We were already moving before Marten finished his sentence.

  It was becoming a rhythm I hated how quickly my body learned.

  Boots on pavement. Wind in my ears. The city blurring into a streak of storefronts and cracked sidewalks as we ran toward another siren, another column of smoke, another place where people would be kneeling in the street with their hands behind their heads.

  Another roundup.

  Mino was ahead, armored plates still imperfect where Zacheas had patched them in a rush. Zacheas ran just behind him, lighter on her feet, eyes scanning rooftops and intersections like she could read threats in the angles of shadows. Taco kept pace in the rear, breathing hard but refusing to fall back.

  And Garth—

  Garth moved like he’d decided the distance didn’t apply to him.

  He took streets in long bounds, vaulting cars and fences without breaking stride, cutting across rooflines when the ground got too crowded.

  Heroko wasn’t with us.

  Not at first.

  He walked alone a few blocks off our route, like he was on his way to somewhere important, not following the noise of panic like everyone else.

  There was a television in the front window of a closed electronics store. The screen was bright enough to cut through the daylight.

  Heroko stopped when he saw himself.

  The broadcast replayed old footage—him standing in a street with smoke behind him, sword lowered, expression calm. The anchor’s mouth moved under a caption that tried to make him sound like a savior.

  For a moment, Heroko’s face softened. Not by much. But enough.

  Then the ticker changed.

  ROBED WOMAN ATTACKING CITY — CIVILIANS BEING TAKEN

  Heroko’s eyes hardened.

  His hand went to the sword at his side. The motion was casual, almost lazy, but the air around him tightened, like the street sensed what he was about to do.

  He drew the blade a few inches.

  Glass in the window trembled.

  The store’s display screens flickered as if they could feel the pressure building.

  Heroko lifted his chin, gaze fixed on the TV like it had personally insulted him.

  He took a step—

  A shadow passed over the storefront.

  Garth landed on the roof above in a hard crouch, shingles popping under his boots. He looked down, winded only in the way a storm might be winded.

  “Heroko!” he shouted.

  Heroko didn’t look up. “What.”

  “We have a mission,” Garth snapped. “And for the love of god, refrain from blowing the city up.”

  Heroko’s grip tightened on the sword.

  For one heartbeat, it looked like he might ignore him out of spite.

  Then he slid the blade back into the sheath with a sharp click.

  The tremble in the glass eased.

  Heroko looked up, eyes cold. “You’re late.”

  Garth’s expression flickered between irritation and relief. “Move.”

  Heroko smiled as if he’d just been invited to a party.

  And then he was gone, cutting down the street at a pace that wasn’t a run so much as a decision.

  We hit the scene like a wave.

  A wide intersection near an open plaza—vendors’ stalls overturned, fruit crushed into the street, a few abandoned shopping bags scattered like shed skin.

  Civilians were lined up in groups, hands bound with crude restraints, watched by a ring of Astrebounds.

  Bounded.

  Some of them wore mismatched armor scavenged from who-knew-where. Others wore nothing but street clothes, eyes flat and wrong, moving with that eerie confidence that came from a power that wasn’t theirs alone.

  The prisoners looked exhausted. Not just scared—exhausted. Like they’d been running, hiding, failing, and now they’d been caught.

  Mino swore under his breath and charged.

  His first impact hit like a wrecking ball. An Astrebound went flying, hit a wall, and didn’t get back up.

  Zacheas slid in under a swinging arm and drove a strike into a knee. The leg buckled. The Bounded dropped. Her eyes stayed on the next threat without a pause.

  Taco threw something that burst near the ground with a sharp crack—enough to scatter a cluster of enemies and give the prisoners a second to breathe.

  We were cutting a path toward them.

  Then Garth and Heroko arrived.

  Garth dropped from above into the middle of the ring like a thrown weapon, and the moment he landed, his arm swept out—

  One broad, simple motion.

  Seven Astrebounds fell.

  Not staggered. Not thrown.

  Fell.

  Like something invisible had cut the connection between their bodies and their intent.

  Mino slowed mid-step, staring.

  “Holy—” he began.

  Zacheas didn’t stop moving. “We’re getting stronger,” she said, voice tight with focus. “All of us.”

  Mino glanced at her, confused, then back at the fallen enemies. “He just— he just erased them.”

  Zacheas ducked a blast and countered with a kick that sent another Bounded skidding. “We’ve been killing Astrebounds for weeks,” she said. “You think that doesn’t do anything?”

  Mino hesitated, the thought landing wrong in his mind—progress measured in bodies. “I… don’t feel different.”

  Zacheas didn’t look at him. “Because you’re used to your own weight. You don’t notice when it shifts.”

  Heroko passed them, sword still sheathed, killing with motion and presence alone—one strike here, one there, clean, efficient, as if he were pruning a tree.

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  We reached the first line of prisoners.

  Mino’s gauntleted hand snapped a restraint like it was cheap rope.

  “Go,” he barked. “Run. Don’t stop.”

  They stumbled away in a wave—some crying, some silent, all of them looking over their shoulders like they didn’t believe freedom would last.

  Then Kyle walked into the intersection like he owned it.

  He didn’t come alone.

  A handful of his followers flanked him, spreading out, trying to pen us in.

  Kyle clapped his hands once, slow and mocking.

  “Aww,” he called. “Look at you guys. Always showing up right when the party starts.”

  Mino’s posture tightened. “Kyle.”

  Kyle’s grin widened. “Mino.”

  He glanced at Heroko, eyes bright with delighted malice. “And him.”

  Heroko didn’t react.

  Kyle’s followers rushed.

  They were good enough to be a problem for civilians, good enough to force us to split attention. But they weren’t enough.

  Mino folded two of them into the pavement in three steps. Zacheas dropped another with a precise strike to the throat that left him gagging and panicked. Taco took the legs out from under a third and sent him sprawling.

  Kyle’s smile faltered when he realized we weren’t getting pinned.

  When he realized he was losing.

  He clicked his tongue, annoyed.

  “Well,” he said, “this is boring.”

  He stepped back, eyes sliding toward the far side of the plaza where the last prisoners were still clustered—too many of them, too slow, still half-bound, still trapped by fear even with the path open.

  Kyle lifted his voice.

  “Hey!” he called, and the word snapped like a leash.

  Someone moved in the crowd.

  A skinny man stepped forward, shoulders hunched, face too narrow, eyes too wide. He looked like he should have been a victim in the line, not an enforcer.

  But the air around him was wrong.

  The Bounded’s spirit inside him wasn’t loud like Heroko’s, wasn’t heavy like Garth’s.

  It felt… hungry.

  Kyle pointed, careless, like he was tossing a toy to a dog.

  “Go have fun,” he told the skinny man.

  Then Kyle turned and ran—not away, not retreating in panic, but skipping sideways through chaos like he was choosing where the next laugh would be.

  Mino started after him.

  The skinny man lifted a hand.

  Mino’s next step stopped like he’d hit a wall.

  A pressure wrapped around the intersection, invisible but absolute.

  The skinny Astrebound smiled, small and uncertain.

  Then he spoke, voice thin.

  “Hit me.”

  No one moved.

  Zacheas narrowed her eyes. “Don’t.”

  Heroko shifted his weight. Garth’s gaze locked onto the man with the stillness of a predator.

  Taco—nervous, impulsive—threw a sharp blast anyway.

  The skinny man didn’t dodge.

  He inhaled.

  Not with his lungs. With something else.

  The blast disappeared an inch from his skin, swallowed like it had been poured into a hole.

  Then he exhaled—

  And the same force came back twice as hard.

  It hit Taco and sent him tumbling end over end across the pavement. He slammed into a low wall and slid down, dazed.

  Mino cursed and charged with a punch.

  The skinny man absorbed that too.

  A blink later the force returned, snapping Mino’s armor plates and launching him backward like he weighed nothing.

  Zacheas tried a precise strike with minimal output—speed over power.

  The skinny man didn’t need power to catch. He caught the intent. The motion itself. Something about him fed on impact.

  Zacheas flew sideways, hit the ground hard enough to skid.

  We regrouped instinctively, forming a loose ring.

  And we realized the problem all at once.

  We couldn’t hit him.

  Any attack—energy, force, even aggression—became fuel.

  A lightning rod.

  A trap.

  He stood there, skinny arms slightly out, inviting it, soaking it in, throwing it back.

  Heroko’s mouth curled in irritation. “Annoying.”

  Garth took a step forward, eyes flicking to the prisoners still too close to the danger.

  “We can’t let him stall us,” Garth muttered.

  The skinny man’s smile grew, sensing the frustration. “Come on,” he repeated. “Hit me.”

  Then Alisa screamed.

  She hadn’t been on the front line. She’d been helping prisoners move, guiding a limping woman, pulling a boy along by the hand.

  She saw Taco hit the wall. Saw Zacheas go down. Saw Mino thrown.

  And fear did what fear always did.

  It made her choose violence.

  She ran at the skinny Astrebound with nothing but her fists.

  No spirit flare. No energy pulse. Just a human girl sprinting on rage and panic.

  The skinny man blinked, confused—

  Then his smile sharpened. Because he realized something too.

  He couldn’t steal what she didn’t have.

  He lifted a hand, ready to strike her like anyone else.

  Garth moved.

  He crossed the distance in a breath and put himself between them, taking the blow meant for her.

  It hit his shoulder and made him slide half a step.

  Alisa froze behind him, horror widening her eyes.

  Garth didn’t turn. “Back,” he ordered.

  She stumbled away, shaking.

  The skinny man stared at his own hand like he couldn’t understand why the hit hadn’t flattened Garth.

  Then he lunged again, trying to get around him—

  Garth intercepted, arms spreading like a gate.

  Heroko watched it all with a frown that wasn’t concern, exactly.

  More like offense.

  That someone so small could cause so much trouble.

  The skinny Astrebound took a step back, realizing he’d drawn too much attention.

  His gaze darted—searching for Kyle, for instruction, for escape.

  He made his choice.

  He turned and ran.

  Mino started after him, limping, armor cracked. Zacheas pushed up to one knee, trying to regain balance. Taco was still shaking off the impact.

  The skinny man was going to get away.

  Heroko’s eyes narrowed.

  He moved—not chasing, not sprinting, but walking forward with a deliberate calm that felt heavier than a run.

  He drew his sword.

  The skinny Astrebound glanced back and saw the blade and flinched instinctively.

  He lifted both hands, panic rising.

  Heroko raised the sword slightly, like he was about to cut him down.

  The skinny man inhaled hard, dragging in everything—anticipating power, gathering it, preparing to spit it back.

  Heroko’s gaze stayed steady.

  Then the air around Heroko changed.

  He didn’t just swing.

  He powered up.

  Not with an explosion. Not with a scream.

  With an ugly, controlled surge—like a furnace door being opened.

  The street’s dust lifted. Loose debris rattled. The edges of the world seemed to tighten around him.

  All of it fed into the skinny man’s hungry void.

  The Astrebound’s eyes widened, suddenly realizing he’d swallowed too much.

  His body arched.

  His veins lit with borrowed force.

  His mouth opened in a silent cry.

  Then he detonated.

  A tight, violent burst—contained enough not to level the intersection, but brutal enough that when the light cleared, there was nothing left of him but scattered fragments and a blackened scorch mark on the pavement.

  Silence rang in the aftermath.

  Heroko lowered his sword.

  For a second, no one spoke.

  Then Taco, still half-sitting against the wall, let out a breathy laugh that sounded like it hurt.

  “At least…” he managed, coughing, “at least we’re getting stronger.”

  Mino didn’t answer. His stare was fixed on the scorch mark like he was trying to decide whether that counted as victory or something worse.

  Zacheas slowly stood, brushing grit from her hands. Her expression was controlled, but her eyes kept flicking to Alisa, checking she was still there, still breathing.

  Garth’s jaw was clenched so hard it made the muscles in his cheek jump.

  Heroko sheathed his sword with a small click and turned away from them all as if the scene had already ended.

  “We’re done here,” he said.

  Mino’s voice was sharp. “Where are you going?”

  Heroko didn’t stop walking.

  “Where I want,” he called back, and there was laughter in it—light, careless, like none of this weighed on him.

  He disappeared down the street.

  We stood in the wreckage, surrounded by freed civilians running in every direction, listening to distant sirens and the city’s constant, exhausted breathing.

  And for the first time since all this started, the thought landed clean and heavy in my mind:

  Spike wasn’t the only monster out there.

  And we were becoming something else too.