Adam sat under the tree, staring at the diminished flame behind his closed eyelids.
He hesitated.
The source was shrinking. Every experiment had cost him a visible chunk of energy. If he kept going, the flame might go out entirely. And he had no idea what that would mean.
'Should I stop? Should I conserve what's left?'
The question hung in his mind for several seconds.
Then he heard voices.
They were faint at first—laughter, shouts, the dull thud of something hitting the ground. Adam opened his eyes and turned his head toward the open field beyond the riverbank.
Three boys stood in the grass about fifty meters away.
They were throwing stones, competing to see who could throw the farthest. Their clothes were clean. Their shoes were intact. Middle-class kids. Khayer City boys.
Adam's body went cold.
The memory surfaced instantly—sharp and violent. These were three of the four boys who had beaten the original Adam. The fourth wasn't here, but Adam recognized the other three without hesitation. The faces, the voices, the way they moved—everything matched the fragmented memories that had poured into his skull earlier that day.
Adam pressed his back against the tree trunk and pulled his body behind it. He tucked his legs in and held his breath.
'Don't see me. Don't look this way.'
But it was already too late.
One of the boys—the tallest of the three—had turned his head at the wrong moment. His eyes caught Adam's movement. He squinted, then a slow grin spread across his face.
He raised his hand and pointed.
"Look who's over there."
The other two turned. The moment they saw the tree, the riverbank, and the figure trying to hide behind it, their expressions shifted from curiosity to excitement.
All three started running toward him.
Adam heard the footsteps—fast, heavy, getting closer. His heart hammered against his ribs. His palms pressed into the dirt.
'No. Not now. I can't deal with them now. I don't even know how to use my power properly. I don't even—'
They were already there.
The three boys stood in a loose semicircle in front of the tree. Adam was on the ground, his back against the trunk, looking up at them.
The tallest one—the leader, clearly—cracked his knuckles. He looked down at Adam with the same expression a cat gives a cornered mouse.
"Well, well. The tough slum kid." He glanced at the other two with a grin. "You know what? Let's use what our teacher taught us. Test our fundamentals on a real target."
Adam had been afraid. Genuinely afraid. His body was weaker than theirs, his position worse, his options nonexistent.
But the moment those words left the boy's mouth, the fear froze mid-beat.
'Teacher.'
'Fundamentals.'
Adam's eyes locked onto the tall boy.
'What teacher? What fundamentals? Do middle-class people learn combat? Do they learn to fight with—'
"What fundamentals?" Adam's voice came out before he could stop it. "Is this… magic?"
The tall boy blinked. Then he laughed.
"Magic?" He shook his head. "You slum rats really don't know anything."
He raised his right hand and clenched it into a fist.
Adam couldn't see anything different with his normal eyes. The fist looked like a fist. But he *felt* it. A subtle pressure in the air around the boy's hand. Something invisible was forming—gathering, wrapping around his knuckles like a second skin.
Energy.
The same kind of energy Adam had felt inside himself. The same flame. These boys had it too. And they knew how to use it.
The realization hit Adam like a wall.
'They can use it. Middle-class kids can use it. It's not rare. It's not special. It's taught. In schools. By teachers. Only we—the slum people—don't know about it.'
The information was valuable. Critical, even. But it also meant something else.
These boys were trained. Adam was not.
The tall boy stepped forward. His energy-coated fist drove toward Adam's face.
Adam threw himself sideways.
The fist missed his head by inches and slammed into the tree trunk behind him.
The trunk cracked.
Not a scratch. Not a dent. The wood split apart with a sharp, violent sound, and a section of bark the size of Adam's forearm shattered and fell to the ground.
Adam stared at it. His mouth was dry.
'If that had hit my face—'
He didn't finish the thought. He didn't need to. These boys weren't holding back. They weren't playing. They were using him as a training dummy, and they would not stop.
Adam scrambled to his feet. His legs shook. His mind was screaming at him to run, but he couldn't outrun three trained fighters in an open field.
He took a deep breath.
The quick dodge—the one that had saved his face—hadn't been pure luck. His lungs still carried a residual trace of the enhancement from earlier. His body had moved faster than it should have. Just slightly. Just enough.
But it wouldn't last. And normal reflexes wouldn't save him a second time.
Adam had never tried to concentrate with his eyes open. Every time he'd accessed the flame, it had been in deep meditation, eyes shut, body still. This was the opposite—standing, breathing hard, three hostile people in front of him.
But he was out of options.
Adam exhaled slowly. He didn't close his eyes. Instead, he kept them fixed on the tall boy while reaching inward—imagining the thread, the same thin strand of energy, being pulled from the flame.
Not to his lungs this time.
To his eyes.
He had no idea if it would work. He had never done this before. He had never even tried to concentrate while standing, let alone while someone was about to punch him again.
But desperation has a way of cutting through doubt.
The thread separated from the flame. The flame—already weak, already barely a flicker—shrank further. Adam felt it diminish and ignored the panic that came with it.
The thread rose. Not toward his chest. Not toward his lungs. It climbed higher, through his neck, past his jaw, and connected—fragile and trembling—to his eyes.
The world changed.
Adam's normal vision didn't sharpen in the way he expected. Colors didn't brighten. Edges didn't become clearer. Instead, a new layer appeared over everything he saw.
The three boys were still standing in front of him. But now, Adam could see *inside* them.
Each one had a flame. Not below the navel like Adam's, but in the same general area—the center of their torso, deep within. Their flames were bigger than Adam's. Each one burned at roughly the size of a fist. Steady. Strong.
And from those flames, energy flowed.
But it was not clean.
The energy didn't travel in neat lines or precise threads. It moved like water through a cracked maze—splitting, spreading, leaking in every direction. From the tall boy's core, a thick stream of energy ran up his torso, branching chaotically through his chest and shoulders, spilling into his arms in uncontrolled bursts. The energy that had gathered around his fist was just the portion that happened to reach his hand through the messy tangle.
It was powerful. But it was wasteful. Inefficient. Like pouring a bucket of water to fill a cup—most of it hit the floor.
'Their connection is messy,' Adam thought. 'They're pushing energy to their fists, but they're losing most of it along the way. Their pipes are leaking everywhere.'
The tall boy stepped forward again. His fist drew back for a second punch.
Adam watched it happen. The speed was the same as before—the boy wasn't faster on his second attempt. But Adam's perception had changed. The enhanced eyes didn't make the world move in slow motion, but they gave Adam something just as valuable—prediction.
He could see the boy's muscles tensing, could see the energy shifting in his arm a fraction of a second before the fist moved. His brain processed the angle, the trajectory, the timing—all of it faster than normal.
The fist came toward his face.
Adam shifted his weight and leaned back. The knuckles passed an inch from his cheek. He felt the displaced air brush against his skin.
The boy's eyes widened.