Chapter 227
Huh
"Could you give me a ride?"
The walkie-talkie buzzed violently in the hands of the person holding it. A panicked voice rushed through the line:
"What the hell, I just saw someone jump on your roof! What's going on? Hello? Fuck?" The line cut abruptly, leaving only static.
There was a stunned silence in the car.
No one moved. No one breathed.
This wasn't just a person climbing onto a moving car. That would have been insane enough. No—the roof had been torn open. With bare hands. The metal was bent, shredded, and curling upward in jagged shards. Every instinct screamed danger, and yet they couldn't tear their eyes away.
Who was this guy? He had to be an Ascender—but where had he come from? There had been no warning. No indication that someone capable of this existed here, now, above them.
The sound alone had sent a jolt down their spines. The kind of sound you only ever heard in nightmares or horror films, but never in real life. Except now it was real, and happening inches above their heads.
The mind raced, buffering, trying to reconcile impossible physics with reality. Their hearts pounded in sync with the engine, a wild, irregular rhythm that made the world seem even more surreal.
Then, above the jagged opening, Thor eyes flicked up briefly, as if surveying the sky, and then down again, locking onto the stunned passengers inside the car.
A faint, confident smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
"I don't know if I can get a ride, actually…" His voice was casual, almost teasing, belying the chaos around him. "…It looks like we're about to crash."
Time seemed to slow for a heartbeat. Every detail hung in the air like suspended glass.
The car's occupants were caught between disbelief and fear. There was no time to react. All they could do was watch, trapped in that suspended moment, as the impossible figure of Thor balanced effortlessly above them, a harbinger of imminent chaos.
"Huh."
The driver, who had been far too focused on the impossible scene above, jerked his head forward just in time.
Ahead, the road seemed to collapse under his vision. A massive oil truck loomed, it tires grinding against the asphalt and barreling straight toward them. The sheer size of it, combined with its blinding speed, made every other thought vanish instantly.
He only had a few seconds to react. A few seconds to think. A few seconds to survive.
Before the instinct to swerve or brake could even fully form, a calm, almost teasing voice sliced through the roar of the engine and the chaos above.
"I hope you got your seat belts on."
It was Thor. His words were casual, almost playful, as if they weren't seconds away from a collision that could tear the car apart.
The driver's heart slammed against his ribs, a wild drumbeat that made every movement feel sluggish and surreal. The tires screamed against the asphalt as he fought for control.
The truck's horn blared, a deep, urgent note that echoed through the enclosed space of the car and rattled the metal frame. Dust kicked up from the road, shimmering in streaks of late afternoon light, making the world blur in a dizzying swirl of motion.
Suddenly—like he had blinked—Thor's figure had simply appeared between the truck and his car.
One second he was on the roof, looking down with that faint smirk—and the next, he was there, standing in the direct path of a roaring oil truck
The driver could've sworn—sworn—he saw Thor's eyes flicker in that instant. A flash of something strange that was barely visible. Like a pulse of light beneath the surface of his gaze, it was like the world itself hesitated around him.
The driver's last thoughts didn't even have time to form properly. He didn't get to finish his panic or final prayer. All he had was one unfinished certainty ringing inside his skull: that all three parties involved—the car, the truck, and Thor—now definitely owed death a payment.
But that grim conclusion didn't even finish forming before it was swallowed.
A sudden, searing heat rushed against his face—an overwhelming wave of warmth, it pressed against the windows and flooded the interior of the car, as if they'd suddenly driven into a wall of fire. A flash of light followed immediately after— it was blinding, total, and unrelenting. It drowned out the world, reduced everything outside to pure white.
No one inside the car could see a thing. In unison, they threw their arms up, shielding their faces. The heat prickled their skin. The light clawed at their eyes. Every nerve screamed at them to duck, to brace, to do something.
They could only wait for the inevitable.
Wait for the crunch of metal, for the brutal sound of the car being torn in half. For the scream of tires, for the shatter of glass. They waited for their very bones to break.
But it never came.
Seconds passed like minutes, stretched tight by fear. There was no impact. Or deafening crash. Only the sound of their own rapid breathing, the soft ticking of the dashboard, and the fading hiss of whatever force had just passed over them.
Slowly—very slowly—the driver lowered his hands from his face. His heart was still pounding, his breath caught in his throat. He turned his head toward the window, expecting smoke, fire, wreckage—something.
Instead, what he saw made him question whether he was awake at all.
Thor was still standing there, completely still in the space between the two vehicles. He hadn't moved. He hadn't fallen. And somehow, he hadn't been touched. There was no injury, blood or even dust on his clothes. His posture was relaxed, as if nothing had ever threatened him in the first place.
And just beyond him, the massive truck—still intact. Not even a scratch dented its surface. The car was the same. There was no sign that anything had happened at all.
If the driver hadn't seen it with his own eyes—if he hadn't felt the heat, hadn't been blinded by the light, hadn't experienced the fear first-hand—he would've assumed he imagined it all. But he knew what he felt. What they all felt.
And yet, there stood Thor. Untouched by the impossible.
One of the girls shouted, panic rising sharp in her throat, "Get out of the car! We have to run—split up!"
The words snapped through the tense air like a whip, and just like that, the frozen spell was broken. The driver came to his senses in an instant, adrenaline surging as the threat of death returned with full clarity. Every survival instinct roared to life.
He reached for the door handle. So did the others. Their hands scrambled at the locks and pushed at the doors as they all tried to escape, to spill out onto the road and scatter in every direction. None of them had a plan. They didn't need one. Anything was better than being trapped.
But just before the driver's fingers reached the handle, something stopped him.
A sound.
A strange, deep groan echoed through the car—a low, dragging sound like steel being twisted by invisible hands. It made his stomach turn. The sound didn't belong in a car. It didn't belong anywhere.
He froze.
With his eyes wide, he slowly looked up—and saw Thor. The man hadn't moved from his spot between the vehicles. He stood there with one hand resting gently on the hood of the car. Nothing about the gesture looked threatening. His palm wasn't clenched, he wasn't forcing pressure downward. But somehow, it was enough.
From beneath his touch, the metal began to ripple.
Like water.
The hood didn't crumple—it waved. Smooth, unnatural waves spread from where his hand made contact, and as the ripples passed through the frame of the car, the metal followed like liquid. The doors buckled inward with the hinges shifting just enough to resist movement. The handles bent ever so slightly out of shape. The entire structure was instantly deformed.
The car hadn't been crushed. It had been locked—from the outside, with nothing more than a touch.
The driver's mouth went dry.
A crawling sense of horror spread through his chest, it was tight and suffocating. He no longer felt like a person inside a vehicle. He felt like an animal in a cage. His breathing turned shallow.
Sweat began to bead along his brow, trailing down the side of his face and soaking into his collar. His hands trembled against the glass as he stared at Thor.
There was no doubt left.
He wasn't just looking at some lucky lunatic who had jumped on a moving vehicle.
He was in the presence of a powerful Ascender—One who could rewrite the rules of reality with ease.
And now, they were trapped with him.
One of the guys in the back lost it.
His breathing quickened into shallow gasps, his wide eyes darting from the warped doors to Thor's motionless figure outside. Panic overtook reason. Whatever fear he once had was gone now, buried beneath pure desperation.
With trembling hands, he pulled out a gun.
It was small—standard black, slightly scratched at the handle. While guns weren't favored among Ascenders; it was still just as deadly and useful among normal people.
He didn't give a warning.
He just snapped.
The gun rose in his shaking grip, and his finger jammed down on the trigger as if trying to erase the fear clawing at him from the inside.
Tat tat tat tat ta—Tat tat tat tat ta—Tat tat tat tat ta—Tat tat tat tat ta—Tat tat tat tat ta.
The sound filled the car like a thunderstorm made of metal.
The muzzle flashes lit up the inside of the car in bursts of orange, turning their panicked expressions into warped, flickering masks.
His aim was wild—erratic and untrained, with each shot veering off at unpredictable angles. But chaos has its own form of precision.
The first bullet hit the driver in the neck.
It wasn't a clean shot. It tore through the soft flesh just above the collarbone, ripping a jagged path and erupting in a spray that painted the windshield red. He choked on his own blood before he could even understand what had happened, his body slumping forward, twitching against the steering wheel.
The second round struck the girl beside him.
It hit her just under the eye and burst out the back of her skull, shattering bone and splashing the back window with something thick and pink and wet. Her body convulsed, with her spine arching violently before collapsing sideways onto the gear console.
The smell of copper flooded the car.
The car felt warm.
The others screamed, with some ducking, some pressing against the twisted doors, clawing to escape. The shooting didn't stop. The man was still pulling the trigger even after the chamber clicked empty, his breath ragged, his eyes wild, as if he still hadn't realized what he'd done.
The only thing left moving was the smoke curling gently from the barrel of the gun.