. She kicked open the heavy roof access door, stepping out into a hurricane of howling wind and blinding, desperate light.

The sprawling rooftop was a treacherous maze of humming industrial transformers and colossal steel frameworks supporting the neon billboards. At the very edge of the precipice, silhouetted against a violently flickering magenta sign that read Eternity, stood a man.

He possessed an impossible, lethal elegance. He was dressed in a sharp, tailored suit that seemed woven from both the deep shadows and the bleeding magenta light. But it was the outline of his physical form that made Sara’s blood run cold. He was vibrating. A high-frequency blur softened his edges, making him look like a heat mirage hovering over boiling asphalt.

As Sara stepped forward, her boots crunching on loose gravel, the massive magenta sign behind him snapped off. The sudden darkness was absolute, save for the man himself. He turned slowly, and his eyes were twin pools of c
...(more at https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai).
For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)