Midnight at a dump clearing. The wind blows bringing the smell of the decayed garbage and stuff.
Ash standing straight as the leaves rustled beneath him, spine straight and posture steady with his arms behind his back like an experienced sage.
"I'm cooked"
No plan. Not a single damn one!, Ash thought, his heart thumping steadily despite the storm in his head. Just wing it. Reckless as always. Hope it's enough.
A low chuckle broke the silence, followed by the crunch of boots on gravel. Kael emerged from the shadows, his gang fanning out behind him—five figures, all lean and sharp, like wolves circling prey. Kael's leather jacket glinted faintly under the moonlight, his smirk cutting through the dark like a blade. His crew moved with lazy confidence, chains clinking, eyes glinting with malice.
"Welp," he thought dryly. " Am so cooked."
"Well, well," Kael drawled, stopping a few yards from Ash. "The great Ash, standing tall like he's got this all figured out. You got a plan, or you just here to look pretty?"
Ash's lips twitched, but his face stayed stone-cold.
"Five lackeys? Damn am so done for" ash thought biting his lips
"Why are you doing this kael? I don't think I have ever offended you before right?" Ash questioned.
Why? Well it's because I freaking can and it's fun! What other reasons do I need?. Kael stated with a sneer.
Ash eyelids twitch "so your basically gaining nothing from this?"
Keal eyebrow rose"who said am gaining nothing? I'm gaining entertainment, quality entertainment you know "
" Is it really just entertainment?" I questioned.
Keal went silent for a few moments,then laughed" fine you got me" he said arms wide "the reason for all this is your bitchy elder sister to blame"
"Big sis?what going on keal" my voice low.
He shrugged" well it's really simple really", he continued with a casual, almost bored tone, "she had the audacity to turn me down. Can you believe that? Me. I approached her nice and polite, asked her out, tried to be a gentleman about it."
His smirk widened into something uglier. "And what does she do? Laughs in my face. Calls me a 'delusional child' in front of her friends. Said I was pathetic."
Ash's hands clenched behind his back, nails digging into his palms.
"So I figured," Kael continued, inspecting his fingernails with mock interest, "why not teach her a lesson? My superpower "Stinger" it's subtle. Just a little prick, like a mosquito bite. Injects a mild poison, nothing immediately fatal, but it builds up. Makes you weak,. Slowly devouring you from the inside." He looked up, eyes glinting with malicious satisfaction. "Your sister suffered for a long time before she finally croaked. And when your mom started asking questions, getting suspicious... well." He shrugged. "Couldn't have that. So she got the same treatment."
The clearing went silent except for the rustling leaves.
Ash's entire body trembled. His vision blurred, the edges going red. His breathing came in sharp, ragged gasps.
"Big sis. Mom."
"You..." Ash's voice came out strangled, barely human. "You... killed them... for THAT?"
"Well, yeah," Kael said, as if explaining something obvious to a child. "What, you expected a better reason? Sometimes—"
Ash exploded forward.
No technique. No strategy. Just raw, primal fury driving his fists. He crossed the distance in a heartbeat, his first punch catching one of Kael's gang members square in the jaw. The crack echoed through the clearing as the thug dropped like a sack of stones.
"GET HIM!" Kael shouted, stumbling backward.
The gang surged forward. Ash ducked under a wild swing, drove his elbow into another attacker's ribs. His knuckles split open against someone's teeth. Blood—his and theirs—spattered across his face. He fought like a cornered animal, all desperate violence and grief-fueled adrenaline.
For a moment, impossibly, he was winning.
Then his previous injuries caught up with him.
His cracked ribs screamed as someone tackled him from the side. His knee—already barely functional—buckled. He hit the ground hard, and suddenly they were everywhere. Boots. Fists. Chains.
"Hold him down!" Kael's voice, sharp with vindictive glee.
Pain exploded across Ash's face, his ribs, his spine. He tasted copper. Felt something crack. The world tilted sideways, his vision swimming with stars and darkness.
Through the haze of agony, he heard Kael's laugh—high and cruel.
"Entertainment," Kael panted, standing over Ash's broken body. "Quality. Fucking. Entertainment."
Another boot to the ribs.
Ash's consciousness flickered like a dying candle.
"Not like this. Can't... can't end like this..."
But his body wouldn't respond. The darkness crept in from the edges, hungry and inevitable.
Then he heard Kael's voice,
" Although yeah, your sis was older than me I am only 18 and she was in her mid twenties then but I awaken got a superpower. Making me someone with a standing, am supposed to be respected not rejected!" He said practically shouting at the end. "Now you understand" he inhaled, smoothing his voice " those with superpowers are not to be disrespected"
Ash vision went dark with despair
"That's enough," Kael said, his voice distant now, filtering through the cotton-wool haze filling Ash's mind. "He's done. Throw him in the pit."
Rough hands grabbed Ash's broken body. He felt himself being dragged, his heels scraping across gravel and dead leaves. Every jostle sent lightning bolts of agony through his shattered bones, but he couldn't even scream. His throat wouldn't work. His lungs couldn't fill.
"God's, he's heavy for a scrawny bastard," one of the gang members grunted.
"Just dump him," another replied. "Boss says the pit'll do the rest."
The pit. The old waste dump at the edge of the clearing—a fifteen-foot drop into rusted metal, broken glass, and rotting garbage. People had died down there before. Nobody ever checked. Nobody ever cared.
Ash felt the ground disappear beneath him.
For a single, weightless moment, he was airborne.
Then gravity took over.
He hit the bottom with a sickening crunch, landing on something sharp and unforgiving. Fresh pain exploded through his shoulder, his hip, his skull. His vision,what little remained—flashed white, then red, then started fading to black.
Above him, silhouettes moved against the night sky. Kael's voice drifted down, casual and satisfied.
"Rot in hell, Ash. Say hi to your sister and mom for me."
Laughter laced with retreating footsteps sounded in ash blurred hearing.
Ash lay there, crumpled among the refuse, unable to move, unable to breathe properly. Blood pooled beneath him, warm and sticky. His consciousness flickered like a faulty bulb—on, off, on, off.
"This is it, he thought dimly, consciousness slowly fading away. " This is how it ends."
But consciousness didn't end.
It... shifted.
Suddenly he wasn't in the pit anymore. He was floating. Suspended in an endless void of grey-black nothingness, formless and weightless. He didn't feel his body nor the pains keal inflicted No pain.
"What..."
His thoughts echoed strangely here, reverberating through the emptiness.
Then it all came flooding back.
"Your bitchy elder sister... she had the audacity to turn me down."
"My talent 'Stinger'... makes you weak. Slowly devouring you from the inside."
"Your sister suffered for a long time before she finally croaked."
An all consuming rage erupted through Ash's consciousness like a volcanic eruption. It wasn't human anymore. It was primal. Pure hatred distilled into its most fundamental form.
"HE KILLED THEM," Ash's thoughts screamed into the void. "FOR NOTHING. FOR HIS GODDAMN EGO."
His sister. Twenty-five years old, always smiling, always protecting him even when he didn't deserve it. She'd worked two jobs to keep them fed after their father left. She'd stayed up nightsworking shifts.
His mother. Old,tired but loving, her hands always rough from work but gentle when she brushed the hair from his eyes. She'd fought so hard to give them a life, even when the world tried to grind her down.
And they'd suffered. Slowly. Painfully. Poisoned by some entitled little *monster* who couldn't handle rejection.
The rage built higher and higher,hotter and hotter
"I'LL KILL HIM. I'LL KILL THEM ALL."
The thought rang repeatedly growing louder but even as the thought formed, reality crashed down like a sledgehammer.
He knew he couldn't.
He was powerless. Just another ordinary human in a world that had moved beyond humans—a world where superpowers made you a god and lacking one made you garbage.
His sister had no superpower. His mother had none. That's why Kael got away with it. That's why nobody would ever investigate. Nobody cared about the powerless, especially those from the slums.
Desperation clawed through Ash's psyche, replacing rage with something sharper, colder.
"I need power. I need a talent. I need vengeance, I need...."
Then something clicked in him, like a glass shattering.
Then his mind went blank
Outside.
Kael and his gang were halfway to the clearing's exit when they heard it.
WHOOOOOOOOM.
The sound was wrong. Not an explosion exactly—more like reality itself taking a sharp breath in.
"The hell was—" one gang member started.
Then came the real explosion.
Fire erupted from the pit—but not normal fire. This was a black, roiling mass of midnight flames that climbed into the sky like a pillar of pure void, consuming light rather than producing it. Purple lightning crackled through the inferno, striking the ground with thunderous cracks that shook the earth.
"What the FUCK?!" Kael stumbled backward, his smirk gone, replaced by naked shock.
Through the black flames, a figure rose and stepped on the ground.
It was walking. Slowly. Deliberately. Each step sent ripples through the dark fire, parting it like a curtain.
The figure emerged.
Ash.
But not the broken boy they'd dumped minutes ago.
Black flames wreathed his body, flickering and dancing across his skin without burning. His eyes glowed with an eerie purple light, crackling with the same electricity that coursed through the fire. His wounds were still there the blood, the bruises, the broken bones but he walked as if he felt none of it.
His face was expressionless. Empty. Like looking into the abyss and finding nothing staring back.
Kael took another involuntary step backward.
"That's... that's impossible. You're supposed to be—"
Ash's head turned toward them with mechanical precision.
When he spoke, his voice was layered—his own, but echoed by something deeper, darker, something that seared fear into their bones.
"You killed them."
The black flames around him flared brighter, hungrier.
"Now..."
Purple lightning arced from his fingertips, scorching the ground.
"...you die."