Chapter 9: The Weight of a Thousand Souls
Agent Kieran Moore sat at his console in the Academy’s surveillance hub, eyes darting between the streams of data flooding the screen. The room hummed with the low murmur of agents monitoring various locations around the country, but today, Kieran’s attention was fixed on a single city: Galewood. There had been reports of metahuman activity, and Kieran’s instincts had been prickling ever since the alert came through.
Something was wrong.
He reached for his headset, adjusting it as a series of energy spikes flashed on his display. The readings weren’t catastrophic yet, but they were building, like a distant rumble of thunder before the storm. A conduit—someone capable of absorbing and releasing energy—had been flagged by local authorities. Conduits were unpredictable, volatile even. The last thing Galewood needed was a conduit on the brink. They already had enough struggles after all.
Kieran narrowed his eyes at the readings. Along with the energy spikes, there was something else—a faint emotional signature that had caught his attention earlier. He could sense it now, hovering at the edge of his awareness, an empath’s aura pulling in the emotions of everyone around them. Whoever they were, they certainly weren’t trained. Their emotions were bleeding out, raw and unfiltered.
Kieran shifted in his seat, uneasy. His own empathic abilities were tingling, the rising tide of tension in Galewood scratching at the back of his mind like nails on a chalkboard. The emotions coming from the area were growing denser, more chaotic. Fear, anxiety… and something sharper. Panic.
“What’s going on in Galewood?” Kieran asked, his voice tight.
One of the other agents glanced over. “Local authorities were pursuing two suspected metahumans. Energy spikes keep climbing, but nothing major yet. We’re monitoring.”
Kieran frowned, his eyes glued to the fluctuating readings on his screen. The energy surges were getting stronger. More erratic. His fingers tapped nervously against the edge of his console as he focused, closing his eyes briefly to hone in on the emotional undercurrent of the situation.
He could feel it—the faint pulse of emotions coming from two distinct sources. One was the conduit, their emotional field tense, volatile, barely holding together. But the other… the other was something else entirely. It was an empath, for sure, but there was something different about them. They weren’t just reacting to the emotions around them; they were absorbing them, drawing them in like a sponge.
Kieran’s pulse quickened. Whoever this empath was, they were powerful. And untrained. That combination, mixed with a conduit on the brink, was a recipe for disaster.
He opened his eyes and turned back to his screen, his heart hammering in his chest. “I’m picking up serious emotional activity in Galewood,” Kieran said, his voice strained. “There’s an empath in the mix—someone powerful. If this goes bad, we’re looking at a major event.”
Before the other agent could respond, a sudden flare of energy spiked on the monitors. Kieran’s breath caught in his throat as his eyes snapped to the readings. Something was happening.
The next few moments passed in a blur. A visual feed from a nearby surveillance drone flickered onto his screen, and Kieran watched as two figures were cornered in a dark alley, their backs against the wall. The police had them surrounded. Guns drawn.
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“Shit, those idiots better not fucking shoot” Kieran muttered under his breath. He could feel the tension crackling through the screen, the fear in the officers, the panic rising in the metahumans. The energy coming off the conduit was almost visible, a low, pulsing light that radiated from his body.
And then, in an instant, everything fell apart.
One of the officers fired.
Kieran’s breath froze in his chest as he saw one of the figures—the empath—drop to the ground. Even without audio, the visual feed told him enough. The empath had been shot.
The emotional spike that followed was like a lightning bolt to Kieran’s mind. Fear, confusion, pain—all of it hit him in a sharp, jagged wave, but it was nothing compared to what came next.
The conduit snapped.
Kieran’s eyes widened as the screen lit up with blinding light. The conduit’s body pulsed with raw, unchecked energy, the force of it spilling out in all directions. The officers around him scrambled, but they were already too late. A shockwave erupted from the conduit’s position, rippling outward with terrifying speed.
Kieran watched, helpless, as the energy engulfed the street. The drone feed flickered, struggling to stay connected as buildings shook and windows exploded outward in a shower of glass. The ground itself seemed to buckle, the raw force tearing apart the infrastructure.
And then it happened.
The explosion ripped through the heart of Galewood, a massive blast of energy that turned the screen white for a moment. Kieran blinked, his heart pounding in his chest as the screen re-focused, revealing the aftermath. The devastation was unimaginable. Entire city blocks reduced to rubble, streets torn apart, and fires raging in the distance.
Kieran couldn’t move. His eyes were glued to the destruction, his mind barely processing what he was seeing. But then, like a freight train slamming into him, the emotional fallout hit.
He gasped, doubling over as the wave of emotions crashed into him with terrifying force. It wasn’t just the fear or the panic this time—it was the deaths. The raw, agonizing terror of hundreds of thousands of people, their final moments frozen in the air, their emotions leaving a scar on the world. The shockwave of their deaths rippled through Kieran’s mind, each one a dagger plunging deeper into his psyche.
He clutched his head, trying to push it back, but the weight of it was suffocating. The fear, the pain, the loss—it was too much. Far too much.
“No,” Kieran whispered, his voice trembling as he tried to block out the flood of emotions. But there was no stopping it. He could feel the terror of the people in the city, each of them like a beacon of pain, reaching out to him with their dying breath. He could feel their panic, their desperate hope for survival, all of it extinguished in an instant.
His vision blurred, his chest tightening as he gasped for air. The emotional pressure was crushing him, squeezing the life out of him with every heartbeat. He couldn’t breathe. His heart raced, pounding so hard he thought it might burst. He tried to focus, to ground himself, but the emotions were pulling him under, drowning him in the collective trauma of a city destroyed.
His hand reached out for the console, gripping it tightly as if it could anchor him. But there was nothing to hold onto. The emotions were too strong, too powerful. He could feel himself slipping deeper into the storm of emotions, dragged under by the sheer force of the collective suffering. Kieran’s breath came in ragged gasps as he fought to hold onto reality, but the torrent of fear and pain was relentless. He had never felt anything like this—not on this scale, not with this intensity.
His vision swam, darkening at the edges as the weight of thousands of minds collapsed onto his own. He could hear the screams—echoes of the last moments of people who had no time to process what was happening to them. The panic, the disbelief, the terror—it all swirled together into a cacophony that battered against his mind, relentless and unforgiving.
“No… no… please…” Kieran’s voice was barely a whisper, but even speaking felt like a monumental effort. His head throbbed, his temples pulsing with every wave of pain that hit him. His thoughts became fragmented, shattered by the overwhelming flood of emotion. He tried to pull back, to sever the connection, but his powers—his gift—had become a curse. He was wide open, and there was no escape.
The deaths were too numerous, their emotions too raw and unfiltered, slamming into him again and again, wave after wave. He felt their fear as the blast consumed them, their pain as the force tore through their bodies, their desperate, final thoughts reaching out into the void. Every single life, extinguished in an instant, left a mark in his mind—sharp, burning, and inescapable.
Kieran’s body shuddered violently, his grip on the console weakening as he slumped forward. His heart was racing out of control now, his breaths coming in short, sharp bursts. He could feel the world slipping away, the darkness encroaching on his vision. His chest felt like it was about to collapse under the weight of it all, the overwhelming pressure of the emotional storm consuming him from within.
His mind teetered on the edge of oblivion, every thought drowned out by the endless screams, the pleading cries, the terrified voices of the dead. He could no longer tell where his own emotions ended and theirs began. It was as if he had become a vessel for their pain, their terror, their loss, and it was tearing him apart.
With one final, desperate effort, Kieran tried to reach out, tried to warn the others, but his voice was lost in the sea of agony. He could feel the last flickers of his strength fading, the crushing weight of the dead pulling him under for good.
And then, there was no then. Just nothing