The storm had always been my secret friend.
When I was small, and the sky would crack open with thunder, other kids would scramble for cover, hiding under blankets with their hands clamped over their ears.
Not me. I'd crawl onto the sofa by the big living room window, press my nose against the cool glass, and watch.
I'd wait for that brilliant, terrifying flash, the one that would split the world in two for a single, blinding second.
I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
It was raw, untamed power, and it felt like magic.
Back then, I believed in simple magic. I believed the world was fair. I believed good people always won. I believed my parents were invincible, their laughter a permanent fixture in our warm, brightly lit home.
All of those beliefs burned away ten years ago, on a night that smelled of smoke and screamed with a different kind of fire.
I ran a hand through my damp hair.
The cold shower had done little to wash away the fatigue, only replacing the grime of the restaurant with a deeper, bone-chilling cold.
I looked at the mirror on the wall. My reflection was a study in washed-out grays, black eyes shadowed with exhaustion, skin pale from too many nights under fluorescent lights, a face that had forgotten how to smile.
The restaurant shifts had carved away at me, but the real hollowing out had happened a long time ago.
My gaze drifted to the nightstand, to the single photograph I kept.
The edges were soft and frayed from too much handling, the colors faded like an old dream.
They smiled back at me, forever preserved in a moment of sunlit happiness.
My father, his arm slung around my mother's shoulders, a mischievous glint in his eye.
My mother, her head thrown back in mid-laugh, a sound I could almost, but not quite, remember.
A lump formed in my throat, hard and painful.
"I did it," I whispered into the stillness. The words were ash in my mouth. "I have now awakened. You were right, Dad. I had it in me all along."
He'd always believed it. He'd fill my head with stories of Hunters, not just their epic battles, but their motivations.
Which was simply either money, or power.
He'd crack jokes about the arrogant ones who met stupid ends in dungeons, a cautionary tale wrapped in a laugh.
My mother would playfully swat his arm, but when she'd look at us, her eyes held that same spark of hope.
They saw a future for me painted in brilliant, lightning-struck colors.
But I hadn't been special. Not for a long, long time.
In a world that measured your worth by the power in your veins by the time you were sixteen, I was a zero. A null.
By eighteen, you're written off. The gate closes.
I was twenty. I wasn't a late bloomer; I was a fossil. A relic of a hope that had died in a fire.
My fingers tightened on the photograph, the frame digging into my palm.
The memories came then, unbidden and brutal.
The acrid smell of smoke, and dust. The oppressive, blistering heat. The deafening sound of abilities.
They died protecting me. And the guilt had been my constant companion ever since, a lead weight settled deep in my chest.
A hundred well-meaning voices told me it wasn't my fault, that a ten-year-old couldn't have done anything.
But logic is a weak weapon against a memory that haunts you every night.
The feeling that it was my fault, was a ghost I could never shake.
All there did was only to protect me, they didn't care about their self at that moment.
"I'll make it up to you," I promised the frozen smiles in the photo, my voice raw. "I'll become someone you'd be proud of. I won't be useless anymore. I won't let anything stand in my way."
Not fear. Not people. Not guilt. Not this city. Nothing.
The photograph slipped from my fingers, landing soundlessly on the rumpled bedsheet.
I stood up, the movement decisive now. I pulled on my black hoodie, and shoved my hands into the pockets.
The air in the room was suddenly too thick, too heavy with the past. I needed out.
I stepped outside, and the city wind, sharp and cold, slapped me awake.
But first, I had somewhere important to go. A place where it all began, and where it all ended. The cemetery. They needed to hear it from me.