The footage spread faster than a virus.
By dawn, it had saturated every screen in Othernesia—from flickering phones in night markets to ultrawide terminals in corporate towers. Over and over, the same loop played:
A man, leaping through smoke and rain.
A jagged bolt of lightning tearing open the sky behind him.
Another figure—a monster—crashing through cars and roaring with inhuman fury.
Screams. Sparks. Silence.
The Lightning Hero.
That's what they called him.
#LightningMan
#HarborHero
#BlueFlameGod
Memes. Sketches. Fan edits.
Conspiracy threads, spiritual prophecies, military speculation.
His silhouette re-drawn with wings made of lightning.
Children in alleyways mimicking his stance, sparks chalked on walls.
Roman Ravenscroft had become something more than a man.
He had become myth.
And myths—once born—belong to everyone.
In a damp safehouse beneath an abandoned arcade, Roman sat with his back against the wall, dim phone in hand. His face stared back from dozens of thumbnails—each one slightly off.
The eyes too bright.
The jaw too square.
The posture always heroic.
In one edit, he had glowing veins.
Roman swiped through them, slow. Each post felt like a stranger narrating his soul.
❝He's not a mutant. That's engineered. Military-grade discharge.❞
❝CGI. The lightning struck before he moved. Staged.❞
❝He called the lightning. Like a god.❞
❝My cousin saw it. He saved people. He's real.❞
❝That monster paused. Like it knew him. What if this was all a test?❞
Misha had warned him not to read the forums.
He didn't listen.
And now, every version of himself screamed louder than the one inside.
He remembered the moment clearly—electricity burning through his skin, a truck flying at him, the crowd screaming. But the memory felt distant now. Like something someone else had survived. Someone cleaner. Braver.
Someone he wasn't.
On state-run TV, polished anchors read from smooth prompters.
"Authorities have confirmed that the events in Tasik Harbor were caused by an unsanctioned skirmish between a rogue bioweapon and an unidentified vigilante. The origin of both is under investigation. Eight civilian casualties have been reported."
They didn't use the word mutant.
They didn't say hero.
They called him a phenomenon.
An instability.
He shut the screen off. Not in anger—just in quiet defeat. Even lies deserved silence sometimes.
At night, the thoughts hit harder.
He thought of the woman in the market—trapped beneath a crushed food cart.
He'd seen her.
He'd heard her cry.
But he hadn't saved her.
Did anyone even remember her?
Was she real?
Or had the myth already erased her?
The mask wasn't just external anymore. It was happening inside him—rewriting what he believed about himself.
He found it waiting for him the next morning—wrapped in sterile white cloth.
A face.
At least, that's what it looked like. A full human face. Skin-toned. Textured. Eyelids. Pores. Even imperfections: a faint scar along the jawline, freckles under one eye.
He flinched, pulse jumping.
"What the hell is this?" he asked.
"A mask," Misha said, calm as always, as if she were offering him a coat.
He held it up, the synthetic flesh almost breathing in his hands. It was too real. No street vendor or black-market doc could've made this. It didn't resemble a face—it was one.
"Where did you—" he started, but stopped.
Misha didn't answer. She didn't need to.
Roman hesitated.
Then pressed the mask to his skin.
It sealed to him with a subtle warmth, adjusting, shaping itself to his bone. When he looked into the cracked mirror by the wall—he didn't recognize himself.
Not just disguised.
Erased.
He looked normal. Like someone with a past. A man you might pass in a crowd and forget a second later. A man who might have gone to school, had a job, lived a life.
He touched his cheek.
The mask moved with him. Seamless.
A chill settled deep in his spine.
How many times has Misha worn one of these?
Was that her face?
Had he ever seen her real face?
He didn't ask.
But the question lodged in him like glass.
Behind him, Misha stood silent—but not still. Her face unreadable. Her thoughts burning.
Beneath the Othernesia Internal Security Bureau, a woman in a slate-gray blazer stood before a projection of the viral footage.
"Drown the truth," she ordered.
"Flood the forums. Fabricate classmates. Plant families. Fake school photos. Half-true interviews. Anonymous whistleblowers. We don't erase Roman… we multiply him."
"Make twenty versions. Make it impossible to know which one's real."
And so it was done.
Roman became a soldier.
A clone.
A ghost.
A myth.
A woman.
A god.
A hoax.
A file too corrupted to recover.
No one could agree.
And that was the point.
Back at the Safehouse
That night, Roman stood near the stairwell of the old arcade, where peeling walls met shadows. Someone—a child, probably—had drawn a mural of him on the wall.
Crude. Rough lines. But unmistakable.
The Lightning Man.
Smiling.
Misha joined him.
"That's not me," Roman said.
"No," she replied softly. "It's what they want you to be."
He let out a laugh—dry, bitter.
"Why does that feel worse?"
Misha didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Because both of them already knew:
This wasn't the end of the chase.
It was just the beginning of the performance.
In Armenia — Observation Room 4C
Far beneath a mountain, a former intelligence officer stared at a paused frame: Roman's eyes—right before the mutation burst.
"That's not electricity, he have different power, did he one of those who can have multiple powers or is he someone who dig deep enough into his own power and generate derivative power?" the man muttered.
Another voice behind him: "Should we reactivate a full force retrieval plan?"
The officer shook his head slowly, gaze still fixed on Roman's frozen face.
"Not yet," he said. "We don't even know what he is."
"We can't afford to risk everything without knowing exactly what we stand to gain," he said, his voice low but firm.
"You understand what's at stake," the other replied. "Thanks to our president's antics, most of the world already resents us. If we're seen invading another nation, they won't hesitate to retaliate. They'll come at us in force—and before we even destroy half of them, our alien tech will be gone."
Kael listened in silence as his subordinates argued, their voices a mix of fear and urgency. The reports were worse than expected—Othernesia was already stirring, and Dorgu was loose.
He straightened in his chair. The room fell quiet.
"Submit the request to mobilize the Black Lance Unit," Kael said, his tone leaving no room for doubt. "And make sure the commander himself leads the operation. This goes straight to the president."
His gaze swept over the table, cold and steady.
"We bring Dorgu back," he continued, each word measured like the pull of a trigger.
A heartbeat of silence.
"Dead or alive."
A junior officer, pale under the room's cold lights, dared to speak. "Sir… if the objective is retrieval, why commit the Black Lance unit? Wouldn't containment be—"
Kael's gaze cut across the table, and the officer's voice dried up.
The war room smelled faintly of oil and ozone—a scent that clung to steel, cables, and soldiers who never truly left the battlefield. The walls were covered in shifting maps of Othernesia's coast, satellite feeds blinking in pale blue, and lines of encrypted data scrolling without pause.
At the center stood Commander Sylas Drein.
His posture was too precise, his eyes too clear—like polished glass over a calculating machine. Rumor among the ranks claimed Drein hadn't lost a single operation in twenty years, though the truth was harsher: he simply erased the operations he lost from the record, along with the people involved.
On the table before him was a dossier marked in crimson: DARIUS DORGU.
Around him, a half-circle of Armenia's elite operatives stood at attention. These weren't the regular hunters—these were names whispered even in the underground mutant networks: Saboteurs, infiltrators, power-wielders who operated under no flag but Drein's orders.
"We retrieve him—or we put him down before he forgets who his masters are."
His fingers tapped the dossier once, a quiet punctuation. "And if the Ravenscroft boy is in play… we end him before his file gets any longer."
No one in the room questioned the tone. They all knew the stakes. Dorgu's ability was a weapon Armenia could not afford to lose.
Drein straightened, addressing the operatives with the ease of a man signing a death warrant.
"Your insertion window is twenty-two hours. Othernesia's ports are under surveillance; you'll go in through the flood tunnels. No contact with local authorities, no witnesses. Your primary objective: bring Dorgu home. Alive if possible. If not…" He let the silence finish the sentence.
Back at the hideout.
While Roman adjusted the mask again, marveling at its realism, Misha stood still—her expression serene.
But inside, she was breaking.
Should I use it again?
She already knew the answer.
Every time she used her power—every time she reached into the web of timelines and pulled—Doom followed.
Always.
If she survived one?
Another would rise.
Stronger.
Closer.
Inevitable.
She once thought she could outrun it. Outsmart it.
Now, she only hoped to delay it long enough.
The air crackled faintly.
Roman couldn't feel it.
But she could.
She closed her eyes. Let the pressure of time crush against her chest like water. Like static.
And let the question echo, silent and final:
Was this moment worth another Doom?
Logic said yes—strike first, see further, prepare. A power unused was as good as no power at all. But logic wasn't the only variable.
Her gaze fixed on Roman.
The moment she interfered, the moment she tugged on fate's threads, the scent of a greater predator than Dorgu would find them. And if that happened now, in his current state, he wouldn't survive. Neither of them would.