Even more than their Random Encounter ability, consider that even if you survive your initial encounter with one, it can leave a piece of itself in your body that will grow inside you and devour your soul.
The phantoms don't just touch you; they seize your immortal consciousness, pulling and tearing it, screaming, from your body to consume it.
"I try to imagine what that must have been like. Seeing everyone around you fall over dead for no apparent reason. And then, at the end, feeling something next to you. Invisible. Touching you. Reaching inside your body and—"
Which also highlights what a nightmare the initial days of the invasion must have been like. An ever expanding circle of death that nobody can explain emanating out from the Phantom Crater. Sometimes it goes off one direction only to suddenly turn and go a different way but always in roughly a circle expanding. Before anyone picked up on the energy being aspect it must have been the most singularly terrifying thing to have ever happened.
