Time didn't slow down. It crystallized.
Every detail of the underpass snapped into hyper-sharp focus. The graffiti scrawled on the damp concrete walls, a chaotic tapestry of Baseline frustration. The steady drip… drip… drip of water from a cracked pipe overhead. The smell of stale urine and wet asphalt. And him. Kragg.
He was bigger than he'd looked on the news feed. A mountain of a man, well over seven feet tall, with shoulders so broad they seemed to scrape the walls of the passage. His skin wasn't just like stone; it was a living, shifting matrix of granite and basalt, rough and gleaming dully in the low light. His eyes were the worst part—two chips of flint, devoid of anything resembling human thought, burning with a dull, malevolent hunger.
Elara's breath hitched beside me, a sharp, terrified sound. Her hand shot out and gripped my arm, her fingers digging in like claws. The confident, popular Gifted girl was gone, replaced by a terrified child.
"Arthur…" she whispered, her voice trembling.
My mind, my ever-reliable analytical engine, didn't fail me. It simply presented me with the cold, hard data.
Threat Assessment: Maximum.
Opponent: High-tier Physical Mutation. Estimated strength and durability exceed any known Baseline countermeasures.
Assets: One Sonic Crystallization user (in a state of panic). One Baseline male.
Probability of successful confrontation: 0.0001%.
Optimal course of action: Immediate, non-confrontational retreat.
The data was clear. Unassailable.
But my feet were rooted to the spot. Because the data didn't account for the way Elara's hand was shaking. It didn't account for the memory of a little girl with scraped knees who used to trust me to make things better.
Kragg took a step forward. The ground didn't just shake; it cracked under his weight. A low, grinding sound emanated from his chest, a rockslide of a voice.
"Lost," he grunted, his flinty eyes fixed on Elara. "Pretty little noise-maker. You made a mess of my head." He raised a hand, and his fingers, each the size and shape of a railroad spike, flexed. "Gonna make a new sound. A crushing sound."
He wasn't a strategic villain. He was a force of nature. An earthquake given intent. And his intent was focused solely on Elara.
My body moved before my mind could process another variable. A stupid, reckless, utterly Baseline action. I stepped in front of her, putting myself between the mountain and the girl.
"Run," I said to Elara, my voice surprisingly steady. It was a command, not a suggestion.
Kragg's gaze shifted to me. The dismissal in his eyes was absolute. "Baseline trash. Get out of the way." He swatted a hand through the air, a casual, backhanded gesture meant to brush me aside like a gnat.
The impact was like being hit by a car.
A searing, white-hot pain exploded in my chest. I heard the sickening, wet crunch of my ribs giving way. The world spun, a dizzying carousel of concrete and orange light. I was airborne for a timeless moment, then I hit the wall of the underpass with a force that stole the air from my lungs and the light from my eyes.
I slumped to the ground, a broken doll. Agony was a fire in my torso, each ragged breath a knife twist. Through a grey, narrowing tunnel of vision, I saw Elara scream, her hands flying to her mouth. She was frozen, her Gift useless against the sheer, overwhelming terror.
Kragg turned his back on me, my existence already forgotten. He took another step toward Elara. "Now for the main song."
This was it. This was the end of the quiet life, the analytical observations, the carefully managed expectations. This was the brutal, stupid reality of a world where power was the only true currency. And I was bankrupt.
A profound, helpless rage bloomed inside me, hotter than the pain in my chest. It wasn't just anger at Kragg. It was anger at the world that had created him. Anger at the system that left people like my father behind. Anger at my own uselessness. The anger focused into a single, desperate, silent scream.
NO.
And something answered.
It started as a flicker of heat in the very core of my being, deep beneath the pain. A single, dormant ember that had been waiting, patient as a volcano, for ninety years.
Then, it ignited.
The heat erupted outwards, an inferno contained within my skin. It wasn't a fire of destruction; it was a fire of creation. The agony of my shattered ribs was consumed, transformed into pure, raw energy. A light, the color of molten rock and a newborn sun, blazed from my eyes, my mouth, from every pore of my body.
I pushed myself up from the ground. But it wasn't me moving. It was the power. My body was no longer flesh and bone. It was a vessel.
Molten rock, glowing with intense inner heat, surged over my skin, plating my arms, my chest, my legs in living, volcanic armor. I could feel it—the impossible weight, the incredible strength. The pain was gone, replaced by a roaring, terrifying ecstasy of power. My vision was tinged with red and gold, and I could see the world in terms of heat signatures. Kragg was a cold, blue-black monolith. Elara was a terrified, flickering candle.
I stood, no longer Arthur Prott, the quiet Baseline. I was something else. Something new.
Kragg, sensing the shift in energy, stopped his advance on Elara and turned. The dull confusion on his stone face was almost comical.
I didn't speak. I didn't think. The power thought for me. It was instinct, pure and primal.
My new body, the Molten Form, moved with a speed that belied its mass. I closed the distance between us in a blur of heat-hazed air. My fist, a mass of semi-liquid rock and contained plasma, swung.
It connected with Kragg's granite jaw.
The sound was not a crunch. It was a cataclysm. The sound of a mountain being struck by a meteor. A web of fractures spiderwebbed across his stony face. A shockwave of force and heat erupted from the point of impact, blowing dust and debris in a circle around us.
Kragg roared, a sound of genuine pain and shock, and staggered back, clutching his face. Chips of stone fell from the fracture lines.
He stared at me, his flinty eyes wide with a new emotion: fear.
I stood between him and Elara, a titan of magma and flame, the very air around me shimmering with intense heat. The embers had ignited. The star was awake.
And it was furious.