After a shower that did absolutely nothing to help, I made my way downstairs. My face still felt like someone had stuffed it with rocks, and the painkillers I'd downed might as well have been candy for all the good they did. Didn't make sense—no blood, no visible wound, so why did it hurt like hell? Like phantom pain from a tooth that technically had never been there.

The smell of coffee and something sweet hit me as I reached the kitchen. Aunt Grace was there, already dressed for work in her usual crisp suit, hair pulled back tight enough to give most people a headache.

"Good morning," she said without turning around, focused on whatever she was cooking.

I tried to respond, but my swollen cheek made it feel like I was talking through a mouthful of cotton. Just that small movement sent fresh pain shooting through my jaw.

She must have noticed something was off in my grunt of a reply, because she turned around. Her eyes went wide. "What happened?"

"It hurts," I managed to whimper. For a second, I wanted to just collapse into her arms like I used to when I was a kid. But Aunt Grace had a strict policy about unnecessary physical contact—namely, that it usually ended with someone (me) getting smacked upside the head for being dramatic.

She stepped closer, eyes narrowing as she studied my face.

"There’s some problem with my wisdom tooth," I muttered, wincing as even talking made my jaw ache.

Aunt Grace leaned in, inspecting my swollen face. Her fingers brushed my chin as she tilted my head slightly, her usual no-nonsense expression shifting into something more thoughtful.

Her brows furrowed. "Your cheek looks really swollen. This isn’t normal."

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. You didn’t just say that.

I just sighed. "Feels like someone took a sledgehammer to my face."

"Did you bite your tongue in your sleep or something?" she asked, still inspecting.

I almost laughed at that. If only it were that simple. No. Someone had removed a part of me. Stolen a damn tooth without a trace.

Aunt Grace went back to finishing her toast. “Are you going to school like this?”

I shook my head. “No way. I need to find a good dentist first.”

Without missing a beat, she walked over to the dining table, picked up her purse, and fished out a small card along with what looked like a coupon. “One of my clients gave this to me yesterday,” she said, glancing at it before handing it over. “Some new dental clinic. Said they’re offering a free cleaning to the first few customers. Who thought it’ll come in handy so soon.”

I took the card, flipping it between my fingers.

At first, I was just surprised by the sheer coincidence of it all. That this random card had ended up in her hands yesterday, just in time for my mystery tooth situation.

What were the odds?

What caught me off guard wasn’t the card itself but the colors in my perception—gold mixed with red.

Opportunity woven with danger.

Suspicious. Or maybe just an absurd stroke of luck.

Either way, I had no better leads. I exhaled and pocketed the card, resigning myself to my fate. Guess I’m visiting a dentist today.

Outside, the morning weather was still miserable, rain pounding against the windows in an endless downpour. I made the decision then and there—I was taking the day off from the academy. The pain in my mouth, combined with the sheer exhaustion of everything else, was enough reason to skip.

But I couldn’t do anything on an empty stomach. Despite the dull ache throbbing through my jaw, I filled a cup with milk and sipped it carefully through a straw, settling onto the couch with the TV on.

On the screen, a news anchor was animatedly telling people how their day would go based on the first letter of their name. I stared at the screen for a few moments, mildly curious. Would it say anything for ‘N’?

But before it could get there, I lost interest and flipped the channel.

"We're getting reports of massive destruction in the North District after what appears to be a mage losing control of their abilities. Early reports suggest—"

I nearly choked on my milk. That couldn’t be right. Mages losing control? Right Now? What were the odds? In my three centuries of life, I had never heard of such a thing. Metas? Sure. Metas lost control all the time—some even lived in a constant state of imbalance. But mages? They were precise, calculated. Their abilities weren’t some unstable force of nature but structured art.

What the hell is going on in this Loop?

And this particular mage? They lived in North District—the richest, most influential district in the city. That meant they weren’t just any mage. They had to be powerful.

I pulled up the map, quickly dialing the reported location. I memorized it. Then I shook my head, grinning. My luck today was unreal. I had just found myself a mage. Maybe this one could actually help me. If not today, then tomorrow. If their future wasn’t already doomed, I’d make sure to pay them a visit.

Satisfied, I happily slurped down the last of my milk through the straw, feeling oddly accomplished. Thirty minutes later, I stepped outside, locking the door behind me. Pulling up my map, I checked the route—then opened my bank balance.

Yeah. The train was the better choice.

Anyway, the dentist’s clinic wasn’t far.

With my hands shoved into my jacket pockets and a face mask covering my face, I walked toward the nearby subway station. The city was still drenched in rain, the downpour relentless, its effects seemed to ripple through everything. The streets were quiet, as if the storm had swallowed all movement. I boarded the train, taking a seat near the window. The rhythmic vibration of the train beneath me was soothing, and I let my eyes drift shut.

Five minutes.

A tingling sensation crept through my consciousness. My instincts sharpened, nudging me awake. My eyes snapped open. Nothing. My perception shifted, scanning for threats. No danger. Odd. There were only a handful of people in the train car, scattered and silent. My eyes landed on a man nearby.

He sat across from me, impeccably dressed—an expensive suit, a gleaming silver ring on index finger, polished shoes, the kind of presence that didn’t belong in a dingy subway car. But that wasn’t what caught my attention. He was reading a newspaper. Who the hell still did that? Then, I noticed something stranger. His shadow. It didn’t match him. While the man sat still, calmly flipping through the pages, his shadow took the shape of a wolf, its tail wagging lazily, as if amused by something unseen. I clicked my tongue and closed my eyes again. No hostility. No immediate threat. Not my problem.

Six stops later, I got up, exiting at the underground station. The walk through the tunnels took about ten minutes before I finally emerged outside, rain still coming down hard. Unfurling my umbrella, I navigated the short distance to the dentist’s clinic. It only took me two minutes before I reached the entrance.

The doorbell chimed as I pushed it open.

Inside, the waiting area was empty. A young woman, probably in her late twenties, sat behind the receptionist desk, idly playing on her phone. The moment she noticed me, she straightened, slipping into professional mode with a bright, practiced smile.

“Welcome!” She greeted me cheerfully.

I pointed at my mouth, frowning. “It hurts for no reason.”

“No worries,” she said smoothly, sliding a form across the desk. “Just fill this out and write down your health insurance number. The doctor is in the office and will take a look at you shortly.”

I nodded and did as instructed, scribbling my details down. Within seconds, I handed it back.

A moment later, the door at the far end of the room creaked open, and a woman stepped out. She was young—younger than I had expected for a dentist. But what stood out most wasn’t her age, but her clothes. They were… out of place. Almost archaic. She wore a delicate dark green dress, embroidered with gold thread in intricate designs that shimmered under the clinic’s fluorescent lights. At first glance, the patterns seemed decorative, elegant. But when I looked closer, I realized the details resembled tiny molars and incisors.

Her hair was a rich coffee brown, cascading in soft waves over her shoulders. Her posture was effortless, graceful—like she belonged in a grand ballroom rather than a dimly lit clinic.

Then she smiled at me with her impossibly white, and impossibly straight teeth, and... I could have sworn there were more of them than there should be.

"Please, come in," she said, her voice soft as silk. "Let's see what's troubling you today."

I stepped forward without hesitation, following her inside. The room was dark. Too dark for a dental office. Unlike any other clinics I had been to, there were no harsh white lights, no sterile, overly bright lamps meant to blind you while someone shoved tools into your mouth. Instead, dim golden fixtures cast elongated shadows across the room, making everything feel just a little distorted.

But I didn’t question it. Most people with meta abilities had their quirks, and I had long since stopped being surprised by them. So instead, I simply observed.

"Make yourself comfortable," she gestured to the chair. It looked normal enough, "You're having some tooth pain?"

"Yeah," I said, settling into the chair. "Woke up with my wisdom tooth missing and my face looking like I lost a fight with a brick wall."

She hummed thoughtfully. "Missing, you say? How fascinating." There was something in her tone that made me think she found it more than just professionally interesting. "Let's take a look, shall we?"

The chair reclined smoothly, and I found myself staring up at her face, partially hidden in the darkness. Those too-many teeth gleamed as she smiled down at me.

"Don't worry," she said, reaching for something I couldn't see. "This won't hurt a bit."

She leaned over me, those too-perfect teeth still gleaming in the darkness. "Open wide."

I did as told, though my jaw protested. Her fingers were cold when they touched my face. She tilted my head this way and that, making small humming sounds.

And then, something strange happened. My jaw and teeth didn’t hurt anymore. Despite the soul crushing pain I had been feeling since early morning, the pain faded under her touch, melting away like it had never existed in the first place. She was… good. Too good. It wasn’t just skill—it was something more. Something flawless. And suddenly, I knew. She wasn’t just a good dentist. She was probably a Tooth Fairy. The realization sent a slow wave of understanding through me. Only a Tooth Fairy could remove a tooth so perfectly—without a scar, without a trace, without me even knowing it had happened. It was one of their many abilities, an inherent magic woven into their existence.

And now, the question that burned at the back of my mind—Was she the one who originally stole my tooth in the night? And if so, what the hell did she want with it? Or worse—what did she want with me?

Suddenly, "Most curious," she murmured out of nowhere. "You've lived quite a while, haven't you?"

I tensed, barely stopping myself from flinching. Nothing in my appearance suggested my age. Nothing about me should have given away that I had lived through centuries.

What was wrong with this woman?

The question pulsed behind my eyes like a warning bell. Was she playing with me? Testing the waters? Or was this the prelude to something darker?

The answer came swift and terrible. My mouth sealed shut with supernatural force, as if my lips had been sewn together by invisible threads. My airways constricted, not gradually but instantly – as if that part of my anatomy had been edited out of existence. The last thing I saw was her smile, wider than ever, those too-many teeth now looking less like pearls and more like the bars of a cage closing around me.

The darkness in the corners of the room writhed and deepened, as if someone had spilled ink into the shadows.

"North."

The name – my name – cut through the darkness. Time seemed to fracture; less than a heartbeat passed between the word and the effect it had on me. My consciousness began to slip, name and identity dissolving like sugar in rain. It felt like being dragged into the undertow of a nightmare, reality peeling away layer by layer.

Pure instinct took over. I ghosted through the dental chair, my body moving with desperate urgency. My hands scrabbled against the smooth floor as I dragged myself backward, putting distance between myself and both threats – the Tooth Fairy with her too-many teeth, and the unseen speaker whose voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Even as my meta perception stretched out into the darkness, trying to find the source of that voice, it found nothing. The room was shrouded in rainbow colors, which meant someone else’s meta nature was affecting the surroundings reality.

There was also a hint of gold swirling on the roof, though I couldn’t decipher what kind of opportunity it was showing me here, because all I could focus on was the glaring red and black color of death around me.

My trembling fingers found my face, confirming the horror I already knew: my facial features had flattened, smooth as a porcelain doll's. No mouth, no nostrils – just flat, impossible planes where my airways should be. Precious seconds of oxygen ticked away in my lungs. Through the rising panic, one thought crystallized with perfect clarity: the tooth fairy had to die first. My eyes locked onto her like a compass finding north. If I could end her, her meta would surely break – assuming I could get to her and others before suffocating to death. Besides, there was nothing to lose.

I reached for the nearest object—a glass vase with fresh flowers sitting on a small side table. In one swift motion, I grabbed it,

The Tooth Fairy didn't even flinch, her too-wide smile suggesting this was all according to plan. The room's shadows shifted in my enhanced perception – patches of burnt orange swirled with purple, warning of both controlled chaos and deception. There were more than two people watching.

I hurled the vase at her face. As she dodged, I caught a flash of emerald green behind her – beneficial change – and turned myself intangible; just then a teenage girl crashed through the dental cabinet, sending instruments flying. She landed in a crouch, and immediately broke her index finger. The sickening crack of her own bones breaking was followed by a grunt of satisfaction.

The Tooth Fairy's laughter echoed as I solidified, my lungs burning. Forty seconds of air left, maybe less. The bone-breaking girl lunged with inhuman speed, her arm swinging with enough force to shatter concrete. I barely ducked, and her fist punched straight through the wall.

A patch of darkness to my left suddenly blazed silver – connections forming – and my body moved on instinct. Good thing too, because a figure stepped out of the darkness like a ghost becoming visible, his body flickering like bad reception. When he spoke, reality seemed to stutter.

"Your name sits well on my tongue, North."

The man (or if he could be called that), face was a patchwork of stolen features – someone else's green eyes, another's sharp jawline. A portion of the room behind him shimmered violet, screaming of hidden truths. There was something off about him calling my name as I felt another pull of dreams and sense of dread. Even while in my tangible state I couldn’t escape the effects of his meta.

I dropped and rolled as the bone-breaker advanced from the sofa, her movements calculated despite her youth. While she dashed toward, another crack echoed– she'd broken her left pinky. Such a small bone, but her following punch cratered the wall where my head had been moments before.

Thirty seconds of air.

The girl circled me with efficiency, and broke another finger with a quick snap. Each fractured bone seemed to fuel her already terrifying strength.

And when I had thought, I finally knew whom I was dealing with. The room's shadows suddenly rippled, and a woman stepped in the light from the dark. Samewhile, anything her darkness touched, chunks of the dental office simply ceased to exist – a chair here, a cabinet there, reshaping. Where her light fell, things reappeared. I caught flashes of pure white in my perception – pure possibility – dancing with absolute black certainty wherever she moved.

My vision was starting to blur. Twenty-five seconds.

The bone-breaker snapped her middle finger, a sharp crack ringing through the air. Her muscles coiled with newfound force, and with a feral grunt, she hurled the heavy dental chair like it was nothing more than crumpled paper. I didn't move. The chair passed clean through me, slamming into the far wall with a deafening crash, metal bending inward like soft clay.

I kept my focus sharp, eyes analyzing every detail, every movement, letting the fight unfold as I gathered data.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Patterns. Timings. Weaknesses.

Finally, That’s it. My thoughts sharpened like a blade as my vision snapped into razor focus.

No more playing.

The bone-breaker lunged, her next punch blurring through the air with lethal force. I phased. Her fist cut through empty space, momentum betraying her, and the unintended target—The name-stealer. His stolen face rippled like disturbed water as he staggered backward, a soundless gasp escaping his lips.

Fifteen seconds of air left.

The light-bender switched rapidly between her forms, trying to catch me in her erasing darkness. But I could play that game too. Tangible, intangible, tangible again – dancing between states as the room warped around us. A flash of gold in my perception caught my eye – guaranteed success – right as the bone-breaker snapped her thumb with a grunt.

She launched forward again, her expression cracking with frustration, her attack fueled more by anger than strategy. The others mirrored her mood—their collective irritation hanging thick in the air.

I let her fist pass through my form once more, watching the realization creep across her face. She had been hoping for a time limit. Hoping that I would burn out, that I would be forced to return to the physical world. But she was bound to be disappointed. I could shift without fatigue. I could stay like this indefinitely—until the only thing I truly needed…

Was to breathe.

Her next move was pure frustration, a last-ditch effort to regain control. She tore up the floor tiles, fingers digging deep into the foundation, ripping the room apart at its seams. Then, she flung the shattered debris into the air, turning the space around us into a storm of deadly shrapnel. Tiny, jagged pieces spun like whirling blades, cutting through light fixtures, shredding through the walls like paper.

Ten seconds.

I solidified just long enough to grab a flying tile and hurl it at the light and dark bender, forcing her to switch forms defensively.

“You can now rest, North.”

Tsk! Tsk!

I wanted to seal that person's mouth. His words made me drop out of tangibility, a glaring weakness.

Eight seconds.

Spots began to dance in my darkening vision. Realizing my weakness, the bone-breaker made her move. Her strength surged and feet propelled her, letting her move faster than the eye could track, but I didn't need to see her.

I could feel the displacement of air, the way the world shifted around her presence, the gravity of her sheer force pressing toward me.

And then—

"North, we all know your secret."

Damn this guy.

I was hit by another existence erasing attack. The name-stealer talked too much. I had to grit my teeth to keep from reacting, to stop myself from turning tangible at the worst possible moment. Because right now—A human bull was charging straight at me.

I went intangible the second before she struck. Her entire force passed through me like a phantom, leaving her overextended, off balance. And in that precise moment, I solidified. My hand snapped around her arm, gripping tight. Using her own momentum against her, I twisted my body, hurling her mid-air—Straight into the light-bender. The collision was beautiful.

Six seconds.

The world was getting darker, the edges of my vision narrowing. My lungs screamed for relief, for oxygen, but I had to hold on. Had to finish this.

"You should be out of oxygen already. How much longer can you last?"

The name-stealer lunged, moving with my own speed, my own reflexes—But he didn’t have my desperation. Or my experience. I was already gone before his attack landed, phasing through the floor and reappearing behind my true target.

She stood still, watching everything with quiet amusement. The Tooth Fairy. As if none of this mattered to her. As if I was just another distraction, another insignificant moment in her long, existence. Her smirk widened, her posture unbothered. I lunged.

Four seconds. Just enough time for one last gamble.

A final, desperate leap. My hand solidified inside her chest, sinking deep through cold, unnatural flesh. And I felt it. Her heart. Cold as ivory. Hard as bone. Her smirk vanished. The Tooth Fairy’s scream tore through the air, a sound so raw and unnatural that every mirror in the office shattered instantly. Glass rained down around us, cutting into the floor, into my skin—But I didn’t let go.

I tightened my grip. And the soft and warm heart felt more like squishy dough..

Fear flashed across her stolen face.

Real fear.

She knew what was coming.

Her Death.

The Tooth Fairy’s perfect face collapsed, melting into something unrecognizable, something that had never been real to begin with. It was eerie. Empty. Just a creature that had been playing dress-up with stolen lives.

My body snapped back like a rubber band, lungs expanding, and holy hell, breathing again felt unbelievable. For a moment, pure relief flooded my system, like coming up for air after nearly drowning.

But that feeling died fast.

Because then came the rage.

"NO!" The name-stealer lost it. The room filled with violet light as his stolen features started melting off his face. The hatred in his eyes – his only original feature left – was something else. He reached down his own throat and pulled my name out like a burning rope. "I'll wear your whole life, North! No one will ever remember you existed!"

Behind him, the bone-breaker snapped both her shoulder blades despite the pain on her face. The cracks echoed like gunshots. The floor cracked under her feet as she charged in anger, riding that high you get when pain and power mix just right. She hurled the cabinet toward me.

However, I ignored her and instead, the name-stealer's scream of rage died in his throat as I turned to face them. He saw something in me that made him take a step back. Smart man. Their advantage was gone – no more suffocation countdown, no more desperation.

Now they'd learn the consequences of their actions.

As bone breaker had expected, I tuned intangible.

A flash of amber in my perception – the light-bender was just behind me, trying hard to make me pull where her darkness fell. I phased, letting her darkness pass through me and catch the name-stealer instead. His stolen features rippled as half his borrowed face temporarily ceased to exist. The sound he made wasn't quite human.

The teenage bone-breaker tore a support beam from the wall, swinging it like a bat.

But I could see the dejection creeping into her eyes – the realization that her power was practically useless against someone like myself.

I went tangible for just a split second, letting the beam mid-swing, and slam into the wall. Though, I had no care even if the building would collapse on my head right now.

The bone-breaker desperation mounting with each crack. In the next couple seconds, she threw everything she had at me – chairs, cabinets, even chunks of wall. Each projectile passed harmlessly through me. Meanwhile, the fear in her young eyes grew with each failure.

Step by step, I walked over to her while wondering if she’d run, given her super strength and speed.

"Stay back!" She broke her wrist next, the sound sharp and wet. The enhanced punch went right through my head. I didn't even blink.

"You know what's beautiful?" I asked, advancing steadily. "The moment someone realizes they're completely powerless." I reached toward her face, letting my hand phase through her attempts to block.

The name-stealer tried speaking my name, his voice cracking. "N-north—"

I clicked my tongue again as I was pulled into the strange dream-like state again.

To my right, the light-bender was having her own crisis, shifting between light and dark like a broken strobe light. And the entire building with her seemed to change between day and light. But I watched her futile attempts with mild amusement. Couldn't erase what didn't exist in her dimension.

Meanwhile, the bone-breaker's fingers snapped in quick succession – crack, crack, crack. Each break punctuated by a sob. Tears cut tracks down her face as enhanced strength made her whole body shake. "Please—"

What a strange girl? Why are you breaking the rest of your fingers if you don’t want to fight me?

Still, I let my hand phase through her sternum, not quite solid, just enough for her to feel the cold ghost of death hovering around her heart. A taste of what was coming soon.

However, suddenly, movement by the door caught my eye – the name-stealer making his break for it. Amateur. I cut through the walls like they were curtains, materializing in front of him. His stolen features ran like melting wax as terror set in. "Leaving so soon? But we're just getting acquainted." My fingers phased through his skull, sliding into grey matter. "How does this feel?"

Though, I didn't wait for an answer. His eyes rolled back, blood trickling from his nose as I kept my hand phased inside his brain. Dragging his twitching body toward the bone-breaker girl. But I only caught a flash, the wall exploded outward, and the bone-breaker was gone at inhuman speed, crashing through the other store fronts, but thick metal or concrete didn’t stop her feets.

Damn. I had been hoping to get something out of her—some piece of information, some hint as to why they had suddenly come after me out of nowhere. But now, that chance was slipping through my fingers. She was probably just a pawn in all this, manipulated into the mess by someone else pulling the strings. But in the end, it didn’t matter.

Anyone who tried to kill me without cause had already forfeited my sympathy.

It was only natural.

But then, the light-bender pulled her vanishing act too. Hiding in whatever pocket of existence she'd carved out, beyond even my meta-perception. The whole thing was starting to piss me off.

I stood in the wreckage of the half demolished dental clinic, watching colors shift and swirl as I scanned the debris. The dead receptionist lay crumpled by her desk – she'd be back tomorrow, at least. Small mercy.

Then I caught it – a ripple of rainbow hues outside, like oil on water. The light-bender was on the move, leaving a trail of distorted space behind her.

I bolted through the half demolished wall before the supers could arrive, following that technicolor breadcrumb trail into the daylight. This wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

The rainbow distortions stretched through back alleys. I kept my pace steady, my breathing controlled as the woman flickered between light and dark, her presence shifting like a strobe effect. Every time she did, reality twisted around her—trash cans popped in and out of existence from other places, brick walls momentarily vanished, and shadows bent unnaturally.

My perception lit up like a twisted Christmas display—flashes of amber warnings mixing with burnt orange chaos.

She was good. I had to give her that.

Every few seconds, she attempted to erase the path behind her, warping the environment, forcing me to react in real-time—phasing through suddenly-solid air, ducking under obstacles that hadn’t existed a second ago.

But she couldn’t keep this up forever. No matter how skilled she was, no matter how many tricks she had at her disposal, maintaining such rapid shifts came at a cost. Meanwhile, the crowd in the open streets had already taken notice. Phones were out—some recording, some frantically calling the City Protectors or one of the many superhero teams in the area.

Good. Let them.

I wasn’t planning on dragging this out longer than necessary. Then—a burst of violet flared in my perception. She was about to double back. Anticipating her move, I cut through three buildings, taking the shortest possible route, pushing forward with every ounce of speed I had.

And as I emerged onto the wider street, just as she turned the corner—

I saw it.

That split-second moment where realization hit her. Her face twisted in pure shock—eyes widening, breath catching—she hadn’t expected me to be here. The look on her face when she saw me was almost worth the chase.

She switched to darkness, erasing a massive chunk of the road between us.

Fine.

I didn’t slow down.

Stepping forward, I walked across the newly-formed patch of soil she had created where pavement once existed. Her eyes widened in disbelief as she realized—her powers weren’t going to save her.

Desperation flickered in her expression, and in the next instant, she shifted to light, restoring everything in a blinding flash. More frantic attempts to throw me off—a fire hydrant appeared in my path, then vanished, then reappeared as solid steel. I phased through it all.

"Running's only making this worse," I called out, letting my voice carry, just enough to make her feel the inevitability of it all. I passed through another of her hastily constructed barriers with ease. "You can't keep this up forever. And neither can I."

She turned sharply down an alleyway, reality warping wildly around her as she tried to carve a path out of nowhere.

But then—gold flashed in my perception.

Guaranteed success.

Now.

I cut through the building to my left, emerging through a wall just as she reached the dead end.

The alley strobed between light and dark as she frantically shifted shades of light around her, trying to hide enough reality to make an escape route. But her powers were failing, exhausted. Each shift became shorter, less stable. The rainbow ripples in my perception were fading to dull grays.

I took another step forward. She had nowhere left to run.

I found myself staring at her, something unfamiliar stirring in my chest.

Her desperate attempts to escape, the way reality fractured around her, increasingly useless shifts between light and dark – it was strangely intoxicating.

I smiled.

My vision clouded over, like looking through dirty glass, and a sensation of cold spread from my core. My consciousness entered the unknown made up of nothingness.

Outside– my shadow stretching across the alley wall, growing, distorting. It wasn't just darkness anymore. The shape it took made the woman's mind recoil – a massive maw filled with crimson teeth, each one larger than my hand.

She couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Could only watch in horror as my shadow, this thing that couldn't possibly be mine, lunged forward. It phased through the light-bender like I would, but this was different. Wrong. Her scream cut off as the teeth passed through her, and I—

I felt—

The world snapped back into focus. Cold sweat soaked my clothes as I stared at her lifeless body crumpled on the ground. No blood, no marks, just... empty. Like something fundamental had been torn out of her.

"What..." my voice shook as I stumbled backward. “Why? Why did I just do that?”

My hands trembled as I looked at them, then at myself– now perfectly normal, perfectly innocent.

But I could feel it. A little of something had grown in me.

I ran. For the first time in years, I ran not from an enemy, but from myself.

From the question burning in my mind: what the hell was I becoming?

…

…

I darted through streets and alleyways. But, reality rippled around me with each step – not like when I phased, but in bursts of light and darkness escaping from my body.

A newspaper stand shifted position with a light lamp as I passed. A parked car disappeared and then back again, but now transformed into gleaming crystal.

No. No, this shouldn't be—

My growing panic and fear made it worse. Fear of losing myself to something unknown. Patches of sidewalk vanished under my feet. Things disappeared, warped and appeared back as I passed, caught between light and dark like she had done. But this was raw, uncontrolled, maybe more chaotic. My meta seemed to have improved or altered their original meta in some way.

The colors in my perception went haywire, marking powers that weren't mine but somehow were now. They couldn’t be given back and the person would probably be erased from reality most probably for forever.

I stumbled into an empty lot, my emotions spiraling.

A surge of anxiety made more darkness spread out from my like I was some kind of twisted lightbulb, but instead of casting illumination, I was consuming it.

The walls dimmed. The air itself seemed to fade, like the space around me was being rewritten into nothingness.

Then—I breathed out.

Light flared.

A violent, blazing pulse of restoration, surging through everything my darkness had taken. The ground returned, the bricks solidified, the very air around me shimmered as if being rewritten into place.

Back and forth.

Light and dark.

Like the flickering of a dying star, my new meta surged with each panicked breath, uncontrolled, wild, responding to every unstable beat of my racing heart.

I wasn’t just fighting her anymore.

I was fighting myself.

That thing, the gaping mouth—it hadn’t just killed her. It had devoured her and her power. And now, it was mine.

The realization sent another wave of chaos outward. Reality bent and buckled around me like a funhouse mirror. Trees became steel, then glass, then flesh, then trees again. The ground rippled like water.

I fell to my knees, clutching my head, but it only made the power surge stronger.

I hated this. I hated being out of control. Yet, I couldn't control myself.

Why? Why?

Why?

…

Five minutes.

…

Apparently, the universe didn’t like me throwing tantrum as my reality-warping meltdown was interrupted by something that made my new powers feel microscopic.

First came the eerie silence – the kind that happens when the world holds its breath.

Then came the tremor, starting deep in the Earth's core.

Not an earthquake – but as if the entire Earth had been thrown off its axis.

----------------------------------------

Suddenly, the sky split like cheap fabric, peeling back to reveal something that shouldn't exist.

The shockwave hit first, blasting away half of Earth's atmosphere in one instant, violent motion. Cities flattened. Mountains crumbled. The wall of force rolled across continents like God's hand sweeping chess pieces off a board.

Through that impossible tear came the legs. Each one wider than the Mississippi, longer than the distance to the moon, moving with geometries that violated everything known about space and time. They punched through dimensions as if reality was tissue paper.

The first leg hit somewhere in the Pacific. Tectonic plates slid like ice on a hot griddle - California tore away from the mainland in one violent spasm. A tsunami rose, not a wave but a wall of water tall enough to brush the stratosphere. It erased coastlines with the casual indifference of an eraser on pencil marks.

More legs descended. One speared through the Himalayas, shattering the roof of the world into dust. Another plunged into the Atlantic, displacing so much water that coastal cities on both sides vanished in an instant. Each impact drove deeper, not just altering the Earth's crust but the very foundations itself.

Then came the body.

Its size so massive that it defied comprehension - a mass of writhing flesh and hair that seemed too alive blotted out the sun over entire continents.

It was only after a few moments that a few alive could make its appearance: It was a spider, built by something that had only heard spiders described in an alien language, then filtered through dimensions that shouldn't exist.

The Earth's magnetic field snapped like rubber bands. Gravity went haywire - cars, buildings, and people floated upward only to crash down again as fundamental forces rewrote themselves.

Earthquakes rolled across every continent. The planet's crust buckled and heaved like water on a hot pan. Mountains thrust up from flatlands while others collapsed into suddenly appearing chasms. The Mediterranean Sea drained in seconds through new cracks in the Earth's surface. The Sahara Desert became an inland sea as underground aquifers exploded upward.

Each movement of those massive legs sent fresh catastrophes rippling across what remained of the world. Yellowstone erupted with the force of a thousand nuclear bombs. The Amazon rainforest sank into a crater that reached the mantle. Antarctica split in two, its ancient ice sheets sliding into boiling seas.

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"Which dimensional hell did you crawl out of?" I whispered, my stolen powers forgotten in the face of cosmic horror. By some miracle - or curse - of my meta, I wasn't dead yet, surfing a chunk of what used to be downtown on waves that made tsunamis look like ripples in a swimming pool.

I shook my head in disbelief. This wasn't supposed to happen - these things were meant to be contained, kept in check by the League of Legends. Something had gone very wrong.

The thought barely finished forming when darkness fell.

Not the darkness of night, but something deeper.

The sun itself seemed to sputter and die, its light devoured by what appeared in our solar system.

A human figure, if you could call something that massive "human" - its head alone dwarfed Jupiter, its body stretching across space in impossible proportions. The continent-sized spider that had been destroying Earth looked like a dust mite in comparison.

The Limitless.

The Man Who Holds Infinity!

A face that could have been carved from galaxies turned its attention toward us. Its eyes - its eyes - were like looking into the death of universes. The figure reached out with casual grace, moving through space itself as if it was merely parting curtains. Its hand, perfectly proportioned yet larger than solar systems, wrapped around our planet with the delicate touch of someone picking up a fragile ornament.

Then its other hand rose, and in that moment, I understood what true insignificance meant. The movement was smooth, unrushed, terrifying in its casualness—like watching someone reach for a bug they had spotted on their desk.

No hesitation. No urgency. Just certainty.

The proportions were perfect—too perfect. Human-like in every way, and somehow, that made it infinitely worse. This wasn’t some alien horror, some incomprehensible nightmare from beyond the stars.

This was the true powerhouse of humanity or one of them.

A being that stood at the peak of existence, where raw dominance wasn’t just something it held—it was something it was.

With the precise, effortless motion of someone pinching an ant, those cosmic fingers plucked the spider-horror from Earth's surface. I watched, caught between awe and madness, as the impossible unfolded before me. The human figure, this cosmic titan, held the writhing, continent-breaking spider-thing between its fingers. Not with urgency. Not with malice. But with the mild curiosity of someone examining a peculiar insect.

For a long, agonizing moment, it simply observed.

Then, It pinched.

With the same casual indifference one might use to squash a bug, the spider—this nightmare that had reshaped landscapes with its steps—vanished. Gone. Not destroyed. Not obliterated. Just... removed, as if it had never existed in the first place.

The human figure’s expression remained unchanged.

Why would it react?

To it, we were nothing but specks, dust floating in the vast expanse of its perception.

Our apocalypse was nothing more than a momentary inconvenience in its realm.

I barely had time to process that horrifying truth before my vision faded, and as I sank into depths of water, those galaxy-deep eyes burned in my mind—vast, unfathomable, indifferent.

Then, just before the darkness claimed me, a final thought surfaced, oddly calm considering everything that had just happened: Hopefully, tomorrow will be better.

Déjà vu.

The next moment, I was back in the empty parking lot.

As if the horrible nightmare had never happened.