Leon's blood ran cold as he noticed the door unlocked, already ajar. 'Lily always bolted it from the inside when she was alone, so how?' he thought, and when the realization struck him.
"Lily?" Leon called out, pushed the door open before his mind could even catch up. "Mom?"
His voice cracked like glass as he placed a trembling step on the wrecked floorboards just inside the doorway.
Screaming "Mom" on the third time, the only reply that shot back at him was a low, shuffling noise that echoed from the inside of the living room.
Instinctively, Leon burst in, his chest heaving, as the fear for his family streak across his face like sweat.
Unluckily, what he feared hit him with a jolt of pain he couldn't describe. Not shock, but like a white-hot seizure of protectiveness that bypassed his thoughts entirely. My mother. My sister.
Inside the living room, two of Tiger's thugs smiled at him. One slammed his boot on their rickety table, scattering their few belonging like rotten trash.
The other turned his back at Leon, loomed over his mother, and making her shrink into her chair. In her blind eyes, Leon saw a wet terror shimmering, as tears traced down her cheeks.
"The boss just wants to send a message," the thug looming over Leon's mother sneered. "Make sure the painter's kid knows his place."
Something inside Leon gave way. The shame, the alley's rage, the clawing grief, all of it collided and ignited like nuclear weapons launched at the same time.
"Get away from her!" Leon roared.
The thug turned, surprised, then laughed. "Look what crawled of the gutters."
One threw a lazy, powerful punch meant to end the fight before it actual start. But Leon saw it coming not in slow motion, but as a predicted line of force.
He didn't just duck; his body slid beneath it with an uncanny, paranormal efficiency. His own clenched fist slam into the thug's stomach felt less like a punch and more like a release of pressure.
The thug grunted, stumbling back into the wall with a crash, "…damn." The second thug stopped his vandalism, his face twisting from irritation to wary confusion.
He moved forward, threw his right leg, but Leon blocked it before it could push air around his waist, then slam his elbow on the knee, letting a crack sound fill the air.
The thug held his leg, crashed on the ground and screamed.
The first thug moved forward, pushing himself at great speed and sending an unstoppable punch at Leon's cheeks.
The impact sent Leon three steps back, but he didn't fall. And when he pushed himself forward, saw the thug he'd broken his knee standing on the broken leg.
Leon moved, blocked, and struck not with skill, but with an instinct that felt as if it had been recently downloaded into his muscles.
He received a punch to the ribs that should have cracked bone; the pain registered as a distant, cold pressure, a notification from a body that no longer felt entirely his own.
When he missed a swing and his fist hit the wall, the crack that spiderwebbed out sounded wrong, like stone groaning under a weight it was never meant to bear.
He wasn't winning. He was surviving, fueled not by adrenaline, but by that same hungry, resonant energy that had buzzed within him ever since he witnessed the incident at the alley.
Finally, with a combined surge of fury, and the cries of his mother, Leon shove both thugs out through the door and slam the door shut.
Standing at the side of the door and panting heavily for ten continues minutes, Leon's legs gave out, causing him to slid to the floor.
As the thrumming power shifting him faded, his muscles felt like frayed wires, trembling with a strange, electric fatigue.
But beneath the exhaustion, a deeper sensation pulsed: a cellular hunger. His body had tasted that golden power, and now it craved more.
After tending to his sobbing mother and sister, his eyes landed on the black envelope crumpled on the floor.
The awakening exam was tomorrow, and this time, it wasn't just hope anymore. It was a weapon, and he needed it like the blood running through him.
That night, drawn by a need for answers, Leon slipped out to the ruins of the Granum Tower.
It was a carcass of wrecked metal and blackened stone when he got there. The air reeked of acid and cooked death clanged in his lungs like glue.
His heart ached with every step through the debris and every inhale of breath he took. When he finally reached the top, his eyes opened wide.his breath caught.
His breath caught as he spotted a familiar green fabric, his father's cap, fluttering from a piece of rebar, untouched by the fire that had left the entire building as a wreckage.
As his fingers closed around the rough cloth, he heard a dry, skittering chitter echo from the shadows.
In an instant, every hair on his arms and body erected while he turned his head slowly.
He swallowed low, seeing two pair of glowing, faceted eyes blink open in the dark.
When a long leg moved out of the shadows, realization struck him like lightening. The creatures he saw were like nightmares given form: insectoid limbs skittering over molten metal, and carapaces gleaming like spilled oil.
One lunged, a razor limb scything for his head. Leon threw up his arms hoping to use his fragile bones to block it. But a golden light erupted from his chest, blazing into a shield of solid sunlight.
The creature's limb slammed against it with a shower of sparks and a sharp, metallic clang.
As it recoiled and struck again, the shield dissolved, flowing like liquid light into his hands, uniting into a blazing sword of pure, condensed will.
The sword guided Leon. It moved his arms, granting him speed and precision that weren't his own, deflecting strikes meant to bisect him.
At that instant, he was a passenger in his own body, gasping for air, and slipping toward defeat. Yet managed to leave wounds on the creatures.
The creatures regenerated, their limbs elongating into jagged, organic swords. Leon knew, with cold certainty, that he could not block what came next.
Then, a blazing image seared his mind:
It wasn't a memory; it was an inheritance. He didn't see his father, he experienced the moment through his father's senses.
He felt a cool, controlled certainty flooding his veins, saw the world through eyes that perceived the explosion not as chaos, but as malleable energy.
The flames parted like a respectful sea. And in that shared, final glance, he understood: His father's eyes glowed with the same golden fire as the sword in Leon's hand.
The light wasn't a weapon he'd found. It was a legacy he had finally awakened. His father hadn't died. He had vanished out of existence, transformed, or maybe both.
The vision vanished. The creatures, which had been poised to strike, now stood at a vast distance, staring at him with what he could only sense as recognition, or fear.
A distant outbreak siren wailed. And in the moment of distraction, a glancing blow from a creature's limb caught his shoulder.
Hot agony lanced through his bones. The golden sword dissolved into light and retracted into his chest like wound healing itself. He fled, the creatures not pursuing.
Leon fled, but the creatures didn't follow, they stood there, grinning.
Leon didn't stop until he crumpled in the alley behind his home, body shaking, shoulder burning, mind reeling with terror and a devastating truth.
…
The next morning, under the 5:00am morning breeze, Leon stood drowsily before the cracked egg-shaped silver mirror, his arm on his mouth.
He yawned, cracked his eyes open and stood there shock to see his own reflection staring back at him.
The reflection was a stranger. His frame hadn't just grown; it looked denser, as if quietly reforged.
The eyes that met his were harder, older, holding a watchful stillness that belonged to a predator or a soldier.
Then, a faint golden mark, a tiny sunburst, flickered on his forehead. It didn't feel like a blemish. It felt like a brand – a receipt for the power he'd drawn.
He swiped at it. It vanished, but the feeling of being marked remained, etched not on his skin, but on his soul.
After readying himself, he picked up the black envelope. He kissed his mother's cheek, waved to Lily, and vanished into the riotous street.
The envelope was no longer an exam slip. It was a ticket into the hidden world where his father had walked, where monsters skittered in ruins, and men stole light from the poor.
Today, he wasn't just taking a test. He was reporting for a duty he had no idea how to go about it.
He would learn to control the legacy blazing in his chest, and he would find the man who had left it for him.