At the crack of dawn, Ren was lying on his bed when he slowly started to wake up. He felt groggy and wanted to keep sleeping, but there was a strange sensation. He didn't know what it was, and he was too tired to even think about it properly.
He felt the sensation all over the room.
Ren slowly got up and looked around. It was dark, so he couldn't see anything. Normally, feeling something unfamiliar in the dark would terrify someone, but he was too exhausted to feel scared. He just walked across the room until he reached where he remembered the light switch was. He fumbled for a second before finding it and turning it on.
He kept his eyes closed so the sudden brightness wouldn't bother him, but something changed—the sensation he had been feeling shifted. Ren opened his eyes and adjusted to the light. The room looked completely normal.
But he knew what he had felt hadn't disappeared he can still feel it.
He thought about it for a moment, then an idea came to mind. Ren reached back and turned the light off. The sensation returned immediately. He turned the light back on again, this time focusing on where the sensation was coming from.
Every single place where he felt it… was a shadow.
"No freaking way," Ren muttered.
Before doing anything else, he rushed to the bathroom and washed his face to shake off the drowsiness. Once he was more awake, he fixed his messy bed hair, returned to the room, and sat on the floor, focusing on the shadows.
It was obvious now. He had some kind of connection to shadows, which meant New Life must have worked. Still, all he knew was that he could sense shadows—there had to be more to it.
He focused harder, making random gestures and giving commands in his head, trying to move the shadows.
Shadow step. Shadow clone. Shadow—whatever.
None of it worked.
But when he focused, he felt something—like there was something he could grab. That feeling sparked an idea. Ren imagined pulling something out of the shadow.
And something responded.
A shadow tendril emerged from the shadow. It was thin, dark, and shaped like a ribbon.
Ren froze, completely stunned.
He had summoned a shadow tendril. And he could control it.
After a moment, he snapped out of it. "Okay… I need to experiment with this."
He spent the next half hour testing his ability. He discovered that he could only create a shadow tendril from an existing shadow, and he could only create one for now. He wasn't sure if he could make more—he felt like he might be able to, but he didn't know if he wasn't skilled enough, strong enough, or knowledgeable enough maybe it's one of those things or all of them.
He also experimented with the way he can manifest it. Depending on the thickness of the shadow, he can either manifest it or not. If it's too thin—like the shadows that appear from a an object in the middle of a well lit room it's so light that he can't really manifest it normally. But if he strains himself, he can manifest a tendril. Even though he managed to manifest one, it would actually be weaker than normal, and that's not good.
Because its strength, it was weak. He tried lifting things with it, and if he had to judge, it was about as strong as a weak human arm. When he tried to lift his phone, he felt the weight.
That alone told him how weak it was.
Still, there was something else. He could feel the tendril—not just control it, but sense it. It felt like an extension of himself. He couldn't see through it or hear through it, but there was something there. He couldn't explain it yet.
It was like it was connected to his senses somehow, but he didn't know how
The power itself was weak, but that was fine. Powers could be trained. Still, it didn't feel impressive. He had seen plenty of famous heroes within incredible powers that are way beyond him and make his power look like a joke
But that didn't really matter.
What mattered was what he would do with this power.
The hero course was now a real option, but he decided to think about that later. School would start in a couple of hours, and it was still early.
He might as well play some online games on his console until then.
With that thought, Ren sat down, turned on his console, completely unaware of the difficult day waiting for him.
(Author's Note:
Sorry this chapter was a bit short—it was mainly meant to give a quick explanation of his powers. I didn't want to stretch it out unnecessarily, especially since his ability isn't anything extraordinary yet. I also didn't want to pad the chapter with filler just to make it longer. That said, I do feel like it was lacking a bit, especially when it comes to Ren's presence—it didn't feel as alive as I wanted it to. I'll do my best to improve on that going forward.)