Leon's blood went cold just as he noticed the door unlocked, already ajar.
'Lily always bolted it from the inside when it's five. So how?' He thought, then swallowed, cold sweat beading his face.
"Lily? Mom?" Leon called and pushed the door open.
His voice cracked when he stepped on the wrecked floorboards right after the doorway.
"Mom!"
Before his echo could return, a shuffling sound drifted from the living room.
Leon bulged forward with a heaving chest. A mixture of fear and pain hit him like a violent seizure of protectiveness that burned past thought.
'My mother! My sister!' the names echoed in Leon's head as he shifted glances at the extra two uninvited guests.
In the living room, two of Tiger's thugs were laughing heartily.
One had his boot planted on their rickety table, scattering the few belongings like trash.
The other stood over Leon's mother, forcing her to shrink deeper into her wheelchair. In Li Mei's blinding eyes, Leon saw wet terror trembling as tears slid down her cheeks.
The thug with a mark on his left cheek whispered. "The boss just wants to send a message," he increased his grip on Leon's mother's shoulder. "Hear his words. 'Make sure the painter's kid knows his place.'"
Watching how the tears kept dripping from his mother, something inside Leon gave way. The shame, the alley's rage, and the clawing grief all collided at once.
"Get away from her!" Leon roared.
The thug with the mark turned with a surprised look, then laughed. "Look what crawled out of the gutters."
When the other thug turned, he didn't hesitate. He threw a lazy but heavy punch forward. The kind meant to end a fight before it actually starts.
Leon saw the punch nearing him as a line of force which his body had understood before his mind could.
He ducked beneath it with an uncanny ease. His body glided low as he raised a punch and hurled it into the thug's stomach.
PUM!
It felt less like a punch and more like a pressure that had finally broken free. The thug grunted and staggered, crashing into the wall. "…damn."
Then, the thug with the mark's face twisted from irritation into wary confusion as he stopped tearing through the room.
He moved in and threw his right leg up, aiming for Leon's left side. But Leon blocked it before the kick could fully turn. He drove his elbow down and cracked the bone in the thug's leg.
Crack.
When Leon loosened his grip, the thug dropped to the ground, screaming. He clutched his leg as if his entire life had come to an end.
The thug without the mark pushed himself from the wall and charged. He moved at a brutal speed and threw a hard punch at Leon's face.
The impact knocked Leon three steps back. His vision became hazy, yet he didn't fall.
The thug crouched toward the one with the mark, then tried to help him up.
Leon shook his head and grinned. "I'm not done yet."
In an unearthly manner, the marked thug's legs got healed. The two faced Leon head on.
Leon blocked, struck, and turned. He moved not with skill, but with an instinct that felt newly purged into his muscles.
A punch which should have cracked a bone slammed into Leon's ribs. But the pain reached him from a distance, like a warning sent from a body that no longer felt entirely his own.
When he swung, missed, and ended up hitting the wall, a wrong sound echoed. The stones in the walls groaned under the weight of the punch as a spiderweb of cracks spread through it.
Leon was not winning. He was surviving. Not only on adrenaline, but the same hungry, resonant energy. The very one that had buzzed in him since the alley and carried him through every desperate block and strike.
"Leon!" Li Mei's voice called in a dying tone.
Leon surged forward and drove the thugs out with a mixture of fury and desperation that was crashing his own body down.
He slammed the door shut and pressed his back to it, panting hard.
One minute passed and he didn't move. Two. By the time the fourth had passed, Leon's legs gave out, causing him to slide to the floor.
As the power shifting within him faded, the distant pain was now felt like his own. His muscles trembled like frayed wire, twitching with a strange electric fatigue.
After tending to his sobbing mother and sister, Leon caught sight of the black envelope crumpled on the floor.
The awakening exam was tomorrow. And now it was no longer hope. It was a weapon. And he needed it like blood.
That night, pulled by a need for answers, Leon slipped out of his home. He made his way to the ruins of the Granum Tower.
By the time he got there, it no longer looked like a building. Instead, it looked like a carcass of wrecked metal and blackened stones.
The air reeked of acid. The smell of sour fish and roasted meat clung to every breath he took. His heart ached with every step through the debris, but he didn't waste a single second.
When he finally climbed to the top, his breath caught as he saw a strip of a familiar green fabric fluttering from a piece of rebar.
Without a second look, he remembered what it was. His father's cap.
Leon reached for it slowly. The rough cloth closed in on his fingers when he realized it was the only thing that was untouched by the fire that had turned the rest of the tower into ruin.
Holding it for three seconds, a dry, skittering chitter echoed from the shadows behind him.
Every hair on Leon's body rose as he turned his head slowly.
Two pairs of glowing, faceted eyes blinked open in the dark. Before Leon could move back, a long leg slid into the light.
Then, Leon's eyes widened.
The creature was a nightmare given form. Insectoid limbs skittered over molten metal. Their carapaces gleamed like spilled oil.
They didn't wait for the human to think. A razor-sharp limb scythed toward the human's head when one lunged forward.
Leon threw his arms up on instinct, bracing to block with his fragile bone… but then, a golden light erupted from his chest and blazed into a shield of solid sunlight.
Sparks burst around them like snow when the creature's limb slammed against it. The ringing sound alone made the creature recoil.
The other creature which hadn't moved struck the shield multiple times before also recoiling back.
Like liquid light, the shield dissolved into Leon's palms and hardened into a blazing sword of condensed will.
The blade of the sword moved first, before Leon's own instinct could notify him. He struck, turned, and deflected with the speed and precision that the sword gave him.
The blade of the sword bounced off blows that should have split Leon in two. He gasped for air, seeing himself as a passenger inside his own body. With human strength, he was barely keeping up with what the sword was making him do.
With every cut or mark the sword left in the creatures, they regenerated before Leon's eyes. Their limbs stretched longer and reshaped into jagged organic swords.
When the moon's rays landed on the creatures' new limbs, a cold certainty settled into Leon's bones. 'I can't block what would come next.'
As soon as the thought faded, a blazing image seared into his mind. It didn't come as a memory, but as an inheritance.
He saw himself looking at the moment like his father did, experiencing his senses.
He saw the explosion not as chaos, but as energy waiting to be shaped.
The flames parted like a sea making way for a king. And in that final, shared instant, Leon saw himself outside his father's body.
He saw the eyes glowing the same golden fire as the sword in his hand.
Just as the vision dissipated, Leon understood one thing: the light was not some weapon he had found, but a legacy he is tasked to finish.
And when he saw himself before the two chitinous creatures, he knew his father had not simply died. But rather, he had vanished into something else, transformed, or maybe both.
For two minutes, the creatures that were poised to strike only a moment ago now stood there, staring at him with something that was close to recognition, or fear.
A few meters away, a distant outbreak siren wailed. When Leon's attention shifted from the creatures, a blow landed on his shoulder.
The force hurled him scrambling a few meters back. When he finally stopped himself, the golden sword dissolved into light. It pulled back into Leon's chest like a wound sealing itself shut.
Leon's boots spiked dust into the air as he ran.
The creatures didn't chase; they just stayed where they were, watching, grinning, and calculating.
Leon did not stop until he reached the alley behind his home.
His body shook tremendously with a burning sensation that traveled to his inner core. His mind reeled with terror and a truth that was too large to hold as he collapsed at the front of his doorstep.
…
Beneath the cold 5:00 AM breeze, Leon stood drowsily before the cracked, egg-shaped silver mirror.
He covered his yawn. When it lowered, he froze. Locking eyes with his own reflection felt like staring at an ungodly creature that was destined to take life.
The muscles of the person in the mirror had become dense, almost as if something inside him had quietly reforged them overnight.
The eyes were older, carrying the watchful stillness of a predator, or a soldier.
On the forehead, a faint golden mark flickered into view in a sunburst. It felt less like a brand and more like a receipt for the power he had drawn.
With one swipe, the mark and the sunburst all vanished. But the feeling remained on his soul.
After making himself ready, Leon picked up the black envelope and gave it a final, careful scan.
He kissed his mother's cheeks, waved at Lily, then stepped out into the riot street.
Under the rising morning sun, the envelope no longer felt like an exam slip. It was like a ticket into the hidden world his father had once walked. A world where monsters skittered through ruins and men stole light from people with low incomes.
Leon crossed the highway with one thought in mind. 'I would learn to control the legacy blazing in my chest. And I would find the man who had left it there.'