Roman caught up near a collapsed tunnel bridge where traffic had bottlenecked. Dorgu landed in the middle of the jam—eyes glowing faint white now, arms twitching with unstable growths.
A woman tried to run past him.
He backhanded her into a windshield.
Screams erupted.
Roman leapt.
Mid-air, a lightning strike cracked the sky behind him—faint, but perfectly timed.
Civilians gasped.
To them, it looked like the spark had answered him.
He slammed into Dorgu shoulder-first, driving the monster through the hood of a car.
The pavement erupted.
People scattered.
Phones went up.
The world was watching now.
Dorgu rose from the dented hood, smiling through split lips and blood.
His body twitched again—this time with sharp, unnatural protrusions. His copy of Roman's mutation wasn't holding cleanly. His form wanted to collapse.
Roman stood a few meters away, electricity dancing between his hands—but the rest of him unchanged.
Calm. Still. Human.
One monster.
One man.
To everyone watching—
This was a superhero story.
The streetlights flickered in sync with Roman's heartbeat.
Sirens echoed in the distance. Helicopters circled above, their searchlights slicing through rain and smog. Civilians had mostly fled, but not all—some watched from rooftops, others peered from behind cracked doors and windows.
Dozens of phones recorded it all.
Dorgu knew it too.
He stood in the middle of the intersection, hunched slightly, muscles twitching. His body still bore the shape of Roman's mutation—but it had begun to twist. Metal cracked through his arms like broken armor. Steam hissed from vents in his skin.
Roman faced him across the ruined street, shoulders square, fingers twitching with electricity.
He hadn't said a word.
He didn't need to.
Dorgu's expression twisted into something almost like amusement.
"Look at them," he rasped, motioning toward the blinking red lights on phone cameras. "They think you're a hero."
Roman didn't respond.
But the voltage in the air began to rise.
Dorgu moved first.
His leg crashed into the pavement as he lunged low, fists raised. Roman dodged sideways, barely missing a wide swing that sheared the side mirror off a nearby car.
Roman responded with a sharp burst of electricity—short, controlled, aimed at the soft joint in Dorgu's shoulder. It struck, and Dorgu jerked, the current crawling into his nervous system before he could ground it.
But it wasn't enough.
Dorgu slammed his elbow into the ground mid-roll, cracking the asphalt. Emotion surged around them—panic, awe, adrenaline—and he fed off it like fire to dry wood.
Roman pushed back.
He stepped forward, faster than human eyes could track, and drove his fist into Dorgu's ribs. Sparks flew.
To the bystanders, it looked like the hero had just landed a righteous blow.
To Roman—it felt like punching steel.
But the electricity bit deeper than his knuckles. He felt it surge, carving paths through Dorgu's corrupted armor. The defective copy was resisting the current now, but its structure was failing.
Cracks formed along Dorgu's left arm. Thin fractures that pulsed faintly.
Roman exhaled.
He pressed forward.
Flash and Spectacle
Dorgu retaliated with a roar and grabbed the front of a delivery truck parked nearby. With an inhuman heave, he hurled it.
Gasps rose from rooftops.
Roman caught it with one hand.
A pulse of silent sorrow from a rooftop couple watching, hearts heavy with dread, made his limbs light. For a blink, he became weightless—his bones hollow, his motion frictionless.
He redirected the truck mid-air.
It landed beside Dorgu in an explosion of sparks and twisted metal.
Roman landed silently afterward.
Someone below whispered, "Did he just… catch that?"
The recording cameras didn't blink.
Dorgu Shifts Again
But Dorgu didn't retreat.
He dropped to one knee, clawed fingers digging into the asphalt. His body shivered.
A surge of raw fear from nearby spectators hit him—and it showed.
His eyes flashed white, lips peeled back into a half-snarl, half-smile.
He was evolving.
Still broken, still incomplete—but adapting.
Roman realized it then.
If he didn't end this soon, Dorgu would stabilize. And if that happened, it wouldn't be a fight anymore.
It would be slaughter.
Roman's hands glowed faintly blue, electricity rising in spirals.
His body buzzed with stolen fragments of power.
The people behind him believed he could win.
But they didn't know.
They didn't feel the weight in his chest.
The pressure in his spine.
The soul beneath his skin—shifting again.
The storm had calmed—but Roman hadn't.
Every breath came with resistance now.
Not just from the pain blooming in his ribs or the blood soaking into the sleeve of his jacket, but from something deeper—something inside him pulling.
The electricity no longer surged like a gift.
It rattled like a cage.
Across from him, Dorgu straightened.
The fractures in his armor had fused again, more jagged now, but holding. He rolled his shoulders with slow control, no longer grinning—just watching.
Roman shifted his stance, forcing himself not to limp.
But Dorgu saw it.
Of course he did.
He took a single step forward—and paused.
A faint twitch crossed his brow.
He tilted his head, listening.
Not with ears.
With something else.
Inside his body, Dorgu's power didn't stop analyzing, and then at some point it told him that he is at his limit of using this power if he use this power any longer he will really turn into mindless monster controlled by chaotic emotions.
He looked at Roman, he knew that Roman should be facing the same problem as him.
Then he spoke—not to taunt, not to gloat—but softly, almost like a scientist reporting a result.
"You're on the edge."
Roman didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Dorgu continued, voice low enough only Roman could hear.
"If you stay in this state much longer... you won't come back."
Roman's jaw tightened.
Dorgu's eyes flicked once to the crowd behind the barricades—cops, drones, civilians, media.
Then back to Roman.
"You're not like them. Not even like me."
He exhaled.
Then turned.
And ran.
Roman's body moved before he could think.
He chased.
His boots struck concrete, thundered over rooftops, pounded through alleyways slick with rain and oil. Every movement cost him. Every breath cut deeper.
But he couldn't stop.
He had to stop Dorgu. Not for the crowd. Not for Misha.
For himself.
Because something inside was shifting again.
The emotional field of the city—the fear, the awe, the violence—it had fed his Soul Mutation too long, too much. He could feel it now, climbing his spine like claws.
His fingertips sparked wildly, uncontrolled. His limbs didn't feel like his anymore—they responded too fast, too sharp, like someone else was driving.
His vision blurred.
The buildings ahead warped. Not with distance.
With panic.
Dorgu led him out of the market, away from the harbor, down through crumbling districts where no one watched.
No lights. No emotions. No one to feed from.
Just the sound of running feet.
And Roman—
He stumbled.
Collapsed to one knee.
His chest heaved.
The glow in his hands sputtered.
His body screamed to keep going.
But his soul begged him to stop.
And finally—
He did.
He knelt alone in a dead alleyway, rain falling in soft rhythm around him. Sparks fizzled on the wet asphalt and went out.
Dorgu was gone.
And Roman didn't chase.
He sat back against the wall, blood smearing down his arm, breath shaking.
For a moment, he thought he would black out.
But the mutation... quieted.
Slowly.
Unwillingly.
The emotions faded without fuel.
And with them—the risk.
He hadn't transformed.
Not fully.
But he knew—next time, he might not get that choice.
A sound behind him—footsteps.
He didn't look.
He knew who it was.
Misha sat beside him in silence.
They didn't speak.
Not for a long time.
Because there was nothing to say—
Not yet.
Because they both knew:
Next time, Dorgu wouldn't run.
And if Roman wasn't ready…
He wouldn't walk away.
By sunrise, the footage had gone viral.
Every angle.
Every spark.
Every moment Roman had chased Dorgu through the streets, fists blazing with lightning, had been caught on at least a dozen phones, drones, and CCTV nodes.
And in every clip—
He looked like the hero.
A headline flashed across global feeds:
> "Mystery Lightning Hero Saves Market from Rampaging Monster."
Tasik Harbor—August 3rd
Another scroll:
> "Who is the Lightning Man?"
Othernesia Internal Security Bureau – 7:42 AM
A wall of screens showed slowed footage of Roman slamming into Dorgu, redirecting a truck mid-air, crackling with blue current under the night sky.
A woman in a slate-gray blazer stood behind the operations table. Her fingers tapped once on the screen.
"Shut it down," she said. "All of it."
"Already trying," her analyst muttered. "But it's everywhere. Social media, foreign archives, mirrored sites. We're losing the narrative by the hour."
"Fake a chemical accident," she said. "Blame the chaos on cartel warfare. Make it look like something local."
The door opened behind her.
A junior official ran in—phone still pressed to his ear.
"Ma'am. We just got a call."
She turned. "From who?"
He hesitated.
Then said, flatly:
"Armenia."
The room fell quiet.
The man lowered the phone.
"They said to not cover this up."
The official in gray didn't blink. She sat down slowly.
So that was it.
Armenia didn't just want the incident public.
They wanted Roman's face to be burned into every screen.
Somewhere Else — In the Shadows
Misha watched a news reel from a cracked monitor inside a warehouse.
Roman sat beside her, arms crossed over bruised ribs, hoodie pulled low.
"…heroic figure unknown, but witnesses say his actions saved dozens of lives…"
Roman turned away.
"I didn't save them," he muttered. "I almost killed everyone."
"You didn't," Misha replied.
"But I could have."
She didn't deny it.
Didn't reassure him.
She just turned off the screen.
"We need to move."