People gathered behind the yellow tape, whispering.
I spotted a guy around my age wearing casual clothes. He looked like he'd run out of his building the moment an alert pinged his phone. He kept checking his wrist-screen like it might explain what was happening better than his own eyes could.
I moved beside him. "What happened?"
He blinked, startled, then shrugged like we were already friends. "Someone died," he said quietly. "They're saying it was an accident, but…"
"But?"
He leaned closer. "But I heard fighting. Like—real fighting. And the neighbourhood AI system sent out a Level-3 emergency warning. They don't do that for gas leaks."
The way he said real fighting made my stomach tighten. In this city, "real fighting" didn't mean street thugs throwing fists.
It meant powers.
"What did the police say?" I asked.
The boy glanced at the heavily armed officers. "They said… domestic dispute. Then a gas malfunction. They told everyone to go home."
Domestic dispute. Gas malfunction.
A highly convenient story.
I watched the officers' body language—too stiff, too controlled. Even their floating surveillance drones held a rigid perimeter, acting like they were guarding something incredibly dangerous, not cleaning up a civilian accident.
My stomach tightened at a word the boy didn't dare say out loud, but his eyes said it anyway.
Supernatural.
Transcendent.
Everyone knew such people existed. Three hundred years ago, other dimensions had "invaded," and reality cracked open. Monsters and dungeons spilled into the streets. Humanity only survived because certain people awakened powers that defied science.
A hundred years ago, the strongest of those beings built massive Towers around the world to contain the monsters that couldn't be killed. And technically, peace came.
But peace didn't mean we were safe. It just meant society split in two.
Once the world was stabilized, the Transcendents became the ultimate elites. They retreated to the "Inner Rings"—glittering, heavily fortified districts built around the Towers. There, they handled cosmic threats, hoarded resources, and fought their own secret political wars.
The rest of us? We were left in the outer sectors to live mundane, ordinary lives.
In school, they called it "stability." On the news, they called it "control." People like me just called it "not my problem." We didn't have the luxury of getting involved in a world we couldn't reach. I had only ever seen Transcendents on screens. News clips. Broadcast tournaments. Heroes giving flashy speeches after clearing a dungeon.
They were so far above me they might as well have been fictional.
And yet, my eyes wouldn't leave the building's entrance.
That was when the glass doors slid open. Two officers emerged, carrying a heavy black corpse bag.
The crowd murmured.
"Damn…"
"Was it a civilian?"
"It has to be. Have you ever heard of a Transcendent dying in a cheap, normal apartment complex?"
The boy beside me swallowed hard. "If that's really a Transcendent… this will get buried. Like always."
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My heart was doing something strange.
It was beating too fast. Too hard.
It wasn't fear. Not exactly. It felt like… attraction.
Like something inside my chest had latched onto that corpse bag the way a magnet blindly finds iron.
Before I even realized it, my feet moved.
One step. Two.
A police officer stepped forward, blocking me with a thick, gloved hand. "Hey. Back up."
His voice wasn't loud, but it carried the heavy weight of authority—and a very clear threat.
I flinched, stopping in my tracks and forcing my gaze down. "Sorry."
He studied me for a second, as if calculating whether I was going to be a problem, then waved me off. "Curiosity kills, kid. Go home."
I nodded quickly and stepped back into the safety of the crowd.
That should have been the end of it.
But then, the air changed.
The streetlights dimmed—not physically, but in the way the world dims when the blood violently drains from your head. The crowd's whispering voices became muffled, as if I'd been shoved underwater.
For a terrible moment, I couldn't even feel the cold night wind against my skin. It was like the night itself was holding its breath.
And from the corpse bag…
Something rose.
A thin thread of black light—was it smoke? Shadow? Liquid darkness?—slipped out through the zipper seam as it had just been permitted to leave.
It moved with vicious intention.
Straight toward me.
My body locked up. I couldn't scream. I couldn't step away. I couldn't even blink.
The black light pierced my chest without an ounce of pain, sliding into me as easily as a stone dropping into a pond.
Then, it rushed down my arm.
Heat flared violently across the back of my right hand—an itch that instantly turned sharp, like hot needles digging under my skin. I jerked my hand up to my chest, breathing hard.
A mark had appeared.
It was pitch-black. Clean-edged. Not a bruise. Not dirt.
A symbol.
Suddenly, the world's sound returned all at once—the murmuring crowd, the wailing sirens, the distant hum of hover-cars overhead.
I looked around frantically. No one reacted. No one stared at me. It was as if absolutely nothing had happened.
But I knew.
My throat went bone-dry.
"Is this…" I whispered to myself, staring at my hand. "Some kind of curse?"
And in the glass of the building's entrance, I saw my reflection again.
This time, the young man staring back finally looked like someone the world had noticed.