The gift waited like a held breath.
Luke stood in the cave mouth, sun on his scales, and thought a single thought: On.
Something unseen aligned inside him. Power flooded—clean, roaring, inexhaustible—and his body answered. The Kryptonian blueprint lit every cell; draconic flesh accepted it without pain, without flaw. Bones tempered. Muscles rethreaded. The lattice of his scales drank light and gleamed darker for it.
He had expected agony. He got clarity.
"Right," he said, half laughing. "Perfect means perfect."
Warmth streamed into him as if he were a black ocean and the sun a river. Wounds from the hatch closed almost shyly, knitting into nothing. New scales slid out in tighter patterns, light tracing edges. He blinked—and a red glint flashed through his vision and was gone, a promise more than a weapon.
He held still, refusing to sprint himself stupid on day one. Power was loud. Control had to be louder.
"Inventory," he murmured. "Kryptonian baseline… and the rest."
A second map unfurled within the first, not written in words but in doors. Fifty of them, each opening onto a world. Air/Wind. Earth/Stone. Fire. Water. Ice. Lightning. Metal. Wood/Plant/Nature. Sand. Dust. Mud. Clay. Lava/Magma. Crystal/Gem. Light. Darkness/Shadow. Sound/Vibration. Gravity. Magnetism. Pressure. Vacuum. Weather/Storm. Smoke. Ash. Steam. Mist/Fog. Poison/Toxin. Acid/Corrosion. Radiation. Plasma. Oil/Tar. Gas—special gases. Salt. Glass/Obsidian. Blood. Bone. Fungus/Mycelium. Insect. Swarm. Time. Space. Aether/Ether. Void/Null. Starlight. Moonlight. Temperature/Thermal. Seismic. Spirit/Soul energy. Chaos/Entropy.
Each door wanted him to step through. Each door would make him into what it named.
"Elemental Forms," he said, testing the shape of the ability in thought. "Elemental Split."
Understanding clicked: he could become any element, command any element, and if he wished, divide into many bodies—each a sovereign element—with no true "main" to kill. Minds braided together, a single hypermind considering fifty views at once. He would usually wear one body for sanity's sake. Usually.
He looked down at his claws, then at the rock shelf beneath him. "Small. Keep it small."
He focused on Air.
The dragon's body sighed. Scales softened to shimmer, then to nothing; his outline loosened into flow. Pressure equalized across him as he became wind—taste of stone, trace of cold iron deep below, the sun a pressure-lantern warming currents. He held the shape for a breath, then pulled himself together again, scales clicking back into place.
"Okay," he said, grin audible. "Next."
He touched Earth/Stone with a thought. His weight deepened. Scales faceted into basalt gloss; the ground under him took his shape like an old friend greeting him at the door. A push and he could have sunk into the ridge and worn it like armor. He released it and returned to draconic flesh.
Fire answered with joy. Heat rose through him without burning; flame licked harmlessly along his forearm as he let a streamer curl from his teeth, then snapped his jaw shut before it became a beacon.
Lightning crackled in his bones when he called it, a thrum like a plucked string. Water waited cool and patient. Light and Darkness both felt like home, the first a clean blade, the second a soft room. Gravity was a warning: a lever that could turn mountains into pebbles and pebbles into stars if he stopped being careful.
He breathed. "Not today."
He could split. He could pour himself into fifty bodies and walk the world as a stormfront. He could test "planetary" because the One Above All had said "just for fun" and meant it.
He chose hunger instead.
The sun slid lower. The barren backs of Vanaheim's stones threw long shadows. The cave behind him was gouged by power, not patience; no mother scent, no guard, no sibling-heartbeat. A mystery for later.
His stomach reminded him that solar warmth soothed, but meat satisfied.
"Food first, omnipotence later," he decided. "Baseline rules: don't flash the sky, don't level a realm trying to catch a rabbit."
He nosed the wind. Nothing but mineral and old ash. Farther out, a thinner smell—dried grass, faint musk—down a slope where the rock broke into flats.
He set off along the ridge, keeping elevation and the last light on his back. As he moved, he practiced restraint.
Air: a whisper to lighten his steps, nothing more.
Gravity: a subtle ease, reducing his footprint without tugging the horizon.
Sound/Vibration: a hush around his claws, the click of scale on stone swallowed before it was born.
Light: a shadow-skin, darkening his shine without disappearing.
It was intoxicating, how absolute the control was—and how quietly it could be used.
He crested a rise and saw them: squat, six-legged grazers, hide like old bark, clustered around a patch of stubborn weeds. Not smart, not slow. Enough meat to answer the first question of the day.
Luke considered fifty ways to end this and chose one that wouldn't rewrite the weather.
He split—just once.
The sensation was a clean parting, like dividing attention between two eyes. Two Lukes stood where one had, both real: one a dragon of shadow, the other a dragon of wind. Minds braided, no lag, no confusion, just more view.
Wind-Luke went high, a ripple along the ridge, ready to cut escape vectors with pressure walls. Shadow-Luke flowed down-slope, darker than the rock, aura tight and kind.
At thirty paces, he let the hunt end with respect. Earth steadied under the grazer's hooves; Gravity bent barely, just enough to make a stumble inevitable. The animal fell, hard and clean. No panic, no chase.
They rejoined into one before the first bite, threads knitting without seam.
"Planet-killer," he said around the taste of blood, amused and sincere, "meets chef."
He ate, slowly, learning his own teeth and tongue, how much of the hunger was instinct and how much was habit. Solar warmth kept his energy high; food satisfied something older.
By the time the sun kissed the horizon, he'd cached the rest under stone with Earth's gentle help and scouted a vantage where he could watch the night without announcing himself. He felt the red flicker threaten his eyes again and blinked it down, promising himself sunrise tests: a hover without wings, a low-output heat vision line etched on slate.
He glanced back at the cave. He glanced up at the first star.
"Thanks," he told the empty air, because he knew Who had heard him hatch and decided to throw fireworks. "I'll keep it fun."
He settled like a black thought against the ridge, let the last light soak into him, and listened to the world breathe. Fifty doors waited. He would open them one by one, not because he had to, but because he wanted to know what each one felt like.
Night came. He didn't fear it. He was the thing night feared.
Tomorrow, he'd learn to fly the way a sun learns to rise.