The mark on my left arm burned like a brand against my skin.
Colors exploded behind my eyelids—cosmic blues bleeding into starfire gold, silver light warring against absolute darkness. Images flashed in rapid succession: armored figures moving through space, worlds cracking like eggs, something vast and hungry swallowing entire star systems.
The burning intensified. The mark beneath my skin writhed and pulsed, responding to visions I couldn't understand. A battlefield stretched across dimensions. Beings of pure light clashing against creatures of living void. The sound of reality itself screaming.
Pain. Loss. Desperate love. Sacrifice.
Emotions that weren't mine crashed through my consciousness like tidal waves. The mark blazed hotter, and for a terrifying moment I felt it trying to tear free from whatever held it back.
The bracelet on my wrist pulsed steadily, fighting against the cosmic fire in my blood. The necklace around my throat grew warm, its infinity symbol glowing faintly as it reinforced the suppression.
But the visions kept coming—more intense than ever before.
A figure wreathed in starlight reaching toward me. A voice calling a name I didn't recognize. The sensation of falling through infinite darkness while something precious slipped away forever.
The mark gave one final, agonizing pulse—
The bedroom mirror exploded.
I jerked awake to the sound of glass raining onto the floor, my heart hammering against my ribs. For a moment, phantom emotions flickered through me—grief, rage, longing—before the bracelet smoothed them away.
But the mirror remained shattered.
"Min-Jun?" Mom's voice called from the kitchen. "Are you alright? I heard something break."
I stared at the glittering fragments scattered across my floor, each piece reflecting the morning light. The mark on my arm had stopped burning, but I could still feel it beneath my skin, restless and angry.
"I'm fine," I called back. "Just knocked something over."
As I swept up the glass, I tried to make sense of the visions. But like always, the harder I focused on them, the faster they faded, leaving only confusion and the lingering taste of cosmic fire.
"Eat up," Mom said, sliding a plate of eggs and rice in front of me. "Big day today."
Dad looked up from his tablet, where news footage showed heroes responding to a monster attack in Busan. "Global Heroic Academy exam day. Can you believe our Min-Jun is actually taking it?"
"I still can't believe you changed your mind," Mom added, settling beside me with her coffee. "What made you decide to try?"
I thought of my friends' faces yesterday, their desperate hope that I wouldn't abandon them. "They asked me to."
"Good friends are worth taking risks for," Dad nodded approvingly. Then his expression turned playful. "You know, if you really wanted to ace this thing, you could just take off that bracelet. Bet you'd surprise everyone."
I looked at him with a flat expression. "That would destroy the world."
Both parents froze for a moment, then Dad burst out laughing. "Okay, okay, no need to be so dramatic! I was just joking."
"Have fun today, sweetheart," Mom said, though I caught the slight worry in her eyes. "Just do your best."
"I will," I said, finishing my breakfast.
The testing facility in Incheon rose like a fortress from the harbor, all gleaming metal and reinforced glass. Hundreds of students milled around the entrance, their nervous energy crackling in the air.
I found my friends clustered near the main gates.
"Min-Jun!" Jae-Wook waved me over, practically bouncing with excitement. "Can you believe we're actually here?"
Hye-Jin glowed brighter than usual, her golden radiance betraying her nerves. "I barely slept last night. What if I mess up the power control test?"
"You won't," Tae-Min said confidently. "Your light manipulation is already C-rank level."
"What about you, So-Young?" I asked.
She held out her palm. A small flame danced to life, but this wasn't the wild fire I remembered from school. This flame moved with precision, shifting from orange to blue to white-hot intensity before settling back to a gentle flicker.
"So-Young," Hye-Jin breathed, "that's incredible!"
"B-rank intensity with A-rank control," Tae-Min analyzed. "When did you—?"
"I've been training every night since graduation," So-Young said quietly. "I didn't want to be left behind."
Something warm stirred in my chest at their progress—pride, happiness—before the bracelet gently suppressed it.
"Attention all applicants!" A voice boomed. "Please proceed to the main entrance for registration and stage one testing!"
"This is it," Jae-Wook said. "Whatever happens, we stick together, right?"
"Together," they all agreed, looking at me expectantly.
"Together," I said.
The first testing chamber was filled with crystalline orbs identical to childhood affinity tests, but larger and more sophisticated.
"Lee Min-Jun," the examiner called. "Station seven."
"Place your hands on the orb," she instructed. "Channel your mana steadily."
I pressed my palms against the cool crystal surface.
The orb exploded.
Crystal fragments shot across the room like shrapnel, students diving for cover as alarms blared.
"Equipment malfunction!" someone shouted.
They brought a second orb, reinforced with stabilization runes. Same result—complete destruction.
"I'm sorry," the head examiner said. "This appears to be a rare equipment incompatibility. We'll have to mark this as a testing failure."
"I understand."
Around the room, my friends were making their orbs glow with various colors, advancing to stage two.
I was going home.
"Min-Jun!" Hye-Jin called as I headed for the exit. "Wait!"
But I didn't stop. I walked out alone, leaving them to chase their dreams.
I took the long route home through the residential district, avoiding the main roads where celebrating families would be gathering. The afternoon sun cast long shadows between the apartment buildings as I walked, hands in my pockets, trying not to think about my friends advancing to the next stage while I—
A child's scream cut through the air.
I stopped, head turning toward the sound. It came from Hanbit Park, a small playground nestled between two apartment complexes about a block away. The kind of place where children played on swings and elderly couples fed pigeons.
Another scream. Then something else—a sound that made my skin crawl. Not human. Not natural.
Keep walking, I told myself. Not your problem.
But my feet were already moving toward the park.
I approached through a narrow alley between buildings, the screaming growing louder. Through a gap in the fence, I could see into the playground's central area.
The thing that had once been human stood eight feet tall in the middle of the sandbox, its body a grotesque patchwork of conflicting elements. Its left arm was massive and stone-like, veins of electricity crackling across its surface in brilliant blue arcs. The electrical discharge was so intense it had melted the nearby swing set into twisted metal.
Its right arm was skeletal and wreathed in flames that somehow coexisted with patches of ice that never melted. Where fire met ice, steam hissed constantly from its flesh, creating a fog that reeked of burnt meat and ozone.
The creature's torso was a nightmare of surgical scars, showing where different DNA had been forcibly integrated. Its chest rose and fell erratically, as if multiple respiratory systems were fighting for control.
But the worst part was its face—or faces. Features shifted constantly, as if different people were trying to surface through the same flesh.
"Help... us..." it moaned, the voice a cacophony of at least a dozen different tones. "Please... make it... stop... the pain..."
The voices of the victims. The people Eternal Helix had used to create this abomination.
A little girl, no more than six years old with pigtails and a yellow dress, cowered behind an overturned bench. Tears streamed down her face as she pressed herself against the metal, trying to become invisible.
The creature's attention fixed on her, and I watched its expression shift from anguish to something predatory. Its stone arm rose, electricity dancing between its fingers with increasing intensity. The air around its hand began to ionize, crackling with barely contained power.
"Hungry..." it said in a child's voice that didn't match its monstrous form. "So... hungry..."
The little girl whimpered, and the sound seemed to drive the creature into a frenzy. Its electrical discharge intensified, turning from blue to white-hot plasma. The remaining playground equipment began to melt from the ambient heat.
It took a step toward her, its massive stone foot cracking the concrete. Then another. The flames on its right arm flared higher, while ice crystals spread across the ground where its feet touched.
The girl tried to run.
The creature moved faster than something that size should have been able to, its skeletal arm lashing out with inhuman speed. Bone fingers wreathed in fire reached for her yellow dress—
Time slowed.
I felt the bracelet's suppression like a weight on my soul, holding back not just my emotions but my very nature. For fifteen years, I'd lived as a ghost of myself, watching the world through glass, never truly feeling, never truly living.
But in that moment, looking at a terrified child about to die while I stood by and did nothing, something deeper than the bracelet's control stirred.
I know exactly how much this is going to hurt, I thought, calculating the timing with perfect precision. I know the recoil will be agony.
I don't care.
The monster's flaming skeletal hand closed around the little girl's arm. She screamed as the fire began to sear her skin.
I moved.
For a fraction of a second—less than a heartbeat, faster than the bracelet could react—I let my true nature surface.
The world exploded into cosmic fire.
I crossed the distance in an instant, my body moving at speeds that turned the air to plasma. The creature's head snapped toward me, multiple faces showing confusion and rage, but it was already too late.
I caught its stone arm in my bare hand, my fingers closing around the electricity-wreathed limb. Where my skin touched its flesh, reality itself seemed to recoil.
The creature's eyes—all of them—widened in terror. "What... are... you?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. The cosmic fire in my blood was singing, demanding release after fifteen years of suppression.
The monster tried to pull away, its five different power types flaring to maximum intensity. Electricity that could level buildings coursed through its stone arm. Flames hot enough to melt steel erupted from its skeletal limb. Ice that could freeze nitrogen solid spread across its torso. Earth manipulation caused the ground beneath us to buckle and heave. And through it all, some kind of enhancement ability pushed its already impossible strength to even greater heights.
None of it mattered.
Where my fingers touched its flesh, the creature simply... ceased. Not destroyed, not killed—unmade. Reduced to component atoms that scattered on the wind like dust.
The electrical discharge died. The flames guttered out. The ice melted instantly. In less than a second, the five-power metahuman that could have leveled city blocks was gone, leaving only empty air and the lingering scent of ozone.
The little girl stared at the space where the monster had been, her young mind unable to process what she'd just witnessed. To her eyes, it must have looked like the creature simply vanished—too fast for human perception to follow.
I was already moving again, folding space around myself as I prepared to teleport away—
The bracelet reacted.
Pain beyond description tore through my nervous system as the suppression device punished me for my defiance. It felt like molten metal in my veins, like every nerve ending was being flayed with cosmic fire.
I materialized in my bedroom and immediately collapsed, a scream ripping from my throat as I clutched my wrist. The bracelet blazed with angry light, its punishment swift and merciless.
"MIN-JUN!" Mom's voice, terrified and urgent.
She burst through my door to find me writhing on the floor, my back arched in agony as the bracelet's retaliation coursed through my body.
"What's wrong? What happened?" She dropped to her knees beside me, her face pale with worry.
The pain began to fade, leaving me gasping and shaking on the carpet. Mom helped me sit up, her expression mixing concern with something deeper—understanding.
"You used your powers," she said quietly. Not a question, but a statement of fact.
I couldn't speak yet, still recovering from the bracelet's punishment.
"What made you do it?" she asked, studying my face. "You know how dangerous it is. You know what could happen if—" She stopped, her eyes widening with realization. "You saved someone, didn't you?"
The bracelet pulsed gently, smoothing away the lingering echoes of emotion, but not before I felt it—a flicker of something that might have been pride.
"I'm okay," I managed, though my voice came out hoarse.
"You're not okay. None of this is okay." Mom pulled me into a fierce hug. "But I understand why you did it. Just... please be more careful. The world isn't ready for what you really are."
After she left, I sat on my bed, staring at the bracelet's now-calm surface. My phone buzzed with a text from Jae-Wook: Passed stage two! Where did you go?
I typed back: Went home. Good luck.
We'll tell you everything later. Proud of you for trying.
I set the phone aside and tried not to think about the little girl, or the monster, or the moment I'd felt truly alive for the first time in fifteen years.
Director Yoon's Perspective
Director Yoon sat in her car outside the testing facility, reviewing the day's reports on her tablet when her phone buzzed with an emergency alert: Metahuman attack reported in Hanbit Park residential district. Threat neutralized. No hero response required.
She frowned. Metahuman attacks didn't just neutralize themselves, especially not the kind that required no cleanup crew.
Curious, she activated her power. The world around her shifted into sepia tones as her time photography ability engaged, allowing her to see temporal echoes of recent events within her range.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
The metahuman had been a fusion of five different power types—electrical manipulation, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, earth control, and some kind of physical enhancement. The kind of abomination that required a full hero team to handle safely.
And it had been facing a small child.
But then—movement too fast for normal perception. A figure in a school uniform appearing between the monster and the girl. The temporal image was blurred from the sheer speed, but she could make out enough details to see what happened next.
The student had simply touched the creature, and it had ceased to exist. Not exploded, not collapsed—just... gone. Reduced to atoms in an instant.
She rewound the temporal image, focusing on the student's face and uniform. Young, maybe fifteen or sixteen. Dark hair. And there, clearly visible on his chest—a name badge from today's academy exam.
Lee Min-Jun.
The same boy whose testing orbs had exploded during the mana affinity examination.
Director Yoon stared at the frozen temporal image, her mind racing. A student who broke testing equipment, then casually erased a five-power metahuman from existence with a touch.
She grabbed her phone and dialed the testing facility.
"This is Director Yoon. I need you to pull all information on a student named Lee Min-Jun who tested today. Everything—address, family background, academic records, medical history, psychological evaluations. Send it to my secure line immediately."
"Director? Is there a problem with one of the applicants?"
She looked again at the temporal echo of impossible power contained in a teenage boy.
"No problem," she said quietly. "Just a very interesting student who I think we need to reconsider."
As she ended the call, Director Yoon made a mental note to have a very long conversation with whoever had decided that Lee Min-Jun wasn't academy material.