[FREE | Reading Sample] TS - Chapter 2 - The Emerald Tablet

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------------------- Start of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) -------------------
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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

We're back with more Tabula Smaragdina today!

The Reading Samples are intended to last around 3-5 Chapters, so they are quite a bit larger than your average TAS or ND ones, to make sure that I can cover all the bits I want to present in the sample.

Today's chapter is a little over 10k Words long, so about three as long as a normal TAS/ND chapter! MASSIVE reading, yay!

Enjoy, and don't forget to provide feedback in the discord channel! (#other-novels -> Thread: "Put feedback for TAS in here")

I'm particularly looking for feedback on whether you are interested in a continuation based off of this initial Reading Sample, and specifically what parts got you really interested (if at all).

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To hopefully pre-empt some questions that might come up:

No, this will not replace TAS.

No, this will not replace ND.

No, it will not be a third novel alongside the other two anytime soon, as I'm maxed-out on energy/time capacity for writing with those.

Yes, it is something I'm considering as a third novel for the future, hence the Reading Sample.

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Now, with all that out of the way, I once again ask that you go into this with an open mind and just take it for what it is. And remember to provide targeted feedback on the things you like/dislike!

Enjoy!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's the GoogleDoc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jVBIuZh_J7asmTyYT5YUDo5DFJpzDtLNUmP0X3llkJw/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 2 - The Emerald Tablet

“Triss and I learned about the actual grading system for Powereds today.

Like, the full version. Not the kindergarten–elementary school one everyone gets spoon-fed.

God, what a loooong class that was…

Because—surprise—it’s way more complicated and buried in legal bullshit than you’d ever expect. Triss said it was probably because a bunch of countries that very reluctantly signed on with the One World Council demanded insanely strict standards and iron-clad legal wording for literally everything. 

Which, yeah… Fair, I guess.

If you’re basically handing over your sovereignty to some giant international entity you barely control, you’d probably want everything nailed down with iron spikes and blood ink too.

Anyway. 

After we got through the mountains of legalese and a whole detour into how the grading system even came together—which was mostly history we’ve already covered in, like, five other classes—we ended up with… the exact same ranking list everyone else gets.

You know. The one taught in kindergarten.

If that isn’t the purest distillation of what studying Hero Law feels like, I don’t know what is

Or law in general, maybe? Hard to say. Hero Law is its own weird beast. 

Also it’s been a while since I talked to Martha…

…Maybe I should actually do that soon? Catch up?

Yeah. I set up a date for us all to meet and talk about our studies. That’s happening.

But still.

We got the same list. How dumb is that?!

We spent hours going over how scientists and lawyers desperately wanted Greek and Latin everywhere, while the OWC PR department kept screaming “keep it simple for the masses”—and after all that? Same damn list. 

Both sides shoved in to make everyone happy. Hah…

So what was even the point of today?

I took a ton of notes on the legal stuff on the laptop, so I’m not rewriting all that here.

(Search for “Hero Rankings” or “Grading System,” future Sadie!)

But seriously. Just look at the list!

You’ve seen it a thousand times already, of course… And yet you had to sit through almost six hours of class to reach the exact same conclusion:

Whoever designed these rankings absolutely lost the plot at some point.

I-Rank - Inertis
H-Rank - Humilis
G-Rank - Gradus

- - - - - - Operational Level - - - - - -

F-Rank - Facultas
E-Rank - Epsilon
D-Rank - Delta
C-Rank - Gamma
B-Rank - Beta
A-Rank - Alpha
S-Rank - Superius
O-Rank - Omega

Okay, so… Grading Powers from least to most powerful?

Honestly, not a bad idea. Makes sense, if you think about it. 

Lets you tack new stuff onto the bottom later if you need to.

But then they decided to use the English alphabet, as well.

In reverse. Ascending. Order.

Like—putting A on the strongest thing they had, B on the second strongest, and so on.

Which completely defeats the entire point of reversing the order in the first place! 

You know. The whole “leave room at the bottom when new stuff shows up” thing, that it was initially meant to be upside-down for?!

And—shockingly, as who could have possibly foreseen this—new stuff did show up.

Like almost right away.

Cue S-Rank and O-Rank getting bolted on later when everyone collectively went, “Wait… maybe A-Rank isn’t actually the top?”

And then, because why not, they mixed Greek letters with random Latin words just to make the English alphabet line up. Because that definitely makes everything far clearer.

Absolutely unhinged… Just truly, utterly deranged behavior.

Triss—rightfully, for once—went on a full hour-long rant about how stupid this whole system is. I mostly just nodded along and took notes while questioning reality, but she wasn’t wrong in the least.

I guess, if I’m being charitable though, the OWC at least didn’t completely erase the so-called “useless” Powereds. They just… shoved them off into their own little category away from the “useful” ones.

Which. Yeah. I guess that is technically better than nothing.

Honestly though? I would’ve loved an Inertis-ranked Power like Miss Brightshine’s.

Instantly cleaning surfaces in my room?

That’s not useless. That’s a damn dream-superpower, right there!

The lower ranks get way too much bad press, honestly…”

—

[Sadie’s Diary, 2029]

======

======

The answer came as another vision, eerily similar to the Convergence Vision itself.

The world around me tore away in jagged pieces, replaced by a single object suspended in nothingness: A gigantic stone tablet. Green, like polished gemstone, its surface simultaneously too smooth and too rugged to make sense. 

Symbols crawled across it—writing that wasn’t writing, diagrams that refused to stay still, shapes folding into themselves and then unfolding into something inherently wrong. Lines intersected at angles my eyes couldn’t perceive. 

Circles became spirals became nothing became voids. 

The profound meaning behind it all brushed against my mind like elongated twisted fingers grasping for my sanity… And slid off, leaving behind only a dull ache.

Then the tablet shattered.

Thousands upon thousands of glowing green fragments burst outward, spinning around me in impossible orbits. They collided, fused together, split apart again, recombining in new, beautifully perfect and horrifically wrong configurations before tearing themselves loose once more. 

The air around me screamed without sound as the pieces suddenly shot away, vanishing into the distance.

The vision lurched.

I saw shards slam into dirt, burying themselves deep beneath cracked soil. Others punched through rooftops, vanishing into houses with no warning at all. Some skipped across large bodies of water, sinking slowly into black water that swallowed their glow whole.

The scene twisted again, snapping into something that made my skull throb.

A land that should not exist. 

The sky bent downward like it was watching itself. The ground pulsed, breathing in slow, uneven and jittering rhythms. Distance meant nothing—near and far tangled together until the idea of space itself felt utterly sick and perverted. 

Just trying to hold the mere thought of this place made my temples burn in agony.

Shards fell here too. 

They scattered across that wrong land, embedding themselves into surfaces that recoiled at the touch, as if this world’s reality itself rejected them. The areas they touched morphed and writhed, like a living organism screaming and trying to get away.

Another violent flip.

Yet another different world.

Blinding brightness clashed with absolute darkness, heat and cold layered on top of each other in ways that simply made no sense. Trees that weren’t trees reached upward, their limbs folding and unfolding like joints made of bone, shadow and sinew. 

Shards struck their trunks and vanished inside. 

Mountains loomed in the distance, and when the fragments slammed into them, the mountains groaned—deep, resentful sounds that rolled through the scorching, frozen air in frequencies no mind was made to process.

The vision collapsed in on itself.

The shards froze mid-motion, snapping back together in a blinding rush. The green gemstone tablet reformed, whole once more—its surface smooth, its symbols still crawling and alive, until they abruptly stopped altogether.

Then it changed.

The gemstone softened. 

The symbols melted away into a smooth, perfect finish.

And suddenly, it was Sadie.

Laughing. 

Bright and warm and so her it made me feel like my heart was being ripped apart from the inside out. Her smile wide, hair bouncing in that very same way it always did, eyes crinkled just right, like I’d seen it a thousand times before. 

Like nothing bad had ever happened. 

Like she was right there, about to say something genius and stupid and comforting and utterly perfect.

Then the vision shattered.

Reality slammed back into me all at once.

I lurched backward, nearly falling out of my chair as my body snapped fully back into existence, like I hadn’t been inhabiting it at all for the past few minutes. My lungs burned as I sucked in air, gasping hard, chest heaving like I’d just run the hardest marathon of my life. 

My heart thundered in my ears, my eyes unfocused, struggling to perceive anything.

“What—What the fuck…”

The room slowly came back into focus. 

The desk in front of me. My bed to the side, pushed against the wall. My hands holding the pen I had picked up before the vision had started. The notebook in front of me.

And my mind started to catch up.

The images clicked together, piece by piece: The tablet. The shards. The worlds. The placement. Sadie.

My breath hitched.

I spun toward my desk, nearly throwing myself out of the chair again as I rushed forward and grabbed the notebook I’d already opened. 

My hands trembled as I looked down.

There it was.

Not an empty page. Not a rejection, as I had expected.

A simple instruction, written by my own hand, that read: “Obtain one of the scattered pieces of the Tabula Smaragdina.”

‘A path…! There is a way…!’

My heart felt like it was going to burst straight out of my chest. Tears flooded my vision, spilling down my face faster than I could wipe them away. I laughed and sobbed at the same time, barely able to breathe.

And then I screamed, as I became unable to bear the pressure in my chest.

A raw, unfiltered scream torn from the deepest part of me.
A sound filled with unmitigated triumph, infinite gratitude and utterly unhinged energy.

Because the universe, for the very first time in my life, hadn’t said “no” to one of my pleas.

My scream broke off halfway, my voice giving out as I sank into the chair, crying and staring at the words in my notebook in complete disbelief.

Heavy footsteps approached my door—my father’s, judging by the sound—and he knocked carefully.

“Are—Is everything okay, Teresa?” he asked. The concern in his voice was impossible to miss.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the page, but a smile spread across my face anyway—uninvited, but genuine—as I answered, “Yeah. Sorry about the scream. I just got a drop I’ve been working on for a while. I’ll try to keep it down, sorry.”

The lie came easily. It wasn’t the first one.

White lies were part of my toolkit, as natural as breathing.

I heard him sigh in relief through the door. “Ah, that’s great! Congratulations, then. Ehm… Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes, if you can find a save point by then. We can wait if you need more time—just let us know, alright?”

“Fifteen minutes sounds great, dad,” I replied right away, leaning back in my chair and earning the usual creak of protesting aluminum.

A few moments later, his footsteps faded away.

“I can get her back…” I whispered, my voice raw and shaking from the emotion tearing through me. “I can really get her back…!”

Of course, I knew the vision hadn’t outright said that. 

The writing in the notebook didn’t say it either.

But my Power hadn’t said no. Instead, it had given me a path.

That meant it could do something—something that, by my understanding, counted as “getting Sadie back.” Because that’s how Powers worked. 

And as far as I was concerned, that meant bringing her the fuck back to life.

‘This shouldn’t be possible… There are no Powers that can bring back the dead. There never have been,’ I thought, desperately poking holes in my own reasoning, refusing to accept what the answer seemed to imply. ‘But the Power isn’t lying. It literally can’t.’

It just seemed… Unreal.

Why would I be the one person in human history to get a Power that could even possibly bring someone back from the dead? No other Power had ever come close to something like that.

Even the only O-Rank Healer-type in the world, Paeon, didn’t have anything even close to resembling “reviving someone weeks, months, or years after death.”

That kind of thing belonged in myths. In stories about literal fucking gods. 

Not in the hands of a useless, selfish person like myself.

‘So how could this possibly be real…?’

But the spark of treacherous hope that had made me ask the question in the first place had already grown into a roaring inferno in my chest at seeing the answer. 

Even if I didn’t want to believe it being possible…

‘I have to do it. I just have to do it.’

There was no doubt about that part. No matter how much I wanted to believe my emotion-fueled brain was jumping to the wrong conclusion, the truth was simple. I didn’t have a choice.

Even if there was only the tiniest chance that my Power could bring Sadie back, I had to try. I owed her that. And so, so much more.

So I had to do it. No matter the cost.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to slow my racing heart and get myself back under control. 

It only half worked.

But honestly, who could blame me? If anyone else knew what I did, they wouldn’t be calm either. No one in the history of mankind would be.

‘At least I’m calm enough to think again,’ I told myself. ‘So… how do I even start working on all of this…?’

The first and most obvious step was figuring out whether the fragments of the Emerald Tablet—as I now instinctively knew the thing had been called, thanks to my Power finally deciding to share that detail—were already a known thing in this world.

If people were already collecting them, or even just talking about them online, that would make things a lot easier than having to search the entire planet by myself. Or planets, I guess, if my reading of the vision wasn’t completely off.

‘I am really not looking forward to figuring out how to reverse-Incursion into the other planes,’ I thought with a grimace. ‘That sounds like one hell of a side quest.’

Still, I knew what my first move had to be.

I pulled out my phone and opened the ever-trusty internet search engine.

For the next ten minutes, I searched every term I could think of, digging into anything related to fragments of the Emerald Tablet’s fragments. 

And to my shock—and elation—they were already a known thing.

I found several articles and forum posts about “mysterious gemstone fragments of unknown origin,” described as “completely impervious to damage of any kind.” Some of them had even killed people and caused serious collateral damage when they’d come down, apparently.

Most of the initial reports dated back about two years.

‘Why two years ago…? What happened two years ago?’

As far as I knew, nothing major related to the Convergence had happened around then. 

The only big event was the American Kaiju Incursion of 2031, but that didn’t line up.

The first fragments were reported falling like comets in January.
The Incursion didn’t happen until months later, in early July. 

And the previous major Incursion had been back in mid-November, which didn’t match up with the timing either.

“Probably something to keep an eye on,” I muttered, writing it down in my notebook under the very first line of the quest. “There has to be a reason for that timing. Maybe it’ll help me track them down, if I can figure out if there’s some sort of connection…”

One thing became obvious almost immediately, though—my old nemesis was back with a vengeance: Money.

“As fucking always,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair. “Nothing in this world works without stacks and stacks of money. Fucking typical.”

There were two fragments of the Emerald Tablet up for sale online. 

Not on Amazon or eBay, of course, but on very real, very expensive art auction sites.

And the prices were insane. Several tens of millions of credits.

One was supposedly in North America, priced in dollars converted to credits. The other was in Asia, where the credit system had already been fully adopted.

Either way, I couldn’t afford either of them. Not even remotely.

‘Alright,’ I told myself. ‘At least I know they exist, that they sometimes get sold, and that there’s a market for them.’

That meant I could try to figure out a way to make enough money… or steal one.

Given my Power set, there was probably a way to do either, if I spent enough time working it out.

And considering how many shards I’d seen break off from the tablet in my vision, there was absolutely no way only those two shards existed. 

Especially because the Convergence seemed to love its patterns. Just like with the whole “Immortal” Hero thing, things tended to spread out somewhat evenly. Which meant there was a pretty good chance at least one fragment—maybe even several—was right here on Nova Terrae somewhere.

I’d just have to find them… Somehow.

“Dinner is ready!” my father’s muffled voice called from the kitchen.

Which was probably as good a time as any to take a break.

Both physically—since I suddenly realized I was absolutely starving—and mentally, because the vision and everything after it had left me feeling completely drained.

“Time to eat and have an awkward dinner with my parents,” I muttered, a small smile tugging at my lips as I stood up and headed for the kitchen…

—

About half an hour—and one very awkward dinner—later, I was back in my room.

It had been nice to eat with my parents again for the first time in weeks. But the awkwardness I’d expected showed up right on schedule.

They did their absolute best to dance around the real issues. 

No mentions of Sadie. No questions about her death. They didn’t even get close to anything risky, like asking how my studies were going, for example.

Instead, they stuck to careful small talk, clearly trying to figure out how I was actually doing without pushing anything too hard.

Which, of course, just made everything feel extremely stiff and weird.

I gave them my best “I’m slowly healing” face. And maybe it hadn’t been entirely fake either—because I was healing, at least a little. 

Having a goal helped a lot.

Whether that goal would truly fix everything… Well. That was another question entirely.

But I’d taken the time to come up with a game plan for the immediate future, and it was high time to put it into motion.

First things first, I raided my wardrobe.

I pulled out the oversized black-and-red, reversible trench coat I’d bought years ago for an anime cosplay that had never quite come together, and which had been rotting in my closet ever since. 

I also grabbed the matching black leather gloves and slipped them on.

Next came a plain gray hoodie, paired with a set of tight gray jeans.

The second-to-last item I needed for tonight was easily the strangest one: A mask.

Not a medical mask, but a theater-style one. 

It showed a human face stripped of flesh, exposing bone, muscle, sinew, and tendons beneath, along with pearly-white teeth left bare without lips to hide them.

‘I kind of forgot how gnarly this thing is…’ I thought, turning it over in my hands. ‘But it’ll hide my face just fine. Doesn’t really matter what it looks like tonight.’

I’d originally, very briefly considered covering up my freckles with makeup, since they were one of my more recognizable features—right after my hair. But why bother, when I had a damn mask lying around, eh?

So I pocketed it for later.

The mask had been one of Sadie’s many, many weird gifts from a couple of years ago.

“You’ll absolutely love this one, I just know it,” she’d said smugly when she gave it to me.

And… I hadn’t hated it. But “love” was a strong word for something that unsettling.

It was cool, though. I’d just never had a real reason to use it—aside from the couple of times Sadie had dragged me to anime conventions or on Halloween.

‘Guess you’re getting a second lease on life now, little mask…’

Finally, the very last item was one of my old phones—I was a bit of a hoarder when it came to electronics. I turned it on to check if it still worked, which thankfully it did.

Then I plugged it into its charger, just to make sure it had juice for later.

‘I’m not going to be one of those morons that walks out there doing illicit activities with their very-real-ass phone tracking every step I take via GPS, nuh-uh. Not gonna be me.’

With that sorted, I turned my attention to the Vials I’d prepared earlier.

I picked up the [Universal Solvent] first and rubbed it thoroughly over my leather gloves. 

Then I grabbed the Vials of [Alchemical Fire] and [Acidic Fluid] and did the same, coating them carefully in the solvent as well.

“Last thing I need is some cop—or, god forbid, a fucking Hero—finding these Vials or shards of ‘em and tracing my fingerprints,” I muttered as I finished the slightly messy work. 

“That’s how Villains get caught.”

Not that I was one, of course. I just hadn’t registered yet. But I was definitely going to do so, very soon. As anything else would be illegal and would, in-fact, make me a Villain.

So I went ahead and treated the Bomb Casings and the Mutagen Injectors with the solvent too, even though they were still empty. Since I was already wearing gloves, they should stay free of anything identifying from here on out.

Next, I carefully tied my hair back and tucked it into the hood of my hoodie, then pulled the hood up and checked twice—then a third time—that not a single strand was visible.

It probably would’ve been smarter to dye my hair a more normal, less memorable color again, but… yeah. I didn’t want to. For reasons.

Finally, I slipped on the trench coat and filled its many pockets with my Vials, Bomb Casings, Mutagen Injectors, the phone and a small selection of ingredients I knew I’d need.

Mask in hand, I left my room, walked down the hallway, and stopped at the front door.

“I’m heading out! I’ll be back in a few hours,” I called into the apartment.

There was a short pause, then my dad replied, “Okay! Do you need me to pick you up later? Should I set aside an alarm chair?”

I snorted at the words alarm chair.

It was something he’d started doing whenever I stayed out late. Since I didn’t have a driver’s license, I sometimes called in the middle of the night for a ride. To avoid waking my mom, he’d leave clothes on a chair in the living room so he could change quietly.

Hence, alarm chair.

“No, thanks! Love you!” I called back, already opening the door.

I didn’t wait for a reply before heading out.

The door shut softly behind me, and the chilly early-February air of Haekoz hit my face right away. 

It smelled clean—cold stone, faint traces of damp earth, and something sharp and fresh I couldn’t quite name, but still enjoyed. The wind cut through my clothes just enough to be uncomfortable, slipping under the trenchcoat and along my neck.

I absolutely loved it.

The cold woke me up in a way nothing else ever really did, clearing my head and grounding me in my body. 

Sadie had always hated weather like this. One of the few things that genuinely got her to swear and complain loudly were cold, windy days.

She was definitely a lizard person through and through—always cold, always chasing warmth, stealing my hoodies and complaining about my room being too cold. Meanwhile, I would’ve happily left my room’s AC at fifteen degrees year-round and called it living my best life.

I pulled my coat a little tighter to keep the annoying wind out and started walking, boots crunching softly against the pavement as I moved away from the row of apartment houses toward the bus stop about a block down.

This part of Haekoz—the Nidra neighbourhood—was quiet. 

Almost eerily so, compared to the city proper. 

The buildings around me were modern, but in that rushed, semi-uniform Nova Terrae way that screamed built fast, built cheap, built with Powers. 

Which made a lot of sense, really, as the entire continent hadn’t even existed a little over forty years ago. So naturally, things had ended up having to be built in a bit of a rush to colonize the place amidst the global Vyre Incursions.

Nowadays, most of the apartment houses looked similar at first glance—two or three floors, one family per level—but the details were what made all the difference.

Roof shingles in all kinds of colors. Small front gardens, some carefully tended, others wild and overgrown. Wind chimes, little statues, hand-painted signs, strings of lights left up long past Christmas, as was tradition every year.

It all felt genuinely lived in.

Nothing like the inner city, with its brutalist slabs of concrete and Power-created rockcrete towers that had seemingly purposefully been shaped into soulless cubes, stacked on top of each other like tumors sprouting from the ground.

Out here, at least, things still had soul.

‘Which is the entire problem,’ I thought. ‘I can’t exactly test my Powers here when pretty much everyone knows my face. Even with a mask, there aren’t that many weirdos around here walking around in a big trench coat.’

No. I definitely needed the soulless city as my testing ground.

If nothing else, it offered anonymity.

Arriving at the bus stop, I waited a minute or two before the bus finally rolled in, its electric hum cutting through the quiet, empty street. When the doors hissed open, I stepped inside and, with a quiet sigh, paid my fare using one of the disposable credit chits I’d grabbed from home.

I hated paying for fares.

The whole credit system—chits, cards, all of it—had been part of the One World Council’s grand initiative to unify humanity against the Vyre. A single, global currency, backed and maintained through collaborations between high-tier Crafter-type Heroes like Tech-Lord, Mr. Robot, Technocrat, and Cryptix. 

Purely digital. Practically immutable and unhackable. Impossible to counterfeit.

From a logistical standpoint? Brilliant.
From a personal one? Still annoying as hell.

Because I already had a damn public transport pass from my university enrollment! I’d already paid an obscene amount for it, too. But of course, since this wasn’t a trip to university or from university, it didn’t apply.

‘Couldn’t possibly let it work across all public transport, right? Imagine the fucking horror. A few thousand students riding buses and trains “for free”—as in, already paid for with the damn overpriced pass?! Truly the end of all humanity and civilization as we know it…!’

I felt the familiar spike of irritation rise up that would make my blood boil for the next few hours—then stopped myself.

I took a slow, deep breath. Then another.

And to my surprise… It actually worked.

The anger ebbed instead of exploding outward. My shoulders loosened. My jaw unclenched.

That alone made me pause.

For weeks now, it had been one extreme or the other. Numb emptiness, or a constant simmering rage that threatened to boil over at the smallest provocation. The fact that I could shut down a rant like that—actually calm myself—felt like a massive victory.

‘A good sign… I’ll need a clear head for not fucking this all up on the first move.’

I found an empty seat near the back of the bus—which wasn’t hard, since it was almost completely empty—sat down, and watched the district slide past the window as we pulled away from the stop.

Slowly, the scenery shifted from the softer, rural feel of the Nidra district into something harsher and heavier.

The first district we rolled into was Valcrest. 

It still tried to pretend it had roots, at least. The low-rise housing of Nidra gave way to wider streets and blockier buildings here, but there were still some trees lining the sidewalks, their branches bare this time of year. 

Small cafes and corner shops clung stubbornly to ground floors, their signs hand-painted or softly lit, fighting the good fight against the creeping sameness. 

The buildings as a whole, however, were markedly taller here. Denser too, but someone had at least tried to make them still look human. 

Balconies with plants. Murals on otherwise dull walls. 

Little hints of individualism like that were visible everywhere.

‘Keep fighting, y’alls…’ I thought with a lopsided smile. ‘Keep putting yourselves out there! Make things pretty! The world’s depressing enough as it is.’

I found myself half-remembering the pictures my parents had often shown me of their own childhoods—rural landscapes, city streets that supposedly used to have colour… before the world had almost ended. 

I had always loved those pictures and the world it had painted.

‘Not something I’ll ever get to see…’

Then we crossed into Ironreach.

That was where all the pretense ended.

The buildings rose higher and closer together, massive slabs of concrete and rockcrete stacked with no artistic intent but efficiency. 

Windows became narrower and almost entirely uniform. 

Color drained out of the world, barring the garish neon-lit advertisement screens that were plastered absolutely everywhere, instead replaced by grays, blacks, and dull metallic tones. 

Street-level greenery had practically vanished entirely, traded for reinforced walkways and utilitarian lighting installations built on reinforced concrete and steel pillars. 

Everything looked designed to simply endure.

This was absolutely the kind of place where people moved fast and didn’t look up—exactly the kind of attitude I needed to slip by unnoticed.

As the bus pushed deeper into Ironreach and closer to the city center, I caught a glimpse of something far off on the horizon, back in the direction we’d come from—barely visible through the late-evening darkness beyond Nidra.

The Wall.

It stretched across the skyline like a scar, an impossibly massive megastructure encircling the city. Layers of reinforced, Power-generated rockcrete, steel, and materials I didn’t even have names for, all fused together into something meant to say “no” to the end of the world.

Every major city on earth—at least those still standing—had a Wall now. 

Haekoz just happened to have one of the biggest, strongest examples on the planet—likely in the top twenty.

The reason was obvious: Home city of Immortal Phalanx and all that. 

Headquarters cities for the Immortals were considered more important than most places, so they got the really good defenses, regardless of whether they mattered otherwise or not—which Haekoz did not. It wasn’t even the damn capital of Nova Terrae.

Not that having a top-tier Wall meant much when it came to Kaiju, of course.

Walls could slow the Vyre. 

Sometimes even stop them. Usually redirect them. And at the very least, buy a considerable amount of time—enough for the military and Heroes to assemble and respond.

Kaiju, however, didn’t give a single flying fuck.

They tore through even the strongest Walls like wet paper, crashing straight through layers of reinforced rockcrete and steel as if humanity’s best efforts were nothing more than a suggestion. 

The only thing Walls ever really did against Kaiju was delay the inevitable by a few minutes at best, if you got particularly lucky in the type of Kaiju that had decided to visit.

And the only thing that ever truly stopped a Kaiju… Was killing it.

Usually at a cost so high no one liked to talk about it as a viable strategy.

‘But it is the only one. So…’

The bus slowed, then hissed to a stop, and the doors slid open onto the Central Haekoz District.

The heart of the city.

I stepped off the bus and was immediately assaulted by it.

Central Haekoz was Ironreach turned up to eleven. 

The same brutalist architecture, the same towering slabs of concrete and rockcrete—but packed tighter, stacked higher, leaving barely any sky visible between the buildings. 

And where Ironreach had at least some restraint, this place had absolutely none.

Late-Stage Capitalism was plastered onto every available surface.

Billboards loomed overhead. Neon signs screamed for attention. Power-based holograms flickered and looped endlessly, projecting smiling faces and impossible promises straight into the air. Spend here. Eat this. Buy now. Upgrade your insurances. 

Every step was just another demand for my credits, another visual shove trying to pry open my digital wallet and make me bleed.

Stepping onto the sidewalk felt like getting jumped in every sense of the word.

Even this late in the evening, with the sun long gone, the city glowed. 

The only real light came from the ads and the harsh, brutalist street lamps bolted to the buildings, but it was more than enough—too much, really.

And it was disgustingly warm.

Noticeably warmer than Nidra had been. 

All that concrete and rockcrete trapped the heat of the day like an oven, the kind of place that was utterly unbearable in the summer. The stale and heavy warmth of the air clung to my skin, immediately making me feel clammy despite the single-digit temperatures.

And then there was the smell…

Smog. Concrete dust. Old oil. The sweat of tens of thousands of people packed into too little space, with barely a breeze to carry any of it away. It wrapped around my face the instant I had stepped outside of the bus like someone had decided to just straight up waterboard me with a concentrated whiff of the city itself.

‘Maybe I should’ve brought a medical mask too,’ I thought grimly, sneering and wrinkling my nose. ‘Just to block out the fucking smell.’

I pulled my coat tighter and started walking, heading deeper into the district. 

I followed the perfectly rectangular street grid almost at random, letting myself get a bit lost on purpose. I wanted some distance between me and the bus stop before I started testing anything. The harder I was to trace, the better.

Luckily, Haekoz was still a very, very young city.

Total surveillance hadn’t fully taken root yet, as it had in many other cities. 

The main roads were covered in cameras around the clock, sure—but most side streets only had the occasional one, and alleyways were usually completely blind.

If I’d tried something like this in one of the cities of the pre-Appearance-era—places long swallowed whole by authoritarian surveillance under the banner of “security,” all to “keep the Vyre out”, of course—this would’ve been completely impossible.

Somewhere like Hong Kong, New York or London?

I would’ve had to play this very, very differently.

‘But luckily, this is not that...’

After a few minutes of semi-aimless walking—and a quick stop at a 24/7 convenience store to grab the last ingredients I needed—I found an empty alley tucked between two long-closed shops. I hadn’t seen anyone on the streets leading up to it either, which made it feel like the perfect place to hunker down and start experimenting.

Making absolutely sure no one else was around, I pulled the mask from inside my coat pocket and slipped it on.

I took out the Bomb Casings next and set them on a nearby trash container—my makeshift desk for the night. I laid out the freshly bought pack of nails, some of the burnable paste, and the matchsticks I’d brought from home, then focused.

An instant later, all five Bomb Casings were filled as the items vanished.

Each [Alchemist’s Bomb] took ten nails of any kind, fifty milliliters of burnable paste, and three matchsticks. So, basically, a small mountain of stuff just disappeared into thin air, which still caught me off guard no matter how many times I’d seen it happen with the Vials.

‘Still so fucking weird to watch…’

Lastly, I set down the two Mutagen Injectors along with the ingredients I’d managed to gather—unfortunately, only enough for the [Brawler Mutagen].

Unlike the Formulae and Bomb recipes, the Mutagen’s ingredients were a bit trickier to source, I’d quickly learned. Not hard, exactly—but it was a whole different thing to casually walk around with a box of nails versus lugging around a whole-ass chicken.

Which was exactly what the [Brawler Mutagen] required. 

Along with three rocks—yes, actual rocks off the ground—and any kind of sinew.

So I’d ended up buying a whole chicken and some beef sinew from the nearest store, since we definitely didn’t just have that lying around at home.

And considering that the [Striker Mutagen] and [Speedster Mutagen] needed similarly ridiculous and unwieldy items, I was starting to think Mutagens were specifically meant to be prepared ahead of time and carried around, not mixed on the fly like the Vials or Bombs seemed to be able to be.

Now, focusing on the injectors, I watched in fresh awe as the chicken packages, the sinew, and six rocks vanished into nothing, filling the injectors with a semi-translucent crimson liquid.

It looked a lot like the liquid in the [Cure Wounds] vial—but thinner. Compared to the Mutagen, the Vial’s contents were almost completely opaque.

“Alright, everything’s prepared then…” I muttered to myself, pocketing the freshly made Bombs and Mutagens before pulling out the [Acidic Fluid] Vial. “Probably best to start with something that won’t immediately announce that someone’s fucking around out here. Fire and explosions can wait.”

I grabbed a nearby trash bag—which wasn’t hard, given the state of the alley—and dripped a bit of the liquid straight onto it.

The moment it made contact, the bag practically imploded. The material collapsed inward as the acid tore through it, eating into the contents with a sharp, high-pitched sizzle.

“Holy fuck,” I breathed, instinctively taking a few steps back. 

I really didn’t want to be anywhere near that.

I’d only used a few drops, but by the time the sizzling died down, there was a sizable hole burned straight through the bag and whatever had been inside it. All that was left was a nondescript sludge and a thin wisp of residual smoke—which I had no intention of breathing in.

“Alright. Very efficient and effective… definitely don’t let this thing spill accidentally,” I muttered, my eyes stuck on the sludge as my mind instinctively refused the order to not imagine what it would do to human flesh and bone.

I carefully sealed the Vial again and slipped it into one of the inner pouches of my trench coat—though I had to fight every instinct I had to put something like that so close to my body.

‘Hmm…’ I thought, weighing my options. ‘[Alchemist’s Fire] and [Alchemist’s Bomb] are going to be loud and obvious. The Mutagen might be best for last, since it sounds like something I might need to run away with afterwards. Just the word alone feels… questionable.’

I also didn’t really like doing things out of order.

Formulae came first on the list, so finishing them before moving on to the Bombs just felt right.

‘But logically, the Mutagen is probably the smartest choice here…’

I let out a quiet sigh and picked up one of the two [Brawler Mutagen] autoinjectors.

The description hadn’t been very helpful, so I wasn’t entirely sure what I was even about to do—though the name alone gave some hints.

‘This isn’t just going to give me a random Brawler-type Power, right?’ I wondered. ‘No way it works like that. But if it doesn’t… then what the fuck does it do?’

All the description said was:
“Inject to gain a Brawler’s constitution. Duration: 8 Hours / 5 Minutes (Non-Alchemist)”

And I also really wasn’t thrilled about stabbing myself with an autoinjector full of a strangely colored liquid that no scientist had ever tested for human safety.

But… 

‘Here goes nothing.’

I jabbed it into my thigh. 

The autoinjector fired instantly, pumping the Mutagen into me. I felt the liquid spread, oddly warm—and less than half a second later, the injector crumbled away and vanished.

“Huh… Well, at least I know what happens to them when they’re used up. That’s good to—”

A full-body shock tore through me, cutting the thought off completely.

“Oh fuck,” I managed to force out, as my entire body changed.

It happened all at once.

My muscles swelled violently, doubling, then tripling, then quadrupling in size, stretching my skin tight as strength flooded into me faster than my brain could keep up with. 

Bones hardened and lengthened, grinding and shifting as my limbs extended, my joints popping as my body restructured itself from the inside out. 

My view lurched upward as the ground seemed to fall away, my perspective rising higher and higher in the span of a heartbeat.

I could feel every single change as they happened.

Every muscle fiber tearing itself apart and rebuilding thicker. Every bone reinforcing, growing denser, longer. Organs shifting position to make room for more. My balance vanished as my center of mass changed mid-breath. My stomach churned violently, nausea crashing over me as my brain tried—and failed horribly—to process what was happening.

Nobody was ever meant to feel all of… this.
Nobody was meant to know their own body this intimately.

It was too much. Almost enough to make me vomit once again.

But then, abruptly, it was all over.

It had lasted two, maybe three seconds at most.

I stood there, swaying slightly, my breath coming out in deep, heavy pulls that seemed to never end as my lungs were apparently bottomless now. 

The alley felt… smaller and far narrower. And my head was closer to the fire escapes now. 

Way closer. Like “I need to actually duck to not hit them” closer.

I blinked, staring down at myself.

I was absolutely huge.

I was definitely no longer my old 1.64 meters. Not even close.

If I had to guess, I was probably pushing three meters now. Maybe more. 

My arms and legs were as thick as my entire torso had been before, if not thicker. 

I slowly lifted one massive arm in front of my face, staring at it like it belonged to someone else entirely. I flexed a hand, watching fingers the size of tools curl and uncurl, practically rippling with the force of the muscles behind them.

I almost laughed out loud.

I felt like the fucking Hulk.

There was one big difference though: My clothes were, somehow, entirely intact.

The trench coat still hung from my shoulders. The hoodie hadn’t torn. The jeans weren’t shredded. The mask seemed to be perfectly covering my face still. Everything had changed with me, stretching and reshaping as if they’d always been meant to fit a body like this.

‘That makes no fucking sense…’ I thought, massive eyebrows creasing behind the mask. ‘The Mutagen is clearly some kind of chemical. And it affects my biology. Nowhere in there should anything even get remotely close to touching my clothing.’

But, of course, there was one clear and obvious answer to the question.

‘Convergence bullshit,’ I rolled my eyes.

I carefully reached into one of my pockets and pulled out my phone. 

The thing looked tiny in my hand now, like a toy. I fumbled with it for a few seconds, my oversized fingers struggling with the screen until the camera finally turned on.

And then I saw myself.

“Jesus fucking Christ—!” I nearly dropped the phone, and got even more startled by my own heavy-set, deep voice.

Towering in the frame, hidden behind the fleshless mask, shoulders broad and inhuman, limbs thick with raw power—I didn’t look like a person anymore. 

I looked like something that had escaped. 

Escaped from where, I couldn’t really say—but escaped, all the same.

“Alright…” I said slowly, getting used to the deep, heavy sound of my own voice.

It was baritone as fuck! If it weren’t for the two very obvious bumps pressing against the front of my trench coat, there’d be no way anyone could tell I was even a woman based on my voice.

“This is… definitely an experience,” I added, mostly to hear myself talk.

It took a few more seconds to get my bearings. 

That was a lot of change to shove into such a short span of time. But once I was fairly sure I wasn’t about to puke or completely lose it anymore, I started moving, testing out this new, unfamiliar body.

Thankfully, everything seemed to just… work.

Walking, shifting my weight, even turning around felt exactly the same as before—despite being almost twice the size. 

Which was… very suspicious.

‘Yeah…’ I thought. ‘That’s definitely not how brains work. Or biology. Or anything, really. But when has the Convergence ever cared about that, eh?’

I was thankful either way. It meant the Mutagens came with a healthy dose of don’t fuck with how you actually think about moving, which was very useful. Especially if something like the [Speedster Mutagen] worked the same way.

Carefully, I started testing my new strength. I put my massively oversized hands on the trash container I’d used as a makeshift desk earlier and then… just lifted it.

My eyes widened as the whole thing came off the ground without even a hint of strain. 

It felt like picking up a slightly larger water bottle in terms of difficulty.

It was mostly empty, sure, but those things still weighed, what, two to three hundred kilos? Solid metal construction, not exactly small.

I gingerly set it back down, not wanting to mess up the alley any more than I already had.

“Okay… so… Brawler-type, then, huh?” I muttered, still trying to wrap my head around my Power’s apparent versatility. “I can just give myself—or others, for very short time frames—Powers…? That… that seems extremely overpowered, no? There’s gotta be some kind of restrictions or downsides on this…”

The first thing that immediately came to my mind was the complete and utter lack of any extra Power-instincts in my head. No built-in knowledge came with the Mutagen, which meant I either had nothing but raw size and strength, or I’d have to figure out how this temporary Power even worked, completely on my own.

Even Brawler-types with body-morphing effects like this usually had something extra. Special techniques, instincts, or at least a sense of how to use their new form to its most optimal effect.

‘So that’s definitely a downside,’ I thought. ‘But considering I could probably pick someone up and rip them in half without much trouble… not that big of one.’

Still, there wasn’t really anything I actually planned to do with that information or my morphed body right now.

So I tried to will myself back to normal. The same way I willed the recipes to fill the Vials, Bomb Casings, and Mutagen Injectors.

Nothing happened.

“Oh… oh no,” I breathed as the realization hit. “Fuck, fuck, fuck… Come on.”

I tried everything. 

Focusing on my body, trying to force it to shrink. Mental commands. Even saying it out loud like a damn anime character, ordering the damn Convergence to end the effect early.

Nothing worked.

“Ah, fuck…! I’m stuck like this for eight hours, huh?” I sighed at last, leaning carefully against the nearby wall. “Guess I found the real downside… no takesie-backsies.”

This was going to be a major problem.

How the hell was I supposed to get back home as a three-meter-something-tall monstrosity…?

‘Problem for future-Triss,’ I ultimately decided after a few moments of being unable to come up with anything on the spot. I still had a few things left to test to keep my mind off it for now. [Alchemist’s Fire] and [Alchemist’s Bomb] were still waiting, after all.

Just as I started awkwardly rummaging through my massive pockets with my comically oversized hands, trying to fish out the toy-sized weapons of mass destruction, I froze as voices echoed off the alleyway walls.

“Stop! Please!” A woman’s voice.

Then nothing. I strained my ears.

“No! Don’t! Please stop! Please! I—I can’t! Please!” The voice came again a moment later, louder, more frantic.

My spine tingled as ugly images flooded my head, my blood starting to boil.

‘You’re not actually fucking serious right now, are you…?’

“Stop! Oh god, please…! Help, someone! Hel—” The scream cut off abruptly.

I let the Vials and Bombs I’d barely managed to pull free slip back into their hiding places and rushed toward the sound, moving as fast—and as quietly—as a three-meter-tall monster possibly could.

I burst out of the alley into a narrow side street.

A quick glance left and right showed no obvious cameras, and no other people. Across the street were four more alleyways, and I frowned, trying to figure out which one to check first.

Luckily, the night was eerily quiet, even this deep in Central Haekoz. 

When I strained to listen, muffled cries and the sound of struggling carried faintly from one of them.

My blood was properly boiling now. There was very little doubt about what was happening. 

And for the first time in this new body, I threw caution to the window, not caring about the noise I made and simply chose to move.

The ground cracked violently under my feet as I launched into a sprint. I almost startled myself with how long my strides were, but I was too focused on reaching the alley to really register it.

In two or three seconds, I had crossed the entire street. Two massive steps later, I was already inside the alley when I finally saw the source of the noise.

The scene snapped into focus—and my mind had unfortunately not exaggerated anything. 

The woman was pinned beneath him, one arm trapped awkwardly under her body, the other clawing uselessly at the ground. Her clothes were torn and pulled out of place, bruised skin exposed in the dim, neon-light spilling in from the street. Her face was streaked with tears and grime, her eyes wide and frantic with panic.

The man loomed over her, his weight pressing her down, one hand clamped over her wrist as he fumbled, ripped and tore at her clothes with his other.

For a brief second, my vision blurred from pure rage. 

I felt it surge through me with its hot, violent and almost blinding intensity. It shot through me so fast and so hard that I had to fight to keep my focus, my thoughts threatening to spill out into doing something far worse than was legally allowed.

I took the last few steps forward into the center of the alley.

The woman’s eyes flicked past him at the movement. Then they locked onto me.

She went completely still.

Her eyes widened, not with relief—but with pure, unadulterated terror. 

And I couldn’t exactly blame her, either. From her perspective, a massive, towering thing with no flesh for its face had just emerged from the shadows behind her attacker.

The man noticed the sudden stillness and laughed under his breath, breathless and smug.

“See?” he muttered. “That’s better, babe. Knew you’d calm down eventually. I promise you’ll enjoy this.”

That’s when my right hand closed around his torso. My fingers were large enough to wrap around him completely, my grip firm and uncompromising, leaving him not even room to struggle. 

I lifted him off her like he weighed nothing at all. One smooth motion. No effort.

“Wha—?!” His voice cut off mid-sound as he was yanked backward and up.

I pushed him into the concrete wall to my left, pinning him there with his face mashed  squarely against it. The impact cracked through the alley and I was pretty sure I heard something snap.

‘Whoops. Bit hard to control my strength… Not that I’ll lose sleep over it with him.’

He made a mess of sounds—muffled whimpers, panicked grunts, half-formed pleas—but nothing coherent made it past the wall or my grip. His hands flailed uselessly, arms twisting back as he tried to grab whatever had him, his feet kicking at nothing but air.

I glanced down at the woman and tried to soften myself somehow, to look less like a nightmare looming over her—which… yeah, probably didn’t work.

“You okay, Miss?” I asked, immediately hating how stupid that sounded. 

Obviously she wasn’t.

She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stared up at me, frozen, eyes wide with pure terror. I pointedly ignored the widening pool of liquid below her, because I really couldn’t blame her for it one bit, given everything.

I let out a heavy sigh and lifted my free hand, making a vague shooing motion. “Get out of here. I’ll deal with him. You’re safe now. Go home.”

That seemed to finally do the trick.

Something in my words must have cut through the shock, because the woman jolted like she’d been released from a spell. She scrambled backwards on hands and knees, nearly tripping over herself as she pushed away from the wall—and from me—then staggered upright and ran. 

No hesitation. No looking back. Lots of stumbling as her clothes were still thoroughly not in the right place Just raw, animal panic as she bolted down the alley and vanished around the corner, her footsteps fading fast.

I watched her go for a second longer than necessary, making sure she was really gone.

Then I turned my attention back to the thing still squirming in my hand.

He was still moving. Still making wet, terrified noises against the wall. 

I adjusted my grip and casually twisted him around, pressing his back into the concrete instead and lifting him higher and higher until he was at the right height for me.

Face to face.

The moment his eyes met my mask, they blew wide open.

Pure terror flooded his expression. 

Up close, I could see that he was missing several teeth—freshly so, judging by the blood smeared across his lips and chin. He tried to pull his head away, to shrink into himself, but there was nowhere to go. 

The wall was at his back. My hand wrapped fully around his torso like an unyielding vice.

I felt something ugly curl up inside my chest… And for absolutely no reason at all, I decided to actually allow myself to enjoy it for once.

“Good evening,” I rumbled, pitching my voice rougher, letting it scrape its way out of my throat in a guttural growl.

He whimpered at the sound.

His hands twitched uselessly, fingers curling and uncurling as if begging without quite knowing how. His mouth worked around broken teeth and blood, words tumbling out in a cracked, panicked rush.

“P-please—please, I—I’m just a lil’ guy, okay? I didn’t— I didn’t mean— I’m not—” His voice collapsed into a wet sob. “I’m not worth it, man. I don’t— I don’t even taste good, I swear! Just—just let me go. Please.”

The sheer, unbelievable gall of him begging me like that made something snap in me.

My grip tightened.

There was a sickening series of wet cracks from inside his body—ribs and several other bones giving way—and his breath rushed out of him in a strangled groan. His eyes rolled back slightly as the air was crushed from his lungs, his mouth opening wide in a soundless scream he didn’t have the oxygen to make.

He sagged in my hand, trembling, very much still alive—but also very, very aware of how close he was to not being.

‘Now… what exactly do I do with him?’ I wondered, using the time it took him to drag in shaky, painful breaths to try and form a plan—as I very much did not have one. ‘Legally, I can’t just kill him. Even if the world would probably be better off that way…’

That, really, was the curse of having studied law, wasn’t it?

I knew the exact lines between right and wrong. Knew them by heart, even. 

And killing, even in a situation like this, simply wasn’t legal unless someone else’s life was still at risk and there was no other option—which wasn’t the case anymore.

On top of that, I was a Powered now. That made everything even stricter.

Technically, I shouldn’t even have done what I already had—if we were going purely by the law-as-written. I would have been expected to try and talk him down first. Most people would have backed off the moment a Powered stepped in, without anyone getting hurt.

‘So… technically I already broke the law, I guess. Whoops.’

Still, that didn’t mean breaking it further was the right move.

‘I could just break his legs and leave him in front of the nearest police station,’ I thought grimly. ‘I really could snap them like twigs.’

I glanced down at his legs, dangling uselessly from his shaking and whimpering body.

From my new, massive perspective, they looked extra spindly.

‘That might be best, all things—’

A sudden, unknown pang tore through my chest, making me instinctively tighten my hands into fists. The only thing that stopped me from closing my hands was the immediate groan of pain he let out as my fingers shifted even slightly.

“Oh fuck—” I breathed and eased up considerably, not wanting to accidentally turn into a murderer right then and there.

I tried to focus inward, to figure out what that sudden, vicious pang in my chest had been—but it wasn’t pain. Nor was it fear. It was more like a tug…? A pressure…? As if something had hooked into me and was pulling, not on my body, but on my focus instead.

My head turned before I consciously told it to, eyes drifting toward the north-west, somewhere beyond the mouth of the alley. 

It wasn’t far. Whatever it was, it was close. Uncomfortably so. 

And it was getting stronger by the second, like a current ramping up, dragging my focus with it whether I wanted to or not.

I frowned, my grip on the man loosening just a fraction more as my thoughts raced.

“What the hell is that…?” I muttered.

The pull intensified again, sharp enough this time that I actually staggered back half a step. 

My heart skipped.

I queried my Power for potential answers instinctively—and for once, it answered immediately, no notebook required.

Vyre Incursion.

“Oh, fuck me sideways…” I hissed under my breath, panic flooding in hot and fast. “No. No, no, no—!”

If an Incursion kicked off here, right now… people would die. A lot of them. 

It didn’t matter that the streets were mostly empty this late. The buildings wouldn’t hold. Concrete, rockcrete, Power-grown materials—none of it meant shit to Vyres from a newly spawned Incursion. They would tear through it all like wet paper.

“Haaa… fuck, fuck, fuck!” I snarled, dragging in a sharp breath. “Why is all of this shit happening around me? Why tonight?!”

I didn’t have time for any of this.

I lowered the man to the ground, making sure he was upright—even if his legs were shaking so badly he could barely stay standing on his own. Then I crouched down until we were eye to eye, my massive shadow swallowing him whole.

His face was a mess of terror and pain. Good.

I leaned in close, my voice dropping into a low, guttural growl.

“You will go to the nearest police station and turn yourself in for what you did tonight,” I said slowly, clearly. “If anyone asks about your injuries, you fell. That’s your entire story.”

His breath hitched, frantic nods jerking his head.

“You will not mention me to anyone. Ever.” My grip tightened just enough to make the point. 

“I will be watching you.”

I leaned even closer, letting every ounce of anger and menace seep into my words.

“And if I don’t see you walk into that station within the next ten minutes,” I finished quietly, “I will turn you into a cube no larger than a credit chit. Are we understood?”

His eyes went impossibly wide.

He nodded again, fast and desperate.

After one more brief moment of hesitation, I released him.

The moment my hand let go, the pull in my chest surged once more—urgent now, screaming for attention. 

I straightened, already turning toward the north-west.

“Run,” I commanded, hearing him stumble away as fast as his legs would carry him.

I broke into motion as well, the concrete of the alley groaning and cracking beneath my feet as I charged toward whatever fresh hell was about to tear open the city.

The very instant I burst out of the alley the same way I had entered it, however, I realized the grave error in my thinking—far too late.

My footsteps halted dead, one massive step into the street proper, as I spotted three figures emerging from another alley up ahead, closer to where the pull was dragging me.

All three of them wore the emblem of the WHA, proudly displayed on their chests.

‘Of course Heroes would be running toward an Incursion, you fucking moron,’ I cursed myself. ‘What the hell were you thinking?!’

I tried to turn, to dash back the way I had come—but the moment the thought even crossed my mind, not half a second after stepping into the street, all three of their heads snapped toward me.

Our eyes met across the distance.

‘Ah fuck…’

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