I wake with a gasp, the world snapping back into focus. I'm on a leather couch that costs more than my tuition. The air smells of old books and the clean, sharp scent of an approaching storm. My head pounds, a dull, rhythmic ache. My right wrist burns.
I push myself up, my gaze falling to my hand. My breath catches. Etched onto the pale skin of my inner wrist is a sigil, an intricate pattern of lines and curves glowing with a soft, internal blue light. It's not a tattoo; it's a part of me now, a terrifying and beautiful brand that pulses in time with my frantic heartbeat. This isn't a dream. It's real. I'm marked.
Across the room, Julian Thorne stands behind a massive desk, watching me. I am a specimen under his microscope. An error in his calculations.
He pushes away from the desk and starts toward me, his movements a study in contained power. His face is unreadable, carved from stone.
"Are you…?" My voice comes out a rough whisper. "Are you okay?" The question is absurd, a relic from a world that no longer exists.
He stops a few feet away, his gaze fixed on the glowing mark on my wrist. "Irrelevant." His voice is clipped, cold. "Report. What did you feel when you made contact with the seal?"
Not, what happened? Not, who are you? It's an interrogation. A damage assessment. I'm not a person who stumbled into the wrong place; I'm a faulty component that caused a system crash.
"I felt… everything," I stammer, my mind reeling. "It was like being electrocuted."
"Be specific," he demands, his tone leaving no room for argument. "The energy flow. What was its vector?"
I stare at him, baffled and terrified. "I don't know what that means."
His jaw tightens, a flicker of irritation in his glacial calm. It's clear I am not a piece of equipment he knows how to operate.
I need to get out. My survival instinct screams louder than my confusion. I push myself off the couch, my legs trembling but holding. He is a predator, and this is his den. I take a step back, putting space between us.
Pain.
It erupts behind my eyes, a blinding, staggering spike of agony so intense it's like my skull is being split open. A raw gasp is torn from my throat, and my vision whites out. I collapse, my knees hitting the plush carpet with a sickening thud. Through the searing haze, I see Julian flinch, his own hand flying to his temple, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle spasms. He grunts, a low, guttural sound of pure, animal pain.
He felt it too. The same spike. The same agony. A shared, invisible wound.
Distance. Distance is pain.
He straightens up, his face a mask of grim comprehension. The pain recedes as quickly as it came, leaving a phantom throb behind my eyes. He looks at me, then at the space between us, as if measuring an invisible force. Then, deliberately, he takes a step forward.
The throbbing in my head vanishes. But the air in the room changes. It becomes thick, heavy, buzzing like a live wire. The recessed lights in the ceiling flicker, a frantic, stuttering pulse.
He takes another step.
The buzzing intensifies to a high-pitched whine. The lights surge, flaring with the brilliance of a miniature sun before they explode in a shower of sparks and shattered glass. The monitors on his desk flash and die. The room is plunged into semi-darkness, lit only by the emergency lights and the steady, ominous blue glow from the sigil on my wrist.
Proximity is chaos. A raw, uncontrollable power. We are two ends of a faulty circuit, and the space between us is an arc of pure, destructive energy.
The doors to the office slide open with a soft hiss, cutting through the sudden, crackling silence. VP Marcus Sterling stands in the doorway, flanked by the two security men from the ritual. He takes in the scene with a sweep of his cool, analytical eyes—the shattered lights, the darkened monitors, me trembling on the floor, and Julian standing amidst the wreckage.
A slow, predatory smile touches Sterling's lips. "It appears the anomaly is conscious," he observes, his voice smooth and utterly devoid of surprise. He steps into the room, his expensive shoes crunching softly on the broken glass.
His gaze settles on me, dismissive and cold. "The containment protocols are clear, Julian. We can't allow an unknown variable of this magnitude to persist." He gestures almost casually in my direction. "We terminate the risk."
The security men step forward, their movements efficient and purposeful. Primal fear, cold and sharp, overrides everything else. I scramble backward again, away from them, away from Julian. The instant I increase the distance, the spike of psychic pain hits, a nauseating wave of agony.
"Enough," Julian snarls.
He doesn't move toward security. He moves toward me. He crosses the space between us in a single, fluid stride and grabs my arm.
His touch is a lightning strike. The pain vanishes, not just recedes, but is annihilated in a dizzying, terrifying surge of raw power. It's not a flicker this time. It's a detonation. The energy doesn't just surge through the room; it pours out of us, a raw, untamed torrent. Every remaining light and fixture in the vast office—desk lamps, wall sconces, the emergency lights—explodes in a final, concussive blast of energy. The room is thrown into near-total darkness. The only light comes from the sigil on my wrist, now blazing like a miniature star.
Silence falls, thick and absolute, broken only by the sound of my own ragged breathing. Julian's grip on my arm is like a manacle, grounding and terrifying. Through the massive, floor-to-ceiling window behind his desk, the skyline of Veridia City is a glittering tapestry of lights.
Or it was.
As we watch, a ripple seems to pass through the night sky. The clear, star-dusted darkness begins to curdle. Clouds boil up from nowhere, dark and bruised-looking, churning with an unnatural speed. A flicker of lightning, stark white and silent, illuminates them from within. A storm, violent and instantaneous, is forming directly over the heart of the city, with the AETHEON tower as its epicenter.
It's our power. Our chaos. No longer contained to a single room, but unleashed upon the world outside.