In the inky tapestry of night, where stars whispered secrets and dreams took flight, a convergence of cosmic marvels unfolded. The gang, their eyes ablaze with malice, closed in on Noah, their prey trapped in the labyrinthine alleys of fate.
"No way out now, Doc!" one of them jeered, his voice echoing off the damp brick walls.
Another laughed, cruel and breathless. "You should've stayed in your hospital. This is our street."
Noah's chest heaved. He pressed his back against the cold stone, his legs quivering. The alley felt smaller with every step they took toward him. His mind screamed for escape, but his body had reached its limit.
It was then when the shadows threatened to swallow him whole that the universe itself intervened.
A comet, a celestial wanderer bound by no earthly chains, blazed across the heavens. Its radiant tail painted the night in hues of silver and blue, a streak of light too brilliant to belong to this world. Its glow spilled downward, flooding the alley with an otherworldly gleam.
"What the hell is that?" one of the gangsters muttered, shielding his eyes.
Noah staggered forward, his gaze locked on the sky. The comet's light did not just touch him it claimed him. The shadows stretched and twisted, wrapping around his form as if the veil of destiny itself had descended upon him.
And then it happened.
The fabric of reality quivered. A shudder ran through his body, violent and electric. He gasped as if lightning had pierced his veins, his heart pounding with an unnatural rhythm. His legs burned, not with pain, but with power swift, uncontainable. His ears rang, then sharpened, every sound magnified until he could hear the blood pumping in his pursuers' veins, the rhythm of their breath, the unspoken thoughts that flickered in their skulls.
—He's cornered. One shot and it's over—
—What is that light? God, what's happening to him?
—Don't run. Don't let them see you're afraid…
Noah clutched his head, the whispers crashing into him like waves. "Stop… stop!" he cried, his voice breaking.
The gang froze, their jeers silenced, replaced by uneasy glances.
And then, Noah moved.
Not as a man, but as something faster, sharper. His body blurred, vanishing from the spot where he stood. The gang spun wildly, searching the shadows, but he was already behind them, his footsteps a whisper carried by the wind.
"What-what is this?" one of them stammered, panic rising.
Noah looked at his own trembling hands. They didn't feel like his anymore. They buzzed with energy, every muscle coiled like a spring ready to shatter the laws of physics. The comet's shadow lingered on his skin, searing him with a truth he could neither deny nor understand.
He wasn't just running anymore. He was transcending.
Yet, wonder was drowned by terror. He didn't ask for this power, didn't want it. But it had chosen him.
***
Miles away, high on the city's edge, Leilani Gomez pressed her eye to the telescope of the Hillcrest Observatory. She had been tracking the comet for weeks, charting its arc across the heavens, its brilliance stirring something deep within her.
But tonight tonight was different.
The comet's glow expanded, as though bending closer to the earth. And then she saw it: a man in the alley below, his body engulfed in its celestial shadow.
Leilani's hand froze on the telescope. Her breath caught. "No… it can't be…"
She pulled back and stepped to the observatory's glass window, staring out at the streak of light that now bathed the city in its eerie glow. Her chest tightened. She knew that man Noah Reynolds. She had seen him before, walking beside her father in the hospital halls.
Her father.
The memory of his bloodied coat, the cruel echo of the gunshot, stabbed through her heart. Tears stung her eyes, but she did not look away. Something was happening to Noah, something that defied reason, something written not in medicine or science but in the very fabric of the cosmos.
The comet had marked him.
And in that moment, Leilani understood: this was no accident. Fate had tied them together, two souls caught in the same celestial web.
Her whisper filled the silent observatory. "Noah… what have you become?"
***
In the alley, Noah collapsed to his knees, trembling with the weight of the transformation. His chest rose and fell with ragged breaths, his body alive with impossible energy. The whispers of strangers' thoughts still pressed against his skull, but beneath the chaos, one certainty remained.
The man he had been at Hopewell Medical Institute the healer, the student, the son was gone.
In his place stood something new.
A reluctant custodian of powers he could neither control nor deny.
And though the night was silent again, Noah knew the shadows of his life had only just begun to stir.