The White Blindness
Chapter 1
The afterlife didn't have a pearly gate. It didn't have a river of fire or a scale for a heavy heart. It was just a room—the kind of liminal space you find in a mid-range hotel when the fluorescent lights are humming a frequency that makes your teeth ache.
I sat in a plastic chair that felt too small for my frame, though I couldn't quite remember how big my frame was supposed to be. My last solid memory was the screech of tires, the smell of ozone and burnt rubber, and the sudden, sickening realization that a distracted driver in a semi-truck was about to erase thirty-two years of mediocrity.
"You're thinking about the truck," a voice said.
I looked up. Across from me sat a man—or a shape that suggested a man. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt that was loud enough to be a physical assault, and his face seemed to shift whenever I blinked. One second he looked like a weary office clerk; the next, a wide-eyed child.
"It was a very large truck," I managed to say. My voice sounded thin, echoing against walls that weren't quite there. "Am I dead?"
"Technically? Yes. Legally? Your estate is currently being bickered over by a cousin you haven't spoken to in a decade. But cosmically? You're a lucky winner." The being—the ROB, the Entity, whatever it was—leaned forward, its eyes flashing like dying stars. "I'm bored. And when I get bored, I relocate assets. I'm moving you to a new reality. A playground. But because I'm feeling whimsical, I'm giving you a new skin to wear. A masterpiece of biological and spiritual engineering."
"A playground?" I felt a cold knot of dread form in a stomach I wasn't sure I still possessed. "Where are you sending me?"
The being smiled, and for a moment, its face settled into something sharp and cruel. "A world of heroes and villains. A world where the gold light at the end of the tunnel is actually a multi-dimensional parasite. You know it well. You've read the serials. You've argued about the power levels in the forums."
The dread crystallized. "Worm. You're sending me to Earth Bet."
"Bingo. But don't worry. I'm not sending you in as a mook. I'm giving you the peak. The ceiling. The one who stands alone."
The being snapped its fingers.
The hotel room didn't just disappear; it shattered. The sensation was less like falling and more like being turned inside out through a straw. My consciousness expanded, stretching across dimensions I couldn't name, and then—
Pain.
It wasn't the dull ache of a bruise or the sharp sting of a cut. It was a sensory apocalypse.
I hit a hard, cold surface—concrete, damp with salt spray and grime. I tried to gasp, but the air felt like it was made of jagged glass. My eyes were closed, yet I could see. I saw the molecular vibration of the air molecules. I saw the flow of tectonic pressure beneath the city's crust. I saw the electromagnetic hum of a streetlight three blocks away, flickering with a dying filament.
I screamed, but the sound was muffled by the sheer weight of the information flooding my brain. It was too much. Every atom in a five-mile radius was screaming its existence at me, demanding to be processed, categorized, and understood.
The Six Eyes.
The realization flickered in the dark corners of my mind. This wasn't just a power; it was a curse of perception. I reached up, my fingers trembling, and felt my face. The skin was smooth, the bone structure delicate but firm. My hair was long—silkier than anything I'd ever felt—and bone-white.
I wasn't me anymore. I was a woman. I was her. A female iteration of the strongest sorcerer, dropped into a city that ate hope for breakfast.
I needed to cover them. I needed to dampen the signal.
I clawed at the fabric of the high-collared jacket I was wearing—dark, heavy, expensive-feeling—and found a length of black fabric tucked into a pocket. A blindfold. With shaking hands, I wrapped it around my head, pulling it tight over my eyes.
The world went dark, but only relatively. The Six Eyes still fed me a blueprint of my surroundings through cursed energy—a concept that shouldn't exist here, yet thrummed in my chest like a second heartbeat—but the physical light was gone. The "resolution" of the world dropped just enough to allow me to breathe.
I leaned against a brick wall, my chest heaving. The salt air told me everything I needed to know. The smell of rotting fish, the distant groan of a sinking shipyard, and the pervasive sense of urban decay.
Brockton Bay.
I stayed there for a long time, huddled in the mouth of an alleyway near the Docks. I didn't move. I couldn't. I had to catalog the inventory of my own soul.
Inside me, there was a well. It wasn't the "shards" or "passenger" energy I knew from the books. It was thick, viscous, and ancient. Cursed energy. It responded to my will with terrifying efficiency. I could feel the Limitless—the concept of infinity brought to life. It sat between me and the wall, a microscopic distance that could never be crossed unless I allowed it. Infinity.
But I also knew the geography of this world's despair.
Somewhere in this city, a girl named Taylor Hebert was likely rotting in a locker or beginning her first tentative steps into a life of escalating trauma. Somewhere out at sea, Leviathan was waiting for the clock to strike. Above it all, Zion—Scion—was drifting aimlessly, a god-sized hole waiting to be filled with the desire for extinction.
I stood up, my legs feeling longer than they should be, my center of gravity shifted. I caught my reflection in a puddle of oily water, illuminated by a nearby neon sign for a failing laundromat.
The blindfold covered the top half of my face, but the rest was... striking. Ethereal. I looked like a porcelain doll carved by a god who had a penchant for arrogance. I was tall, lithe, and radiating an aura of absolute, unearned confidence that didn't match the frantic pulsing of my heart.
"Focus," I whispered. My voice was different—higher, melodious, but carrying an underlying resonance that made the air shimmer.
I had the map of the future in my head, but Earth Bet wasn't a story anymore. It was a meat grinder. Being Gojo didn't make me invincible; it made me a target. If Cauldron caught wind of a "Cape" whose power didn't come from a shard—someone who could manipulate the very fabric of space without a colonial link to the Entities—they wouldn't just recruit me. They'd want to see what made me tick. They'd want to see if my "Infinite" could stop a Grey Boy loop or if the Simurgh could find a crack in my sanity.
I began to walk. Each step felt like I was re-learning how to exist. I moved through the Docks, my "sight" picking up the thermal signatures of rats in the walls and the distant, rhythmic pounding of music from a gang-controlled warehouse.
I needed a base. I needed information. Most of all, I needed to test how this world's "physics" handled a foreign infection like Jujutsu.
I reached out a hand and touched a rusted dumpster. I didn't touch it, of course. My Infinity kept a hair's breadth of space between my skin and the metal. I pushed. The dumpster slid back an inch, the friction of the ground protesting.
I felt the cursed energy flow—Blue. The lapse technique. I visualized a point of attraction. A small pebble a few feet away suddenly blurred, sucked toward the center of the dumpster with a violent clack.
It worked. But the feeling was... off. In the manga, Gojo's power was a natural law. Here, it felt like the world was trying to "read" the effect and coming up with an error message. The air felt static-charged. The reality of the Worm-verse was governed by Shards—giant, interdimensional supercomputers that simulated physics to create "powers." My power wasn't a simulation. It was an imposition of a different reality's logic onto this one.
That made it dangerous. It meant the Shards might not know how to counter me yet, but it also meant I was a "glitch." And glitches get patched.
I turned a corner and stopped.
Three men were standing under a flickering streetlamp. They wore the colors of the Merchants—tattered greens and browns, the smell of cheap meth and desperation clinging to them like a shroud. They saw me, and their eyes widened.
I probably looked like a dream—or a nightmare. A tall, white-haired woman in high-end tactical-chic clothing, wearing a blindfold in the middle of the night in the worst part of town.
"Hey, princess," one of them said, stepping forward. He had a rusted pipe in one hand and a twitch in his eye that suggested he hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. "You lost? This is a private road. Toll is everything you've got in those pockets."
I looked at him—not with my eyes, but with the Six Eyes. I saw the way his heart struggled against the stimulants in his blood. I saw the tension in his muscles. I saw the dull, flickering spark of his humanity being eroded by the city.
I felt a flash of irritation, followed by a cold, analytical detachment. This was the "Gojo" influence—the supreme confidence of the strongest. To me, these men were no more threatening than blades of grass.
"I'm having a very long day," I said, my voice smooth and dangerously calm. "And I haven't decided if I like this city yet. Don't make the decision for me."
The man laughed, a wet, hacking sound. "Think you're a cape? Where's your team, huh? Where's your PRT badge?"
He swung the pipe.
I didn't move. I didn't even flinch.
The pipe stopped two inches from my temple. It didn't hit a wall; it just... ceased to progress. The man let out a grunt of effort, pushing harder, his face contorting. The pipe vibrated in the air, held fast by the infinite space between his intent and my skin.
"What the hell?" he hissed.
His friends backed up. They weren't capes, but in Brockton Bay, everyone knew the signs. Invulnerability was one thing, but this wasn't a Brute power. There was no impact. No sound.
"My turn," I said.
I didn't use Blue or Red. I didn't need to. I simply reached out and flicked the pipe with one finger, infused with a microscopic burst of cursed energy reinforcement.
The pipe shattered. Not bent—shattered into a dozen jagged shards of rusted iron. The shockwave traveled up the man's arm, and I heard the distinct pop of his shoulder dislocating. He fell to the ground, screaming.
The other two didn't stay to help. They turned and bolted into the darkness, their boots splashing through the puddles.
I stood over the fallen man, watching the way his cursed energy—the tiny, leak-like amount that all humans possessed—flared with the color of agony.
"Go," I said. "Tell whoever you work for that the weather in the Docks is changing."
He scrambled away, clutching his arm, sobbing.
I was alone again in the rain. I looked up at the sky, where the clouds obscured the stars. Somewhere up there, the Simurgh was singing her silent song. Somewhere in the Atlantic, a titan was sleeping.
I was one woman against a narrative designed to end in a graveyard. I had the eyes of a god and the body of a legend, but I was currently a homeless trans-dimensional castaway with no money, no identity, and a target on my back the size of a skyscraper.
I needed to find a place to sleep. I needed to find Taylor Hebert. And I needed to figure out if my Unlimited Void would break a parahuman's brain, or if the Shard would try to process the infinity for them—and what kind of monster that would create.
I started walking toward the lights of the Boardwalk. The Six Eyes picked out the distant silhouette of the PRT building on the water, a fortress of glass and steel.
The story was starting. I just had to make sure I wasn't the one who ended it.
Next step: Find a way to acquire funds and a secure location without alerting the Protectorate's thinkers. The Tattletales and Watchdogs of the world would be looking for any new ripples in the pond. I had to be a tidal wave they never saw coming.
Would you like me to continue with Chapter 2, focusing on the protagonist's first day in the city and their attempt to establish a secret identity?