The dawn came wrong.
At first glance, the horizon seemed normal—gold spilled across the sky, the clouds were painted crimson, and the heat kissed the land. But Solaris felt it. A wrongness threaded through the light, a weight in the air that made the world hold its breath.
Perched on the jagged edge of a volcanic ridge, his body glowed faintly in hues of yellow and red, his skin alive with shifting fire. Small in stature but fierce in form, he looked like a comet frozen mid-flight, his spines sharp like carved rays of sunlight. His eyes reflected the dawn, not with calm admiration, but with wariness—like a hunter watching the shadows of the forest.
The sun was his tether, his pulse, his breath. It whispered to him across the void, pouring into his bloodstreams rivers of molten energy. On quiet days, its warmth was a comfort. Today, it burned with unease.
"Something stirs," he murmured, his voice carrying oddly against the barren rock. "Something… hungry."
He closed his eyes. The world slowed to a crawl. A leaf caught in the breeze appeared suspended midair. A falling pebble lingered in its descent, lazy as a dream. In that suspension of time, Solaris listened.
The universe itself seemed to groan.
There—threaded between the pulse of Earth and the roar of the sun—was the rhythm of intruders. A vibration not born of this system. A shiver through the cosmic web.
Solaris clenched his fists, and his veins ignited like lava channels. Sparks danced from his fingertips, each one too bright, too hot, to belong in this world.
"They've crossed the veil," he whispered.
The ground beneath him quaked—not from tectonic rage, but from something worse. The air tore open with a scream like glass dragged across stone. Above him, the fabric of sky split.
And from that wound, the Comic Forces descended.
They did not belong here. They were shadows clad in impossible armors, their edges glowing like fractured stars. They came from other universes, bearing the dying breaths of alien suns, carrying them in their bodies as weapons. Their shapes shifted—beast, machine, phantom—yet each bore the same hunger: the core of Solaris's star.
Their leader emerged last, towering and terrible. Horns like obsidian spires curved from his skull. His chest burned with a fractured sunstone, pulsing like a diseased heart. His voice rolled like thunder across oceans.
"Solaris! Child of flame. Keeper of a star that should never have been yours." His words shook the dust from mountains. "Surrender the fire, or we will drink your sun dry and leave your Earth in ruin."
The smaller warriors howled, voices weaving into a chorus of conquest.
Solaris rose from his crouch. He was dwarfed by them, a spark before a storm, but sparks had teeth. His glow sharpened, yellow blazing into red, heat distorting the air around him. His spines bristled with fury.
He tilted his head, smiled—sharp, dangerous.
"Try me."
And he vanished.
No blur, no warning. One heartbeat he stood, the next he was upon them, faster than sight. The first invader fell before it understood it was struck, body shattered by a force like lightning made flesh. Solaris reappeared several meters away, crouched low, the ground beneath him scorched into glass.
The enemy roared.
The battle began.
The ridge exploded with chaos. Solaris darted like a sunbeam, cutting through the tide of armored beasts. Every strike he landed melted steel, every dash left scars in the earth. They swung blades the size of towers, unleashed beams of starfire stolen from alien suns—but Solaris was always gone before impact, a flicker, a ghost of heat in their grasp.
But their numbers did not dwindle. For every one he broke, two more crawled from the sky's wound. The horizon filled with them, a swarm of cosmic carrion.
Solaris panted, his chest burning. The sun above answered his fatigue with a surge of heat, pouring strength into him. His vision sharpened. His speed doubled.
"Faster," he growled. "Hotter. Burn brighter!"
And the world dissolved into streaks of fire.
He became motion itself.
Yet even as he fought, something gnawed at him. The leader had not moved. The horned colossus stood back, arms folded, watching. His fractured sunstone pulsed, each beat making the air heavier, the Earth groan louder.
Solaris broke another enemy apart and hurled its remains into the abyss. He glared at the leader, sparks falling from his body like ash.
"Why do you wait?" he shouted.
The leader's laugh was slow, cruel.
"Because, child, this is only your warm-up."
The words were not threat—they were prophecy.
The sky split wider.
Something vast pushed against the veil. Larger than mountains, older than light, it pressed into this universe with a groan of reality tearing. Solaris stumbled as the sun itself flared in panic.
And for the first time in an age, fear touched him.
Whatever crawled from that wound was no mere warrior.
The silence of the night was broken not by thunder, nor by the wind—but by a vibration that seemed to tremble through the very marrow of the earth. Solaris stiffened. His glowing quills dimmed for a breath as his ears twitched, catching a note of something alien, a hum that was not of nature but of intrusion.
He turned his gaze upward. Above the canopy of the blackened forest, the stars wavered, as if pulled by invisible hands. Entire constellations bent, warped, and shivered as though seen through boiling water. Solaris's crimson eyes narrowed.
"The veil is thinning," he murmured, his voice low, edged with fire.
From the horizon came a slash of light—no, not light, but the opposite, an absence that devoured the sky. A jagged rift cracked open in the heavens, its edges glowing violet and sickly green, spilling a radiance not meant for mortal eyes. Solaris could feel the pressure in his bones. It was like standing too close to the sun, but twisted, corrupted, inverted.
He pressed a hand to his chest where his heart pulsed with molten energy. His lifeline to the sun throbbed, erratic, as though warning him: They are here.
And then he heard it—the whispers. Voices not carried by wind but by force, slithering into his skull like tendrils.
"Solaris… Flamekeeper… Sunchild… give us your fire… surrender the star…"
He bared his teeth, quills bristling, sparks scattering off his body. "You'll choke on ashes before I yield."
The rift widened. From its center spilled shapes—tall, grotesque silhouettes plated in obsidian armor, bodies streaked with cracks that bled cosmic light. Their eyes were pits of starless void, yet their movements were impossibly swift, graceful, as if gravity bent to their command.
The first of them stepped fully into the earth's sky. A towering creature with four jagged horns and claws like sickles. His armor pulsed with an inner glow, his chest bearing the sigil of a dying star.
He spoke, and the words made the trees around Solaris wither.
"You are the last Flamekeeper. We have come to extinguish you, and with you, the sun that feeds this wretched planet. Your light has burned long enough."
Solaris crouched, heat rippling off his body. Flames crackled between his fingertips. "You'll find this flame harder to snuff out than you imagine."
The horned one tilted his head. "Then let the eclipse begin."
In an instant, the invaders surged, dozens of them tearing through the sky, their weight collapsing branches and shattering the earth beneath their steps. Solaris vanished in a blink, his body leaving behind only a streak of gold and crimson light. He reappeared in front of the first warrior, his fist blazing like a miniature sun, and drove it upward into the creature's chest.
The impact exploded in a shockwave that turned stone to dust and bent the trees backward like blades of grass in a storm.
The warrior stumbled but did not fall. He laughed, a sound like grinding glass. "Good… very good. Burn brighter. Make the feast worth consuming."
Solaris's flames roared higher. His body blurred again, faster than sight, striking, vanishing, reappearing, striking again. Each blow shook the ground, but each time, the warriors only pressed closer, their numbers swelling from the endless rift.
His breaths grew sharp. For all his speed, for all his sunlit power, the rift was endless.
And above them all, looming at the edge of the tear in the sky, Solaris saw a greater shape forming. Massive. Titanlike. Its shadow alone smothered the light of the moon.
A chill—an unfamiliar sensation—crawled across Solaris's fiery skin. For the first time in ages, he felt… small.
But fear was not what gripped him. No. It was the challenge. His lips curled into a grin, teeth sharp as flame.
"Fine then," he whispered. "Let the stars themselves come for me."
The rift groaned wider, like the sky itself was tearing apart at the seams. A noise followed, not just a sound but a pressure that hammered the soul, a resonance that made Solaris's very bones quake.
The Titan was pushing through.
It was still half-formed, its bulk caught between realities, but even incomplete it dwarfed the mountains. Its outline shimmered with molten scars, its limbs bent at wrong angles, its head crowned by jagged horns that stretched like spears into the stars. Its chest glowed with a fractured core, not one star but many, crushed together in agony. Solaris's flames flickered as he beheld it. This was no mere soldier, no hungry scavenger of stars.
This was a Collector.
The invaders had sent one of their ancient war-beasts, a being that consumed suns whole and carried them in its chest. Entire galaxies whispered of them as myths, destroyers that heralded the end of civilizations.
Solaris's fists clenched. His quills flared, red and yellow light bathing the scarred ridge around him. He could feel his connection to the sun pulsing erratic, the great star screaming in defiance as if it too knew what was coming.
The horned commander below spread his arms wide, his laughter rolling across the land.
"Do you see, Flamekeeper? This is the fate of your world. We need not fight you. The Collector will feast upon your star, and with it your power will vanish. You will burn out like the candle you are."
Solaris spat on the blackened ground, a glob of molten light sizzling where it landed.
"Then I'll tear its throat out before it takes a single bite."
And with that, he was gone.
Solaris blurred forward, faster than the eye, faster than thought. He streaked across the battlefield, weaving through enemy warriors like a firebolt through dry tinder. His speed carved trenches into the earth, his strikes detonating like miniature suns. Each blow shattered armored invaders into shards of obsidian and flame, but more poured from the rift, endless, relentless.
He reappeared atop a shattered column of rock, chest heaving. The Collector's shadow had grown larger, its body forcing the rift wider, the sky sagging under its mass. Around him, the invaders pressed in, blades glowing with stolen star-fire, their voices chanting in alien tongues:
"Consume. Eclipse. Consume. Eclipse."
Solaris's lips peeled back into a grin, though his heart pounded like a war drum. "Chant louder. I like an audience."
He exploded into motion again, but this time his movements carried rhythm. He ducked and wove, spinning through enemies with a dancer's grace, his fists and kicks landing like thunderclaps. One invader lunged with a blade of frozen plasma—Solaris ducked, snatched the weapon mid-swing, and spun with such force that both the blade and its wielder shattered.
But as he struck, the Collector's gaze fell upon him.
Two eyes like collapsing stars opened in its half-formed head. Its voice followed, low and deep, carrying across the land like the sound of worlds falling into black holes:
"Solaris…"
The very air seemed to die around his name. The ground cracked, trees blackened, the light dimmed.
"Flamekeeper."
Solaris's body trembled—not from fear, but from the sheer weight of the voice pressing against him. His flames flared violently in answer, his soul refusing to bow.
"Yeah?" he shouted, his tone reckless, defiant. "Say my name again. Let's see if you can choke on it!"
The Collector's chest glowed brighter. A beam of compressed starlight began to gather, aimed straight at Earth's sun.
Solaris felt it instantly—like a knife pressed to his veins. His connection to the star wavered, faltered, sputtered. The world tilted. His breath caught.
"No…" His knees bent, his fists clenched. "You don't touch my sun."
He blurred upward, rock shattering beneath his launch. He shot straight into the sky, a streak of crimson and gold, faster than bullets, faster than lightning. The air burned behind him. He struck the forming beam with his entire body, redirecting the energy skyward, where it burst into a cascade of auroras.
The explosion hurled him back down like a meteor. He struck the ground hard enough to crack the ridge in two. Dust and fire engulfed him.
The horned commander laughed. "Even your speed cannot save you from inevitability, Solaris!"
From the crater, the small figure rose again. His body smoldered, cracks glowing with inner fire, his spines aflame. He coughed, then wiped blood from his lip and smiled.
"Guess what," he rasped. "I'm faster when I'm mad."
And the sun above flared brighter in agreement, sending a surge of power that nearly blinded the battlefield.
The ground cracked beneath Solaris's boots as he staggered forward, smoke curling from his spines. His chest rose and fell in ragged bursts, but his eyes never left the Collector. The titan's horned silhouette loomed, framed by the tearing rift. Each second it dragged itself closer into this reality, the air grew heavier, as though the sky itself was trying to smother him.
He spat ash and smirked. "You're big, ugly, and late for your own funeral."
The horned commander sneered. "Your arrogance is your doom, Flamekeeper." He lifted his blade, a weapon carved from collapsed stars, its edge humming with endless hunger. Behind him, soldiers banged their weapons on the ground in unison, their chant rising again:
"Consume. Eclipse. Consume. Eclipse."
Solaris rolled his shoulders. His body ached, but the ache reminded him he was alive. He kicked off the broken ridge, flames igniting at his heels, and launched himself into the mass of enemies. His fists struck like meteor impacts, every swing carving craters into the battlefield. He spun, a blazing whirlwind, hurling warriors aside like burning leaves. Their armor cracked and their weapons melted against his skin.
But for every one he felled, two more poured through the widening rift.
He gritted his teeth. I can't outpunch infinity.
His quills flared, sparking with solar fire. He drew deep, reaching for the sun's heartbeat, letting its rhythm fuel his limbs. The warmth coursed through him, filling the cracks, the pain, the doubt. He was not fighting alone. The star burned with him.
Still—when his gaze snapped skyward, the sight froze his heart.
The Collector's hand had breached fully. Each finger was the length of a mountain range, molten veins glowing like rivers of lava. It reached for the heavens, its claws stretching toward Earth's sun. The ground shook with each movement.
"No you don't." Solaris crouched, the earth crumbling beneath him. He blasted upward, body sheathed in flame. The wind howled in his wake as he ascended, faster than sight, aiming for the titan's wrist.
The Collector's eyes followed. They blazed brighter, focusing on him.
Solaris screamed as he struck the wrist with both fists, his entire body pouring into the blow. Fire erupted like a newborn star, ripping through the battlefield. Invaders were thrown miles away, their armor vaporized. The mountains cracked, rivers boiled.
But the Titan's hand did not fall.
The Collector's voice rolled across the skies:
"You are a spark. I am the void that swallows suns. Fall, Flamekeeper."
Solaris's flames dimmed under the weight of that truth. His knuckles bled light, his lungs burned, his heart thundered. For a fleeting moment, doubt pierced his defiance.
What if I can't win? What if the sun dies because I wasn't enough?
The thought was poison. He almost let it take root—until memory surged.
He remembered a girl's laughter.
Soft, bright, warm as dawn.
He remembered his village, long before the war, when the sun was simply a giver of life, not a weapon. He remembered playing in the fields, racing shadows, hearing the old ones speak of the "Flamekeepers," guardians who were more myth than man.
He had been a boy with dirt on his face and stars in his eyes when the first rift opened. He remembered the screams, the fire, the invaders tearing through homes like paper. He remembered clinging to his little sister's hand—then the light, the terrible light, as the Flamekeepers descended from the skies.
They had been titans of fire themselves, legends wrapped in flesh. They fought with the sun in their veins. And they had fallen, one by one, until only embers remained.
And then, in the ruins, the sun itself had chosen him.
Solaris gasped, the memory burning fresh. The warmth surged in him again—not just fire, but purpose. His sister's voice echoed like a prayer: "Don't let them take the light."
His quills blazed brighter, flames roaring anew. He shoved against the Titan's wrist again, teeth bared, body cracking under the pressure.
"Listen, void-breath," he snarled through blood and fire. "I'm not a spark. I'm the wildfire that doesn't die."
The sun above flared in answer, its corona spilling across the sky. Light cascaded down, bathing him in power. His veins blazed, his aura flared, and for a heartbeat he seemed larger than the mountains.
Solaris roared and swung again.
This time, the Collector's wrist buckled.
The titan reeled back, its roar shaking constellations. Its hand withdrew into the rift, burning trails of smoke across the heavens. The battlefield fell silent for half a breath. Invaders staggered, stunned.
Solaris stood on the ridge, chest heaving, flames spiraling around him like wings. His grin was bloody but unbroken.
"Guess that makes it round one."
The Collector's wings unfurled wider, blotting out what little light slipped through the cracked seams of the rift. Its voice was like a swarm of knives dragged across steel, a hundred tones fighting for dominance.
"Solaris, child of the burning star. Your flame is but a candle against the hunger I bear. The suns of a thousand galaxies already whisper in my marrow. Yours will only season the void."
Solaris's chest heaved, the heat within him pressing against the limits of flesh and spirit alike. Sparks flickered at the edges of his fur, every strand glowing like a filament about to burst. His eyes narrowed into molten crescents.
"I am not a candle," he said, each word resonating with the pulse of the Earth below. "I am the dawn."
Then he moved.
The speed was no longer motion — it was absence. Space folded around him, time stuttered, and the Collector's black crown shattered under the first strike. The creature screeched, its body unraveling into streams of night, but just as quickly reformed, chains of void knitting its wounds.
Solaris pressed the attack, each blow a miniature sunrise, flares of light so fierce they scarred the walls of the rift. But for every strike, the Collector countered with talons of darkness, ripping the brightness from existence and hurling it back like spears. One grazed Solaris's shoulder — flesh seared not from heat, but from the total absence of it. His blood hissed as if ashamed to leave him.
"You burn brighter than the others," the Collector mused, weaving its shadows into a scythe longer than mountains. "But brightness is waste. Darkness is patient. And patience always wins."
The scythe came down. Solaris caught it with both hands, the force splintering bones and rattling his core. His knees buckled. The rift beneath him cracked wider, revealing glimpses of stars trembling in their cages. He pushed back, roaring, the sound a beacon across dimensions.
Far below, on Earth, every child looked up at once, hearts thrumming with the echo of a hero they had never met but somehow knew. Farmers dropped their tools. Sailors froze at their wheels. Cities hushed as the sky burned brighter for a breath.
Solaris shoved the scythe away, spinning with the motion, and delivered a kick so fast it struck yesterday and today at once. The Collector's torso imploded, shadow ichor spraying like liquid night. But from the spray, dozens of lesser shades sprouted, each bearing fragments of its power.
The swarm descended.
Solaris vanished and reappeared among them, tearing through shade after shade, but each slain birthed two more. His flames spread across the rift like wildfire, yet even wildfire must breathe, and the darkness did not.
His lungs screamed. His limbs dragged heavier with every strike. The sun's warmth reached for him, distant through the broken veil. He snarled and reached back, drawing deeper, deeper — until veins of pure solar fire spidered across his skin.
The Collector paused, watching, intrigued.
And Solaris erupted.
A sphere of brilliance detonated outward, vaporizing hundreds of shades in an instant. The rift shook as if in fear. The Collector staggered, clutching its reknitted crown. For the first time, its many voices hissed not with hunger, but with alarm.
"Impossible…"
Solaris didn't answer. He had no words left — only light.
But the effort cost him. His form dimmed, the flames along his body faltering, flickering toward ash. His vision blurred, stars smearing into rivers. He collapsed to one knee, chest heaving. The fire in him guttered.
The Collector saw. It smiled — a ghastly curve stitched from void.
"Yes. Burn yourself out, little sun. All flames die. And when you do, I will feast on the ashes of your world."
It raised its scythe once more, shadows drawing into a singularity at its edge, heavy enough to drag light into its blade. Solaris tried to stand, legs trembling, but the fire wouldn't answer. His body rebelled, hollow.
Then he heard it.
A whisper — not from above, not from the Earth, but from within.
"Rise."
The voice was ancient, older than the sun itself, older than even the Collector's hunger. It was the voice of the Source, the primal ignition that birthed every star.
Solaris's dim eyes widened. His body split with new radiance, but this time it was not drawn from the distant sun. It was drawn from the origin of suns. His wounds sealed in an instant. His frame stretched taller, sharper, golden light flaring until the rift itself recoiled.
The Collector faltered. Its many voices screamed together, "No—this is forbidden—"
Solaris rose.
And when he moved again, it was not fast. It was inevitable.
He struck the scythe. It shattered into nothing. He struck the Collector. Its crown, its wings, its endless mouths, all exploded into storms of night, hurled across the rift like chaff before a hurricane.
The darkness shrieked, clawed, begged, but the light consumed, relentless. The Collector's swarm fell silent. One by one, its shades guttered like candles before dawn.
And then — silence.
Solaris stood alone, burning at the center of the rift, chest heaving, body cracked but unbroken.
But he knew. He felt it.
This was not the end. The Collector was not alone.
Something else stirred beyond the rift. Larger. Older. A hunger deeper than any shadow he had ever felt.
The rift pulsed, veins of darkness spreading wider, threatening to snap open into the cradle of Earth.
Solaris clenched his fists, fire roaring back to his skin. His eyes, molten crescents once more, narrowed.
"This isn't over."
And the rift answered with a voice that was not a voice, a vibration that shook stars:
"NO, CHILD. IT HAS ONLY BEGUN."
The Collector's shadow still lingered in the rift like smoke after fire, yet Solaris did not rush back to Earth. His chest rose and fell with the rhythm of cosmic silence, and the heat within him pulsed faintly, not like a warrior braced for endless combat, but like a pilgrim pausing at the edge of revelation. The void whispered to him, not with words but with an endless, patient hum — the vibration of suns scattered across galaxies.
And in that hum, Solaris realized something he had not allowed himself to admit: he was not merely defending Earth. He was being tested.
The sun that birthed his speed and his fire was not a tool; it was a living covenant. The hotter it burned, the faster he became, but the brighter it blazed, the more it asked of him — responsibility, clarity, purpose. The fight against the Collector was not just about defeating a thief of light. It was about proving worthy of holding light at all.
He turned his face toward Earth. The blue sphere shimmered in the distance, vulnerable, unaware of how close it had come to being devoured. Clouds swirled across its skin, sunlight kissed its oceans, and for a fleeting instant, Solaris envied the stillness of mortals who could live without knowing the battles fought for them in silence.
He descended.
The rift closed behind him, like a wound stitching itself in haste, and the air of Earth welcomed him with the familiar warmth of home. Solaris landed not in the heart of a city nor on the edge of a battlefield, but in a meadow where the grass bent toward the sun and the air smelled of growing things. A river traced silver lines across the land, and birds scattered at his arrival, startled yet unafraid.
It was here that Solaris often came when he needed to think. Not because it was hidden — though it was — but because it reminded him of who he was before the power consumed him. He remembered being small, no larger than a spark, a nameless creature who had watched dawns with awe, not command.
He lay back on the grass, the red and yellow of his body blending oddly with the wildflowers. For once, he did not race. He let time move as it pleased.
"Was that victory?" he asked the sky, though he expected no answer. "Or was that only the beginning of being hunted?"
The clouds drifted. Somewhere far away, children laughed, their voices carried faintly on the wind. The sound cut deeper than any battle wound. Because battles he understood — strikes, counters, speed, heat. But laughter? Laughter reminded him of what he might lose if ever he faltered.
The sun shifted overhead, brighter now, as though listening. Solaris closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the warmth. But the warmth did not soothe him as it once had. It throbbed with urgency, like a pulse quickening in alarm.
Then he heard it. Not in his ears, but in his core. A voice, faint yet steady.
"Child of flame, you are not alone. The suns are waking."
Solaris sat up, his breath caught. He had heard whispers before — fragments in dreams, half-formed echoes during races across the upper atmosphere. But never had the sun spoken so clearly.
"The suns… waking?" he murmured.
The river rippled, though no wind stirred it. Shadows bent strangely, as though bowing. And in that moment, Solaris felt something stir far beyond Earth — presences vast and ancient, stirring in their sleep across the black sea of space. He glimpsed them only faintly, but enough: colossal beings bound to stars, some benevolent, some ravenous. The Collector was not alone. He was only the herald of greater hungers.
A tremor ran through the meadow. The birds returned, not in song but in restless flight. The air thickened, and Solaris knew peace was already over.
He rose slowly, not with the giddy energy of speed but with the solemnity of burden. "So this is the path. Not war after war, but guardianship after guardianship."
For a moment, his childish side wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. He had dreamed of races that spanned galaxies, of seeing how fast he could run when stars blazed hottest. But the race he found himself in now was not about being fastest. It was about outlasting despair.
A ripple tore the sky open. Not like the Collector's rift — this one shimmered with gold, beautiful and wrong. From it stepped a creature unlike any Solaris had seen. Not dark, not shadowed, but gleaming, its body patterned like fractured glass that reflected countless suns. Its eyes burned with kindness and cruelty interwoven.
"I am Radiarch," it said, its voice layered with echoes of many. "You have something that was never meant to belong to one. The power of a sun is not yours to hoard."
Solaris's fists tightened. "It's not hoarded. It's given. I run because the sun allows it. I fight because Earth needs me."
Radiarch tilted its head, amused. "So small a world. So loud a claim. Do you believe the universe waits for you to decide its fate? That laughter in your meadow, those rivers you love — do you think they matter to the stars?"
Solaris felt anger stir, but not the hot rage of battle. This was quieter, heavier. "They matter to me. And if I'm the bridge between suns and Earth, then they matter to the light itself."
Radiarch's laugh was neither cruel nor kind. "Then prove it. Prove that one creature, bound to one star, can hold against the hunger of many."
The rift widened. Behind Radiarch, Solaris glimpsed silhouettes — others like him, yellow and red, blue and green, violet and black, each pulsing with their own suns, each watching with unreadable eyes.
Solaris swallowed. He knew then: the Collector had been only a spark in the storm.
Yet he did not flinch. Instead, he bent low, fingers brushing the grass, the sun's heat swelling through him like a drumbeat.
"Then let the race begin," he whispered.
And the world tilted as light itself prepared to run.