KILLIAN'S POV
After "hanging up" on the call, if you could even call that mess of tension and unveiled anger a call, I leaned back in my chair and exhaled sharply.
The sound echoed off the walls of my study like I'd just released weeks of stale air. It wasn't frustration. Not exactly. Just… boredom.
Life had been so... bleh lately. No racing nerves, no adrenaline fueled moments, not even a neighborhood Karen on BS.
I guess, sometimes even borderline omnipotence comes with paperwork-level monotony.
I drummed my fingers against the desk—tap, tap, tap—letting the rhythm fill the room until it started to annoy me as much as the silence had.
Then it hit me, sudden and sharp, like a spark inside my skull.
Why not… shake things up a bit?
A grin tugged at my lips. One of those reckless, dangerous kinds of grins that usually meant I was about to do something either brilliant or profoundly stupid.
I stood, rolling my shoulders, stretching out the stiffness from sitting still too long.
The air around me thickened as I pulled at the fabric of space itself. The portal formed in front of me, an elliptical tear in reality, edges shimmering like liquid mercury, humming low in my bones.
Without giving myself time to think twice, I stepped through.
The world snapped back together with a faint pop, and I found myself standing in a narrow alley.
The smell hit first—street food, wet asphalt, and the unmistakable sour bite of liquor.
A homeless man lay curled near the wall, asleep under a tattered blanket, his slow breathing clouding faintly in the chill air.
I carefully stepped over him, boots crunching on loose gravel. The portal behind me collapsed soundlessly, leaving nothing but the quiet drip of water from a broken gutter.
The alley was wrong in the best way—unnaturally clean, unnervingly perfect.
Not a single piece of trash, not a single crack in the brick walls.
It was like someone had scrubbed it out of existence with a divine eraser, save for the man asleep at my feet.
But when I emerged from that uncanny stillness onto the street, the world opened up and there it was.
A massive building, cutting into the skyline like a stone pillar from some modern Olympus.
And at its summit, shining even through the grime of the city air, was a golden globe.
Two words stretched across it in bold, timeless letters:
DAILY PLANET.
I stared for a heartbeat, then another, feeling the grin pull wider until it hurt my cheeks.
This wasn't just excitement—this was the thrill you feel at the top of a rollercoaster, seconds before the plunge.
Not that we ever actually went to Coaster Cliff World, given the chase and all, but alls well that ends well, right?
Looking around the city that you can only see in comics, I'm giddy. This is what I'd dub as Nerdvana.
"Well," I said grinning, my voice alive with barely restrained excitement, "one thing's certain…"
I let my eyes linger on that iconic globe, imagining just how deep this rabbit hole could go.
"There's no way in hell that this'll be boring."
And then I stepped forward...
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END OF FIRST ARC
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