Weeks blurred into an endless stream of action. I flew across the country, slicing through the sky with a roar that shook clouds and sent plaster crumbling from ruined houses. My shadow fell over dead cities, refugee camps, fields strewn with bodies where crows circled like black commas on a gray canvas. I found survivors in the basements of Detroit, where walls were coated with mold and the air was heavy with the stench of rotting rats; in tents in Oklahoma, where sand crunched underfoot and stung the eyes; in the mountains of Colorado, where snow mingled with ash and the wind carried the scent of pines and death. The medicine worked everywhere—my blood healed wounds, drove the virus from lungs, restored strength to emaciated bodies. People reached for me, their hands trembling, not from fear but from hope. I saw their faces—dirty, gaunt, but alive—and wondered: was it worth it? Every syringe, every drop of blood was a piece of me given to them. How much could I give before I was empty? Endlessly long.
But there wasn't enough blood. I cut myself again and again until my arms were a lattice of scars—thin, white, vanishing in seconds. I stood before a shattered mirror in an abandoned apartment, staring at my reflection: eyes red from exhaustion, skin pale, hair matted with sweat and dust. For the first time in this life, I was tired. Not physically, but mentally. My appearance mirrored my inner state. If I wanted, I could be as perfect as before. But perfection isn't trusted in my world.
I cut my wrists, palms, even my neck, feeling the blood flow, hot and heavy, but it was still too little for millions, let alone billions. I gripped the knife until my fingers went numb, thinking: is this the price? My life for theirs? Or am I just a fool who believes he can cheat fate?
I can do many things, but I can't cut myself 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
So the days passed.
I hadn't slept in so long…
On one of the endless days of flights and rescues, in an abandoned laboratory in Kansas, among rusty centrifuges and broken computers with cracked screens, I met Dr. Ellis. An interesting woman. Similar, yet infinitely different from me. They spoke of her as a mad old woman who had lost too much—husband, son, daughter. Locals nearby said she was one of the first to notice the strange virus. She tried to do something, but no one listened. Nor did her family.
She clung to her granddaughter, a girl with thin braids, lying in the next room on a sagging mattress. Ellis hadn't given up. Madmen with hope are my best allies. Her gray hair was tied in a messy bun with a piece of twine, her glasses with a cracked lens slid to the tip of her nose, and her fingers, etched with wrinkles and chemical stains, moved with surprising dexterity. She took a vial of my blood, our vaccine, held it to a microscope—old, with peeling paint—and froze, her breath catching.
"This isn't just blood," she said, her voice raspy, like a smoker with forty years behind her, but it thrummed with excitement. "There's energy here. Otherworldly. I see structures—crystals, spirals—that shouldn't exist in a human body. It's like… a star trapped in a cage of flesh. I can synthesize it, but we need resources. Laboratories, reagents, equipment. And money. Lots of money. Even in this damn apocalypse, the internet and money haven't disappeared. Corporations still exist, milking people."
"There'll be money," I replied, clenching my fist until the veins stood out under my skin like rivers on a map. "I know where to get it. I need time." Faces flashed in my mind: smirking, oil barons with fat fingers clutching gold chains. They thought they were untouchable. I'd prove them wrong. I couldn't rob entire companies—ordinary people worked there, just trying to survive—but the ones at the top? With ease.
Weeks dragged on like a torn film reel, its frames blurring into a gray haze of exhaustion and blood. I tore through the sky, leaving a trail of superheated air that cracked dry branches and sent dust falling from slanted roofs. My shadow glided over the ground—long, black, like a knife stabbing the heart of dead cities. In New York, where skyscrapers jutted from the earth like broken teeth, I descended into basements filled with concrete rubble and rusted pipes leaking brown water that smelled of iron and rot. There, among piles of trash—crumpled cans, newspaper scraps, charred children's toys—people hid, their eyes glinting in the dark like cornered animals. In Texas, I walked across scorched plains, sand crunching under my boots, the wind carrying the smell of burnt rubber and bones picked clean by vultures. Everywhere, I distributed the medicine—drops of my blood in cloudy syringes that trembled in my hands as I injected them into withered veins. People clung to me, their fingers—thin, with broken nails—leaving dirty streaks on my jacket, their voices merging into a hoarse whisper of gratitude. But in their eyes, I saw not only hope but a question: how much longer?
My blood flowed like a river, but the river was running dry. I stood in an abandoned church somewhere in Arizona, before a cracked altar covered in dust and bird droppings, cutting myself again. The knife—old, with a handle wrapped in duct tape—bit into my wrist, leaving red streaks that faded and vanished. Blood dripped into a tin bowl, ringing like rain on a rusty roof, its metallic sheen reflecting the dim light filtering through broken stained glass. I stared at my reflection in the pool of blood—my face gaunt, shadows under my eyes like charcoal smudges, lips dry and cracked like parched earth. I could look perfect, like before, when cameras caught every flight, every smile. But now I wanted them to see the truth: I'm no god, no angel, just a man tearing himself apart for them. How much more could I give? How many times could I raise the knife before it stayed in my hand forever?
Dr. Ellis became my anchor in this chaos. She was a good person. We worked in that same Kansas lab—a cramped room with a low ceiling, walls covered in peeling paint, the floor littered with glass shards and wire scraps. The air smelled of chemicals and rust, a sharp sting that burned the eyes, while an old fan in the corner hummed like a dying beast, stirring dust in circles. Ellis sat at a table, hunched over a microscope, her fingers—dry, with cracked skin—moving with a watchmaker's precision. Nearby lay her tools: bent-tipped tweezers, vials with murky stains, syringes, one cracked but still usable. In the corner slept her granddaughter, Lily, wrapped in an old blanket with faded stars—her breathing weak but steady, her thin braids splayed across the mattress like black threads on a gray canvas.
We could've moved to a better place, but Ellis refused to leave.
"You're killing yourself, boy," she said, not looking up from the eyepiece. Her voice creaked like old hinges, but it held a steely resolve, tempered in fire. "Your blood's a miracle, but you're not a machine. Even stars burn out if you keep them lit too long."
I clenched my fist, feeling the skin tighten over my knuckles, and looked at my hands. The scars were gone, but I remembered every cut—the pain, the hot pulse, the cold that followed. She was right. I couldn't cut myself forever. But I couldn't stop either.
"Then find a way," I replied, my voice dull, echoing off the cracked walls like a map of a broken world. "You said it can be synthesized. Prove it."
Ellis leaned back in her chair, which creaked under her weight, and removed her glasses, wiping them with the edge of a faded shirt. Her eyes—gray, with red veins—looked at me with a tired mix of curiosity and stubbornness.
"I can," she said, tapping a nail on the table, leaving a faint scratch in the wood. "But we need more than this junk." She nodded at the centrifuge, rusty with peeling paint, and the computer with a screen webbed with cracks. "A biotech-level lab. Reactors, sequencers, clean reagents. And money to buy it all. Even now, with the world burning, we can't just walk in and demand obedience."
I turned to the window, where the glass was boarded up, but gray light mixed with smoke seeped through the cracks. The smell of ash crept into my nose, bitter as the taste of my own powerlessness. I knew where to get the money. I saw them in my dreams—fat, glistening, with eyes full of contempt, sitting in their towers of glass and steel. They drank wine from crystal goblets while children died in the dirt, while I cut myself for those they abandoned. Oil tycoons, bankers, generals—their faces rose before me like targets on a firing range.
I sighed. I thought it would come later. I wanted to delay the moment of blood. It would have to be faster.
"I'll get them," I said, clenching my fist until my nails dug into my palm, but the skin stayed whole—I didn't let it break. "Their money will be ours. Their towers will fall."
Ellis snorted, her lips twitching into a crooked smirk, revealing yellowish teeth.
"You sound like a revolutionary," she said, returning to the microscope. "Or a madman. I hope you know the difference."
I didn't answer. There was no difference. I stepped outside, where the wind threw a handful of sand mixed with ash into my face, and breathed in that air—heavy, steeped in death and promise. My shadow fell across the ground, long and dark, like the road I'd chosen.
At night, I flew to Dallas. The sky was black as oil, with only rare stars piercing the smoke, trembling like dying candles. I landed on the roof of a skyscraper—a glass monster whose windows gleamed in the dark, reflecting the fires of distant blazes. The wind whistled in my ears, cold and sharp, tugging at the edges of my jacket, caked with dust and blood. I looked down at the city: empty streets, the wind chasing scraps of plastic and dry leaves, brittle as the bones of a forgotten world. Somewhere below, sirens wailed like wounded beasts, their sound mixing with the hum of generators powering this tower—the last bastion of those who thought themselves kings.
I punched through the glass, shards scattering with a crunch like ice underfoot, and stepped inside. The air was different here—clean, cool, smelling of expensive cologne and leather. The floor was covered in a soft, dark-red carpet with patterns that looked like bloodstains in the dim light of the lamps. Paintings hung on the walls—abstract smears worth more than the lives of those they'd left to die. I walked down the corridor, my boots leaving dirty prints on the carpet, and heard voices—low, confident, sated.
The door to the conference room was massive, dark wood with gold handles gleaming like the eyes of a greedy beast. I pushed it open, and it swung with a dull thud that made the crystal chandeliers tremble above the long table. There they sat—five men in tailored suits, their fat fingers glittering with rings. Their faces shone with sweat and expensive cream, their eyes looking at me with contempt mixed with surprise. On the table before them were wine glasses, red as my blood, and plates with remnants of food—chunks of meat glistening with fat, slices of cheese starting to dry at the edges. No… it was blood, not wine.
"Who the hell are you?" barked one, a fat man with a triple chin, his shirt stretched over his belly like skin on a drum. His hand reached for a button under the table, but I was faster.
I stepped forward, and the air trembled with my power. The table flipped with a crash, glasses shattered on the floor, wine pooling in dark puddles, plates splintering into shards. They leapt up, shouting, but I grabbed the fat man by the throat and lifted him off the ground. His legs dangled like a puppet's, his face reddened, eyes bulging. The others froze, their breathing ragged, the sour, sharp smell of fear filling the room.
Damn vampires.
"Your money," I said, my voice cold as steel honed by the wind. "Every last cent. Or I'll crush you like you crushed this world. Then we'll talk."
He wheezed, his fingers scratching my arm, leaving red streaks that vanished instantly. I squeezed harder, feeling his throat give under my fingers, cartilage crunching. He nodded, gasping, and I let him go. He collapsed to the floor, coughing, clutching his throat, while the others stared at me like a beast escaped from its cage. Still thinking he had a chance.
"Accounts, passwords, keys," I said, stepping to the window, where the glass was already cracking from my presence. My eyes glowed, raising the room's temperature. "Everything you have. Now."
They obeyed. Their hands shook as they pulled out phones, scribbled numbers on crumpled napkins, retrieved cards from wallets smelling of leather and money. I collected it all—billions hidden in offshore accounts, gold in safes, stocks squeezed from a dying world. It was more than Ellis needed. It was enough to start over.
Then came a conversation, after which their ashes scattered far. So, Helios decided to cleanse this world…
I flew off to find what I needed again. Information. The wind struck my face as I soared, carrying their wealth—not for me, but for those they'd abandoned. The sky was black, but I saw light ahead—faint, trembling, like a star trapped in a cage. My star. And I wouldn't let it go out.
---
Neither the first nor the last was Marcus Grave, a media mogul from New York. His skyscraper towered over Manhattan, a glass spire gleaming in the night, reflecting the glow of fires while the streets below drowned in a chaos of screams and sirens. I burst in, shattering a window on the hundredth floor—glass exploded into thousands of shards, sparkling like stars, raining down with a chime against the concrete far below. Guards in black suits opened fire with automatics—bullets buzzed through the air like a swarm of wasps but ricocheted off my skin with a soft ping, leaving only a faint itch, like mosquito bites. I walked forward, their shouts drowned in the thunder of my steps on the marble floor, its black-and-white tiles gleaming like a chessboard.
Grave sat behind a massive mahogany desk, surrounded by gold-framed paintings—portraits of long-dead men with haughty faces—and ivory statuettes carved with painful precision. His gray hair was slicked back with lacquer smelling of alcohol and lavender, his suit pressed, a glass of whiskey smoldering in his hand, giving off a scent of oak, spices, and something cloyingly sweet. Outside, the city burned—orange flames licked buildings, smoke rose in black columns—but he watched it with a faint smile, as if it were a show he'd commissioned.
"Who the hell are you?" he growled, not even turning, his voice low, raspy from whiskey and cigars. He tapped a finger on the desk, adorned with a gold ring bearing a ruby the size of a grape.
"Your judge," I replied, and in two steps, I was beside him. The air between us hummed with my power.
He didn't have time to scream. My hand closed around his throat, fingers digging into soft flesh, feeling his pulse—fast, erratic, like a cornered animal's. I lifted him off the floor—his legs in polished shoes dangled, the glass fell, spilling amber liquid onto the carpet, where it soaked in, leaving a dark stain. One motion—and the crack of his neck echoed in the room, sharp as breaking ice. His eyes rolled back, his body went limp like a rag doll. I tossed him onto the desk, shattering the glass top—shards sprayed everywhere, one tried to cut my cheek, but no wound appeared. I walked to the safe in the wall—a massive steel door with a combination lock, coated in a thin layer of dust. A punch tore through the metal like paper, the edges curling inward with a screech. Inside were stacks of cash bound with rubber bands, flash drives with data, keys to his empire—billions in accounts, food warehouses in New Jersey, private islands in the Caribbean. I transferred the funds to anonymous accounts, destroying his archives with a laser from my eyes—plastic and paper melted, leaving the smell of burnt plastic and sweetish smoke that stung my nostrils.
Suddenly, the body stirred. I turned slowly, tilting my head left to dodge a strike—slow to me, but impossibly fast for a human. Another creature.
A swipe of my hand, and its head shattered into fragments that burned under my gaze. They're everywhere…