The air ripped open.
No explosion. No thunder. Just a silence so loud that it shattered windows for six blocks.
Nyra stood in the flooded lower atrium of the abandoned metro station, panting, water swirling violently around her ankles. Pipes had burst. The ceiling had cracked.
The humidity wasn't natural.
It was burning.
She looked up.
And there he was.
Kael.
His shirt was scorched along the sleeves, steam rising from his shoulders. His skin glowed faintly—not like fire, but like a furnace behind glass. Controlled. Contained. Deadly.
"You're one of them," he said, his voice low and calm.
Nyra's instincts screamed, but she didn't run.
"So are you."
Kael tilted his head.
"You're weaker than I expected."
The walls behind her began to melt.
Aarav – arriving late.
He leapt from the street above through a skylight and landed hard, knees bent, stars flickering in his irises.
His arrival was like gravity shifting in the room. Everything paused for a half-second.
Nyra turned, shocked. She hadn't seen him in years—Aarav?
Kael didn't flinch. He looked at Aarav, and something in him recoiled—not in fear, but in recognition.
"I was waiting for you," Kael said."The empty one."
The fight begins.
Kael struck first.
Not a punch—but a flare.
He raised a single hand, and a ray of heat shot like a solar beam—instant, blinding. The marble floor exploded.
Nyra threw her arms forward instinctively, and a wall of water surged up, intercepting the blast just in time. The water boiled on impact.
Aarav sprinted forward. The ground beneath him fractured, time slowing around his steps. He leapt into the air and twisted—
—and missed.
Kael vanished in a blink of firelight, reappearing behind them like a solar echo.
"You're both unfinished," Kael hissed."But I was born complete."
He raised both hands, and the room brightened like noon inside a furnace.
Nyra collapsed to her knees, struggling to breathe—water evaporating faster than she could summon it.
Aarav staggered, his vision distorting. Light bent unnaturally around Kael—time warping from heat, from raw stellar power.
Kael walked toward them slowly.
"The moon reflects me," he said, looking at Nyra."The stars follow me," he growled, looking at Aarav."You're imitations. I'm the source."
He raised a hand to strike—
But Aarav's body reacted before he could think.
The world slowed.
For a moment, every particle of light froze in place.
And he moved between them.
He wasn't fast—he was in the gaps between seconds.
Kael swung.
Aarav caught his fist.
The impact sent out a ripple in spacetime, distorting the air in rings. Both were thrown backwards across the room.
Aftermath.
Smoke rose.
Kael stood, blood trickling from his nose. Shock in his eyes—for the first time.
Aarav helped Nyra up, both panting, burned and bruised.
Kael didn't attack again.He just looked at Aarav.
"You don't even know what you are."
He stepped backward into the smoke.
The light swallowed him.
He was gone.
Silence.
Nyra looked at Aarav.Aarav stared at his own hands, still crackling faintly with starlight.
"What was that?" Nyra asked.
"I don't know," Aarav whispered."But he's not the only one who's changing."
Above the broken station, the sun burned redder than it should.
The balance was shifting.
And the real war hadn't even begun yet.