The first sensation was the smell.
It was a thick, cloying cocktail of ozone, wet concrete, and something else… something metallic and alien. It was nothing like the sterile, smoky air of his old apartment after the blast. Haruki's eyes snapped open.
Above him was not a familiar ceiling, but a sky the color of a fresh bruise, streaked with hues of orange and purple from a setting sun he didn't recognize. He was lying in a crater, surrounded by the skeletal remains of buildings he had never seen. This wasn't his world. But it was a world he knew.
"One-Punch Man…" he whispered, the words tasting like ash and revelation on his tongue. The knowledge was just there, implanted in his mind as surely as the memory of his own death. The gang's bomb had been thorough. This was… what came after.
He pushed himself up, his body protesting with a chorus of aches. It felt the same—lean, muscular, the body of a fighter. But there was a new current running beneath his skin, a thrumming, latent energy that coiled in his core like a sleeping serpent. He flexed a hand, and for a split second, the air around his fingertips shimmered.
A guttural roar echoed from the end of the shattered street. Haruki's head turned, not with fear, but with a slow, predatory interest. Lumbering out of the shadows was a monstrosity—a hulking mass of fused concrete and rebar, with a single, bloodshot eye blinking from its center. A Wolf-level threat. In his old life, this would have been a nightmare. Now, it was… an opportunity.
"It seems the welcome committee is here," he muttered, a faint, sharp smile touching his lips.
The creature charged, its steps shaking the ground. Haruki didn't flinch. He met its charge, his movements fluid and instinctual. He ducked under a sweeping concrete arm, the wind of its passage ruffling his hair. He drove a fist into its side, but it was like punching a wall; the concrete cracked, but the monster barely noticed. It backhanded him, sending him skidding back across the rubble, his shoes scraping for purchase.
He was strong, but not yet strong enough. This body, while trained, was not the perfected instrument he would forge it to be. The energy inside him stirred, restless.
The monster charged again. This time, Haruki didn't try to meet it with brute force. He focused on that inner current, willing it to his hand. He mimicked a motion he'd seen a thousand times in anime—a sharp, dismissive flick of his index finger.
Shink.
A near-invisible ripple shot through the air. It was weak, unfocused, little more than a concentrated gust of wind. But it scored a clean, shallow line across the monster's chest, shearing off a chunk of concrete.
The monster halted, its single eye staring at the fresh wound in confusion.
Haruki stared at his own hand, his red pupils wide with a blazing, unholy joy. A real, genuine laugh escaped him, sharp and loud in the desolate ruins.
"So… this is the gift," he breathed. "This is the palette."
The concrete monster, enraged, roared and lunged for the final time. Haruki's smile didn't fade. It widened. His white sclera seemed to glow in the twilight.
"Let's see if I can't make a masterpiece out of you."
He didn't just fight it. He practiced. Over the next twenty minutes, he tested the limits of his new body and this nascent energy. He used the rubble as an obstacle course, his agility superior to the monster's brute strength. He flicked his fingers again and again, each En slash becoming slightly clearer, slightly sharper, carving deeper grooves into the creature's form. He learned to modulate the output, to control the lethality. It wasn't about killing it quickly; it was about understanding the brushstrokes.
Finally, as the creature stumbled, half its mass whittled away, Haruki grew bored. With a final, decisive flick of his wrist, a cleaner, more potent slash severed the rebar spine that held its core together. The monster crumbled, its single eye dimming, into an inert pile of rubble.
He stood amidst the ruin, his chest heaving not from exhaustion, but from exhilaration. The thrill of the fight, the discovery of power—it was a drug more potent than anything he'd ever known. The memory of his old life, of the title "Haruki," felt like a faded, boring dream.
He looked down at the remains of his opponent, then at his own hands—the instruments of his new purpose.
"Haruki is dead," he announced to the silent, broken city. The words felt right. True. "That boy was a spectator. I… I am the event."
A new name surfaced from the depths of his soul, a perfect reflection of the destructive beauty he now wielded and the philosophy he embodied. He was not a hero. He was a force. He was the end of the boring, the mediocre, the unchallenging.
He was Hakai.
A cold wind blew through the street, cutting through his thin hoodie. The immediate thrill of the fight faded, replaced by the baser demands of survival. He was powerful, but he was also homeless, hungry, and in a world where the sky itself was wrong.
His stomach growled, a starkly human sound in the superhuman silence. The hunt was over. Now began the grind. He pulled the hood of his black jacket over his head, the blue dragon on his back seeming to shift in the twilight, and melted into the shadows of the crumbling city, a phantom born from ruin, already hungry for the next worthy fight.