The wind at the edge of the stratosphere had no sound.Only the hum of thin air brushed against Ikaris' body as he hovered between heaven and earth, eyes half open to the endless blue curve below.
From up here, the world looked peaceful. The scars of battlefields, the fractures of civilization — they vanished beneath the serene wash of clouds. Cities became dots of light. Mountains were nothing but wrinkles of shadow. Humanity, from this height, looked whole.
And yet, he knew better.
Beneath that blanket of clouds, the same world turned and burned with restless hearts. Fear. Hope. Desire. Quirks. Powers. All born from something he could not explain — and yet somehow connected to what he once was, what he once believed himself to be.
He didn't know when he had stopped being part of it all. Perhaps the moment he crossed the void into this reality. Or perhaps much earlier, when he began to question his own purpose.
He drifted lower, through the upper clouds.Moisture gathered on his skin, light scattering across the edges of his silhouette. The morning sun kissed his armor, turning the dull silver to gold for a fleeting instant.
Below him, the Pacific shimmered like glass — vast, endless, deceptively still. The point of entry, where he had first fallen into this world, was somewhere below those waves. He could still feel it, a pulse hidden deep in the water, faint but constant.
Ikaris stared downward.There was something… calling. Not a voice, not a sound — more like a memory echoing in the bones.
He could almost hear Ajak's voice in the back of his mind."Watch over them, Ikaris. They will be greater than they know."
But these humans… these quirked beings… they had already surpassed what nature intended. Their evolution had twisted. Their energy, their mutations — it was something foreign even to the design he once believed governed life.
Were they an accident? Or were they… inevitable?
He folded his arms behind his back, eyes narrowing.Every species he had ever observed had one thing in common — the hunger to become something more. Yet the people of this world had gone beyond survival. They reached for power not to endure, but to define themselves.
"Power without purpose," he whispered into the wind. "Or purpose born from too much power?"
The air carried his words away, dispersing them into silence.
Far below, the surface rippled.Satellites tracked his motion. Hero agencies monitored the skies. They whispered theories — "an entity," "a divine weapon," "a new type of quirk."He heard none of it, but he felt the collective gaze of millions pressing upward like unseen gravity.
He didn't hide from them. He simply existed outside their comprehension.
For every eye that looked up, there was another that looked away. Humanity could not gaze at what it could not define.
He looked to the east — to the stretch of land that glowed like a web of lights.Japan.The hub of heroism in this world.
He had seen their kind: men and women cloaked in titles, symbols, costumes. Protectors. Enforcers. Aspirants. All chasing the meaning of being "hero."And beneath them, people who worshiped them with the same faith ancient civilizations once gave gods.
He understood their intent — the drive to protect, to serve, to be seen. But he also saw the futility.
Every age has its heroes, he thought. And every hero fades, leaving behind only stories.
The world below didn't need gods. It built its own replacements — human enough to relate to, powerful enough to follow. That was the brilliance of this species. They replaced myth with will.
And yet, the question gnawed at him:Why did he, an eternal observer, return to watching them again?
Hours passed in the span of thought.He crossed continents like a shadow. Mountains passed beneath him — the Himalayas, silent and ancient; the deserts of Arabia, glowing under twilight; the frozen ridges of Siberia.
He landed once, atop an icy peak. The air was thin but clear, slicing through his lungs like glass. He closed his eyes, letting the cold bite into him — a reminder that even he could still feel.
The sound of the world here was pure.No cities. No chaos. Only the low hum of the planet's pulse — a rhythm older than all civilizations.
He looked up at the night sky. Stars spilled across the black, countless and indifferent.He could almost trace constellations that no one here knew — names long lost to time, belonging to worlds that no longer existed.
How many worlds have I watched die? he wondered.How many civilizations thought they were eternal?
He clenched his fist.He didn't resent humanity for their ignorance. He envied them.Their lives burned so briefly that every moment mattered. Their choices had weight.
He, on the other hand, was cursed to outlive meaning.
Somewhere below, he sensed energy again — faint, artificial, but organized. Drones. Machines. Probes searching for him.Humanity's curiosity was endless. Admirable, perhaps even beautiful.
He turned his gaze toward the ocean once more.That pulse — the one beneath the sea — had not vanished. It was stronger now, steady and rhythmic. Almost… familiar.
Without another thought, he dove.
The world blurred around him as he cut through the atmosphere, the air igniting briefly before surrendering to the deep blue.He pierced the surface of the Pacific like a spear of light, descending into the abyss.
The water swallowed him whole.Pressure built around his body, crushing to anything mortal — but not to him. He drifted deeper, eyes glowing faintly, scanning the shadows.
The ocean floor stretched endlessly, silent and black.No creature dared to approach.
Then — light.A pulse of silver radiance flickered ahead, faint but unmistakable.
He approached, steps weightless in the void.There, half-buried in sediment, was a fragment — a piece of something alien, metallic but organic, humming with energy. Not a weapon. Not debris. Something older. Something alive.
Ikaris extended his hand, but didn't touch it.He could feel the resonance — like hearing one's own heartbeat from outside the body.
"This world…" he murmured. "You're not supposed to have this."
He stared at the fragment, then looked upward.Above the surface, he could sense human activity. Submarines. Sonar. Surveillance.They were coming.
He turned away.The glow of the fragment dimmed as if recognizing his departure.
With a single motion, Ikaris ascended — rising through the water, through layers of darkness, until light returned. The sky greeted him again, orange and gold under the setting sun.
He hovered there for a moment, letting the wind dry his face.
"They'll find it," he said quietly. "They always do."
Then, as the sun dipped below the horizon, his body shimmered. The light around him fragmented — and with a ripple of energy, he vanished into the thin air.
Satellites lost his trace.Radars went blind.To the world, the entity simply ceased to exist.
Above the clouds, where silence reigned again, a faint voice lingered in his mind.Not from another being — but from within.
"Why do you still watch them, Ikaris?"
He didn't answer.There was no one left to ask the question, no one to hear the reply.
But somewhere deep down, he knew.Because despite all the centuries, all the worlds, and all the cycles of destruction and rebirth — humanity still surprised him.
Their defiance against fate.Their will to fight for meaning in a meaningless universe.
He watched as night consumed the Earth, cities lighting up like constellations reborn.For the first time in a long while, he smiled.
Not with joy, but with something older — a quiet acknowledgment of wonder.
"Maybe," he whispered, "this world doesn't need saving. Maybe it just needs time."
His eyes lifted to the stars, tracing their familiar glow — the same ones he had seen in countless skies.But tonight, they felt closer.
As if even the cosmos leaned in to listen.
He closed his eyes.And somewhere between eternity and existence, the silent observer drifted once more into the darkness unseen, but not gone.