The city of Neohaven breathed with a sterile, pulsating rhythm—a symphony of hover-vehicle hums and the soft, omnipresent glow of prismatic advertisements that painted the soaring towers in shifting hues. The air smelled of ozone and polished chrome. Beneath the grand, arching walkways of the Celestial Promenade, K. moved like a shadow against the light.
His hood was drawn up, the fabric of his grey synth-jacket worn soft at the edges. A black cap pulled low shielded his eyes, which darted from the pristine ground to the faces of the passing crowd. He weaved through the throngs of impeccably dressed citizens with quick, practiced steps, his shoulders hunched, making himself small, insignificant—a pebble in a stream of glittering water. His heart thumped a frantic, anxious rhythm against his ribs, a drumbeat of paranoia he couldn't quiet. Just get to the sector gate, he thought, just blend in and—
A sound tore through the city's harmonic drone.
It was not a siren, but a deep, resonant BOOM that seemed to vibrate from the sky itself, a chord of pure force that silenced the hover-traffic and froze the crowds mid-stride. Windows in the towering spires shimmered in sympathy. Every head, including K.'s, snapped upward.
There, suspended against the canvas of the twilight sky, was a figure.
He was a portrait of impossible, terrifying beauty. He hovered with an effortless grace, borne aloft by wings that were not flesh and feather, but crystallized energy. They pulsed with a deep, blood-red light, each facet catching the city's glow and refracting it into crimson daggers. Behind him, a perfect ring of the same radiant ruby energy hovered like a halo, or a targeting reticle. And at the center of his chest, embedded in a form-fitting suit of dark, matte material that seemed to drink the light, a star-shaped core shone with the fierce, unwavering fire of a perfect gemstone.
A collective gasp swept the Promenade. A woman dropped her datapad. A child pointed, his small voice lost in the awe-struck silence. They were witnessing a Star Glitcher—a being of myth and military-grade power, a living weapon usually seen only in government broadcasts from the frontier wars. Their kind were sovereign, untouchable, demigods walking among mortals.
Then the Glitcher spoke. His voice was not amplified, yet it carried to every ear, low, cold, and precise, each syllable dripping with a disdain that made the air feel frigid.
"You, lowly insect… die."
His head tilted slightly, those unseen eyes pinpointing K. in the crowd with chilling accuracy. Before K.'s brain could even process the words, the Glitcher raised a gauntleted hand, his index finger extending in a casual, gun-like gesture.
There was no charging hum, no gathering light—just a silent, instantaneous release.
A beam of concentrated crimson energy, thinner than a needle and hotter than a sun's core, lanced down. It pierced the space where K. stood with a sound like tearing silk. K. felt a white-hot brand sear through the meat of his left shoulder, a precise, clean hole bored straight through. The impact didn't push him; it punched him, spinning him sideways. He crashed into a public info-terminal, a cry of shock and pain ripped from his throat as he clutched the smoldering wound. The smell of his own scorched flesh filled his nostrils.
From above, a sigh, tinged with boredom. "Haa… I missed your puny heart. How… lucky for you."
The cold, evil tone wasn't just heard; it was felt. It slithered down spines, freezing the terror-stricken crowd in place. They were statues in a gallery of horror.
Gritting his teeth against the nauseating pain, K. pushed himself up, his back against the cracked terminal screen. Fury, bright and desperate, boiled over the fear. "Motherfucker!!" he roared, his voice raw. "What the fuck's wrong with you?! What did I do to you that you're trying to kill me in the middle of the fucking street?!"
The Glitcher didn't even glance at the cowering citizens. His focus was entirely, dismissively, on K. "Stop shouting. Just accept your pathetic fate and die already."
Another finger twitched. Another silent, searing lance. This one tore through K.'s right forearm as he tried to raise it in a futile block. He screamed, staggering, his vision swimming with black spots. "Fuckkk! You fucker!"
Desperation clawed at his mind. He was a mouse in an open field with a hawk circling. He had nothing—no weapon, no armor, no hidden power. All he had was his voice and a desperate, cunning anger. He glared up at the floating deity, a plan forming from sheer, survivalist madness.
"Come down here, you dipshit!" K. spat blood onto the clean pavement. "How is this at all fair?! Just hovering up there, shooting fish in a barrel!"
The Glitcher's expression remained impassive. "It isn't. You are a parasite. And parasites are exterminated. That is how it should be."
"Haha!" K.'s laugh was a broken, pained thing. "You're just scared! You're fucking pathetic without your little beams, aren't you! Too high and mighty to get your hands dirty with actual insect guts?!"
For a moment, there was only the hum of the city's paralyzed systems. Then, a slight, almost imperceptible shift in the Glitcher's posture. A flicker of something—not anger, but mild, intellectual offense. The crimson wings folded inward with a chime of crystalline notes, dissolving into motes of light that were absorbed back into the ring behind him. He descended, his boots meeting the immaculate street with a soft click. He stood perhaps twenty feet from K., an island of terrible power in a sea of frozen bystanders.
He was taller up close, his frame lean and athletic under the dark suit. The ruby star on his chest pulsed with a slow, rhythmic light. His face, now visible, was sharp, handsome, and utterly devoid of warmth. His eyes were like chips of polished obsidian.
"Alright," the Glitcher said, his voice a dry murmur. "You got what you wanted. A closer audience for your demise. Now what?"
Now this! K. thought, and with a guttural cry, he charged. All his weight, all his pain, all his rage went into a wild, swinging left hook aimed at that impassive, perfect face.
It was like hitting a mountain.
The Glitcher's hand snapped up and caught K.'s fist effortlessly. There was no strain, no shift in his stance. He looked at K.'s trapped hand with detached curiosity, then gave a slight, almost gentle squeeze.
The sound was a sickening, wet CRACK-CRUNCH. Bones in K.'s wrist and forearm splintered and gave way. K.'s scream this time was a high, breathless shriek of pure, unadulterated agony. He dropped to his knees, cradling the mangled limb.
"Was that really your plan?" the Glitcher asked, releasing the ruined hand. He sounded genuinely, academically curious. "To fight me? My strength is godly compared to your human limits. Your biology is soft tissue and brittle calcium. Mine is reinforced by stellar fusion."
He raised his palm again, not with a finger-gun, but open-faced. A sphere of swirling, violent red energy coalesced above it, growing from marble-size to softball-size in a heartbeat. It cast hellish shadows on his cold features. The heat from it washed over K., drying the sweat and tears on his face.
"Any last words… insect?"
"I'm…" K. gasped, shuddering, looking up through a haze of pain. His breath hitched. "I'm not dying!"
With a final, desperate surge of adrenaline, he lurched forward from his knees, not to punch, but to tackle, aiming his good shoulder at the Glitcher's midsection.
The result was absurd. It was like a toddler throwing itself at a steel pillar. K. rebounded and fell hard on his back, the air blasted from his lungs. The Glitcher hadn't moved a micrometer.
"The fuck?!" K. wheezed, staring up in bewildered despair. "Why are you rock solid?!"
"I told you." The Glitcher's patience seemed to be wearing thin. He took a single step forward, leaned down, and wrapped his hand around K.'s throat. He lifted him off the ground with one arm, holding him aloft as easily as a man holds a ragdoll. K.'s feet kicked uselessly in the air. "My strength is—"
He didn't finish. With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, he threw K. K. sailed through the air for a dozen yards before crashing onto his back and skidding painfully across the pavement, coming to a stop in a heap near a decorative fountain.
"Ahhhh!" The groan was ripped from him, a symphony of broken parts.
The Glitcher didn't follow. He simply raised his hand again, palm open. The red energy sphere glowed brighter, fiercer. "A cleaner end. Consider it a mercy."
The beam that shot forth was thicker than the others, a solid pillar of annihilation. It struck K. square in the center of his chest. There was no dramatic explosion, just a terrible, quiet thump and a sizzle. A perfectly circular, cauterized hole, the size of a fist, was punched clean through his torso. Through fabric, flesh, ribcage, and the vital organ beating within.
K. convulsed once, then lay still. His eyes, wide and staring, glazed over. The frantic rise and fall of his chest ceased.
Silence.
The Glitcher—Ruby—lowered his hand. The red ring behind him dimmed. "My job's done here." He turned, his boots echoing softly on the pavement as he began to walk away, dismissing the scene, the corpse, the horrified onlookers.
Crunch.
The sound of gravel under a shifting heel.
Ruby stopped.
A wet, rasping, impossibly deep inhalation came from behind him.
"Fucker!!"
The voice was a bloody, bubbling gasp, but it held a terrifying, unwavering core of defiance.
"Where the fuck are you going?! I said… I ain't dying!"
Ruby turned, his brow furrowed for the first time. His obsidian eyes widened a fraction.
K. was pushing himself up onto his elbows. His face was pale as death, beaded with cold sweat. He was trembling violently, every movement clearly agony. But through the clean, horrific hole in his chest, Ruby could see the fractured pavement of the Promenade… and, where the young man's heart should have been, something else entirely.
A shape.
It was small, no larger than a coin, and buried deep within the ravaged tissue. It was a perfect, five-pointed star, glowing with a weak, guttering, but unmistakable yellow light. It pulsed once, twice, like a struggling ember fighting to become a flame.
Ruby's analytical mind, a database of millennia of Glitcher lore and biological constants, screeched to a halt. His eyes locked onto that tiny, defiant star. His lips parted slightly.
"That's…" he murmured, the cold certainty draining from his voice, replaced by pure, unadulterated shock. "Impossible. The catalyst… it's awakened? But the maturation cycle… it's decades premature. Centuries, even." He took an involuntary step closer, his head tilting as if examining a cosmic anomaly. "This… this has never happened. Not in all recorded aeons. The star ignites before the host's death? It's… it's supposed to rise from the ashes, not fight them."
He was talking to himself, the protocol of execution forgotten, replaced by a scholar's bewildered fascination. The yellow light pulsed again, stronger.
K., sensing the shift, used the moment. With a groan that was more rage than pain, he shoved himself fully upright, swaying like a gutted building in an earthquake. "I… I said…" he whispered, each word a battle.
Ruby snapped out of his reverie, but the cold executioner was gone. In his place was a being confronted with a fundamental rewriting of the rules. "This changes nothing," Ruby said, but the menace was undercut by a thread of uncertainty. "A premature ignition is a fragile thing. It will sputter and die inside you. Let me grant it a merciful end."
He swung his arm down in a sharp arc. From his wrist to his fingertips, reality seemed to crystallize and extend. A blade of pure, solid ruby energy formed, six feet long, with a razor edge that hummed with a deadly frequency. A longsword of living gemstone.
K. stood there, swaying, each wet, ragged breath a torture. He stared at the beautiful, terrible weapon, and then at Ruby's face, seeing the crack in the god's facade.
"I… I said…" he whispered, blood flecking his lips.
Ruby moved. It wasn't a blur; it was a deletion of the space between them. One moment he was twenty feet away, the next he was before K., the crystal sword held in a two-handed grip, already thrust forward.
The blade entered K.'s abdomen just below the sternum and exited through his lower back with a soft, piercing sound. Ruby held it there for a second, watching K.'s face, then smoothly withdrew it. The edges were clean, unbloodied—the heat had cauterized instantly.
K. looked down at the new, fatal wound. His legs buckled. He fell forward, hitting the ground with a heavy finality, lying motionless on his side.
Ruby dismissed the sword; it shattered into a thousand red sparks that vanished before they hit the ground. He didn't turn away this time. He stood, waiting, watching the body with an intensity that bordered on dread. The rules of his universe had been bent. He needed to see if they would break.
Five seconds. Ten.
Then, a thump. A weak fist hit the pavement.
A sound escaped Ruby's lips—not a word, but a soft, disbelieving exhale. He watched, rooted to the spot, as the body shuddered.
K. was trying to push himself up. His movements were grotesque, puppet-like. But the yellow light in his chest cavity was no longer struggling. It was blooming. It grew from a coin to a fist, its light no longer guttering but shining steadily, fiercely, casting a buttery glow on the torn edges of his jacket and skin. The two horrific wounds—in his chest and abdomen—began to knit from the inside out with threads of crackling, golden energy.
"I said…" K.'s voice was no longer a whisper, but a crackling, resonant thing. It vibrated with a new, terrible power. It was the sound of a dam breaking, of a star being born in a mortal cage. "I'M NOT DYING!!"
ZZZRRRAAAAKKK-KOOOM!
A blinding, catastrophic eruption of golden lightning exploded outward from K.'s body. It wasn't a beam, but a sphere—a nova of raw, voltaic power that tore up the pavement in a circle around him, shattered the nearby fountain, and forced Ruby to throw up a forearm, a hexagonal shield of red crystal flashing into existence to deflect the screaming energy. The shockwave blew out windows for a block, and the frozen crowd finally broke, screaming and scrambling back in a panicked stampede.
The light died as suddenly as it came, leaving the air smelling of ozone, scorched stone, and something new… something like the air after a thunderstorm, crisp and alive.
Where K. had fallen, a figure now stood upright.
It was K., but transformed. His eyes blazed with pure, electrifying yellow light, no pupil or sclera visible—just twin suns of contained fury. His hair, once a mundane brown, was now a deep, void-like black that seemed to shift and move with a static charge, strands lifting as if underwater. Arcs of yellow lightning skittered across his skin, danced along his fingertips, and snapped between strands of his hair in a chaotic, beautiful corona. And in the center of his chest, where the hole had been, was now a perfect, five-pointed star of solid, pulsating golden light. It shone through his ruined clothing, its light rhythmic and powerful, a counterpoint to the ruby star on Ruby's own chest.
He stretched his arms, rolling his newly healed shoulder. He flexed the hand that had been crushed. Bones crackled back into place, glowing from within with yellow fire. He looked at his hands, then at Ruby, and a wide, unhinged grin split his face. It was the grin of a prisoner tasting free air for the first time.
"Haaaa…." K.'s sigh was a sound of pure, ecstatic relief, layered with a buzzing, electric echo. "Man, I feel… fucking AMAZING! Haha~!"
His voice was exhilarated, intoxicated, terrifying. It was the voice of a power that should have taken a lifetime to master, awakening in a single, violent instant.
Ruby lowered his shield slowly. All traces of boredom, curiosity, even scholarly fascination were gone. They were replaced by something raw and primal: utter, profound bewilderment. His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly agape. He looked less like a demigod and more like a man who had just seen gravity repeal itself.
"This… this is not possible," Ruby breathed, the words barely audible. "The Ignition… it follows the Death. The host perishes, the core cools, and then the Star rises from the stillness. That is the law. That is the only way it has ever been, for millennia beyond count." He took a step back, not in fear, but in sheer cognitive dissonance. "You… you stood up. You spoke. You refused the death. The Star awakened with you. Inside a living host. What… what are you?"
Before Ruby could process the heresy he was witnessing, the air between them cracked.
K. was simply there, inches away. Ruby hadn't seen him move. There was only the smell of ozone and a afterimage of light. K.'s palm, wreathed in dancing, snapping lightning, slapped against Ruby's face.
The world upended.
With a deafening CRASH that echoed through the canyon of towers, Ruby's head was driven into the pavement, cratering the reinforced street for yards around. Dust and debris billowed up in a cloud.
K. stood over the crater, tilting his head, his grin manic. "Hehe~ Man, you're slow…~"
From the dust, a red pulse flared like an angry star. The debris was blasted away in a ring. Ruby rose from the crater, straightening his neck with an audible pop. A hairline fracture on his temple sealed itself in a blink, the ruby light beneath his skin flaring momentarily. His pristine suit was dusted with grey, but he was otherwise unharmed. His expression, however, had undergone its final transformation. The bewilderment was burned away, not by anger, but by a blazing, insatiable hunger. This was no longer a cleanup job. This was a discovery. This was a challenge.
"Fascinating is too small a word," Ruby said, his voice now alive with a thrilling, almost giddy intensity. He brushed absently at his suit, his obsidian eyes locked on the lightning-wreathed star before him. "You have rewritten a fundamental axiom of our existence in five minutes. What is your limit? What is your nature?"
He raised both hands to his sides. The air around him shimmered and screamed. Dozens—then hundreds—of razor-sharp, crystalline blades of solid ruby energy materialized, floating in a deadly, rotating constellation around him, each one humming with enough power to level a building. The red ring on his back flared like a miniature supernova, painting the ruins in hellish shades.
"Let's see," Ruby said, his own grin mirroring K.'s in its ferocity—a god welcoming a new player to the board. "Star to nascent Star… show me what a miracle can do."
He flicked his wrists forward.
The storm of ruby blades shot forth, a horizontal hailstorm of deadly precision, screaming through the air with enough collective force to scour the city block to its foundations.
K. didn't dodge. He didn't raise a shield. He simply stood there, his head slightly cocked, that mad grin still plastered on his face. As the first wave of blades came within inches, his blazing yellow eyes just… flicked toward them.
A web of golden lightning erupted not from his hands, but from the very air around him, a spontaneous, defensive lattice of pure energy that intersected the ruby storm. Where the yellow light touched the red crystal, the blades didn't deflect or melt—they shattered, exploding into harmless showers of crimson glitter that vaporized before they hit the ground. The sound was a continuous, high-pitched symphony of breaking glass. In less than two seconds, the deadly constellation was gone, leaving only fading sparks and the smell of burnt sugar and ozone.
K. let the resonant silence hang for a beat. The lightning around him crackled eagerly, responding to his will. He took a step forward on the molten ground.
"Is that it?" he asked, his electric voice dripping with excited, taunting disappointment. "Come on, Star of Ruby. I just got here. Show me more."
Then he vanished.
Not in a blur of speed, but in a flash of light and a thunderclap that shook the foundations of the nearest towers. He reappeared behind Ruby, then to his left, then above him, then back in front—a zig-zagging afterimage of yellow lightning stitching a cage of light and sound around the Glitcher, the thunder of his passage a continuous, rolling boom that drowned out the distant sirens.
Ruby's head turned, his eyes struggling to track the phenomenon, not with frustration, but with exhilaration. His smile was now one of pure, unadulterated joy. In the heart of the lightning cage, K.'s laughter echoed, wild and free and utterly, profoundly new—the first laugh of a newborn star.
The lightning cage tightened. It was no longer a cage, but a maelstrom—a thousand threads of golden fury seeking entry. Ruby stood in the eye, a bastion of red crystal.
"Enough of this light show," Ruby snarled, his voice cutting through the thunder. He clapped his hands together.
CRACK-BOOM!
The ring behind him shattered. Not into pieces, but into a million screaming shards of crimson light. Each shard morphed mid-air, not into blades this time, but into roaring, bestial shapes—wolves of living ruby with molten fangs, hawks with wings of crystallized flame, serpents of coiled, cutting energy. A menagerie of annihilation, each construct howling with its own elemental fury. The heat alone scorched the glassed ground black.
"Burn," Ruby commanded.
The ruby beasts surged forward. A wolf of flame pounced, maw wide. K. didn't move. He just laughed—a wild, electric cackle—and threw a haymaker of pure lightning. The bolt wasn't a precise spear; it was a clumsy, sizzling club of energy that smashed the wolf into a shower of bouncing, cooling rubies.
A hawk dive-bombed. K. pointed two fingers like a kid playing with a toy gun. "Pew! Pew!" Two fat, jagged bolts of yellow zig-zagged out, missing the hawk completely but creating a crackling net it flew into and vaporized.
He was a brawler. A street fighter given the power of a thunderstorm. He didn't counter with elegance; he overwhelmed with pure, joyful, chaotic output. He stomped, and a wave of lightning rolled out like a tidal wave, bowling over a line of crystalline jackals. He spun, arms outstretched, and became a whirling dervish of indiscriminate arcs that shredded everything in a twenty-foot radius.
"This is awesome!" he roared, grabbing a serpent of ruby that tried to constrict him. He wrestled with it for a second, lightning frying its form, before he ripped it in two and tossed the pieces aside. "Your magic pets suck!"
Ruby watched, his initial exhilaration curdling into cold, seething frustration. This wasn't combat. This was vandalism. This was a child smashing a priceless vase with a hammer. The precision, the artistry of a Glitcher's power was being met with raw, screaming voltage. And it was working. The logic of superior technique was crumbling under sheer, dumb force. Every time K. lashed out, it wasn't a calculated strike; it was a tantrum of power that happened to be strong enough to break Ruby's creations.
He's not fighting my constructs, Ruby's mind raced, a frantic counterpoint to the chaos. He's just throwing more energy at them than they're built to handle. It's not skill. It's… gluttony.
The anger twisted tighter in Ruby's gut. It was the rage of a grandmaster checkmated by a novice who kept knocking over the board.
"Silence, you gnat!" Ruby bellowed, his cool composure fracturing. He raised his arms, crossed them in an 'X' over his chest, and then flung them wide.
The remaining beasts dissolved, their energy rushing back into him. The air grew heavy, thick with gathering power. Ruby's eyes glowed like heated coals. He raised his arms skyward, palms open, as if offering something to the heavens.
Between his hands, a tiny, perfect sphere of condensed crimson light appeared. It was no bigger than a marble, humming with a deep, ominous pitch. Then, with a gesture, he sent it floating upward, high above the battlefield.
It hung there for a moment, a red pinprick against the darkening sky.
Then it began to grow.
It swelled, not slowly, but with a terrifying, silent voracity. In seconds, it was the size of a hovercar. Then a house. It stabilized, hovering like a small, artificial moon—a perfect, polished sphere of solid ruby energy the size of a small home. It cast a deep, bloody shadow over the entire ruined promenade, its surface flawless, reflecting the devastation below and the faint, horrified lights of the city beyond. The hum was now a subsonic thrum that vibrated in the teeth and bones.
"No more games," Ruby said, his voice strained with the effort of containing the sphere's colossal mass. He held his palm up towards it, tendons standing out in his neck. "You want force? I will show you the force of a collapsing star. CRIMSON ANNIHILATION."
He brought his palm down in a sharp, cutting motion.
The colossal ruby sphere dropped.
It didn't fall; it descended with the grim, unhurried certainty of an asteroid. It warped the air beneath it, creating a visible lens of distortion. There was no escaping its area of effect. It was pure, concentrated mass-energy, designed to erase everything beneath it from the atomic level up.
K.'s manic grin finally vanished, replaced by a fierce, animal snarl. This wasn't a construct to outmaneuver or smash apart. This was a fucking meteor.
"Okay," he breathed, lightning snapping wildly around him. "Big ball. I can do big."
Instead of fear, a wild, competitive fire lit in his electric eyes. He planted his feet wide, crouched low like a sprinter, and slammed both fists into the ravaged ground.
"COME ON!" he screamed at the star in his chest, at the storm in his veins.
He wasn't trying to be precise. He was trying to vomit power.
The golden star on his chest blazed like a supernova. From his back, from his shoulders, a torrent of lightning erupted—not in bolts, but in a chaotic, surging flood. It didn't form a careful shape. It was a turbulent, living river of energy that roared upward, twisting and convulsing on itself. Within the churning current, a form began to coalesce through sheer, brute-force will.
A massive, bestial head with jaws of crackling plasma. A long, serpentine body of interwoven lightning. Claws like forks of solid thunder. It was crude, savage, and breathtakingly powerful—a Lightning Dragon sculpted not by an artist, but by the fury of the storm itself. It was just as massive as the ruby sphere, a roaring leviathan of pure voltage rising to meet the descending doom.
"DRAGON!" K. roared, the word lost in the thunder of its creation.
The dragon didn't wait for a command. It coiled and then launched itself upward, not with grace, but with the unstoppable momentum of a tidal wave. It opened its maw, not to bite, but to consume.
Sphere and dragon met in the middle of the sky.
There was no dramatic collision sound. There was a moment of profound, silent pressure—a distortion in reality itself.
Then, light.
An expanding sphere of blinding white energy swallowed the point of impact, bleaching the world of color. A fraction of a second later, the sound arrived—not a boom, but a deep, wrenching KRRRRAAAAA-BOOOOOOOOOM that was less a noise and more a physical force. It was the sound of two titanic, opposing powers annihilating each other.
The shockwave was a visible ring of shattered air and plasma that ripped outward. Every remaining structure for blocks around was flattened, sheared off at the base. The ground was scoured clean, the glass and rubble turned to fine, smoking dust.
The ruby sphere shattered. Not into pieces, but into a billion dissolving motes of red light that were instantly erased in the golden inferno.
The Lightning Dragon detonated. Its form unraveled in a catastrophic discharge that lit up the Neohaven skyline like a second sun for a terrifying second.
The backlash was absolute.
Ruby, his connection to the sphere violently severed, was blasted from his feet. He was a ragdoll in a hurricane, tumbling end over end across the scorched earth before slamming into the slagged-out remains of a transit hub. His beautiful suit was in tatters, blood—that strange, shimmering crimson—streamed from his nose and ears. A deep, angry burn marred his chest where his own ruby star flickered weakly. He didn't move. He lay sprawled, unconscious, the embodiment of celestial order brought low by chaotic, unprecedented might.
K. was thrown backward, skidding on his back through the hot ash. The glorious golden star on his chest was a dull, flickering ember. The lightning was gone. The electric light in his eyes guttered and died, leaving his normal, dazed brown eyes blinking up at the smoke-choked sky. Every inch of him screamed in agony—the ghost pain of his mortal wounds, the bone-deep exhaustion of a power he was never meant to wield.
He tried to push himself up on his elbows, but his arms buckled. A wet, hacking cough wracked his body, and he spat a mouthful of dark, coppery blood onto the grey ash.
He saw Ruby's motionless form in the distance. A weak, wobbly grin touched his bloody lips. "Hah… told you…" he whispered to the uncaring air. "Not… dying…"
The grin faded. The world swam, the edges of his vision tunneling into black. The last of his stolen strength fled.
His head lolled to the side, and darkness claimed him. He lay unconscious, a broken vessel beside the fallen god, in the epicenter of the silence they had created. The sirens were getting closer, but for now, there was only the settling dust, the crackle of dying fires, and the faint, irregular pulse of a yellow star that refused to go out, beating like a stubborn heart in the chest of a ruined boy.