Leon's eyes widened as he noticed the door was already ajar. His blood ran cold. 'Wait, Lily always bolted it from the inside when she was alone.'
"Lily?" he called out, pushing the door open before his mind could calm. "Mom?"
The only answer was a low, shuffling noise from the living room. Someone was inside.
Driven by the fear for his family, Leon charged into the living room. What he saw sent a jolt of adrenaline through his veins.
Two of Tiger's thugs were there. One was casually overturning the rickety table, scattering the few pathetic belongings they owned.
The other had his back to Leon, looming over Leon's mother, who was cowering in her chair, her blind eyes wide with terror.
"The boss just wants to send a message," the thug sneered. "Make sure the painter's kid knows his place."
Something in Leon snapped. The grief, the humiliation, and the fury at the man in the alley all merged into a single, explosive point.
"Get away from her!" Leon roared.
The thug turned, surprised, then laughed. "Look what crawled out of the gutters."
He threw a punch, a lazy, powerful swing meant to end the fight before it began. Leon, who should have been flattened, saw it coming in perfect, slow motion.
He ducked under the blow with a speed that shocked himself and drove his shoulder into the man's stomach.
The thug grunted, stumbling back into the wall with a crash. The second thug stopped his vandalism and turned, his face a mask of annoyance.
The fight was a blur. Leon fought with a desperate, feral strength he never knew he possessed.
He took a hit to the ribs that should have cracked a bone, but he shook it off, the pain a distant echo.
He moved, blocked, and struck not with skill, but with pure, undiluted rage.
A wild swing from Leon cracked the wall, leaving a spiderweb of lines as he pulled it back.
He wasn't winning, but he was holding them off, fueled by a power that flickered just beneath his skin.
Finally, with a combined effort of fury and fear for his mother's cries, he managed to shove them both out the door and slam the bolt home, his body heaving.
He slid to the floor, trembling not from fear but from the aftershocks of whatever had just coursed through him.
He tended to his sobbing mother and sister, his mind reeling. He looked at the black envelope, now lying on the floor where it had fallen during the struggle.
The exam is tomorrow. It wasn't just a hope for a better life anymore. Instead, it was a weapon, and he needed it.
That night, drawn by a need for answers, for some connection to the father he'd lost, he slipped out and walked toward the ruins of the Granum Tower.
The crash site was a cordoned-off nightmare of twisted metal and blackened stone.
The air still smelled of acid and death.
Picking his way through the debris, his heart aching, he saw it: a shred of familiar green fabric, untouched by the soot and fire, fluttering from a piece of rebar.
His father's cap. It was pristine, as if it had been protected from the inferno. As his fingers closed around the rough cloth, he heard it. A sound that didn't belong.
A dry, skittering chittering from the shadows behind a mound of wreckage.
Leon froze, the hair on his arms standing on end. He slowly turned.
From the darkness, two pairs of glowing, multi-faceted eyes blinked open, fixed directly on him. The creatures that emerged from the shadows were nightmares given form.
Insectoid limbs skittered over molten metal, and carapaces gleamed like oil under the emergency lights. They were nothing from this world.
Leon froze in terror, his body stumbling back over scattered debris. The creatures moved in, their chatter sounding almost like a language from a nightmare.
One lunged, a razor-sharp limb scything toward his head. Leon threw up his arms, a helpless gesture. And something responded.
A golden light erupted from his chest, blazing into a shield of pure energy that surrounded him.
The creature's limb clanged against it, deflected with a sharp clang and a burst of sparks.
The light pooled in his hand, forming into a sword of golden fire. It felt alive as it guided his strikes.
He parried a strike, the impact jolting up his arm but feeling right. He swung, and the golden blade sheared through a chitinous limb with surprising ease.
It was a frantic and desperate fight. Each movement slipped toward defeat—but the sword moved as though it were alive, guiding Leon, granting him strength and speed that wasn't his own.
As he deflected a strike that could have taken his head, a blazing image flashed behind his eyes:
His father, walking calmly through the heart of the explosion, the flames parting aside like a respectful sea. Unharmed. Unscathed.
His eyes, for a fleeting second, glowed the same gold as Leon's sword.
The vision vanished as quickly as it came, leaving behind a staggering confusion. 'Dad?'
A siren wailed in the distance—authorities were coming. The distraction was enough.
One of the creatures landed a glancing blow on his shoulder, vibrating his body with sharp and real pain. Survival instinct screamed at him to run.
He turned and fled, the golden sword dissolving back into light and vanishing into his chest as he ran.
He didn't stop until he collapsed in the alley behind his home, his body trembling, his shoulder throbbing, his mind a whirlwind of terror, power, and impossible revelation.
The next morning, before he could bathe, he looked at himself in the silver mirror they owned. The boy who stared back was different. His eyes were harder, older.
A faint, golden mark, like a tiny sunburst, was etched on his forehead. The shy, scared boy was gone. He had looked into the abyss, and something had looked back.
'What's that?' He raised his hand to his temple, swiped for a while, and then glanced in the mirror again. But this time, no mark was there, only his smooth skin.
After getting himself ready, he picked up the black envelope. Kissed his mother's cheeks. Waved at Lily before vanishing into the humming, riotous street.
Today was the exam. He wasn't just going for his family or for a better life. He was going to understand what he was.
He was going to find out what really happened to his father.