Darkness swallowed everything.
It wasn't like closing your eyes. It wasn't like sleep or unconsciousness or even the brief blackouts Max had experienced when he'd gone too long without eating. This was absolute—a void so complete that the concept of light seemed like a distant memory, something that might have existed once but felt increasingly implausible with each passing moment.
Max floated in nothing. No pain, which should have been a relief but somehow wasn't. No breath filling his lungs or leaving them. No heartbeat drumming its steady rhythm against his ribs. Not even the sensation of having a body at all—just awareness, consciousness untethered from anything physical, drifting in an emptiness that stretched in every direction forever.
Only silence.
The kind of silence that wasn't peaceful but oppressive, heavy, like it was actively crushing something essential out of existence.
Then a voice—soft, cold, feminine—cut through the void like a blade through silk.
"Maxwell Thorne."
The sound shouldn't have been possible here. There was no air to carry vibrations, no eardrums to receive them, no brain to process them into meaning. And yet he heard it with perfect clarity, each syllable crystalline and sharp.
He turned—or thought he turned. There was no body to move, no muscles to flex, no head to rotate. Only awareness shifting its focus, attention pivoting toward the source of that impossible voice.
A figure materialized before him.
She emerged from the darkness gradually, like she'd always been there and was only now choosing to be seen. First an outline, then details, then presence so overwhelming it felt like she occupied more space than the infinite void should have been able to contain.
She was beautiful in the way storms are beautiful—in the way natural disasters are beautiful when observed from a safe distance. Tall, impossibly so, with proportions that were almost but not quite human. Her skin was pale like moonlight reflecting off frost, luminous without actually glowing, creating its own context of visibility in the lightless space. Long hair the color of dying embers flowed from her head, starting as deep red-orange at the roots and gradually fading through burgundy and purple into pure shadow at the ends, moving in a wind that didn't exist.
Her eyes were endless black pools—not empty, but *full* of something that human minds weren't equipped to comprehend. Galaxies could have died in those eyes. Civilizations could have risen and fallen. And yet, impossibly, they held something almost… gentle. A tenderness that seemed completely at odds with everything else about her.
The Mother of Despair.
Vista herself.
Max knew it instantly, the same way drowning men know water, the same way burning men know fire. This was one of the Seven Mothers—the divine entities that shaped the world, that granted gifts to humanity, that defined the boundaries between possible and impossible.
The Mother that everyone feared. The one whose name was spoken in whispers. The one whose gifts were the rarest and most terrible of all.
She tilted her head, studying him with an intensity that should have been uncomfortable but somehow wasn't. Like a broken toy she'd found discarded in an alley and discovered to be more interesting than all the perfect ones displayed in shop windows.
"You are dead," she said simply, matter-of-factly, the way someone might comment on the weather or note that the sun had risen. "Your heart stopped beating at 3:47 in the afternoon. Your lungs filled with rainwater mixed with your own blood. Your brain was deprived of oxygen for four minutes and seventeen seconds. Your dream of becoming a Heavenly Star General died with you on wet cobblestones in front of people who never believed in you anyway."
Max's voice came out raw, even here in this place where he had no throat to speak with.
"I know."
It wasn't resignation. It was acknowledgment. He'd felt it happen—the moment his heart gave its last stuttering beat, the instant his consciousness started to fray at the edges, the second he'd understood with absolute certainty that this was the end.
Vista smiled—small, sad, containing depths of sorrow that would have broken most people to witness.
"And yet…" She stepped closer, and the darkness around her rippled like water disturbed by a stone dropped from a great height. "You still want it. Even dead. Even here. Even knowing what you know."
Max's soul—or whatever passed for it in this place—flared with an intensity that surprised even him.
"Yes."
The word came out like a vow, like a promise, like the one true thing in a universe of uncertainties.
She moved closer still, until she was near enough that Max could feel the cold radiating from her like winter's last breath before spring. The darkness shivered. The void itself seemed to hold its breath.
"To become one of the Heavenly Star Generals," she said, and it wasn't a question. "To stand above them all—above the twelve who command armies and shape nations. To prove the Mothers were wrong to leave you blank. To show Kael and Priestess Lira and every laughing child and every pitying adult that Maxwell Thorne wasn't nothing. That he mattered. That he could be *more*."
"Yes."
Vista raised a hand—slender fingers that looked delicate but somehow conveyed infinite strength. Her fingers brushed the space where Max's forehead would be if he'd had a forehead, and the touch was cold enough to burn.
"You understand what you ask?" she whispered, and for the first time her voice carried something that might have been warning. "My gift is not hope. It is not love. It is not dream or aspiration or any of the warm, bright things the other Mothers offer. It is the end of those things. It is the quiet that follows every scream. It is the moment when struggling stops. It is the instant everything stops mattering because the struggle is finally, blessedly over. My gift is *despair*, Maxwell Thorne. The acceptance of endings. The peace of surrender. Do you understand what that means?"
Max didn't flinch. Didn't hesitate. Didn't allow even a flicker of doubt to cross his consciousness.
"I don't care. Give it to me."
Vista's eyes softened—just for a heartbeat, just for the span of a single moment that might have lasted a microsecond or a millennium.
"Very well."
She pressed her palm to the center of his nothingness, to the point where his chest would be, where his heart had stopped, where the Corruption beast's claw had pierced through flesh and bone and dream alike.
Her voice rang out, not loud but somehow filling every corner of the infinite void:
"Maxwell Thorne… I bless you with the gift of silver."
Lightning erupted from nowhere.
Not normal lightning—not the white-yellow electricity that split storm clouds and sought the ground. This was black, crackling with purple undertones, shot through with veins of silver that writhed like living things. It tore through Max's being like he was paper, like he was nothing, like he was everything.
It wasn't pain.
It was worse than pain.
It was power—raw, cold, endless, absolute. The kind of power that came from accepting that nothing mattered because everything ended eventually, so you might as well make the ending *mean* something.
The void shattered around them like glass struck by a hammer.
Reality reasserted itself with the force of a collapsing star.
Max's eyes snapped open in the real world.
Rain hammered the square with renewed fury, each drop hitting like a tiny fist. The storm had intensified while he'd been dead—or perhaps time had simply passed differently in that place between places, that conversation with a goddess that might have taken seconds or hours or years.
His body—still torn open from sternum to navel, still technically lifeless, heart and lungs quiet and still—convulsed.
The wound in his chest began to glow.
Not warm red-gold like healing from Mother Nature's gifts. Not the blue-white of Mother Metal's repairs.
Silver.
Pure, cold, absolute silver that seemed to drink in the light from the stormy sky and reflect it back transformed into something harder, sharper, more *real* than reality had any right to be.
Flesh knit violently backward. The torn edges of the wound crawled toward each other like time running in reverse, muscle fibers reconnecting with wet snapping sounds, skin sealing over them in rippling waves. Blood that had pooled on the cobblestones reversed its flow, drawn back into veins by some force that physics couldn't explain and biology would refuse to acknowledge. Bones that had been cracked by the beast's initial slash—ribs fractured in three places, sternum split down the middle—cracked back into place with sounds like gunshots.
His heart slammed once—a deafening boom that seemed to echo across the entire square.
Twice—harder, like it was angry at having been interrupted.
Then roared to life with a rhythm that was faster than before, stronger, *different* in a way that anyone who'd heard a human heartbeat before would have recognized as fundamentally wrong.
Max stood.
Not slowly, like someone recovering from injury.
Not weakly, like someone who'd just been literally dead.
He simply *was* standing, going from prone to vertical in a motion that had no intermediate steps, that violated every law of momentum and inertia.
Inhuman.
Black lightning—the same impossible electricity that had filled the void—arced from his shoulders in crackling tendrils. It crawled down his arms, wrapped around his spine in a spiral pattern that left afterimages burned into the vision of anyone watching. The air around him shimmered with heat that somehow felt cold.
In his hands, materializing from nothing the way his gift had materialized from death: two gleaming silver guns.
They were perfect. Not ornate or decorated—just *perfect* in the way that ideal forms are perfect. Smooth barrels that caught the light and seemed to hold it prisoner. Grips that fit his hands like they'd been custom-made for fingers that had never held a gun before. Mechanisms so precise that the clicking of their internal parts sounded like clockwork designed by watchmakers who'd transcended the need for tolerances or error margins.
One gun in each fist, pointing at the ground, waiting.
On his forehead, visible to everyone in the square who'd stopped running and fighting to stare: a perfect silver circle appeared, about the size of a coin. Through its center ran a thin black sword, blade pointing upward, so detailed that you could see the individual molecules of whatever impossible material it was made from.
The mark of Vista's blessing.
The brand of the Mother of Despair.
The sign that Maxwell Thorne was no longer entirely human.
It burned cold—not painful, but *present* in a way that ensured he would never forget it was there, never forget what he'd accepted, never forget the price of the gift no one asked for.
The Corruption beast—still rampaging through the square, still roaring its mindless fury, still dripping shadow-rot from jaws that had already killed three civilians and wounded a dozen more—locked eyes with him.
For a moment, it stopped.
Whatever passed for intelligence in its twisted, ruined mind recognized something. Saw something in Max that triggered instincts older than thought, more fundamental than hunger.
Prey had become predator.
Max jumped.
The ground beneath his feet didn't just crack—it *cratered*. Cobblestones pulverized into dust. The stone beneath them fractured pattern twenty feet across. The force of his leap created a shockwave that knocked nearby kids off their feet and shattered windows a hundred yards away.
He moved faster than sight—faster than the human eye could track, faster than the brain could process, leaving only afterimages burned into retinas like lightning scars.
One moment he was on the ground.
The next he was mid-air above the beast, fifty feet up, both guns raised and aimed down.
His voice came out low, steady, fundamentally *changed* in a way that went beyond physical alterations to vocal cords:
"Silver Gift… Silver Rain."
He pulled the triggers.
Not once.
Not twice.
Again and again and again, faster than should have been mechanically possible, fingers moving in blurs, hammers falling in a rhythm that sounded like a single sustained thunder-crack.
Silver bullets poured from the barrels like rain—not metaphorically, *literally* like rain. Hundreds in seconds. Thousands. More than the guns should have been able to hold, more than physics should have allowed, an impossible deluge of silver judgment falling from the sky.
They fell with purpose.
Not like normal projectiles following ballistic trajectories.
Like *judgment*—like each bullet knew exactly where it needed to go and was determined to get there regardless of wind or gravity or the target's desperate attempts to dodge.
Each bullet struck the beast and *unmade* it.
Not killed. Not destroyed. *Unmade*.
Fur dissolved where they hit, breaking down into component molecules that dispersed into the rain. Shadow peeled away in strips like paint being pressure-washed from a wall, revealing the flesh beneath—and then that flesh dissolved too. Rot reversed itself, corruption burning away backward through time until there was nothing left but the ghost of what the creature had been before the darkness took it.
The beast screamed—a sound that started as rage and pain and ended as confusion and something that might have been relief.
Then it shattered.
Not exploded. Not collapsed. *Shattered*—like glass struck by a perfect harmonic frequency, breaking into ten thousand pieces that immediately lost cohesion and became ash.
The ash scattered on the wind, mixing with the rain, dissolving into nothing.
Gone.
Erased.
Made into a thing that had never been.
Silence crashed over the square like a physical weight.
Max landed lightly, boots touching down on cobblestones without a sound, knees bending slightly to absorb impact that should have shattered bone.
Then his legs buckled.
The guns vanished from his hands, dematerializing the same way they'd appeared.
He collapsed forward, consciousness fraying at the edges, the price of using a gift he didn't understand catching up all at once.
Before he could hit the ground, copper wires whipped out from the crowd—soft, careful, controlled with a precision that spoke of desperate practice.
They caught him mid-fall, cradling him like a hammock, supporting his weight without cutting into his skin.
Kael's Copper Wave.
The wires lowered him gently to the stone, treating him like something precious and fragile despite having just watched him obliterate a Corruption beast that had killed trained soldiers.
Kael dropped to his knees beside him, face pale as milk, eyes wide with shock and fear and wonder and confusion all mixed together into an expression that had no name.
"Max…?"
The question carried a thousand others: *What happened? What are you? Are you still you? Are you okay? Are you going to die again? What the hell was that?*
Max's eyes fluttered, fighting to stay open, fighting to stay conscious, fighting against the exhaustion that came from dying and being resurrected and using power he had no right to possess.
Then they closed.
His breathing evened out—shallow but steady.
Everything went dark again.
He woke to white walls and the smell of antiseptic cutting through the air like a scalpel.
A hospital room. Civilian, not military—he could tell by the cheap prints on the walls trying and failing to make the space feel less institutional, by the outdated equipment humming in the corner, by the thin blanket that covered him instead of the heavy wool ones the military hospitals used.
Sunlight slanted through half-closed blinds, creating bars of light and shadow across the floor. Late afternoon, judging by the angle. The rain had stopped. The storm had passed.
How long had he been out?
Beside the bed, two figures slumped in uncomfortable-looking chairs, asleep.
A small girl—maybe eight years old, dark hair cut short in a practical style that suggested someone who couldn't afford regular trips to a hairdresser—was curled up with her head resting on the mattress near his hand. Her fingers were wrapped around his wrist loosely, like she'd fallen asleep holding onto him and hadn't let go even in unconsciousness.
Lila.
His little sister. Not by blood—they weren't related, had probably never even met before they both ended up at the same orphanage three years ago. But they'd claimed each other the way orphans did, building family from whatever materials were available, and blood had nothing to do with it.
And Kael—head tilted back against the wall, mouth hanging open, snoring softly in a way that would have embarrassed him if he'd been awake. Dark circles under his eyes. Shirt rumpled. Copper wire patterns on his arms glowing faintly even in sleep.
He'd stayed. They both had.
Max stared at them, something tight loosening in his chest. Something that had been clenched since the moment he'd stepped into that manifestation circle and the light had died.
He wasn't alone.
Whatever he'd become, whatever Vista had made him, whatever price he'd have to pay for the gift of silver—he wasn't alone.
Lila stirred first, some sixth sense alerting her to the change in his breathing or heartbeat or the ambient energy of the room.
Her eyes snapped open—brown, wide, still carrying the fear of someone who'd learned too young that good things could be taken away without warning.
"Max?!"
Her voice came out as a squeak of surprise and joy and relief all compressed into a single syllable.
She launched herself at him before he could brace, small arms wrapping around his neck, face burying into his shoulder.
"You're awake! You're awake! You're awake!" Each repetition getting louder, more certain, like she was trying to convince herself it was real.
Kael jolted upright, chair scraping against linoleum, arms flailing as he transitioned from sleep to wakefulness in a graceless rush.
"Max!"
He grabbed Max's shoulder—gentle, careful, like he was handling something that might break or vanish if touched too roughly.
"You idiot…" His voice cracked. "You complete and total idiot. You scared us. You *died*. Your heart stopped for four and a half minutes. Do you have any idea—"
Max managed a weak grin, ignoring the pull of freshly healed tissue across his chest.
"Missed me?"
Lila started crying—happy tears this time instead of the desperate, terrified ones she'd been shedding when he was unconscious. Her small shoulders shook as she clung to him like a drowning person clinging to driftwood.
Kael laughed—shaky, unsteady, but genuine. Relief flooding his features so completely it was almost painful to witness.
"Yeah, you absolute disaster. We missed you. Don't do that again. Ever. I mean it. No more dying. It's not allowed."
The door opened with a soft click that somehow carried more weight than it should have.
A woman stepped into the room.
Tall—easily six feet, maybe more. White uniform with gold lion embroidery on the shoulders, the thread so fine and detailed that you could see individual whiskers on the lions' faces. Short silver hair cut in a military style that suggested function over fashion. Eyes sharp as blades, the gray-blue of steel just before it's quenched, missing nothing.
Three silver stars on her collar.
Captain Elara Voss.
Leader of the White Lion squad—one of the twelve elite military units that operated directly under the authority of the Heavenly Star Generals. Veterans of the Corruption Wars. Legends who'd fought in battles that had names every schoolchild knew.
The room froze.
Lila's eyes went wide as saucers, her grip on Max loosening slightly as she stared. Kael stood so fast his chair scraped backward six inches, hand coming up in an instinctive salute before he remembered he wasn't military and let it drop awkwardly. Max sat up straighter despite the protest from healing muscles, ignoring the pull of stitches across his chest that probably shouldn't have been disturbed.
Captain Voss's presence filled the room the way a storm filled the sky—inevitable, powerful, impossible to ignore.
She looked at Max with those steel-sharp eyes, studying him the way a jeweler might study a stone of uncertain value, trying to determine if it was diamond or glass.
"I see you're feeling well, Maxwell."
Not a question. A statement. Her voice was measured, controlled, carrying the weight of authority that came from years of making life-and-death decisions and living with the consequences.
Max swallowed, throat suddenly dry.
"Yes, ma'am."
She stepped closer, boots clicking against linoleum in a rhythm that sounded almost musical. Everyone in the room was shocked—people like Captain Elara Voss didn't visit orphans in civilian hospital beds.
They commanded armies from war rooms. They met with Generals and politicians. They certainly didn't make personal calls to sixteen-year-old kids who'd only had their gifts for a day.
"So…" Max said slowly, trying to read her expression and failing completely. "What do you want anyway?"
Kael made a strangled sound that might have been horror at Max's casual tone with a military legend.
But Elara's lips curved—just a fraction, just enough to suggest that she might have found his directness refreshing instead of offensive.
"I'm here to make you and your friend an offer."
Kael and Max looked at each other, a full conversation passing between them in the span of a heartbeat: Did she just say what I think she said? Is this real? Are we dreaming? Did you die too and this is heaven?
Then back at her.
"An offer?" Max echoed, not quite able to keep the disbelief out of his voice.
"Yes." Elara folded her arms across her chest, the motion causing the gold lions on her shoulders to catch the light and seem to move. "An offer to join the White Lions."
Silence so complete it felt like the universe had stopped breathing.
Then Lila gasped—a sharp intake of breath that broke the spell.
Kael's mouth opened, closed, opened again like a fish drowning in air. No sound came out.
Max stared, certain he'd misheard, certain this was a fever dream or a side effect of resurrection or something equally impossible.
Elara continued, calm as if she'd just offered them tea instead of a position in one of the most elite military units in existence.
"I see great futures ahead for both of you. Talent. Grit. And something…" Her eyes flicked to Max's forehead, where the silver circle and black sword mark glowed faintly beneath the bandage the hospital staff had placed there. "Unique."
Max touched it instinctively, fingers finding the mark through the gauze. It was warm—or cold—or both somehow. A constant reminder of what he'd accepted, what he'd become.
Kael looked between them, copper wire patterns on his arms beginning to glow brighter with his excitement and confusion.
Max met Elara's eyes directly, seeing his reflection in that steel-blue gaze—a skinny orphan kid with a goddess's mark on his forehead and a gift no one had asked for.
"Yeah," he said, and somehow his voice didn't shake. "We accept."
Kael's head whipped around to stare at him.
"We—Max, shouldn't we—I mean—"
But Max was still looking at Captain Voss, and she was looking back, and in that moment something was decided that would change the trajectory of both their lives forever.
Elara nodded once, decisive.
"Good. Report to the White Lion compound tomorrow at dawn. Bring nothing but yourselves. Everything you need will be provided."
She turned to leave, then paused at the door, looking back over her shoulder.
"And Maxwell? Welcome to the beginning of your climb."
The door closed behind her with a soft click.
Silence.
Then Kael let out a breath he'd apparently been holding since she walked in.
"We're joining the White Lions," he said, like he needed to hear it out loud to believe it. "The White Lions. We're—Max, do you realize what this means?"
Max lay back against the pillows, exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure.
"Yeah," he said softly. "It means I kept my promise."
Lila climbed back onto the bed, curling up against his side.
Outside, the sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple and gold.
Tomorrow would bring training, challenges, pain, growth.
But tonight, Maxwell Thorne—the blank who became blessed, the dead who rose, the orphan who'd been chosen—was surrounded by family and possibility.
And that was enough.
End of Chapter 2