"Do you want to know the truth?" she asked, her silver lance still aimed directly at the nape of Xavier's neck.
Xavier was sweating bullets—literally, if biology allowed it. He tried to back away, only to kiss a brick wall with his spine.
"Don't move again, or this will go straight into your neck," she said flatly, her eyes so deadpan they could win an Olympic medal in indifference.
"Okay! Okay! I'll listen—just put that thing away!" Xavier squeaked, his voice cracking like a haunted radio. "Wait a minute, how did you get that pass security?"
She sighed like she was dealing with a particularly annoying tutorial NPC. Then, poof—the lance vanished into thin air like it had clocked out for lunch.
"You're not even a threat. I don't need a weapon to scare you," she said, casually cracking her knuckles. Her expression shifted into something that could be described as rage gremlin with gym membership. "I can beat you to a pulp just fine."
Xavier let out a sound that can only be spelled as: "EeeeeEEEKK!!"
"Anyway, follow me," she said, grabbing him by the collar of his suit and dragging him down the hallway like a sack of mildly disappointing potatoes.
At first, the hallway was empty. But suddenly—people. Lots of them. Watching.
To be fair, it's not every day you see a twenty-six-year-old man getting floor-dragged by a seventeen-year-old girl like he's on sale at IKEA.
"You know I can walk, right?" Xavier said, now full-on carpet-surfing.
She didn't respond. Just kept dragging.
"This is a lawsuit waiting to happen," Xavier muttered as he bumped into a potted plant.
"Didn't you say you were going to tell me the truth or something?" he added, pulling out his phone—probably to Google 'how to sue a teenager with superpowers.'
"Shut up. You talk too much for your own good," she said with a sigh.
"We're here."
She stopped.
Xavier looked around. "Wait—HOW-DID-WE-GET-HERE?!" he shouted. They were on the rooftop of the eighth floor. He could've sworn they were just on the second.
"Keep your voice down," she said, brushing her black hair aside with all the calm of someone ordering fries.
"KEEP MY—WE SKIPPED SIX FLOORS!" Xavier barked. "I didn't feel stairs! Or an elevator! Or even a breeze!"
"I used my Gate. Simple," she said, now perched on the ledge like a moody gargoyle.
"Gate? GATE?! What is this, a fantasy novel?! I thought the lance was even some form of illusion or magic trick."
"Wait... didn't I already explain all this?"
"NO, YOU DIDN'T!"
"Oh... ohhh, right." She paused. "Okay, quick summary: You were born with a Gate, so you're an Executioner. That means you've got powers. Also, there are monsters. They hate Executioners. I don't really know why. I never asked. Maybe they're just jerks. Anyway—surprise! You have superpowers. Congratulations. Yay."
Xavier's left eye twitched like a dying lightbulb. He slowly stepped back, chuckling awkwardly, hoping this was some fever dream brought on by expired vending machine coffee.
Then he bumped into something.
Correction: someone.
Or maybe... a mountain with muscles and breath.
He turned around. There stood a person—if "person" included giants who bench-press tanks for fun.
Xavier looked up, gulped, and said the only thing that made sense in the moment:
"Oh. Cool. I'm hallucinating now. That's new."
Xavier blinked rapidly at the walking skyscraper of muscle now shadowing over him. It grunted—a low, tectonic sound that made his knees quiver.
"Who's this?" the human mountain asked, voice like a freight train trying to whisper.
"He's the newbie," the girl replied, still perched on the ledge like some gothic pigeon. "Don't crush him. Yet."
"Yet?!" Xavier squeaked.
The giant took a lumbering step forward. The roof vibrated. Xavier could swear the air trembled. A faint scent of iron and gym socks wafted from his presence, possibly enough to violate health codes in four states.
"I thought you said he had a Gate," the giant said. "Doesn't look like he could punch a plush toy."
"Look, I'm right here," Xavier said, waving his arms. "And I will have you know I can punch things just fine. I mean, not well, but... with enthusiasm!"
The girl hopped off the ledge. "His Gate hasn't awakened yet. He didn't even know he had one until five minutes ago."
"And whose fault is that?" Xavier snapped.
She ignored him. "But I've seen it before. It's not subtle. It's called Dejhan."
The name hit Xavier like a jolt. His breath caught. A memory—not fully formed—stirred in his chest. The word echoed in the corners of his mind like a voice underwater.
"Wait..." he said, slowly. "Dejhan? I... I used to say that all the time when I was a kid."
The giant raised an eyebrow. "Huh. So it's real."
"Yeah, my parents thought it was gibberish," Xavier muttered. "I used to yell it when I got mad or threw tantrums. Like a weird chant. 'Dejhan! Dejhan!' Like it meant something."
"It does," the girl said simply. "It means 'Open.'"
"Open what?" Xavier asked.
She stepped closer and tapped his chest. "You."
That didn't clear up anything. Xavier was about to argue when the giant grunted again. "If he's got Dejhan, we should test him."
"Test me? What does that mean?" Xavier asked warily.
The giant cracked his knuckles. The sound could've doubled as thunder.
"Nope," Xavier said immediately. "Nope nope nope. Not fighting the sentient meat mountain. I value my bones, thank you."
"It's just a spark test," the girl said. "It'll either trigger your Gate... or you'll pass out. No big deal."
"NO BIG—"
Before he could finish the sentence, the giant's fist moved.
It wasn't a punch, not really—more like a breeze. His knuckles passed within inches of Xavier's face. But the force behind it sent Xavier stumbling backward, arms flailing, brain buffering.
"WHOA WHOA WHOA—"
His foot caught the edge of a loose tile and he tumbled. For one horrifying second, he was airborne.
This is it, he thought. Death by clumsiness.
Then—BAM.
He landed hard, but not on concrete. His hand hit the ground first—fist clenched.
There was a sound. A deep, resonant chime like a temple bell echoing across time. A shockwave rippled out from his fist, spiderwebbing cracks across the rooftop beneath him in a perfect circle.
The air shimmered.
The girl stepped back, eyes finally wide. "There it is."
Xavier groaned, pushing himself upright. His hand felt... hot. Not burning—more like a pulse, a thrum of power running through his veins. His fingers curled unconsciously.
"What... what was that?" he asked, voice trembling.
"Your Gate," she said.
"That was Dejhan?"
"Not all of it," the giant said. "Just a taste."
Xavier looked at his fist, still glowing faintly with a reddish aura. It was warm. Not painful, but alive. Like it was waiting for something.
The girl knelt beside him. "Dejhan is fist-based, yeah. But it's more than punching hard. It's about release. Power stored and then—" She gestured. "Boom. Controlled bursts. Compressed energy. Like detonating a thought."
"I didn't even try," Xavier said.
"Exactly," she said. "That's why you need training. Right now, your Gate is like a firehose tied in a knot."
The giant nodded. "And if you don't learn to aim it, it's gonna blow your arm off."
"Wonderful," Xavier muttered. "So I'm a walking demolition hazard with poor self-awareness. That tracks."
He stood up shakily, still staring at his hand. "Dejhan," he said aloud.
The glow pulsed again. Just for a moment.
A strange, half-forgotten sense washed over him. Childhood tantrums. Screaming the word at the sky. The way his parents would look at each other, worried. Like they knew, but never said.
"This thing... it's always been there, hasn't it?"
"Gates don't appear randomly," the girl said. "They're yours from birth. They wait. Sleep. Then... they open."
Xavier took a long breath. He wasn't ready for any of this. He wanted to go home, eat cereal, and pretend the world was still normal. But something deep in his chest—the same place that used to scream Dejhan as a kid—felt awake now.
No turning back.
He looked up at the two people who had completely ruined his day and possibly his spine.
"Okay," he said. "So what happens now?"
The girl smirked. "Now?"
She turned and pointed to the distant skyline—dark clouds rumbling in over the horizon, unnatural and slow.
"Now we find out why the monsters are so interested in you."