When Pierce heard that voice, he felt a violent pull deep inside him—something clawing toward the very core of his being, toward the most essential and sacred part of his existence.
Instantly, instinct screamed. A wave of primal terror surged through him, as if some buried part of his soul understood that accepting this call would mean losing himself forever. That there would be no return. That it would be better to die here, broken and alone, with whatever scraps of honor he still possessed, than to accept the power being offered.
Unfortunately, Pierce had already crossed the point of no return.
It had begun so slowly, so subtly, that Pierce always believed he was in control. He told himself the figurine was just a curiosity, a harmless token. He told himself the whispers he sometimes imagined were nothing but stress. He told himself that indulging in his petty cruelties, ignoring the consequences of his actions, and feeding his own twisted sense of pleasure and importance were simply ways to assert himself.
But each selfish choice left wounds—small tears in his will, tiny fractures in his soul.
And by the time the voice truly reached him, there was not even a hint of resistance left. The young recruit simply accepted.
The small idol he carried with him every single day shattered, fragmenting into countless razor-thin shards that spun like metal insects before burying themselves into his skin. They pierced through flesh, sank into muscle, and fused with his body, glowing with a malignant, supernatural energy.
Pierce uttered a silent scream, but not in pain—his voice trembled with ecstasy. Because whatever its origin, whatever its corruption, it was power. More power than he had ever imagined.
Bones snapped back into place with wet pops. Torn blood vessels rewove themselves. Shredded muscles reattached and thickened, throbbing with that unnatural dark-pink glow.
In seconds, the damage left by the Luminarch strike vanished completely. And still the transformation continued. His muscles expanded grotesquely, pulsing and writhing as they wrapped around him like living cords, twisting his body into something monstrous.
Sylar, Vorg, Zendo, Michael, and Arthur were still gasping for breath, trying to calm their racing hearts. The battle against the Luminarch had pushed them to the edge, physically and mentally. Their bodies ached, their minds throbbed from prolonged focus, and all five recruits felt as if they could collapse where they stood.
That exhaustion is why none of them noticed the change until it was far too late.
"BOOM!"
An explosion thundered across the battlefield, shaking dust from the remnants of the mountainside. The five recruits immediately tensed, instincts snapping back into place as they stared at a pillar of dark-pink energy erupting into the sky.
Sylar's eyes sharpened, and his breath hitched. "That energy… It's different, but unmistakable. That's the radiation of an Apostle. The power of the Antiverse."
And worse—he recognized the location of the explosion. It was exactly where Pierce had fallen.
Before Sylar could process the implications, a massive tendril of dark-pink muscle burst from the smoke, moving with terrifying speed. It shot across the battlefield like a bullet.
"LOOK OUT!" Sylar shouted.
Using what little strength he had left, he shoved the others aside just in time. The tendril slammed into him with bone-crushing force. Blood exploded from his mouth as he was hurled across the terrain, smashing into the broken mountainside. The impact buried him under tons of stone.
Vorg, Michael, Zendo, and Arthur froze for a split second. Instinct screamed at them to run to Sylar, to dig him out, to help him. But they couldn't. A new enemy had appeared, and if they looked away even for a moment, they would all die.
The tendril withdrew, and the dark-pink radiance dimmed, revealing their attacker.
What stepped forward was no longer human.
A towering humanoid creature stood before them, wrapped entirely in thick, corded dark-pink muscles that coiled and pulsed like serpents beneath his skin. His form radiated grotesque power. Instead of a head, a rounded core sat atop his shoulders, embedded with several glowing eyes that blinked independently, staring with predatory hunger.
The creature examined his own body, flexing experimentally as the muscles writhed. Then the tendrils around where a face should have been tore apart, splitting open to form a crude, horrific mouth.
The first sound it produced was a laugh.
"Hahahahahahaha!" Dark. Twisted. Saturated with a pleasure so overwhelming it bordered on madness.
Despite the distortion, the recruits recognized the voice.
Pierce.
He had become a monster in every sense of the word—bloody, deformed, and utterly corrupted. Yet never in his life had Pierce felt so complete. A tide of love and belonging surged through him—the warmth of a mother's embrace, the intoxicating passion of a lover pressed against his chest, the security of absolute acceptance.
It consumed him.
And he would never let it go.
There was no depravity he wouldn't commit, no humiliation he wouldn't endure, if it meant keeping this feeling. He was ready to burn the world for it.
After a moment of blissful delirium, his glowing eyes finally focused on the four recruits standing before him.
"The top five…" Pierce chuckled, the muscles around his new mouth stretching wide. "I guess now there are only four."
The smile twisted. The light in his eyes curdled from ecstasy into hatred and festering jealousy.
"You always thought you were better than me," he snarled, his voice breaking into distorted layers. "You think you've got everything figured out. You look down on me. You ignore me. Even when I help you, you despise me!"
Pierce's words dripped with fury and accusation, as though he were speaking to someone who had grievously wronged him. Yet none of it was true.
Vorg and the others had never acted against him. They had never plotted to push him down or sabotage him. They simply focused on their own paths and paid him little attention. Why should they have? They weren't friends, nor even acquaintances—just recruits thrown into the same brutal trials.
And as for the idea that they should have treated him differently because they were all recruits, that argument was nothing but hypocrisy. Pierce had killed several people during the tournament. Only a shameless liar could hide behind camaraderie after committing that.
As for the "help" he had supposedly given… the truth was his actions had nearly gotten the entire team killed in their battle with the Luminarch. No matter how one looked at it, his complaints were hollow, every accusation built on delusion.
But facts no longer mattered to Pierce. He had severed himself from truth. He clung to lies—tiny, poisonous stories meant to shield him from responsibility. He twisted reality until every fault, every failure, every consequence became someone else's burden.
It was the trademark of an addict: deny, deflect, distort.
The disgust his words inspired did not last long, for almost immediately after spewing those pathetic excuses, Pierce lunged forward. His right arm bulged, swelling until it was nearly as large as any of the recruits themselves. The monstrous limb snapped toward them with a crack of whipping flesh.
Fortunately, this time the four managed to dodge. The blow hit the ground with a thunderous impact that blasted dirt and rock in every direction, shaking the earth beneath their feet.
Their eyes widened as they witnessed the sheer, brutal strength behind that strike. It was as powerful, perhaps even more powerful, than the corrupted metal arms of the Luminarch they had just defeated.
None of them understood the Antiverse or the Apostles. But even without that knowledge, they could see clearly what Pierce had done. Whatever power he had embraced had elevated his physical strength to the level of a true Shooting Star.
They didn't delude themselves: Pierce was far too strong for them to defeat, especially after they had exhausted nearly all their energy taking down the Luminarch. The logical choice was to run—scatter in different directions and hope that at least some of them would survive.
But that would mean leaving Sylar behind, buried beneath the rubble.
It should have been a difficult decision. It wasn't.
In less than a second, the four exchanged a single glance and nodded. They had not known each other long, nor did they understand much about one another's lives or pasts. But they had fought together. They had bled together. They had trusted one another with their lives in the crucible of battle.
That was brotherhood—not of blood, but forged in battle. A bond equally strong.
Using the last fragments of strength in their battered bodies, Vorg, Zendo, Michael, and Arthur turned to face the abomination Pierce had become. There was no fear in their eyes, no hesitation. Only determination and honor. They fought because it was the right thing to do. They fought because Sylar was their comrade. They fought because abandoning him was not an option.
Explosions and tremors echoed across the battlefield as the clash continued. Meanwhile, beneath the shattered mountain, Sylar lay half-conscious. The earlier strike had nearly driven him into a coma, but just before his awareness slipped away, he had poured every remaining free point into Vitality, raising it by nearly a third. The surge of life force allowed his broken body to partially mend and kept him conscious—barely.
He could feel the light in his mind flickering, threatening to go out. Yet through that haze, he could see faint glimpses of the battle outside. He could hear the struggles of his comrades fighting, so he would not be left alone. That knowledge anchored him, preventing the darkness from taking him fully.
A thought surfaced in his mind—simple, sharp, and absolute.
"I need to fight with them. I need to kill the enemy." It was the essence of everything he had become. Fight alongside the warriors at his side. Destroy the abomination threatening them.
Sylar repeated the thought like a mantra, again and again, until a new light flickered in his eyes.
Under the pressure of that singular intent, something within him shifted. The electrical energy of his brain and the chemical energy of his body began to fuse—not a chaotic flux as before, but something stable, something transcendent.
An evolution.