Author's Note: This latest idea occurred to me today, and I churned out this snippet. Do enjoy and let me have feedback, whatever it may be. Have a great time reading!
I: Spark I
The metallic clang of the locker door echoes in my ears, a final, definitive sound that seals my fate. I'm locked inside, trapped in a space barely larger than my own body, and the darkness is suffocating.
The stench hits me first—an unbearable blend of rotting filth, old blood, and decay. It clings to me, fills my lungs with its fetid presence. I gag, the bitter bile rising in my throat, but there's nothing left to throw up. My stomach is empty, just like the hollow pit of despair growing inside me.
The locker reeks.
Rot and filth, putrid and festering, fill my nose and mouth. I gag again, my body convulsing as my lungs rebel, trying to purge the stench from my system. My hands scrabble against the metal walls, fingers slipping in the slimy decay coating every inch of my prison.
The contents—rotting food, congealed filth, used tampons and pads, clumps of hair—press against me, oozing into my clothes, into my skin.
I try to scream, but my throat locks up the moment I inhale again. The scent is overwhelming, thick and alive in the way something dead can be. My stomach heaves.
I vomit. The bile splashes onto my shirt, mixing with everything else. I feel the acid burn at my lips, but I can't wipe it away. I can't move.I'm trapped.
I beat against the door, hammering my fists so hard I feel my knuckles split. The pain is a distant thing, drowned out by the crushing panic that rises in my chest, a suffocating wave of terror that chokes me more effectively than the putrid air.
I can't breathe. I can't get out.
I can't—
I slam my shoulder into the door, trying to force it open, but the metal doesn't budge. I scream for help, my voice raw and shaking, but the hallway outside is silent. My throat is hoarse, ragged. How long have I been in here?
This is it. This is how I die. Alone, abandoned, left to rot in this metal coffin. I know the teachers won't help. They never do. The adults in my life are little more than specters, indifferent to my suffering, lost in their own worlds of apathy. I'm just another invisible girl—one they can ignore.
Hours? Days? It feels like forever.
I press my face against the slats, desperate for a gulp of fresh air, but the effort is wasted. The stink clings to me, seeps into me. I breathe it in with every shuddering gasp, like I'm drowning in filth.
I don't even know why I expected anyone to come. No one ever does.
"Let me out!"
No response.
I thrash against the metal walls, my fingers clawing at the cold surface, desperate to find a way out. My nails tear, splitting against the unforgiving steel. I can't stop. I can't give in. I scream again and again, but no one hears me. No one cares. The echoes of my voice fade into the gloom, swallowed by the shadows of this locker.
Hours pass—or maybe just minutes. I've lost all sense of time. It's all the same, a relentless cycle of despair and panic. The filth that clings to me becomes a second skin, a miasma of my own failures and fears. I feel it seeping into my very being, under my nails, into my soul.
"Please—" My voice catches, the words barely more than a hoarse sob.
Still, nothing.
How long have I been in here? I don't know. The dark warps my sense of time.
I try to breathe deep, try to keep myself calm, but the air is stale, thick with the miasma of everything that's been left to rot in here. It's getting harder to pull in a full breath.
The walls are too close. Pressing in. Shrinking.
No. No, they aren't moving. It just feels that way.
I shake my head, trembling, trying to fight the rising panic, but my body doesn't listen. My heartbeat is too fast. My skin is clammy with sweat.
I push against the door, against the walls, trying to force more space into existence. My shoulder knocks into something wet and mushy, and I gag again, bile rising in my throat.
I'm going to die in here.
No one is coming. No one is going to help me. They left me.
Emma. Madison. Sophia. I can hear them laughing. I can see their faces in my mind, twisted with cruel delight, watching as I suffocate in a coffin of garbage.
I shake, curling into myself, my body wracked with silent, hitching sobs. I pleaded with them. I begged them to stop. And this is what I got.This is how it ends.
I don't know how long I've been in here, but the darkness creeps into my mind, and I can't fight it anymore. The locker isn't just a box—it's a tomb. I close my eyes, trying to escape, but the memories flood in.
I see my mother's funeral, the way the earth swallowed her, a finality I can't comprehend. My father's distant, broken gaze as he stood there, a shell of the man I once knew. Emma's mocking laughter ringing in my ears like a funeral dirge, her cruel words slicing through me. Sophia's smirk as she slammed the door shut, sealing my fate with a finality that makes my skin crawl.
I scream again, a raw, primal sound that claws its way up my throat. No one answers. The emptiness is profound, the silence deafening.
I pound my fists against the walls, desperate to make them feel me, to make them acknowledge my existence. But it's futile. I'm alone, just a ghost in this prison.
The panic rises, clawing at my throat like a feral beast. I'm trapped in here, and I can't breathe. The walls seem to close in, their cold metal pressing against me, suffocating me. I'm going to die in this wretched place, forgotten and unloved.
I slam my hands against the door again, harder, ignoring the sharp sting in my palms. My nails scrape against metal, tearing, breaking, but the lock doesn't budge.
I squeeze my eyes shut. My breathing slows. My heartbeat steadies. I accept it. I let go.
And the world breaks.
Sudden heat swells within me, a tide of molten agony. My body is breaking, dissolving into something vast and unknowable. I try to scream, but there is no air, no voice—only fire. And then the world is gone.
I am no longer in the locker. No longer in Winslow. No longer Taylor Hebert. I am elsewhere. I am nowhere, weightless, floating in the space between everything.
I see it.
Not with my eyes. Not with sight.
A vast, eternal inferno, burning across the fabric of existence itself. It is not bound by time or space. It has no beginning, no end. It simply is. A fire beyond mortal comprehension, stretching beyond galaxies, beyond dimensions, beyond the very concept of limits.
It is alive. It moves, roiling like a storm. Great waves of light twist and churn, a vast, endless tide of gold and crimson and violet. It is beautiful.
The void stretches infinite before me—no sky, no ground, just an ocean of shifting color, deeper than anything human eyes were meant to perceive.
Beyond the colors, I see stars—dying, their brilliant light collapsing inward, pulled toward something vast, something too large for my mind to comprehend.
A shape. Not a thing. Not a being. A presence.
It stretches beyond the limits of sight, beyond the boundaries of existence itself. A great, living fire, shifting, churning, folding in on itself in endless, fluid motion. It has no form, and yet it has every form, a thousand wings of burning gold, a thousand eyes of searing white, a thousand voices that whisper and roar in the fabric of the universe.
It does not think as humans do. It does not feel as we do. It is hunger, it is creation, it is annihilation. It has existed before the first stars were kindled in the abyss. It will remain long after the last embers of the universe flicker and die. It is both the spark that gives birth to existence and the flame that devours it.
I see eons pass in an instant.
A star burns bright in the void, its light cradling fledgling worlds teeming with life. It reaches out, brushing against the star with a touch so slight, so indifferent, yet the star screams. Its core collapses, a supernova birthing nebulae that will form new worlds, new stars. In death, there is renewal.
A galaxy spirals in the vast darkness, countless civilizations rising and falling upon its worlds. It drifts through, unconcerned, unbound by the petty notions of fate or morality. A single pulse of its power, a flicker of its presence, and the spiral arms are unmade. Entire solar systems dissolve into cascading waves of radiation, their histories erased in an instant. The galaxy burns, reduced to cinders floating in the cosmic void.
Yet, elsewhere, a new one forms.
It does not seek destruction, nor does it seek creation. These are mere consequences of its nature, incidental and meaningless to something so vast.
I see its hosts.
Throughout the eons, there have been others. Beings who have wielded a sliver of its power, who have burned brighter than the stars, who have reshaped the very fabric of reality itself.
Some have ruled entire galaxies as living gods, their wills made manifest through fire and force. Others have crumbled under the burden, their bodies and minds unable to withstand the raw infinity of its essence. Worlds have been saved. Worlds have been lost.
It does not care.
It does not choose based on worth, nor on morality, nor on destiny. It chooses because it can. Because, in a moment that means nothing to it but means everything to those who are touched by its fire, it decides to burn.
And now, it turns its gaze to me.
Something else was meant to come to me first. I feel it, a fragment of something artificial, something crafted—a sliver of power sent through the dimensional void, meant to twist me into something else. It is small, pale, limited. A mere splinter of something greater, built for control, for a purpose I cannot understand.
The flaming entity devours the shard.
The lesser power is consumed in an instant, its feeble light swallowed and reforged into something new. It was never meant to stand before this vast, eternal fire. It is dust before a supernova.
I feel the entity turn its gaze upon me.
A weight crushes down on my mind, my soul, my existence. It is not malice, not cruelty—just something vast, something infinite, something that has seen the birth and death of entire realities.
It is not a god. It is beyond gods.
It does not simply exist—it is existence. And I am nothing before it. A speck. A grain of dust in the storm of creation. A dying ember.
And then, from the vast, endless flame, a fraction—just the smallest sliver—breaks away. It enters me. The fire does not ask. It does not offer. It simply takes. It gives.
I burn. I am falling, plummeting back through the void, through the vision, through time, through reality.
The heat is unbearable, but I do not scream. I rise. It sees this. And it does not speak; it does not have to.
Its voice is fire and silence, a soundless roar that fills my being, reshaping me into something new.
"Burn."
Flames erupt from within me.
No, not flames—something greater. A force that is not fire, not heat, but power itself.
My body disintegrates into light. I see galaxies ignite in my veins. I see entire worlds perish in the wake of my breath. I am unraveling—not ending, not dying, but becoming.
Becoming something more. Something vast. Something endless. The presence watches. Judging. Deciding. It reaches out again.
Pain ignites behind my eyes, sharp and shattering, like glass breaking inside my skull. A scream tears itself from my throat, raw and wretched, but I don't hear it. I don't hear anything.
Everything is white.
Blinding, searing, scorching white. A pressure builds in my chest, growing, swelling, filling me with something too big to contain. I claw at my ribs, fingers scraping against my own flesh as if I can tear it out.
I fall.
No, I plummet, pulled through the void like a comet spiraling toward an unseen horizon. The remnants of the vision blaze inside my mind, too vast to comprehend, too infinite to forget. I have seen things no human was ever meant to witness—cosmic infernos swallowing entire galaxies, civilizations vanishing in the breath of a dying star, the very fabric of reality bending beneath the weight of a force beyond time itself.
And yet, through it all, it chose me. The fire does not leave. It does not fade like a dream or shatter like a memory. It is here, in my bones, in my marrow, in the deepest recesses of what I am.
It coils, writhing through my veins, compressing itself into something small, something mortal. It is a force that has existed since the dawn of creation, and now it is inside me.
One moment, the filth clings to my skin, the stench of rot suffocating me. The next, there is only heat.
The filth—the disgusting, putrid filth that soaked into my clothes, my hair, my skin—disintegrates. Not burned. Not cleansed. It is simply erased, as though it was never there. The rotting, congealed stink is gone. The bile in my throat is gone. The weak, gasping breath that rattled in my chest is gone.
I breathe in, and for the first time in what feels like forever, I am clean.
The walls of Winslow High cannot endure what happens next.
A shockwave detonates outward. Metal screams as it liquefies, curling away in molten rivulets. The filth is incinerated in an instant, vaporized in the expanding sphere of searing white-hot plasma.
The explosion erupts outward, beyond the locker, beyond the hall, beyond the school itself. The building—brick, steel, concrete—all of it evaporates in a wave of fire. The ceiling disintegrates, torn apart by the force of the blast. A hurricane of raw energy engulfs everything in its path.
There is screaming—brief, fleeting.
The students. The teachers. The ones who ignored me. The ones who hurt me. The ones who never cared.
It does not matter.
The fire consumes them all.
The school collapses in upon itself in a roar of destruction. Concrete fractures into dust before it can even hit the ground. Steel beams twist and curl like paper held to a flame. Classroom walls, desks, books—history itself is erased in an instant, swallowed whole by the force of my rebirth.
The school is ruined.
Smoke clogs the air, thick and acrid, stinging my throat. The walls that once loomed over me—once boxed me in like a cage—are reduced to rubble. The floor beneath me is warped, cracked, wrong, as if it can't decide what it's supposed to be.
I breathe, and the air around me shudders. The rippling heat-haze distortion clings to me, warping everything in my presence, making the edges of reality itself flicker and stutter.
The fire does not stop. It hungers.
The streets outside fracture, spiderweb cracks splitting through asphalt as another pulse of heat washes over the city. The shockwave ripples outward, shaking buildings, igniting the very air. Glass windows burst in their frames. Power lines snap and melt in midair. Cars parked along the curb crumple like paper, their fuel tanks detonating one by one in secondary explosions that barely register against the inferno.
The sky itself catches fire.
Above me, the clouds ignite in a roiling storm of plasma and raw, unchecked power. The heat distorts the world, warping the very air with shimmering waves of superheated energy. Where once there was a school, there is now a crater, a smoldering wound carved into the earth, still glowing from the sheer intensity of the blast.
And at the center of it all—
I stand.
The wind howls, carrying embers in spiraling arcs around me. The ground beneath my feet is scorched black, heat still radiating from the shattered remnants of what was once Winslow High. The air ripples around me, bending like light distorted through a flame.
I look down at myself. I am naked, but I feel no shame.
The fire clings to me, wrapping around my limbs, dancing across my skin like living serpents of molten gold. It does not burn me. It is me. My hair, once tangled and filthy, now flows like strands of liquid flame, flickering and shifting in a rhythm I do not yet understand.
My hands tremble, fingers outstretched, wreathed in fire that coils and uncoils as though it, too, is alive. I flex my fingers, and the flames respond, shifting, shaping themselves with my thoughts.
I exhale, and embers dance in the wind. Then, the screaming starts.
Not from the ones who burned. Not from the ones who vanished in the first wave. From the ones who survived.
Distant, scattered voices, echoing across the ruined landscape. They are too far to see me clearly. They do not understand what happened yet. But they know—they know something terrible has occurred.
And then, the sirens. A distant wail, growing closer. Police? Firefighters? Paramedics? It does not matter. They are coming.
To stop me? To help me? I do not know. I do not care.
A tremor runs through my body, exhaustion crashing into me like a tidal wave. My legs shake, my vision tilts, and for the first time since the fire chose me, I feel weak.
The power is still there—infinite, roiling just beneath my skin—but my body is human. Mortal. Fragile. The fire may not burn me, but I am still too small to contain it fully. My knees buckle.
I collapse.
The world tilts, heat still rolling off me in waves, the scorched earth beneath me searing against my bare skin. But I barely feel it.
I manage to turn my head, my vision blurring.
The last thing I see before the darkness swallows me is the pillar of fire, stretching high into the sky, burning with the fury of something that has existed since the beginning of time.
A monument to my awakening.
I wake to silence. Not the stillness of an empty room, not the hush of a city before dawn. True silence. A world gutted of sound.
For a moment, I wonder if I've gone deaf. Then I hear the wind.
It howls across the ruins, carrying with it the acrid stench of burnt flesh, molten metal, scorched earth. It kicks up spirals of ash, sending them drifting through the twilight glow of dying fires.
The ground beneath me is wrong.
I push myself upright, expecting the rough scrape of pavement or the jagged edges of debris beneath my palms. Instead smooth glass caresses my fingers.
The earth itself has melted.
I stare at it: black, polished, fused into a solid sheet. As far as the eye can see, the streets are gone, the sidewalks obliterated, the asphalt transformed into a warped, molten landscape. I shift my weight, but I don't leave footprints. The ground doesn't yield to me. It knows me.
I exhale—smoke drifts from my lips. A faint glow flickers at the edges of my vision, and I glance down. My skin is clean. Pristine. Untouched. I should be burned. I should be dead.
I lift a hand and flex my fingers. The fire is still there, coiling around my fingertips like a living thing. It doesn't burn me. It belongs to me. I look up and I see what I've done.
Brockton Bay lies in ruin. Acrid tendrils of black smoke billow from the desiccated, fire-gutted husks of once proud skyscrapers. Mangled corpses litter shattered streets, blood and sinew painting a macabre portrait of gore.
Oppressive, salient energies blanket the remains of the city. An almost virulent energy clogs the senses and actively stains the very air red. The stench of death permeates the air.
The city is gone. Not just Winslow. Everything. What should have been a dense, urban sprawl is now a wasteland.
Buildings? Obliterated. Only blackened steel beams remain, twisted into unrecognizable shapes, their supports welded into the melted ground by the heat of the blast.
Cars? Gone. Some still exist in fragments—charred husks, twisted frames fused into the pavement—but most have been vaporized.
People? Oh God.
The closest ones—those who were near the epicenter—aren't just dead. They don't exist anymore. Not even ash remains.
Further out, the remains begin—charred bones, blackened husks frozen in their last moments. Some still stand, turned to statues of ash, their expressions lost forever.
A hot wind stirs. One collapses. The dust of what was once a person drifts away into nothing.
I stagger forward. My bare feet hover just above the ground, the heat refusing to touch me. I don't understand. I don't want to understand.
This can't be real.
A bus sits in the ruins, its frame half-melted, windows blown out. I step closer, my breath shallow, my pulse steady.
I don't know why I look inside.
There are shapes burned into the seats. People. Or the imprints of them. Shadows of their final moments, seared into the fabric by the intensity of the fire.
I can see them. The outlines of their arms raised in protection. Their heads turned away. Like they were trying to hide from what was coming. Like they thought that would help.
I take a step back. The glass beneath my feet doesn't crack. I exhale again—more smoke drifts from my mouth. I should feel sick. I should feel something.
Instead, there is only a slow, creeping awareness. I did this. I don't remember making a choice. I don't remember deciding to burn the world.
But I did. I raise my hands again, staring at them—untouched, unburned, pristine. I exhale one more time. This time, when the smoke drifts from my lips, there's something else in it. Something hungry.
I lower my hands slowly. The air around me shimmers with heat, but I feel nothing. The city is silent except for the crackling of distant fires. Everything is gone. And yet, I remain. I should be screaming. I should be crying. I should be on my knees, begging for this to be a nightmare.
Instead, I breathe.
Smoke curls from my lips, twisting into the air like a living thing. The fire that clings to my skin flickers and coils, but it never touches me. I step forward, hovering just above the molten glass that was once a street.
The city spreads out before me, a graveyard of fire and shadow. The skyline is unrecognizable.
Entire blocks are missing. Not just destroyed—erased. Wiped from existence as though they were never there. Further out, where the fire didn't reach immediately, the buildings still stand, but they are blackened, hollowed-out corpses.
And the people—
Their voices are somehow in my head. Distant now, quieter. But I can feel them. The ones who are left. Scattered through the ruins, beneath collapsed buildings, trapped in vehicles that have fused into the ground.
Some are still alive. Many more are not. I can hear them. Not their voices. Not their words. Their minds.
It starts as a whisper. Then a murmur. Then a hundred thousand voices screaming in my head.
I stagger, my hands clutching at my skull, but the voices don't stop. They pour into me like a flood, a tidal wave of thought, of emotion, of raw human suffering.
Oh God, my family was there!
No no no no NO, this can't be real!
Why won't my skin stop burning?!
I should have died… I should be dead!
The fire is still spreading what the fuck
Who did this? Who did this? Who did this?!
I can't shut them out.
They press against my mind, their thoughts shattering through every wall, every barrier I never knew I had. Their pain lances through me, their fear chokes me, their rage burns like coals inside my ribs.
I am drowning in them. Each voice is distinct, yet overlapping, a cacophony of terror and grief. Hundreds of thousands of minds spill their contents into me at once.
I clench my teeth, trying to focus, trying to breathe, but the deluge of emotion is unrelenting. And then I feel their bodies.
Every living person in the city, every survivor, every broken soul left in the wake of my destruction. I sense their heartbeats, their lungs filling with smoke-tainted air, their nerves raw with pain.
I feel them dying. The ones trapped beneath rubble, their bodies crushed, lungs laboring for breath that won't come. The burn victims, skin seared away, raw flesh exposed to the elements.
The ones who made it out, who survived, but wish they hadn't. I see them through their own eyes, flashing between perspectives at speeds I can't control. I close my eyes, and suddenly I see—
A man crawling through the wreckage, his legs shattered, his fingers raw from dragging himself forward. He doesn't even realize his back is still burning.
A woman rocking back and forth, clutching the charred body of her daughter, whispering apologies that will never be heard.
A child, standing alone in the ruins of her home, staring at the place where her parents should be.
Their pain floods through me, an ocean of grief and terror, drowning me in its weight. I choke on it. And then I hear the others. The ones further away. The ones who weren't caught in the center but watched the firestorm consume everything. And I hear their rage.
She's still alive.
This was her.
She did this.
Monster.
Murderer.
The words slam into me like daggers. I stagger back, clutching my head, but there is no escaping them. Their fury burns hotter than the fire.
I feel it spreading, a tidal wave of hatred rushing toward me. And something inside me reacts. My body tenses. My vision flares.
A pressure builds in my skull, swelling and rising until I scream. But it is not a sound. It is a force. A pulse of raw, psychic power erupts from me in all directions. I feel minds shatter.
Some die instantly. Neurons burn out like blown circuits, their bodies dropping lifeless before they even understand what's happening. Others hemorrhage rivers of blood from their eyes, noses, ears and every other orifice. Others seize up, their bodies twitching violently before they collapse, their consciousness torn to pieces.
Even those on the fringes feel it. Their minds are not whole anymore.
Something inside them has fractured. Something they will never get back. And just like that, the city falls silent again. I collapse to my knees, gasping for breath. The flames around me flicker.
I don't understand. I didn't mean to do that. I just wanted them out of my head.
But now they're gone, fleeting existences snuffed out in an instant. The mere pressure of my mind caused theirs to collapse.
The sobering realization sits heavy in my heart. I lift my hands. The fire is still there, dancing along my skin. Not a single ember touches me. I should be afraid. I should feel sick. Instead, I feel something else.
Something ancient. Something that isn't me. A spark of infinity condensed into an avatar of flesh and bone. It stirs inside my chest, vast and unknowable, stretching across time and space.
I remember the vision. The burning galaxies. The solar systems torn apart in an instant. The civilizations that once were—and now are nothing.
The voice that whispered to me in the dark. The thing that chose me. It is still here. Inside me. Watching. Waiting.
And I realize I am not alone. I understand. It is old. Older than this city. Older than this world. Older than this universe. I see it in a flash of cosmic fire, an entity that has lived and burned and consumed for longer than time itself. It is life and death, the beginning and the end, an inferno that hungers, always hungers.
And now, it is in me. The realization should break me. Instead, I stand.
I feel my fingers curl, and not for the first time, I notice the flames dancing across my skin. They do not burn. They recognize me. They are part of me. And I do not fear them.
It doesn't speak in words, but I understand. It has been before. It has burned before. It has chosen others before. I see them. Flashes of memory, of lives that aren't my own.
A red-haired woman standing on a world long since turned to dust, arms spread wide as she ascends, burning like a newborn star. An armor clad warrior, his body wreathed in flame, driving his blade into the heart of an entire civilization, the planet itself screaming as its core shatters. A blue-skinned being without a name, floating through the void, watching a dying galaxy collapse into nothingness, its light swallowed whole.
They were chosen. They were consumed. Now it is my turn. The fire stirs inside me, recognizing that I finally understand.
I am not in control. I am its vessel. I stumble back, shaking my head, trying to deny it—but the moment I do, I feel its amusement.
Like an ancient predator watching its prey realize it was never going to escape. I suck in a breath, steadying myself. This thing inside me—it isn't human. It never was. But I am. Aren't I?
I look down at my hands, flexing them. The flames curl around my fingers like obedient pets. I don't feel pain. I don't feel weak. If anything, I feel… more.
More than I ever was. More than I ever could have been. I should be afraid. Instead, I feel something else. A deep, undeniable certainty.
I will never be weak again. I will never be helpless again. The thought sends a shudder through the fire, as if it approves. As if it has been waiting for me to understand.
Before I can ponder further on that recognition, I hear them.
In the distance, beyond the reach of my destruction, beyond the bodies and the melted streets, there is a siren. A piercing, shrill wail tears through the city, the sound a discordant cacophony that shatters the silence. The siren wails mournfully, before gradually tapering off.
Softer, but no less deafening sirens pick up in its wake. These steadily grow closer, heralding their approach. They are coming. The Protectorate. The PRT. The heroes.
They don't know what I am. Not yet. But they will.
A part of me knows that the impending arrival of the heroes should mean something. It should stir some kind of response in me. Hope. Dread. Relief.
But as I hover above the molten ruins, watching the city's broken skeleton smolder beneath me, I feel none of those things. The fire shifts within me, coiling through my veins like a living thing, responding to the approaching forces with something that feels almost like anticipation.
I can sense them before I see them. Their minds glow against the darkness, flickering with discipline, strategy, fear. They don't understand what they're walking into. Not yet. But they will.
The first to arrive are the fliers. New Wave.
I recognize them even before they come into view, their minds distinct, their thoughts bright and sharp in the burning void.
Glory Girl leads the charge, streaking through the air like a golden comet, her aura flaring as she pushes her speed past safe limits.
Lady Photon and Manpower follow close behind, their thoughts already shifting into battle formations, searching the wreckage for survivors. Brandish and Flashbang move lower, sweeping the ruins, their minds already calculating strategies.
They don't see me at first. They are still looking for the cause. For a bomb. For an Endbringer attack. For something that makes sense.
Then Glory Girl sees me. She jerks to a stop mid-flight, eyes locking onto me, her thoughts screaming with confusion.
"What the fuck?" Her voice cuts through the air, but I don't need to hear her words.
I already know what she's thinking.
Why is she just standing there? Why does she look so—normal? Where are the burns? How is she still alive?
She doesn't understand. None of them do. I feel their minds sharpening, hear their thoughts turning toward suspicion.
Then the second wave arrives.
A transport craft streaks through the sky, engines roaring, cutting a black silhouette against the rising smoke. The PRT. The side doors slide open mid-air, and the Protectorate leaps into the ruins.
Armsmaster. Miss Militia. Dauntless. Velocity. Battery.
I feel their minds click into combat readiness the second they see the scale of the destruction. They've fought before. Killed before. Some of them in wars, some in the streets. But this? This is something new.
Armsmaster lands first, his armored boots smashing into the molten glass below, weapon already in hand. His mind is a machine of data and calculations, scanning the scene, searching for answers.
He locks onto me. I watch it happen. A million permutations of the future unfold in my mind's eye in the span of an attosecond. Armsmaster's thoughts shift, click, sharpen. Recognition.
Taylor Hebert. Missing student. Reported locked in a locker. Listed as a probable trigger event. His next thought is pure ice. This was not a normal trigger event.
Miss Militia lands beside him, rifle raised, shifting between configurations as her mind races to identify the threat. She doesn't recognize me. Not yet. But she knows what she's looking at. A living epicenter. A walking catastrophe.
The realization spreads through the gathered heroes like wildfire. Their minds hum with urgency, snapping into coordination, the battle lines forming before anyone speaks.
They are going to try to contain me. They are going to try to stop me. They don't understand. They can't. I am not what they think I am. I never was.
"Taylor?" Armsmaster's voice is controlled, but his thoughts are not. Suspicion. Unease. Calculation.
I don't respond. A dozen minds whisper around me, analyzing, preparing, moving into position. The fire inside me stirs, noticing the movement. Noticing the threat.
Then Glory Girl moves. Too fast. Too aggressive. Her mind burns with rage and confusion, her vision locked onto the bodies, the destruction, the melted city.
She doesn't think. She just acts. She lunges, fists raised, aura blazing. She's going to hit me. She's going to try.
The fire reacts before I do. A wave of telekinetic force explodes outward from me, slamming into her like a freight train. She doesn't even have time to scream.
One second she's flying toward me. The next, she's gone, a golden blur ripped from the sky, smashing through a collapsing skyscraper.
Silence. Then the world erupts. Brandish moves first, hands flashing into blade-like arcs of light, leaping for me with a warrior's precision.
I see her attack before it happens, her mind outlining the strike before she even moves. I raise a hand. The air ripples. The street beneath her detonates, a vertical column of molten debris ripping into the sky, slamming her backward.
Manpower charges next, strength boiling through his body, Brute-rated durability driving him forward. I let him come. At the last second, I raise a single finger. A gesture.
A telekinetic grip closes around the nearest building, the remains of a once-massive office tower. With an effortless flick, I hurl the entire structure at him. It crashes down like a mountain of steel and fire, burying him in an instant.
Flashbang raises his hands, palms glowing with incendiary light. A single thought and his skin detaches from his body with a wet pop. His body stands erect for a moment, then collapses bonelessly. Organs slosh to the glassy floor in a steaming pile.
"Mark!" Lady Photon's anguished cry is silenced as my attention turns to her. She crumples into a ball the size of a fist, compressed by a force that can crush the planet.
Silence reigns for a fraction of a second before the Protectorate heroes explode into action. They move in tandem, precision and coordination, attempting to box me in.
Miss Militia's weapon cycles into a high-yield railgun, crackling with energy. Dauntless hurls a charged spear, lightning arcing from its tip. Battery and Velocity move in from the flanks, aiming for speed over power.
I don't move. I don't need to. The fire inside me reacts.
A wave of pure force detonates outward, the air itself igniting as the ground shatters, a ripple of destruction tearing through the battlefield.
Dauntless' spear disintegrates mid-air. Miss Militia's gun explodes in her hands, shards of steel raining down around her. Velocity and Battery slam into an invisible wall, bodies folding as they crash backward.
The battle stops.
For a moment, they don't move. They stare at me, at the impossibility of what just happened. Then, I step forward. Hovering. The fire curls around me, flickering with something deeper than heat.
Something alive. I look at them. Their minds are alight with terror, the inescapable realization of their impending doom. Their minds all flicker with the same thought.
This isn't a fight we can win.
They're right. I open my mouth—
And the sky ignites.