Remember fire.
Not warmth. Not comfort.
The kind that swallows cities. The kind that strips skin from bone and memory from soul.
I died in another world. Name was Ellie Hughes. Engineer. Fighter. Girl with a grudge and a half-loaded plasma cutter.
I remember the war. The moment the bombs fell. The screaming. The silence. The betrayal.
And then—nothing.
Until I woke up. Naked. Bleeding. In a crater of corpses. New Terra.
But before that? We died when a fool lit the fuse on a bomb no mind could comprehend.
They called it the Godrend Device — a universe-ripping warhead designed by someone who thought ending reality was the fastest way to win a cold war.
It detonated in silence. Not with fire. With absence. It tore atoms from existence, deleted light, burned gravity. Cities unraveled. Oceans lifted into space. I watched the sky fracture like glass as time stuttered to a stop.
He held me as the world ended. Our skin peeled away first. Our bones turned to code. And we smiled like idiots.
Because somehow, we knew we'd come back.
They call this a second chance.
It's not.
It's a test. And I plan to fail it in the most violent way possible.
This world isn't Earth. Not anymore. It's a rusted-out meat grinder with a pulse. A stitched-together hellscape where cities breathe smog and the laws change by the hour.
It's split into Zones now. War-torn districts ruled by Kingpins — tyrants with Apex power and no conscience.
They don't lead.
They consume.
Scarpoint is where I landed. Welcome mat made of rebar and blood. Home of the Bleeding Cross faction and Thursday night Apex cage matches.
I didn't crawl out of the wreckage. I rose from it.
Because somewhere between death and rebirth, something inside me broke right.
They say each Apex gets one Trait. One mutation. One power born from pain.
I got six.
No one knows how. Not even me.
But my pain didn't pick a lane. It exploded.
Overdrive – Bleed faster, fight harder. I get sharper with every cut.
Gravemaul – Absorb hits. Reflect them twice as hard. Make your punch a funeral.
Razor Pulse – Energy blades from my nervous system. Like my anger grew teeth.
Feral Lock – Bleed on you once, and I can track you through time and trauma.
Hellskin – Pain? I feel it all. But I don't stop.
Oracle-Eye – Predictive kill-vision in my right eye. Sees your death before you swing.
And yeah, it hurts.
Every second.
But it keeps me alive.
My goals?
Simple.
Find out why I was sent here.
Wreck everyone who thinks they understand pain.
Kill a Kingpin. Maybe all fifteen.
Find him.
Yeah. Him.
The one with the smirk. The gold and blue eyes. The bastard who ruined everything in the last world and might just be the only one who remembers it all.
If he's here? I'll find him.
Or he'll find me.
And when that happens…
We'll make the world remember what it feels like to burn.
The last night I saw him, I was riding the edge of a storm inside a bunker with cracked steel beams and flickering lights.
We weren't lovers. We were detonations.
My thighs clamped around his hips, body covered in grit and sweat, fingers curled into his hair like I was trying to pull him deeper into the abyss we called passion. Every thrust was brutal, manic, hungry.
He bit my neck. I scratched bloody trails down his back. We didn't kiss — we devoured.
My spine arched against the cracked concrete as he slammed into me again and again, harder than sanity allowed, chasing a high that no drug, no death, no resurrection could match.
"Say it," I growled. "Say you'll come back."
"You won't have to find me," he gasped. "I'll be inside you again before the sky reforms."
I laughed. Then I screamed.
And not just from the orgasm that split my soul in two, but from the bunker shaking as the Godrend Device began its countdown.
He didn't stop. Not even when the walls shook loose. Not even when the world cracked open. We came together as the air disappeared, like the universe envied us.
And as we died — naked, tangled, laughing in each other's ruin — I knew the next time would be worse.
Hotter.
Freakier.
Because reincarnation?
That was just foreplay.
I am not a savior.
I am not a legend.
I am Hawk.
And this is how I begin.