I don't know how long I was lying there.
Time didn't pass normally anymore — it moved like thick fog, slow and unpredictable, curling around my senses and dragging me between awareness and something colder, darker.
Shira's hand was still in mine, warm and shaking. I could hear her whispering things. Maybe to me. Maybe to herself. Maybe to whatever gods were left after everything we'd endured.
But I couldn't answer.
All I could do was look — and see.
The battlefield stretched out before me like a shattered world. The Sector was unrecognizable now. What once was Tokyo's pride — sleek towers, neon skylines — was now rubble and ash. Black smoke curled upward from the cracks in the earth. Flooded streets shimmered with unnatural colors, like oil slicks tinged with poison.
Nomu corpses disintegrated in the distance, dissolving into puddles of sludge. The last of them were being hunted down by hero task forces — Stars and Stripes leading the charge from above, her body cloaked in the golden light of New Order.
She was shouting orders again, fierce and unshakable.
"Team Gamma — left flank! Push them into the storm wall!"
"Medics, Sector 6! Prioritize the children and— damn it, move faster!"
She didn't hesitate.
Not once.
I admired that.
I envied it.
My breath caught. A sharp pain sliced through my gut. My fingers twitched, then curled into the dirt. My body was screaming.
Then—
"Ngh—"
It happened so fast I didn't even realize what I was doing.
I rolled over to my side, coughing violently. A wet sound echoed in my ears, followed by a taste that chilled me to the bone.
Blood.
Hot and metallic.
But not red.
Purple.
Thick, viscous, unnatural.
It splattered into the mud like ink. Shira gasped and grabbed my shoulder, panic flooding her face.
"No—no no no—Anos, you're—!"
I gagged again. Another wave of purple spilled out from my lips, staining the ground. I tried to speak, but all that came out was a choked wheeze.
My heart thundered painfully in my chest. My skin itched — no, burned — like something inside me was trying to crawl out. The Genesis Flame. The toxin. Whatever it was…
It was changing me.
"I'll call Ryah—" Shira started to reach for her comms, but I grabbed her wrist weakly.
"Don't…" I rasped.
"Anos—"
"They're still fighting." I coughed again. My vision spun. "They… they need you. Out there."
Her lip trembled. She looked torn.
Then a voice rang out behind us.
"Eliza! Marcus! Diamond! This way! We found him!"
I blinked as shapes approached, limping but alive.
My childhood friends.
Their eyes locked on me — on the blood, the damage, the truth of what I was — and every single one of them stopped dead in their tracks.
Eliza fell to her knees.
Diamond covered her mouth in horror.
Marcus cursed under his breath.
And Riley — bruised and bloodied, ice cracking at her fingertips — stared at the purple in the dirt with a haunted expression.
"W-What… what happened to him…?"
My voice was almost gone, but I managed to whisper one thing:
"Stay back."
They didn't listen.
Because heroes never do.