"I’m different from you." I gave him a defiant smile.
"Oh? In what way?" he asked. "Just like , you’ve been twisted by your gifts. You’re nothing but a parasite, growing stronger at the expense of others."
"You’re wrong." I t his gaze dead-on. "The difference between us isn’t purpose or power. It’s what you choose to protect with it."
"Oh?" The amusent didn’t reach his eyes. "Protect. Interesting word choice."
He let it hang in the air like smoke. "Tell , boy — what exactly are you protecting? A world that was already dying before I arrived? You’re not a shield. You’re just the last torch in a burning house, convinced the fire can’t reach you."
"I plan to make sure neither you nor the Architects ever get close enough to find out."
The smile died. Not in anger — sothing colder than that. Disappointnt, almost.
"A sha," he murmured. "I genuinely hoped you were smarter."
He raised a hand, and the thousands of blood-needles answered, humming in low unison as they pointed toward my chest like a compass finding north.
"But if you insist on playing the hero... then I suppose I should remind you how heroes usually end."
The needles burned brighter. Sothing in the air itself locked my body in place — not fear, sothing heavier than that, like the atmosphere itself decided I was already dead.
So I stopped trying to dodge it.
Instead of pulling back, I burned every scrap of remaining energy forward, lunging straight into the killing range.
Then I self-destructed.
.
.
.
I ca back to myself gasping, the cold floor of my own bedroom rushing up to et my knees.
The clone was gone. Completely. Whatever he did to that air, I didn’t want to think about what it would do to my real body.
I didn’t waste ti feeling scared.
Moving to the defense artifact, I pressed my hands against the core and began rewriting the formula — stripping it down, rebuilding the output from scratch.
Within monts, a dense mist began seeping outward from the boundary, swallowing the forest in a slow, quiet tide. It wasn’t much. But it would buy ti if Hexor decided my area was his next stop.
Now all I could do was hope he had no reason to suspect that what he destroyed wasn’t the real .
Hours passed. No sign of him.
That freak of nature was probably sowhere out there, drinking in whatever power this broken world had left to offer. Let him. Every hour he spent feeding was an hour I spent preparing.
And what I kept thinking was that my dragon bloodline wasn’t going to be enough anymore.
The gap between us wasn’t just wide, it was generational. I could spend years sharpening my existing power and still show up to another fight holding a knife against a tidal wave.
I reached for another high-ranking avatar card. I’d been saving it—last ti I used one, it forced to live almost two decades—but I got no choice now.
My vision darkened, then collapsed entirely.
When it returned, I stood sowhere else.
A wasteland. The kind that doesn’t happen by accident — the aftermath of sothing that took its ti.
Ruins stretched in every direction, buildings reduced to hollow ribs of stone and corroded steel, frozen mid-collapse like they’d been abandoned so long even gravity lost interest.
Dust hung in the air without moving. No wind. No sound. Nothing alive, and nothing recently dead either.
Just silence.
I turned slowly, scanning the horizon before glancing down at my hands.
Young. Calloused. A web of old scars ran across the knuckles from work that wasn’t gentle and never ant to be.
Not a child, at least — that was sothing. But whoever this body belonged to suffered a lot.
My clothes confird it. Layers of scrap cloth were stitched together into sothing usable. The shoulders were padded with pieces cut from an old jacket, and my knees were wrapped in salvaged leather for protection.
The whole outfit looked like it was held together more by glue than real skill.
I was still taking inventory of myself when a voice called out.
"Brother Leon."
I turned.
A young boy picked his way through the rubble toward , maybe thirteen, blue eyes catching what little light the dying sky left.
He carried a bag that looked like it was packed by soone three tis his size — the straps were knotted shorter so it wouldn’t drag. His breathing was labored from overexertion.
The mories hit before I could brace for them. Not a flood — more like a series of photographs dropping into my hands one at a ti.
Jas. Younger brother. Biological.
"Let’s go ho." He stopped in front of , still catching his breath, eyes scanning the skyline with a nervousness born from habit. "It’s turning night. The anomalies will start getting active soon."
I looked at the horizon. The light drained from it fast.
Whatever "anomalies" ant in this world, the sight of a ruined civilization was enough to kill any desire to find out firsthand.
"Lead the way," I ordered.
Jas blinked. "...What?"
"You heard ."
He stared at for a long mont, the bag shifting on his shoulders as he readjusted the straps.
"You always lead. You know this route better than—"
"Consider it practice." I kept my voice even. "You rely on too much. What happens if I’m not around one day?"
His mouth opened, then closed. Suspicion flickered in his eyes, wrestling briefly with the logic of it. The logic won — barely.
"...Fine," he muttered. "But don’t bla if it takes us longer."
I followed him without another word.
The ruined streets stretched on, one after another. The farther we walked, the older the damage looked.
About twenty minutes later, we reached an area where other people were also hurrying back before nightfall. No one was in the mood to chat, but it was obvious they recognized us as brothers.
Then Jas turned toward a subway station stairwell, half-buried under rubble, and we began our descent.
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