Prologue
The sky was the color of bruised stone, choked with plumes of dust that glowed red from some unseen, infernal light below. The air itself was thick, a gritty soup that coated Leonardo Martinez's throat with every ragged breath. He was running, or something was running for him—his legs pistoned with a strength that was not his own, carrying him across a landscape that was being systematically unmade.
He saw it all in fragments, his vision hazy and unstable. One moment he was looking out from a vantage point so high it dwarfed mountains, watching as immense, shadowy figures trampled the world beneath their impossible feet. The next, he was ground-level, seeing the intimate details of destruction: cobblestone streets buckling like paper, ancient trees snapping, and the ghostly outlines of spires dissolving into the roiling cloud of debris.
The sound was a physical pressure. Beneath the cataclysmic crunch and roar was a high, piercing static—shhhk-k-k-t—that needled at his ears, a dissonant frequency threatening to shatter his very thoughts.
Fight.
The word surfaced not as a sound, but as a solid thing, a spike of pure intention driven into the core of his being. It echoed the rhythm of the colossal footfalls that made the planet tremble.
He looked down at his hands. They were slick with moisture that wasn't sweat, steaming faintly in the chaotic air. For a terrifying second, they seemed massive, the skin stretched and hard, more like stone than flesh. He blinked, and they were his own again—human, trembling, smeared with grime he couldn't remember touching.
This wasn't his memory. This wasn't his life. He was Leo, and he knew nothing of this hellscape, of this power, of this profound and terrible responsibility that seemed to settle on his shoulders. He was a ghost in a machine of annihilation, a passenger in a body moving with a purpose that was both alien and terrifyingly familiar.
Fight.
It was a command,stripped of all context, leaving only the raw, brutal imperative.
Fight.
It was a plea,a last spark of defiance in the face of total ruin.
Fight.
It was the only truth left in a world that was being erased,a truth etched into his bones long before he was ever born.
A shadow fell over him, vast enough to eclipse the dying sky. It was not the shadow of a cloud or a mountain, but of a living thing, a wall of flesh and muscle that reached into the heavens. It took a single, world-ending step.
And everything—the noise, the dust, the crushing weight—collapsed into a silent, blinding white.
Leo gasped, bolting upright in his bed. The early sun streamed peacefully through his window. His sheets were tangled around his legs, his t-shirt damp with cold sweat. He could still feel the phantom vibration in his teeth, the echo of the static in his ears. And etched onto his soul, as clear as the morning light, was the single, unshakable word.
Fight.