The chaos was, to your twelve-year-old eyes that had seen lifetimes, almost mundane.
A villain with a "Granite" Quirk was having a very bad, very public meltdown in downtown Musutafu. He wasn't a major leaguer—just a hulking brute of living rock, smashing streetlights and upending cars in a frustrated tantrum after a botched robbery. Pro Heroes were minutes away, the crowd was panicked, and the air was thick with dust and screams.
You were supposed to be on your way home from the library. Mom's rule was absolute: Head down, power in, never intervene. You were the secret. You were the boy with the tail carefully wrapped around his waist under his hoodie, the horns smoothed down by your mother's subtle illusion magic (a faint silver shimmer only you could feel). You were the living lesson in restraint.
But a shriek, raw and close, cut through the din. A woman was trapped under a twisted streetlamp, her leg pinned, a slab of cracked asphalt teetering above her from the villain's last stomp.
Your feet moved before your mind could cite the rules. It wasn't heroics. It was something older, more primal. A dragon's instinct to protect its territory, its hoard—and your hoard was this fragile, noisy, vibrant city you'd grown up in.
"Stay back, kid!" a man yelled as you darted past.
You didn't. You slid to a halt beside the woman, your hands—claws slightly extended—closing around the cold metal of the lamp post. At twelve, you looked like a tall, lanky child, but the density of a dragon was in your bones. With a grunt that was more a growl, you heaved. The metal groaned, bent, and gave just enough for her to scramble free as others rushed to pull her to safety.
The Granite Villain noticed. "A little bug!" he roared, his voice like grinding stones, and lunged.
Time didn't slow. It crackled.
You pushed the woman the rest of the way and tried to leap back, but a massive stone fist backhanded the space where you'd been. The shockwave hit you like a physical wall. You weren't badly hurt—your scales along your shoulders flared, absorbing the impact—but you were flung through the window of a shuttered electronics store.
Glass rained around you like jagged hail. You lay sprawled among shattered TV screens, the wind knocked out of you, the taste of copper and ozone in your mouth. Dazed, you heard the villain's lumbering steps approaching, heard the distant, finally-close wail of hero sirens.
And then, you heard the Echo.
It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure. A deep, resonant frequency that vibrated in your horns, in your marrow, in the core of the storm-power you kept banked like a fire. It came from the old, broken televisions surrounding you. Their dead screens, reflecting the chaotic light, suddenly seemed to hold a depth—not of images, but of memory. Of a place of impossible spires and howling winds.
A voice, not heard but felt, vast and desolate as a sea of clouds, washed through you:
"LYRA… WHEREVER YOU ARE…"
It was grief shaped into sound. It was a father's rage against an uncaring sky. It was his voice. Zym's.
Your breath hitched. A pain that was not your own split your heart—a king's loneliness, a mate's betrayal, a parent's hollow, aching search that had lasted eons in emotional time. The Echo wasn't just a memory; it was a live wire of emotion, a piece of his eternal storm, somehow resonating through the fractured electronics, through the primal electricity in the air, and into you.
The dam broke.
A silent, invisible pulse erupted from you. Every light in the district blew out. The sirens died. The world plunged into a twilight lit only by the setting sun and the villain's confused grunts.
No. No, no, no. Mom said never—
But the Echo was a key turning in a lock you didn't know you had. Your human form, the careful construct held for twelve years, shivered.
With a sound like tearing silk, your wings—larger now, leathery and strong—unfurled from your back, shredding your hoodie. Your tail lashed free, the tuft at its end blazing with actual, snapping lightning. The iridescent scales on your arms and neck spread, gleaming with an inner storm-light. Your horns grew, curving back like a crown of bone and power. The air around you hummed, charged, and the tiny, glowing silver markings of your mother's lineage blazed on your skin.
You weren't a full dragon. You were something in-between—a Draconian Avenger, a child of two worlds, awakened by the heartbroken call of a father across the void.
The Granite Villain stared, his stone face incapable of showing true fear, but his body language shifting to pure defense.
You didn't think. You reacted.
You moved with a speed that left after-images. Not flying, but pouncing, propelled by a gust from your wings. Your clawed hand, wreathed in crackling blue voltage, didn't strike him. You slammed it into the ground at his feet.
The lightning didn't electrocute him. It traveled through the earth, through the mineral content of his rocky body. It was a Resonance Shock.
The villain didn't scream; he vibrated. A high-frequency shudder that traveled from his feet to the top of his head. For an instant, his solid form lost cohesion. He didn't shatter, but he fell like a sack of gravel, completely paralyzed, every nerve of his stone body overloaded and ringing.
Silence. Absolute, profound silence, save for the faint crackle of dying energy around your horns and the desperate beating of your own heart.
Then, the lights of the arriving heroes' vehicles illuminated the scene, painting you in stark relief: a draconic silhouette amid the wreckage, standing over a defeated villain.
The whispers started. The phones, back online, were raised. "What is that?" "A new hero?" "A mutant Quirk?" "A villain?"
Horror washed over you, cold and clear, drowning out the last of the Echo's pain. You saw your reflection in a broken TV screen—your father's storm in your eyes, your mother's silver marks on your skin. You were exposed.
With a panicked beat of your wings, you kicked off from the ground, a gust of wind scattering dust and debris. You shot into the darkening sky, a blue-silver streak vanishing over the rooftops before the stunned heroes could even give chase.
At home, you collapsed through your window, your form shrinking, wings folding away, power receding like a tide. You were just a scared, twelve-year-old boy again, shaking in a room full of shattered glass from the window you'd forgotten to open.
The door to your apartment burst open. Lyra stood there, her face pale as moonlight. She had felt it. She had felt the Echo resonate through you, had felt your power surge like a beacon. The smell of ozone and storm filled the small space.
She didn't shout. She crossed the room in two strides and pulled you into a crushing embrace. You could feel her trembling.
"The Echo…" you choked out, tears finally coming. "I heard him, Mom. I heard Dad. He's so… sad. He's looking for us."
Lyra stiffened. The confirmation of her deepest fear and her oldest wound. She closed her eyes, holding you tighter. The secret was out. Your power was no longer a quiet, hidden thing. You had saved people. You had been seen. And you had touched the edge of a grief-stricken storm that spanned worlds.
"I know, Ryūjin," she whispered, her voice fierce with love and dread. "I know. And now… he might have heard you, too."
Outside, the clear night sky over Musutafu began to boil with strange, rapid clouds. A single, deep roll of thunder, that sounded nothing like natural weather, echoed over the city. It was an answer. A query. A father's storm, sensing a familiar, beloved spark in the void.
The hiding was over