Raphael ascended rapidly toward the stars, breaking the atmosphere in a mere instant to avoid the local air traffic of his massive home world. He set a direct course across the country, traveling from one side to the other to reach his family home on the opposite side.
Near his house, he touched down and quickly swapped his hero attire for regular, casual clothes. As he entered the home, he was immediately greeted by his mother, Aurelia, who walked up to him with a warm smile.
"What are you doing here, honey?" she asked, reaching up to pinch his cheek. "It's only been two days of college and you already missed us"?
"How can I miss you guys? Mom, it's only been two days," Raphael replied, gently pulling away. "I only came because I forgot something, and I really need to talk to Dad about something".
Aurelia's expression turned inquisitive. "What is it, honey? You can tell me. Is it money? Because I know how expensive college can be. We gave you a good amount of money, but we told you we're not going to give you anymore. You're going to have to find a job. You're an adult now".
Raphael looked at her, stunned. "No, that's not what it is. You guys are being serious? No more allowance? I have to get a job"?
"Yes, young man," she insisted. "We'll always be here to help you, but it's time for you to grow up".
Just then, Kael began descending the stairs, his voice steady as he addressed his son. "Raphael, I received a message".
Aurelia looked between the two of them, her suspicion growing. "Why are you two acting strange? I want to know what y'all about to talk about. I can be the cool mom".
Suddenly, Raphael's phone chimed with a text notification. He pulled it out to see a message from Topanga:
"I heard you're OK. That One rescued you. Thank you so much for trying to save me back there, you have such a big heart ❤️❤️❤️. I'm sorry for putting you through that. Please call me".
Aurelia leaned in, her eyes locking onto the heart emojis. She let out a small scream of delight and grabbed Raphael's cheeks again. "I see why you two are acting strange! My little boy... my grown man has a girlfriend! His first girlfriend"!
"No, it was just a friend, Mom," Raphael insisted, blushing.
Aurelia looked at Kael and winked. "Okay, I get it. You two are about to have 'the talk.' I'll leave you two alone".
Suddenly, massive bangs echoed from the hallway. The air on one side began to freeze into ice, while the other side erupted in flames as the twins, Aris and Ariel, argued loudly.
"It's my turn to use the phone!" one shouted. "I promised my friend I would text them tonight!" "I don't care! Get off of it!" the other barked back.
Aurelia rushed toward the chaos. "If you guys burn or freeze the house again and we have to rebuild it, someone's going to be grounded"!
Taking advantage of the distraction, Raphael and his father moved upstairs. They quietly exited onto the roof, standing together under the open sky to speak in the silence of the night, far above the noise of the house below.
Raphael handed the small device to his father, his shoulders heavy. "This is it right here, Dad," he said, his voice cracking with a mixture of exhaustion and guilt. "I'm so sorry. I messed up. It's all my fault. I just... I had to play hero. I should have listened to Mom."
Kael took the device, turning the familiar tech over in his hands. A faint, bittersweet smile touched his lips as old memories flickered across his mind. "Yep, this is definitely the technology from our people," he murmured before looking up at his son with a steady, grounding gaze. "It's not your fault, son."
"It is my fault," Raphael insisted, his silver eyes flashing with regret. "If I wasn't being a hero, I wouldn't have met Zion. He wouldn't have sent that beacon out to the monarchy."
"They were going to find us eventually," Kael countered calmly. "It seems Zion was already set on his mission to scout this planet. I always told your mother they would find us and that we should prepare. But your mother... she is the hopeful one. She just wants you all to live a regular life."
Raphael looked toward the distant lights of their home below. "So, are you going to tell her? Are you going to tell her about me being a superhero?"
"Not now," Kael said, his voice softening. "Eventually, I will. I don't want to destroy her spirit. I can tell she really enjoys this new life of ours compared to back home."
"What happened back home?" Raphael asked, his tone shifting to a desperate intensity. "When I was fighting Zion, he told me things. He said you and Mother were traitors to our people to the monarchy. He said they're looking for some type of special crystal."
Kael sighed, the sound echoing in the thin air. "There's much to say, son. So much to tell you."
"Tell me, please!" Raphael shouted, his voice ringing out across the void. "I deserve to know! I deserve to know who I am and where I come from!" He looked down at his hands, which still felt the phantom hum of the Battle Spirit. "You told me about my Battle Spirit. I finally activated it, Dad. When I fought him, it took over me. I did something you and Mom told me never to do I killed someone. Not just him, but multiple demons. It felt like it was part of my nature. It felt... good. But bad. Tell me everything."
Kael booted the device in his hand, its light casting long shadows across his face. He looked at Raphael, seeing the struggle between the boy he had raised and the dark legacy of the Kinetas waking up inside him. He could see it in his son's eyes the Battle Spirit was no longer dormant; it was a restless, hungry thing, pulling at him with a primal urge for combat.
"I can see the conflict in you," Kael said solemnly. "The way we raised you versus the Battle Spirit within you. Let me tell you, son, who we are and who our people truly are. Listen carefully."
The Primordial Dawn
A long time ago, before the birth of the multiverse, before the existence of time or space, there was only one thing: the Apeiron. It was the boundless source an all-powerful state of existence and non-existence combined. From this source, two beings were given rise: Ennoia and Samael.
As they came into being, they began to take form. Ennoia appeared first, manifesting a raiment of pure white a flowing dress accented with gold, adorned with a golden necklace and bracelets. A halo of light settled above her white hair, which curled softly at the ends, and her eyes shone like burnished gold.
Samael formed in contrast. He wore cloth of deep black and crimson beneath heavy armor that showcased his massive physique. Great horns curled from his head, and his eyes burned with the red of a dark rose.
The War of Genesis
Existing in a plane where there was nothing but themselves and the Apeiron, they immediately began to fight for dominance. Their battle was so violent that the sheer force of it created reality; their punches became Genesis, birthing dimensions and worlds, yet simultaneously becoming the End as they destroyed them just as quickly.
They fought until everything was reduced to nothingness once more. Standing in that void, they chose to go their separate ways. Ennoia created her own multiverse, fashioning countless dimensions filled with a vast array of diverse races and species, but within this sprawling expanse, she established her own elite group of Holy Warriors to serve as her primary protectors. Samael likewise forged his own multiverse, populating its many dimensions with a wide variety of unique beings and creatures, though to enforce his will, he raised his own specialized Demonic Legions. For a time, these two multiverses existed in a fragile peace, with the Apeiron sitting as the silent foundation between them.
The Fall and the Purge
But Samael had other plans. He and his warriors traveled back to the boundless source, seeking to drain its energy and grow stronger. With this stolen power, they launched an assault on Ennoia's multiverse.
Ennoia refused to be bullied, her warriors standing firm to protect their home as a catastrophic cosmic war erupted. Eventually, Ennoia and Samael met in a final confrontation before the Apeiron, the source of all existence. Ennoia defeated him, absorbing the power of the boundless source to fuel her victory, decimating his legions before banishing Samael to a separate dimension of her own making: Hell. Following his exile, she merged the two multiverses into one and called for a total genocide of all Samael's demonic warriors. She issued a decree to her Holy Warriors to track down and eliminate every remaining trace of his influence, moving through every planet and dimension to kill or seal away anyone who possessed even a flicker of his essence. It was a systematic hunt designed to erase Samael's legacy from the face of creation forever.
The Birth of a New Race
In a hidden corner of a secret dimension known as Pleroma, there was a world of deep crimson dust called Lazarus. During the height of the Great Purge, a group of Demonic spirits and Holy Warriors who grew weary of the slaughter found a forbidden peace in one another. They became refugees on this scarlet world, burying themselves in its shadows to escape the genocide.
For millions of years, they lived in a state of constant, suffocating fear, never daring to leave their sanctuary for fear of being hunted for their mixed blood and spirit. As the eons passed in silence, their very nature began to shift under the weight of their isolation. Their wings withered and fell away, their demonic horns receded into their brows, and their halos dimmed until they vanished entirely. They were the forgotten, the dead surviving in the dark transforming into something entirely new.
Kael looked deeply into his son's eyes, the weight of eons settling into his gaze. "They became us, Raphael. They became the Kinetas."
He paused, letting the revelation sink in before continuing the history of their bloodline. "We lived in peace and harmony on Lazarus, becoming a new race the likes of which the multiverse had never seen. While this peace took hold within our hidden world, Ennoia finally brought the Great Purge to an end. She ceased the hunt for the remaining Demonic Warriors and turned her sights toward order. She established a new law across the combined multiverses, weaving an entirely new system of governance and existence. To oversee this new era, she created Heaven, a celestial stronghold where she remained to watch over and protect the Apeiron from any who would dare covet its power."
The Awakening of the Spirit
Even with this new system, a shadow of fear still lingered over our people. The new generations, born of a complete synthesis of light and dark, had never once left the atmosphere of Lazarus. For eons, we remained paralyzed by the threat of Heaven, refusing to abandon our world even as our resources plummeted and the planet itself began to reach its age of death.
Then came the day the sky broke. We were attacked by a ruthless alien race from another world, a people who possessed high-tech weaponry far beyond our understanding and massive, monstrous creatures that they wielded as living engines of war. As we fought back in a desperate struggle for survival, we realized something special existed within our blood and spirit: a unique spirit and an unbreakable will to live. We watched as the first of our kind fell in battle, only for his spirit to physically rise from his broken body and return to it, stitching his wounds shut and bringing him back to life.
As the conflict intensified, we discovered a darker side to our nature. Our demonic heritage was hungry; our eyes began to devour the souls of the invaders as we struck them down. Our king at the time, a man named Nimrod, urged our people not to panic. Despite the carnage, he insisted we remain on Lazarus, paralyzed by the fear that Heaven would strike us down as abominations the moment we dared to step into the stars. He believed, or perhaps he only hoped, that we could survive on a dying world with nothing left to give.
But a powerful few declined Nimrod's offer. One warrior, a man of terrifying presence named Lucifer, stepped forward to stand before the desperate crowd. He did not merely speak; he commanded the air around him.
"Look at this world," Lucifer declared, his voice cutting through the wind like a blade. "Our cradle has become our tomb. We have cowered in the shadows of our ancestors' fears for eons, becoming nothing but humiliated remnants and ghosts in a multiverse that has forgotten our name. Nimrod calls for patience while our children starve on a dying rock. I call for the end of our cowardice. We have seen the fire in our blood. We have felt our spirits rise from the grip of death. Our Battle Spirits are not a curse they are the weapon that will defy Heaven itself. From this day forward, we will no longer be defined by the mercy of others, but by the strength of our own will. We will become the only thing this existence respects: absolute power."
To seal his decree, Lucifer moved with a speed that defied the eye. He drew his blade and, in one fluid motion, decapitated Nimrod. As the King's head fell, Lucifer didn't stop; he reached out and gripped the very air, slicing through Nimrod's escaping soul. He inhaled the essence of the former ruler, absorbing his power before the eyes of the masses. While some looked on in horror, many more cheered, their dormant bloodlust finally ignited. Under his command, we charged forward, leaving our world for the first time to conquer the planet of the invaders who had dared to strike us. We took their resources, devoured their souls, and made slaves of every survivor.
The Warrior Society
As our new King, Lucifer was a visionary who knew exactly how to execute his dream of a dominant empire. He immediately restructured our entire civilization into a rigid hierarchy, separating our people by the strength of their essence into Low-class, Mid-class, and High-class warriors, with the Royal Family presiding over all. He decreed that the forge of battle must begin in the cradle; children were taken from their homes at a very young age to begin brutal, systematic training in the art of combat.
Lucifer himself developed the foundational martial arts and techniques that would define us, teaching us to weaponize our Battle Spirits until they were stronger than any technology. Our society evolved rapidly into a race of absolute conquerors.
"I was born into this world, son," Kael said, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly tone. "I was born a low-class warrior, but I had a potential that the instructors couldn't ignore. I trained every single day, pushing past the limits of my body, until at the age of eight, I was given the honor of conquering my first world."
Kael paused, a flicker of memory clouding his gaze as he drifted back to that first taste of war. He saw his eight-year-old self stepping out of a cramped, metallic pod onto the soil of a low-level planet. A male and female of a strange alien species had rushed toward him, their faces twisted with concern rather than fear. "Oh my God, it's a little kid!" they had cried out. "Are you okay?"
Young Kael hadn't hesitated. He didn't even blink. He raised a small, steady hand and released a psychic blast that incinerated them instantly, leaving nothing but ash in the wind. He took to the sky then, a blur of motion at speeds that leveled mountain ranges and shattered entire cityscapes with cascading energy strikes. He remembered the cold mechanical click of his communicator as he spoke into the device: "The planet has been successfully conquered. All major military forces destroyed."
The mothership arrived a week later, darkening the sky. The Kinetas descended in waves like a plague of locusts, systematically absorbing the souls of the citizens and shackling the rest into slavery.
"I conquered more worlds than I can count," Kael admitted, finally looking back at Raphael. He slowly turned his palms upward, staring at them as if the ghosts of his past were still etched into the skin. "I conquered galaxies. I laid waste to entire universes in the name of the King. When I look at these hands, even now, all I see is the blood of the trillions I've slaughtered."
He closed his fists tightly, his voice trembling with a mixture of pride and old horror. "My dream back then was simple: be a Captain, lead my own squad, and be the most ruthless weapon in the empire. I took every mission, no matter how suicidal, and I rose through the ranks on a mountain of corpses. That was my life... until I finally met your mother. I remember that day perfectly. She was standing in the heart of the Monarchy Castle, a light I didn't think I was allowed to see."
"She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen in my life," Kael whispered, the harshness of his warrior past softening in the light of the memory. "She possessed the kindest heart something I had never experienced in our world of blood and conquest. I was ordered to be one of her bodyguards because she was royalty, but as the years went by, she became my teacher, showing me there was more to our spirits than just the hunger for battle."
The unity of the Kinetas began to fracture as Lucifer's obsession with three ancient, magical crystals grew. These relics, when brought together, formed a key that granted access to Heaven, Hell, and the highest realms hidden from reality. The King intended to use this power to launch a final, desperate vengeance. He believed our Battle Spirits were strong enough to conquer Heaven itself, and he sought to free our forefather, Samael, from his eternal banishment.
But then, something occurred that shifted the King's madness into a dark, new gear. Your mother became the first Royal in ten thousand years to prove fertile. Not since the death of Lucifer's own Queen had a newborn Royal been seen; for ten millennia, our elite bloodline had been stagnant. Our people believed that the rarity of our reproduction was a curse a balance imposed by reality to ensure we did not overpopulate the multiverse with our power.
Lucifer saw her as a miracle a divine sign that he could rebuild a grander, purer army consisting only of his people. With the hope of a new generation, his vision turned genocidal. He declared that we no longer needed slaves to serve us; instead, every other species in the multiverse was to be annihilated in a complete genocide, leaving nothing but the Kinetas to inherit the resources of the dead worlds. To him, the rest of existence had become obsolete.
When Lucifer finally located the third crystal, your mother knew she could not allow the multiverse to burn to fuel a madman's ego nor could she bear to be the one to birth the next generation of his genocidal warriors. She stole the key, and I stood firmly by her side as we fled the kingdom with the rest of the resistance. Most of our allies were captured during that desperate night, but your mother and I were the only ones to break through the blockade and escape. We came to this planet to raise you and your siblings with different values, keeping the crystal hidden to ensure that the King's dream of total genocide never becomes a reality.
Raphael looked down at his hands, his voice trembling with a mixture of revulsion and disbelief. "A history of genocide... murder and conquering. I don't want to be anything like that." He looked up, his eyes locking onto his father's. "The crystal that Mom keeps under her bed... is that the one? Is that the key you're talking about?"
"Yes," Kael answered heavily. "But don't you worry about that. That is between me and your mother."
"I do have to worry about it!" Raphael shot back, his voice rising. "It's my problem that they're even coming here. If they find us, they'll try to take over this planet just like all the others. I'm supposed to protect people, but I feel like the worst superhero ever."
Kael stepped forward, placing a firm, heavy hand on his son's shoulder. "Don't say that. We all make mistakes, son. Trust me, I have made trillions of them. Don't worry about the crystal, and don't worry about your mother. I'll talk to her. I'll explain that the Monarchy has finally tracked us down."
Raphael wiped his face, trying to steady his breathing. "So, what's the plan? Are we leaving? Do we have to find a new planet?"
"No," Kael said, his voice ringing with a newfound iron. "We're going to stay and fight. I'm tired of running, Raphael. It's the reason I've been training you, your brother, and your sister so hard. I knew this day would eventually come. And honestly? I'm confident. This planet has some of the strongest beings I have ever met, and they are willing to fight for their home. We aren't alone."
"So... I just live my life? We just wait until they show up?"
"Yes. And you keep training," Kael responded. "We can still meet in the spiritual dimension to work on your techniques. If I had to guess, we have about a year maybe a little longer until they arrive. And it won't be an army at first. When someone fails a mission in the empire, they usually send five to ten elite warriors. They'll assume this is an A-rank planet or higher."
Raphael took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. "If you have hope in us... then I guess I do too." Suddenly, he glanced down at his watch and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Oh man! It's almost 2:30 AM! I have to get some sleep before class!"
Without another word, Raphael began to hover, his Battle Spirit flickering as he ignited his flight and shot off into the night sky, disappearing into the darkness.
Kael remained on the roof, staring out at the horizon where his son had vanished. A moment later, the soft hum of displaced air signaled a landing. Aurelia touched down gracefully on the roof beside him, her expression unreadable in the moonlight. She looked at Kael, then at the empty sky.
"How was the talk?" she asked softly.
Kael let out a long, weary breath. "It went... pretty well."