Chapter 8
In the space the students found themselves in was blinding white with no colour except for the hair and skin of the thousands of other youths who were also present with them, gathered from every corner of the world.
"Is this it ,we died right?" Kingsley said, his voice carrying a weight of quiet sadness.
"Nah. If we were dead, things would feel much different," Francis said, slowly shaking his head in disbelief.
"Maybe we're just in heaven's reception room," Felix offered.
"Nah br, heaven can't have a terrible customer service.how about some chairs?" Charles shouted, still visibly shaken by everything that had just happened.
Then, before anyone could say another word, a young man who appeared to be in his early twenties dressed in the ancient attire of a Greek official materialized before them in an almost theatrical manner, the air around him shimmering with divine energy."jeez why all the drama"Charles muttered under his breath
Introducing himself as Leedon, he said, "Humans I wanted to apologize on behalf of my sister for the trouble she has caused you. I'll get straight to the point." His expression shifted, growing serious. "I am going to awaken the energy that lies dormant within each of you. This will allow you to use abilities similar to those your sister race the Crunux already possesses. Because as of right now, you simply do not stand a chance.""what does he mean by sister race crunux, never heard of them"Christian thought
(When and how will we know our abilities?) Francis thought,with a confused look. Leedon, as if reading his mind directly, answered without missing a beat.
"Fret not the ability you will begin to use after your energy is freed will be based entirely on how compatible you are with it."
And with that, before any further questions could be asked, they were all sent back to their bodies.
When Charles came back to his senses, he found himself already running and at the same moment, a giant fist was hurtling directly toward his face.
His eyes went wide. Every rational part of his brain screamed that dodging was impossible at this range.
But then his body moved on its own.
Without any conscious decision, he shifted sideways in a single fluid motion, the massive fist grazing the air beside his ear as his katana came up instinctively and deflected the blow with a force that sent sparks skittering across the compound floor.
(Wait a minute,what just happened?) Charles thought, genuinely stunned by his own body's reaction. Before he could process it, the zombie launched another fist this time faster, harder, more furious. And again, without thinking, Charles's body reacted twisting, reading the trajectory, blocking the zombie's giant left fist with a precision that shouldn't have been possible.
The zombie roared in frustration.
Charles stared at his own hands.
Then, slowly a grin spread across his face.
The zombie, enraged by Charles's sudden and inexplicable increase in speed and strength, rushed toward him with a relentless barrage of fists and strikes. But Charles met every single one blocking, deflecting, weaving between attacks with a fluid instinctual grace that grew sharper with every exchange. He wasn't just surviving the onslaught anymore. He was countering it.
From across the compound, Francis felt it first a strange, almost suffocating moisture gathering in the air around him, pressing against his skin, responding to something deep within him.
Moisture. Water. Flow.
The realization bloomed slowly, then all at once. Using nothing but his will, Francis summoned a volley of dense water balls and with a sharp thrust of his hand sent them screaming toward the zombie's left shoulder at devastating speed. They connected with the crack of impact, staggering the creature sideways and sending a spray of dark liquid across the ground.
The zombie howled.
Kingsley at the same moment felt heat surge through his palms raw, wild, barely contained. He looked down at his katana as red flames crawled up the blade from handle to tip, the fire responding to him like a living thing. He exchanged a single nod with Francis and charged.
What followed was a three way assault of brutal, relentless coordination. Charles at the front with his body moving like pure instinct, blocking and countering every strike the zombie threw. Kingsley on the flank his flame wreathed katana carving glowing arcs through the dark, each strike trailing embers. Francis from a distance his water balls hammering the zombie's body in rapid, punishing bursts that denied it any moment to stabilize.
The zombie took everything. And kept coming.
It was stronger than all of them. Faster than it had any right to be. And with every passing second, it seemed to be growing more powerful feeding on the fight itself.
Then it changed tactics.
Moving with terrifying speed it slipped past Charles, swatted Kingsley aside like a ragdoll and turned its full attention on Francis grabbing him by the throat and hurling him across the compound. As Francis crashed to the ground, the zombie turned back and with one colossal swing sent Charles skidding across the concrete, barely conscious.
Then having enough,it picked up the weakened Charles and opened its mouth.
Kingsley tried to force himself upright, his katana blazing but his body wouldn't respond, collapsing beneath him face first.
Everything slowed.
Then Isaac felt it.
Deep within him something stirred a warmth that started in his core and spread rapidly through every muscle, every bone, every fibre of his body. He looked down at his hands. They were steady. Unnaturally steady. And when he clenched his fist, the ground beneath his foot cracked.
He understood immediately.
Isaac crossed the compound in a blur his body radiating a dense, invisible energy that compressed the air around him. His footsteps cracked the concrete with each stride. With one precise, devastating horizontal swing with controlled body strengthening flowing through every muscle, every bone of his hands, his blade in a split second found the gap in the zombie's spine.
The zombie's head rolled to the side.
Its body dropped.
Charles crashed to the ground gasping, trembling, covered in the zombie's dark fluid and stared up at Isaac standing above the headless body, blade still raised, chest heaving.
Isaac looked down at the creature. Then with quiet, burning satisfaction said:
"Now. That is my revenge."
Traumatized and completely drained, the students collapsed where they stood weapons falling from their hands, bodies hitting the ground, every last reserve of strength spent. As they lay there in the silence, Mary's voice cut through.
"Oh no...!"
"Why is the zombie regenerating?" Charles said weakly, as the others, alarmed, forced themselves back to their feet.
"What, no It's Thomas," Mary said, her voice cracking. "He's hurt bad. I think he's dying."
She was already on her knees beside him both hands pressed against his chest, her face pale with terror as she examined his broken body. Three shattered ribs. Broken teeth. One hand completely broken. A fractured skull. It was a miracle a genuine, inexplicable miracle that his heart was still beating.
Isaac rushed over, followed by Charles, Kingsley, Francis and Felix.
"Geez Christabel just died and you're all more worried about that pathetic scum?" Richmond shouted from across the compound.
Nobody looked at him. Nobody answered.
"Is he going to make it?" Isaac asked quietly.
Mary pressed her fingers to Thomas's wrist. His pulse was fading slow, irregular, like a flame in the wind.
"I don't think he has much time left," she whispered.
As her last desperate hope, she placed both palms gently on Thomas's bloody chest and closed her eyes.
"Please work. Please work."
She formed an image in her mind energy, warmth, life flowing from somewhere deep within her, down through her arms, into her palms, into him. After several agonizing seconds she felt her hands begin to warm. A soft green light bloomed beneath her fingers, spreading slowly across Thomas's chest like dawn breaking across a dark horizon.
"Whoa what is that?" Felix said, his eyes fixed on the glow.
"She's done it," Kingsley breathed, feeling something unknot in his chest. "She has the ability to heal."
(The damage is far too severe I have to focus on the internal injuries first) Mary thought, her brow furrowed in concentration. She rebuilt the image in her mind more precise this time, more focused directing the energy inward. The green light faded from Thomas's skin and in its place, beneath the surface, his entire skeletal structure began to glow black every bone visible through his skin like an x-ray burning from within. The bleeding slowed. But his pulse remained fragile.
Still she kept going.
"Heal. Heal. Please" Her voice broke. Tears fell freely down her face, dropping onto Thomas's tattered chest. "Please Thomas don't die on me."
Isaac and the others quietly, carefully lifted him and carried him to the school's infirmary Mary never once removing her hands, walking alongside him, her energy flowing without pause.
For three long nights she did not stop. She did not sleep. She barely ate. Every time Isaac or the others urged her to rest to preserve her own strength she ignored them completely, her eyes never leaving Thomas's face, her palms never leaving his chest.
She simply kept going.
On the morning of the fourth day, Thomas's eyes opened.
Opening his eyes, Thomas was shocked to find Mary who had completely exhausted her strength just minutes prior unconscious on the bed beside him.
Slowly tilting his head to get a better look, he immediately shut his eyes again.
(Okay. My head must be playing tricks on me. There is absolutely no way in hell that a woman is lying right next to me on my bed.)
He opened his eyes again. Mary was still there.
His expression froze as if caught in a time loop and in the next moment he grabbed his head and winced sharply from a sudden headache.
As he lay there staring at Mary's sleeping face peaceful, almost childlike, with a thin trail of drool running down the side of her lips he muttered quietly to himself, "I ain't gonna lie her beauty might actually be on par with Veronica's. Oh no. She's going to kill me if she ever heard that."
The moment those words left his mouth, Mary's eyes fluttered open. Her gaze was still heavy with sleep as it drifted lazily toward Thomas who was watching her with an expression caught somewhere between awe and bewilderment. Then she felt it. The drool.
Her eyes went wide.
She slapped a hand over her mouth, wiped it away furiously and apologized with her face burning a deep, mortified red scrambling out of the bed and planting herself firmly in the chair beside it as if she had never been anywhere near it.
The early morning sun pushed its rays through the window, falling across Mary's face and catching the gentle movement of her black, shoulder length silky hair as the morning breeze toyed with it. Thomas, watching without meaning to, felt something in his chest go quiet the kind of quiet that only beauty can produce. So distracted was he that the words slipped out before he could stop them and they came out far louder than intended.
"Mary just look at you. Your beauty is enough to make most men feel like sailors caught in a storm. A storm of emotions."
Mary's face flushed immediately. She looked down at her hands and said softly, "You flatter me."
(Oh no.) Thomas caught himself and immediately pivoted the conversations trajectory,
"Oh right. How come I'm completely fine? Because I distinctly remember having some very serious injuries," he asked, his face shifting to genuine confusion.
"Oh well, I obtained the ability to heal, so I used it on you," Mary answered, placing one hand on her waist with a quiet but unmistakable look of accomplishment.
Thomas's mouth fell half open. It stayed that way for a noticeable amount of time before he finally said, "Abili..what now? Mary, I appreciate you trying to lighten the mood but this is just..."
Mary giggled at his expression, then held out her palm. A soft leafy green glow bloomed from it, warm and steady.
Thomas stared at it.
"I know it's hard to believe," she said, "but it's true. All the others have abilities of their own too."
Thomas stared for a moment longer then exhaled slowly and thanked her. Genuinely, quietly, without any of his usual deflection.
Not long after, the conversation ran dry. The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable exactly but it was building toward something neither of them knew how to address. Mary fidgeted, desperately searching for something to say. Thomas lay perfectly still, staring at the ceiling which somehow made things worse.
The laughter hadn't fully died down when the sound of slow, deliberate footsteps approached from the hallway. Felix had been passing by when he heard Thomas's voice and curiosity, or perhaps something darker, had drawn him to the doorway.
Then the door burst open.
Kingsley, Christian, Mark, Isaac and Francis piled in drawn by Thomas's earlier outburst and half expecting to find Mary in some kind of distress. Instead they found Thomas already awake and Mary sitting rigidly in her chair, fidgeting with her hair at a suspicious speed.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa" Kingsley said, his eyes sweeping the scene. "Thomas, jumping into romance already? You literally just narrowly escaped death."
"It's nothing like that," Mary said immediately her ears turning red.
"Nah, you are absolutely blushing right now," Charles said, pointing directly at her ears with a grin.
"Aha ,just as I predicted," Christian announced, adjusting his glasses like he had just confirmed a scientific hypothesis.
"Oh really?" came a voice from the doorway. "Then how come I've never heard this prediction of yours?"
Christian spun around. Lucy stood in the doorframe with her arms crossed and an expression that could strip paint.
"Lucy , how long have you been standing there?" Christian said, instinctively stepping backwards.
The room erupted into laughter.
Then it stopped.
Felix stepped through the door having been drawn in by the commotion after his earlier pause in the hallway. The atmosphere shifted immediately like a cold front moving in. Charles's expression darkened first. Then the others followed, one by one, until every face in the room was hard and unwelcoming.
"You better turn around before you get folded like a laptop," Charles said, his voice carrying no trace of humour.
Felix ignored every stare and looked directly at Thomas.
"Hey ,what ability did you get?" he asked, his face genuinely curious wi
The room went quiet. Because truthfully — they all wanted to know.th his hand in his pocket."hmmph it seems that someones trying to farm aura.not that it's working anyways" Lucy said sarcasticly, making everybody cover their mouths so as not to laugh
Thomas, after a moment, sat up and began going through every pose and mental exercise he could recall from the novels he had read searching inward for something, anything. A flicker of heat. A pull of water. A surge of strength.
Nothing.
He settled back against the headboard and said flatly, "It seems I don't have any abilities."
The silence that followed was a different kind entirely.
(No abilities. Of all the outcomes I had mentally prepared for this was not one of them. For the first time in a long time, I genuinely did not know what my next move was.)
"Wait , wait, wait, wait," Charles said, his eyes wide with disbelief. "Thomas that's a prank, right? It has to be a prank."
Nobody laughed. Nobody confirmed it either. The expressions around the room ranged from stunned to heartbroken all except Felix, whose face cracked into a slow, menacing grin before he quietly slipped out of the room.
(Why him? Of all people why ? Thomas literally saved us and he deserves it more than anyone) Kingsley thought, his fist clenching so hard his knuckles began to turn white.
Thomas noticed. He noticed all of them the worry, the pity, the helplessness written across their faces and in that instant felt something between irritation and affection.
"Oh jeez," he said, his voice dry. "You lot need to stop looking at me like I've just been amputated."
"But..." Charles started.
"Thomas needs to rest," Isaac said firmly, cutting him off. "Everyone let's move out out."
With heavy, reluctant expressions they began filing out of the room. Christian was last to turn to leave and as he reached the doorway a thought struck him, incomplete but deeply unsettling.
(This shouldn't be possible. That god clearly stated that all youths had their abilities awakened which means it might actually mean that Thomas already had his abilities long before Leedon's awakening. But if that's true then what exactly is he capable of....)
Before he could finish the thought, Isaac called his name from the hallway.
Christian glanced back once at Thomas then left.
The door clicked shut.
(Things just got complicated) Thomas thought, his expression darkening as he sank back into the bed and slipped into a deep, focused state of planning his mind already working through angles, possibilities and contingencies.
He didn't notice Richmond standing just outside the door ear pressed close, listening to every word.
Richmond straightened up slowly, his smile widening as one thought crystallized clearly in his mind a powerless Thomas was a vulnerable Thomas. And a vulnerable Thomas was an opportunity he had no intention of wasting.