I woke up late. Again.
Sunlight, sharp and accusatory, cut through the gaps in my blinds. I didn't rush. There was no frantic pulse, no lurch of anxiety. Just a hollow, quiet acceptance. I moved through my morning routine with a methodical slowness that was its own form of rebellion. A long, lukewarm shower. Brushing my teeth while staring at my own blank reflection. I hadn't shown up for school in four days. What was one more?
As I ate breakfast alone—a silent, tasteless affair in a kitchen too large for one person—fragments of the dream flickered behind my eyes. Not a story, just sensations. The searing heat of **red** rage. The cold, calculating shimmer of **orange** avarice. A whisper of **purple** resentment. They were just colors, feelings that weren't mine, echoes in an empty house. I didn't dwell on them. My parents were gone, off on another "business trip" that would last over a week. The silence was my only constant companion.
I left the house, the door clicking shut with a sound of finality. The walk to the bus stop was a numb, automated process. That's when the scream tore through the mundane morning air.
I turned. A crowd had coagulated on the sidewalk, their faces tilted upwards like sunflowers. My eyes followed theirs. On the ledge of a seven-story office building stood a young woman, her form silhouetted against the pale sky. The air buzzed with a chaotic energy—shouted pleas, morbid curiosity, and the unmistakable click and whir of smartphones recording the spectacle.
I joined the periphery of the crowd, a passive observer. And then I saw it.
A figure stood beside her. It was humanoid, but wrong—a thing of wavering, smoky darkness, its form subtly shifting. And its eyes, two points of cold, intelligent light, locked directly onto mine from that impossible distance. It smiled—a thin, cruel slash—and placed a hand on the woman's back.
No one else reacted. They saw only a woman on a ledge.
To them, she jumped.
To me, the creature shoved her.
The sound was not something I will ever forget. A wet, final crack that silenced the street. Her body didn't just fall; it came apart on impact, as if she'd fallen from the stratosphere, not a mere seven stories. Blood misted the air, speckling the faces of the closest onlookers. Panic erupted, a stark contrast to the morbid fascination of moments before.
The crowd buzzed with theories. "Suicide!" "The pressure must have been too much!" None of their explanations mattered. My gaze was fixed on the rooftop. The creature was still there, looking down at its handiwork with a sense of profound satisfaction. It looked at me one last time, its smile widening, and then it simply dissolved into the air.
I looked at the broken thing on the pavement. I felt nothing. No pity. No horror. Just a cold, clinical observation. I turned and walked away, the screams fading behind me.
---
My name is Will Evert. I am a hole where a person should be.
I don't know if I was born this way. My past is a blurry photograph, my memories rarely extending beyond a week. I used to think this was normal. I never bothered to ask. How do you ask a question you don't know exists?
I arrived at school, the gates looming like the entrance to a prison I was indifferent to. As I trudged across the courtyard, a hostile presence prickled at my awareness.
Jake. The "prince charming" of Northwood High. Tall, sculpted, a golden boy who wore his popularity like a crown. And he was staring at me with a venom I didn't understand and didn't earn. His Life Scale, a faint, shimmering aura only I could see, was a mottled mix of yellows and oranges—ambition, pride, a touch of greed. Standard human issue. But the hostility radiating from him was a stark, **red** spike.
I didn't care. I moved past him as if he were furniture.
---
By lunch, the familiar solitude of the cafeteria settled around me. I was picking at my food when a shadow fell over my table.
"Can I sit here?"
I looked up. It was *her*. Love. Everyone knew her. Ocean-blue eyes, hair like spun sapphire, a grace that seemed otherworldly. But that wasn't what froze the air in my lungs.
Her Life Scale wasn't just good. It was a blinding, pure, incandescent white. **100% GOOD.** I had never seen anything like it. It wasn't human.
"I have none," I said, answering her question about friends with a flat finality.
Her smile didn't falter. "Do you want to be my friend, then?"
"Why?" My voice was a low, suspicious monotone. "Why me?"
Her gaze was unnervingly direct. "I was told to. They said it would be beneficial."
"Who told you?"
Her smile was a sphinx's secret. "It has to be you, Will."
I studied her, this impossible girl with the aura of a saint. A part of my hollow core, the part that usually just observed, stirred with something akin to curiosity. "Fine. Do as you please."
We shook hands. Her touch was warm. For a single, startling second, the perpetual ice in my chest thawed.
---
The ambush came on my walk home. Two of Jake's lackeys materialized, grabbing my arms and hauling me into the damp, reeking confines of a back alley. They shoved me to the ground.
I stood up, brushing grime from my uniform. Pain was a distant signal, like a radio station from another country.
Jake stepped into the light, his handsome face twisted. "Stay away from my girl," he snarled, grabbing my collar.
"Who are you?" I asked.
The question, so genuinely blank, was the ultimate insult. His fist drove into my stomach, slamming me back into a overflowing dumpster. The metal groaned.
"Now do you remember me?!" he screamed.
"If you're talking about Love, she told me she has no friends," I stated, rising again as if nothing had happened. "Hitting me won't solve your problem."
My calm was gasoline on the fire of his rage. He rushed me, his fists a blur of fury, pounding my face, my ribs. "That's what I hate about you! You're too damn calm! I'm supposed to be the cool one!"
I took the blows. My expression didn't change. Blood, warm and metallic, trickled from my split lip. It was the first time I could remember bleeding.
"If you think she's after me because I'm 'cool,'" I said, spitting a glob of crimson onto the asphalt, "maybe you should try being cool yourself."
That was it. The final thread of his control snapped. "I'll rearrange your face!"
His next punch connected with my jaw. And something inside me… *broke*.
Not a bone. A seal.
A **red** fire, deep and ancient, erupted from my core. It flooded my veins, a tsunami of pure, undilated fury. My vision tinted crimson. I looked at Jake, and for the first time, I felt something. It was glorious and terrifying.
I tapped his chest. It wasn't a punch; it was a dismissal.
The force that erupted from my fingertips was invisible, but its effect was not. Jake was hurled backwards as if launched from a cannon, his body skidding across the filthy ground.
"How weak," a voice that was mine, yet wasn't, dripped from my lips. It was darker, layered with a malice that was centuries old. "That's all it takes to beat you?"
I was no longer in control.
From a strange, third-person perspective, I watched myself. My body was wreathed in a flickering **red** aura. And standing beside my physical form, in this psychic space we now shared, was… me. But older. His hair was the color of fresh blood, his eyes burned with embers of hate, and a cloak of living fire smoldered at his feet.
**Wrath.**
The two other bullies charged. **Wrath** moved my body with a predator's grace. My fists became blurs of contained violence. Each impact was punctuated by a sizzle of heat, leaving blossoming burns and deep bruises on their skin. They didn't stand a chance. Dragging Jake's unconscious form, they fled.
As quickly as it came, the fire receded. Control slammed back into me, leaving me trembling and breathless in the sudden silence of the alley.
The coppery taste of blood was in my mouth. The ache of bruises was a dull throb. And for the first time in my life, a real, raw emotion was anchored deep in my soul, a caged beast waiting to be fed.
It was **Wrath**. And it felt like it had attached itself to me. Permanently.