Midnight passed.
On the rooftop of the apartment building, Lucas Kane continued to train.
There was no punching bag tonight.
No formal technique, either.
He simply stood in place with his eyes half closed, throwing punches into empty air.
His movements were slower than usual.
Not because he was tired.
Something about tonight felt different.
Each punch carried a strange sensation—one he had noticed before, but never this strongly.
As Lucas moved, his awareness seemed to slip somewhere deeper.
An endless darkness surrounded him.
Not darkness like night.
Something far larger.
An infinite void.
And every time his fist moved through that darkness, a faint spark appeared.
A single point of light.
Another punch.
Another spark.
If Lucas had looked up at the sky, he would have seen something even stranger.
The constellations above him—Pegasus, Draco, Cygnus, Phoenix, Lacerta, and dozens more—were responding.
All forty-eight constellations associated with the Bronze Saints shimmered faintly in the night.
Not one.
All of them.
Each flash matched the rhythm of Lucas's punches.
One strike.
Another.
And another.
His movements were slow—but somehow incredibly fast.
Each punch completed its full motion before the next began, yet the afterimage of one strike still lingered when the next appeared.
Then another.
And another.
Soon, the air in front of him filled with overlapping shadows of motion.
Then—
A distant sound echoed inside Lucas's mind.
Soft, yet impossibly powerful.
Boom.
A tiny flame ignited in the darkness.
The moment that flame appeared, the stars reflected within that endless void rippled outward like waves across water.
The darkness began to break apart.
At first it was only a tremor.
Then the tremor expanded violently—like the birth of a universe.
The stars exploded into motion.
Inside Lucas's body, something collapsed.
An invisible barrier shattered under a surge of power that felt older than time itself.
A force that had slept for countless ages suddenly awakened.
Lucas's eyes snapped open.
And within them, the faint spark that had appeared countless times during training did not fade away this time.
The flame remained.
It burned steadily.
A violent surge rushed through his body.
Blood thundered through his veins.
Every cell trembled as though thousands of stars were expanding within him at once.
His bones felt as if they were breaking apart and reforming simultaneously—destroyed and rebuilt in the same instant.
It felt like witnessing the birth of a star.
A sharp ringing filled his ears.
Then his vision shifted.
Lucas could see the particles within his own body spinning, collapsing, and erupting like miniature galaxies.
His blood flowed beneath his skin like a blazing river of starlight.
His heart beat like the pulse of a newborn universe.
Each heartbeat sent invisible ripples through the void around him.
Then instinct took over.
Lucas's right hand tightened into a fist.
His heel pressed into the rooftop surface, grinding against the concrete as he shifted his weight backward.
The ground beneath his foot cracked slightly.
He stepped back—
Then struck forward.
The sound that left his mouth was not a shout.
It was a raw surge of will rising from somewhere deeper than his voice.
"Burn… my Cosmo."
His fist drove forward.
BOOM.
The air rippled outward like disturbed water.
The space in front of him seemed to fracture like glass.
For a fraction of a second, even time itself felt distorted.
Then the impact arrived.
The air screamed as it tore apart.
The surrounding space groaned under the pressure.
And the moment itself seemed to collapse before immediately re-forming.
Across the street, windows along the side of a neighboring apartment building shattered simultaneously.
Glass exploded outward with a deafening crash.
Parked cars along the road shuddered violently as if an invisible force had slammed down on them.
Windshields cracked.
Car alarms began screaming one after another.
Far away.
Kamar-Taj.
"Hm?"
The sound came from the Supreme Sorcerer herself.
A nearby sorcerer looked up.
"Master?"
The Ancient One lowered her gaze toward the artifact hanging around her neck.
The Eye of Agamotto.
With a quiet gesture, the artifact opened.
A soft green glow emerged from the gem at its center.
The Time Stone.
A power capable of observing and manipulating the flow of time itself.
The Ancient One studied the shifting visions within the stone.
"…Strange."
She frowned slightly.
"The future has changed."
With another motion, the Eye of Agamotto closed.
Moments later, she vanished.
A mechanical notification sounded inside Lucas's mind.
Ding.
Congratulations. Cosmo Awakening has been successfully activated.
Ding.
It has been my honor to accompany you for the past 1,000 days.
The interface will now disengage.
Until we meet again.
Reminder: Cosmo Awakening is the path of warriors. It grows through battle and evolves through struggle.
Good luck.
The voice disappeared.
The system had arrived quietly one thousand days ago.
And it left just as quietly.
Lucas stood motionless on the rooftop.
Dawn had already begun to brighten the sky.
From the street below, voices erupted in confusion.
"Holy crap!"
"What just happened?"
"My windows!"
"Hey! My car!"
"Who the hell did this?"
"Wait—look up there!"
"Oh my—"
"Jesus Christ…"
Lucas slowly opened his eyes.
In the sky above Manhattan, a streak of deep blue light cut across the clouds like a tear in the heavens.
He blinked.
"…Wait."
Lucas inhaled sharply.
"Did I just punch a hole in the sky?"