The alley was dark and cramped, with no more than a few dim lights casting pale circles on the wet ground. Old pipes ran along the walls, dripping a substance that smelled like rust and decay. The air was thick and heavy, the kind of silence that pressed against your ears.
Zoe rounded the corner first, boots scraping concrete, threads already forming at her fingertips. She looked strong. Ready. Her eyes swept the dead end and found the man standing there, chest puffed, arms loose at his sides. He wasn't running. He wasn't hiding. He was waiting.
Zane was a step behind her, his tattoo flaring crimson, stepping forward as his flames licked at his knuckles. He took the front stage. "Give me back my wallet, thief, and I'll let you walk."
The man smiled. "You'll let me walk?" He tilted his head, voice smooth. "That's generous."
Zoe's threads tensed. "Last chance."
"I'm Julian. The greatest scientist in Solaria. And I determined the variables of our encounter."
Julian reached into his jacket and pulled out a cube. Small. Metallic. It caught the dim light, glinting like a polished gem. He held it up between them.
Zane didn't wait for whatever trick this man was about to prepare. He lunged.
But after two steps, he felt something: his essence draining, pulling out of his core like water through a crack. His legs felt heavy. His flame died. He took one more step before his chest hit the ground.
Zoe ran to him, dropping to her knees, her face twisted with despair. "Zane! Zane, what – "
Then she saw it. A faint, shimmering black residue smeared across his left hand. Something Julian had probably done while snatching the wallet. The substance was still working its way up his arm, stealing his strength.
She grabbed his hand, trying to wipe it off with her shirt, her attention completely fixed on him. Her threads dissolved. Her guard dropped.
She didn't see Julian move again.
He appeared in front of her, silent as a shadow. A metal plate the size of an open palm slid out of his cube, and he swung it in a short, brutal arc.
The plate crushed the left side of Zoe's head with a sickening crack. Her eyes rolled back. She crumpled across Zane's legs, unconscious before she hit the ground.
Julian stood over them, breathing slowly, turning the cube in his fingers. He looked down at Zoe's limp form, then at Zane, who was still conscious but barely holding his gaze on the dark figure until he finally lost consciousness.
The next one to enter the alley was Adin. He saw the scene before him, and his head began spinning, sick to his stomach. He lifted his hands in a defensive posture, nervous.
His heart pounded hard. He said in an unconvincing tone, "Step away from them."
Julian didn't move. He just stood there, cube glinting, looking at Adin like a scientist examining a specimen.
"Or what?" he asked softly.
Adin had no answer. His power required touch. And Julian knew that. They were ten feet apart, and between them lay the bodies of his friends.
But in that silence, Adin's mind was already moving. He knew his power better than anyone. Control of the biological systems.
Nerves. Muscles. Adrenaline. Fear. Pain. He'd always used it on others.
But lately, he had been learning another way to use his powers, similar to the training he had received with Ben.
He used it on himself.
His core pulsed. He reached inward, finding the circuits in his own brain that screamed danger. He muted them. Fear dissolved.
He found the pathways that carried pain and silenced them. Tension became numb.
He found his adrenaline glands, his muscles, his blood vessels. He sent a command: Open. Flood. Contract. Push.
His body answered, giving him the power of several men.
His heart, fueled with newfound power, slammed against his ribs. His muscles swelled, packed with borrowed strength. His vision sharpened. The weight of his own body evaporated.
His core burned. He was burning himself for one moment of impossible power.
Then he moved.
The space between them collapsed. His hand shot out, fingers stretching for Julian's wrist. But Julian was already stepping back. Ready.
The cube pulsed. The metal plate that had been used to hit Zoe's face slid out, but this time the plate wasn't used in its regular size. The essence from Julian's hand injected into the metallic plate, enlarging it to a two‑meter metal wall, putting a barrier between them.
Adin's hand hit flat on the metal wall, missing its original objective.
Surprised but not stopping, he took a step to the right, trying to quickly reach his enemy, but Julian was faster, moving the large metal wall to block Adin again. It was as if he had full control of the plate's action.
Julian watched him stumble, a thin smile on his face.
"Adin Vance. Did you really think I wouldn't read your file? I know your every move."
He put his hands on the metal plate, flat and wide, and pushed it forward with immense strength, as if bending the metal itself.
Adin tried to block the wall moving toward him, but he couldn't even hold it in place, let alone push it forward against Julian's manipulation.
The plate caught him in the chest, drove him back, and pinned him against the alley's brick wall. His head snapped against the stone. The world went dark.
The metal wall returned to its original size and flowed back into Julian's cube.
Julian stepped over him, looking down, brushing dust from his hands.
Zoe lay crumpled against a pile of cardboard, lifeless and pale. Zane was slumped next to Zoe's limp body, his tattoo dark, his face slack.
Adin was pinned against the far wall, his hat askew, his chest rising and falling in shallow rhythm.
The man with his cube stood among them, calm and unhurried, like a gardener admiring a harvest.
"Three down."
One more to go.
Julian didn't wait long. A silhouette rounded the corner of the alley and then came to a halt.
Ben saw his friends: three bodies on the wet ground, three people who had been his students and friends.
His chest tightened. His hands curled into fists.
"I knew it was too odd to just be a petty theft," Ben said, his voice low.
Julian turned slowly, the cube still glinting in his palm. He smiled.
"Your friends didn't. They were small fry.
But I was really waiting for you, Origin user."
Ben stepped forward, essence already making its way toward his fingertips. "Sorry to tell you, but the outcome won't be the same."
Raising his head from the location of his fallen friends, his eyes changed color, colder. "Out of curiosity. Who are you?
And what is it that you want?"
Julian laughed. He spun the cube between his fingers, a sound of broken glass in a smooth machine filling the quiet void.
"What is it that I want?" Julian repeated the question in a passionate manner.
"I will use you to create the god they couldn't!" His voice echoed off the wet bricks.
"And unfortunately for you, I need your pure essence to do it."
Quiet filled the air, with no additional explanation.
Ben didn't flinch. "Well, I don't know what any of that means. But if you want a burial, I will get you one."
Ending the conversation, Ben thrust his hand forward. Three ice shards shot from the ground toward Julian's chest.
Julian slapped the cube. The same small metal disc slid out, then enlarged instantly into a full steel shield. The shards clinked off and shattered.
Ben followed with a water whip from his palm, arcing toward Julian's legs. Julian sidestepped while widening the shield to touch the ground and use it as a moving wall. The water splashed uselessly against the metal.
Ben closed the distance, moving the fight to close range, coating his fist in ice and swinging for Julian's jaw.
Julian ducked, then tapped the cube again. A metal rod extended, aiming for Ben's ribs, catching him by surprise. Ben stumbled back, gasping. No way he could dodge in time. But he didn't have to. Instead, his body dissolved into a watery blob, causing the rod to move in and out, penetrating nothing, only splashing liquid back onto the already wet ground and dripping onto Julian's feet.
Julian spun, tracking the puddle, which reformed behind him. A human fist was already on its way to his chin in an uppercut motion.
The blow connected, but only a fraction of its force landed. A tiny padded mat, growing to a thirty‑centimeter cushion, had slid from the cube at the last second, absorbing most of the impact. Julian took one step back, his smile intact.
"Is that all?" he asked, calm.
Ben wiped his mouth. "You really have everything in that piece of shit cube?"
Julian held it up, the metal cool in the dim light. "I really do."
He reached into the cube and pulled out a glass vial of white powder. Without ceremony, he poured it onto the back of his hand, tilted his head, and snorted it in one go.
Then something changed.
The air around became heavy.
Julian's pupils dilated, changing their shape to indicate danger.
The pressure in the alley spiked. Essence thickened like humidity before a storm.
Julian's pupils dilated further, and his eyes turned red-tinged, veins bulging along his temples and neck.
Ben stepped back, on guard. "What the hell did you just do?"
Julian didn't answer. His lips curled into a wide, unnatural grin.
Then he vanished. Not teleportation, just raw, inhuman speed. Ben's eyes moved left and right, seeing nothing.
A fist wrapped in a metal gauntlet, grown from a wristband that came from the almighty cube, slammed into Ben's stomach from below.
Ben doubled over, flew backward, and crashed into a brick wall. The impact cracked the old masonry.
But his body splashed into a puddle on contact. Water seeped into the cracks, then dripped down, reforming a few feet away. Ben stood back up from the pool of water, breathing hard, a thin line of blood from his lip.
"That all you got, junkie?" he said, wiping his mouth of the blood. He'd managed to avoid the damage from the collision with the wall, but the pain in his ribs made his words sound less convincing.
Julian laughed, a high, unhinged sound. He was already moving again, pulling a handful of small ball bearings from the cube. He tossed them into the air. Each one enlarged to the size of a bowling ball, raining down on Ben in a chaotic, bouncing pattern.
Ben didn't try to block. He changed himself into liquid form again. While jumping head‑on into Julian's attack, his water body split into two streams that flowed around the falling balls, using them as a surface to jump around and attack from both sides. Julian was about to block the incoming attack, searching for the direction from which Ben's body would form back to human, only to be wrong on both accounts.
Ben kept his water form and passed Julian's body, only to rejoin behind him. Then he reformed, his hand rising from a pool of water, grabbed the back of Julian's head, and pushed him hard to the ground in a spiral motion.
Julian stumbled on the wet ground from the heavy, unseen attack, but he caught himself with one hand on the ground. With the other, he spawned another metal plate from his cube and made it into a solid wall that slammed into Ben's front, pinning him against the opposite wall.
Ben's chest compressed. He coughed up blood. But his hand reached out, and the water from a nearby puddle snaked up, wrapping around Julian's throat, and squeezed.
Julian gasped, releasing the wall. As Ben searched for air, his chest finally freed from the wall's pressure, he dropped the essence control around Julian's neck to better his own breathing. Both of them staggered back, gasping.
Julian rubbed his neck, still grinning. "You're slippery. I like that."
Ben spat blood onto the wet ground. "You're a psycho."
Julian straightened, his red eyes gleaming. "That's what they all say when they can't see the vision."
He stood still for a moment. His body relaxed, though his eyes stayed fixed on Ben. The boost was still burning through him, veins pulsing, essence crackling in the air around his hands.
"You're too strong for your age, Ben. Too strong by far." Julian's voice had dropped its maniacal edge, replaced by something almost gentle. "Strength like that needs to be sacrificed for the greater good."
Ben didn't lower his guard. "What are you talking about?"
Julian gestured around the alley, at the unconscious bodies, at the distant lights of Aurora, at the dark sky above.
"Long ago, hundreds of years ago, before we had essence in our world, neither cores nor powers, a few brilliant scientists tried to unlock the full potential of humanity. Their trial involving DNA alteration didn't go as planned. They wanted to create gods." He paused, letting the words settle. "They failed."
He tapped the cube.
"But they did open the door for us. They created an essence that poured into our world. But the god?" He shook his head. "No. They could not yet pay the price. You know the Sixth Law demands weight, and for every miracle, a sacrifice is needed. They had nothing heavy enough to sacrifice. And now it's my duty to make their dream a reality. To create the god that they couldn't."
Ben's jaw tightened. "You're insane."
Julian laughed softly. "I'm the only sane one. I will finish what they started. I will create a god to save us all. And for that, I need your pure essence. Your Origin Power. You are my key to godhood."
Ben's voice dropped, low and dangerous. "I won't let you."
Julian tilted his head, his grin widening. His red eyes gleamed in the dim light.
"You can't do shit about that. You're just a little boy." He paused, letting the silence hang. Then, softer, almost tender: "Still powerless. Like when your mom died. You couldn't do anything then, could you? Just stood there. Watching her bleed out."
Then Ben's body went still. Not the stillness of fear or sorrow, but that of rage.
Everything became dark. Quiet. Empty. A switch flipped somewhere deep inside his mind.
Julian sensed the shift. He knew what was coming. As a true scientist, hearing about this phenomenon was not enough; he wanted to see it with his own eyes. He took a half‑step back, his smile faltering for just a second.
"Oh," he breathed excitedly. "There it is."
Ben did not answer. He did not move. Nor did he weep.
The clouds did it for him. A sudden rain began to fall, and thunder was heard from far away.
Droplets started to fall, and then they stopped. Julian looked around. The world felt as if it had stopped in its tracks. The rain was frozen in place, but he could still move around.
Ben raised both of his hands. All of the water from puddles, from the leaking pipes overhead, from the rain in the night sky converged into a swirling vortex above his head.
Ice shards formed and broke down inside the vortex, as if even they could not handle this power. Essence slipped away from them and returned forcefully again and again, spinning like a blender blade. The cold was so intense that frost crawled up the brick walls.
Julian slapped the cube. A small cocktail beach umbrella slid out and expanded into a massive metal dome, covering him completely. The shards of ice flying around the alley pinged off the dome, but the pressure was immense. Hairline cracks spiderwebbed across the metal.
Julian shoved the dome outward, exploding it into fragments. The distraction bought him a second. He pulled a toy car from the cube, tiny, plastic, red, and flicked it with his thumb. It enlarged to its full size mid‑air as soon as Julian let go, speeding toward Ben like a missile.
Ben formed an ice blade from the swirling vortex, three meters long, curved like a scythe. He swung. The car split in half, the two pieces crashing past him on either side, scraping sparks that lit up the alley walls.
Julian used the smoke to close the distance. He pulled another metal pipe from the cube, growing it to the thickness of a telephone pole, and swung it like a baseball bat.
Ben started running toward Julian's attack while turning into water, flowed under the swing, and reformed in front of Julian, holding Julian's shoulder with a freezing hand and punching through Julian's abdominal muscles with the other. But he couldn't get through. Julian's abs started to grow outward as well.
"I have many tricks, kid. You haven't seen anything yet."
Ben didn't flinch. His mind was focused. He wasn't allowing any doubt, only action.
Julian still felt the cold, but no pain. The effect of his drug was still strong. He dropped the pipe and simply head‑butted Ben's face while his skull grew bigger and larger. Ben took the hit straight on, still trying to penetrate Julian's stomach.
They separated, both bleeding from different places.
Julian, shocked by how much trouble Ben had made for him, bent over and grabbed a loose brick from the ground, threw it while enlarging it to the size of a small car, and then fled back, trying to create distance for recovery time.
But Ben wanted no rest. He froze the air in front of him, creating a thick wall of ice blocking the three‑meter‑long brick, and sprinted for one more attack on Julian. The brick smashed through the wall, but Ben was already gone: he slid as water under the debris, reforming at Julian's feet. He swept Julian's legs.
Julian fell backward but caught himself again with his right hand doing the same acrobatic flip. With the other hand, he enlarged his own fist, doubling its size, and swung upward.
Ben took the hit on his left forearm. Something cracked, a bone, maybe two. Pain flared red‑hot.
Blood dripped from the cracks in his left hand, but he didn't stop.
The dripping blood moved in the air toward his right hand, becoming a red solid crystal. He reached out with his right, piercing Julian's stomach again, now with his new blood icicle.
His broken left hand moved and pressed his palm flat against Julian's right shoulder.
"Freeze," Ben whispered.
Julian's right arm froze up. He looked down. His veins were turning blue under the skin, the blood inside crystallizing from the inside out.
Julian grinned through the pain. "You think that's enough?"
He slammed his own frozen arm against the wall, shattering the ice formation inside his veins. Blood still dripped from his abdominal area, hot and red. He roared, enlarged his right fist again, and swung.
But…
After what felt like a lifetime of fighting, Ben had managed to create a hole in Julian's body, one that blood poured out of, one that also had his own blood mixed inside from the blood crystal.
Then it was over.
Julian's eyes widened. He felt it immediately. The blood in his body clotted all over, stopped moving, stopped circulating. The water in Julian's body froze solid, molecule by molecule, spreading from his core outward.
His heart stuttered. His lungs locked.
"No… You... you wouldn't..." Julian's voice was a rasp.
Ben's face was blank. His hand, still placed on Julian's abs, was freezing every organ from the inside out.
"I guess it didn't say in my file that I would kill you."
Julian's right arm dropped. His legs went weak. He fell to his knees, frost forming on his lips and on his eyelashes, blood pouring from every injury.
But even then, Julian laughed. A choked, broken sound. Blood and ice crystals mixed on his lips. His red eyes locked onto Ben's dark ones.
"You think I'm the only one wanting to use you?"
Ben didn't answer.
Julian's body trembled. Ice pushed through his pores.
"Your friend... Adin... is spying... for a rank." A cough. Blood dripped. "On Korin's orders."
Ben's face didn't change, but his eyes showed doubt and uncertainty. His essence became angrier under his gaze, the ice enveloping every path on the way to Julian's core.
The voice dropped to a whisper.
"I-If you kill me. You'll never be a hero like your father... He-Heroes don't kill."
Ben's eyes stayed cold.
"Then I'm a hero who does."
Julian's lips twitched into a faint smile after seeing a piece of Ben's soul slipping away from his cold eyes.
The smile vanished. His body went rigid. Ice crystals burst through his skin. He toppled sideways, lifeless, hit the wet ground, and shattered into a hundred frozen pieces.
The alley became silent.
Ben stood over the remains. The adrenaline and essence in his body slowed down. His hands were still extended. They were shaking now. Blood dripped from his side onto the icy shards.
Behind him, a groan.
Adin stirred, pushing up from the brick wall, clutching his head. His hat had fallen off. His blond hair was matted with sweat and grime. He blinked, his vision clearing.
He saw the scene.
Frozen shards scattered across the wet ground. Ben standing among them, blood on his shirt, breathing hard, his hands trembling.
"Ben..." Adin's voice was hoarse. "Wa-What happened? Is he dead?"
Ben turned slowly. His eyes were still dark, but they were focusing. He looked at Adin, held his gaze a beat too long, then looked at the shards.
"Julian. He took something. Went crazy." Ben's voice was flat and distant. "I had to."
Adin's gaze dropped to the frozen remains. "You killed him."
Ben didn't answer. He just stared at the pieces melting into the wet ground.
Adin's phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn't check it. He looked at Ben's face, trying to read it, but found nothing.
"Don't tell Korin," Ben said. "Not about this."
"I-I didn't " Adin's throat moved. "Ben, I – "
"He escaped," Ben declared. "We fought. He ran." Ben's voice was harder now, final.
"That's what happened."
Adin hesitated, then nodded. "Okay."
Ben turned away. He walked to Zoe, knelt, and checked her pulse. Alive. Zane too. He let out a breath, but there was no relief in it.
"Help me get them up," Ben said. He didn't look at Adin when he said it.
Adin moved to help. His hand brushed Zane's arm, but Ben was already lifting Zoe on his own, turning his back.
They carried their friends out of the alley. The city hummed around them, oblivious. Adin kept glancing at Ben, but Ben's face was a wall.
Behind them, the frozen shards glittered under the dim lights, slowly melting into the wet ground, forgetting what had transpired moments ago.
Ben didn't look back. He was already thinking about what Julian had said. About Adin. About Korin. About trust.
He said nothing. Only speaking in thoughts.