It was like staring into the heart of a star.

  The Grandmaster glowed bright and emanated torrents of fiery light. She was in her bedroom, her belongings floating around her in ethereal light as her despair exploded from her body in a stream of fire. Black smoke rose in columns and roiled around her as the bright flames intensified. The fires illuminated the ta’lien of her universe, swathing her room with the blackness of the space/time continuum. The elements of water, fire, earth and air stirred with power as they were cosmically scattered across life and death.

  Her aura of power flared to life around her: a phoenix dragon, an apex creature, a dog among both dragons and phoenixes, representing the rise from the ashes of the phoenix and the destruction of the dragon. It curled and trembled as the point of her tail flicked up with curiosity and her four fiery wings spread from her back. Her skin felt oddly numb, as though the flesh had been burned off. But she knew this sensation; she looked down and saw her fingertips and nails had been replaced by claws, and under her rolled-up sleeves, she could see her arms and legs were encased in glittering scales of gold and silver, copper and orange, red and yellow, blue and turquoise: all the colors on the spectrum of light.

  She wanted to scream out, to unleash her pain and despair and humiliation in a stream of fire, but she feared the sound would be lost in the multicolored Blackstar of her power.

  But above all, what she saw was everything, everything that would come down to these next few moments in time. She looked into the future, into hope…and tried to see herself.

  A searing pain coursed through her, as if a bolt of jagged lightning ran through her veins. The way this reality worked was that everything in the world, everything in reality, vibrated at different frequencies, giving off energy in ta’lien that she could track. She could feel them like the machine Reppertum could–but instead of just deviants, she could see everything.

  One of Grandmaster’s abilities, to put it simply, was to search through the patterns of power and deviations through the currents of these energies that made up the world. Right now, she let the thrum of these currents wash over her as she reached into the fabric of shimmering realities–all realities. She did not understand how she could do this, how she was connected to the universe in such a primal way, but she was; she was connected to the heart of this universe. These powers directed her, letting her pull herself deeper and deeper into the weaving threads, into the twisting paths of sacred ta’lien.

  “Tell me about this Eternity Corporation. I have never heard of them before,” Grandmaster commanded the cosmos. “Who are these people and what do they want? What do they want from me?”

  The universe hummed and pulled itself inside out to match her will. With that stroke of power, the information she needed pulled into her mind.

  The Star Legion trains deviants in the use of their powers, encouraging you to embrace them, and so does the Eternity Corporation. They believe it is the path for them, their destiny, for Homo extraneous, to become the dominant species on Earth…

  But they have something different in their minds for Grandmaster, something more than an ordinary pawn or student…they would prefer her to be a partner, someone as an equal in their elite organization. Imagine her students in the most exciting game of all…filled with rules, rewards, punishments, and her as the Monarch…

  The Eternity Corporation is infinite to all.

  So apparently, the Eternity Corporation was a company for the world’s social elite and wealthy–so not for me, Grandmaster thought wryly. It obtained power through economic and political influence. Ever since its foundation as a thieves’ guild for a hellfire club in Britain in the 1700s, they had become deeply rooted in the globe’s markets and trades, especially through criminal activity from the black market.

  As she learned all of this, Grandmaster felt a cosmic spark ignite within herself, and she tried to stop the currents from pulling her deeper. But as she came loose, something else tugged, too.

  The memory she tried to lock up and throw away the key in the deepest recess of her mind. The memory of the fire and the mob.

  Hands of all colors grasped at her and pinned her down. Someone poured bleach on her almost-naked form and she coughed as some trickled into her mouth and burned her throat. A cigarette lighter flicked open and flames ignited on her skin–not her own, but theirs.

  No, no, no! She could shake this off, Grandmaster told herself. She could do this. She could stop the memory. She could do this. She reached out and tried to blindly grope for the currents of energy while her body swayed on her feet, a leaf in a hurricane.

  But the flames had consolidated into a surging beast, its maw hungering for her as its next meal. The living fire thrashed like a beast in violence, like it was shaken by a terrible storm. Grandmaster–the real one or the memory, she wasn’t sure–collapsed to the ground with a hiss of agony, her breath coming out in short gasps of pain as the flames rolled over, onto her, into her.

  Her mental scrying space transformed into cracked wood and singed metal from the collapsed building, and then expanded into a street of broken columns and towering buildings as curious people surrounded her, holding out their phones to film her. The masked figures laughed with delight as they stomped on her face, cracked her ribs and burned her alive.

  She was knee-deep in the snow of a new spring, salty tears stinging her eyes, pinned down by hands as she was burned over and over, struggling and struggling and struggling.

  Stop it! Please! she begged them, thrashing in agony. Stop it! Stop it, please! I will–I will do anything! Please!

  Somehow she managed to wrench herself free and stumbled to her feet. Smoke poured off her skin like a river of water as she raced to the middle of the street, the wind slicing across her cheek with its blades and laughter rattling behind her. She ran like a newborn colt on her burned legs as the pavement cracked beneath her feet, ran and ran and ran, but she could escape the widening chasm beneath her feet as the flames poured onto her. People she ran past groped her and tried to grab her, and when they succeeded, they pinned her down, scorching her skin with pale handprints. They twisted her bones and cracked her jaw with ferocious cracks.

  And then dozens of people stood over her, children and elderly and middle-aged, clad in black robes, their faces shadowed by hoods with the eyes of black suns, mouths curled in wide smiling gashes.

  The flames were supposed to be hot, she supposed, but the sensation was overloading her nerves, so it was nothing but ice-cold as it rushed over her. It was like being plunged into an icy river.

  Smoke filled her lungs, her vision as she coughed and thrashed, the people disappearing. She was flying; no, she was falling; she was frozen in place. Her lungs succumbed to the smoke that filled her. Her heart slowed as her skin was scorched, stripping her down to the bone. Her eyelids felt as if they were glued down with pine sap as they shut forcefully.

  Death was right there, reaching out with a patient hand. But there was only one thing that was left now. Not the fire and not the cold. Not those terrible, laughing faces. There was only the maelstrom of her power, this living beast within her that refused to be caged any longer, ringing through her muscles, filling her veins, dripping through her with cold, bony fingers as something primal awakened, older than time itself. It dragged her down, down, down into the darkness, down into that black pit of oblivion, and she knew if she opened her eyes, those things would consume her because they wanted to destroy her, wanted to destroy her completely and utterly, wanted to–

  …

  And it was only a matter of time before she saw a flash of gold and russet before the cold of Blackstar’s body slammed into hers and their lips met. Grandmaster screamed into his mouth and tried to push him away, but she was weak and malnourished from days of drugged food and wine, and he was so much stronger than her.

  He tore at her thin shift, and Grandmaster had to stifle the scream as he grasped her breasts. He was not being gentle, because the deviant messiah was not a gentle thing. What she was was wild and burning, so he was with her.

  He ripped his lips from hers and murmured words in an ancient language in her ear, and Grandmaster thrashed again. “Stop it, Blackstar,” she said, trying to muster up some of the courage she had felt before. But he ignored her and plunged his teeth into her neck, and Grandmaster bellowed with rage. In deviantdom, that was a claiming mark. A mark that two people were dedicated to each other, and now she would have a scar on her neck, so that everyone would know that she was his property–

  …

  Grandmaster woke up on the floor of her bedroom, screaming and screaming, shuddering as sweat poured down her skin and her body trembled.

  “I can’t sense reality–I can’t scry without seeing what that mob and what Blackstar did to me,” she murmured in despair as the memories of the fire and his touch flashed behind her eyes, like the cold snapping of teeth.

  Maggie wiped her eyes and shakily stood to her feet. This was a mistake. She thought she could do this, but she couldn’t. She could use her powers in other ways, but not this. Never thought. She thought she had left the past behind, but it would always come looking for her, always come to haunt her.

  She was still that scared fourteen-year-old child diagnosed with depression, screaming as she watched her best friend’s dead body dangle from the ceiling; the same dying seventeen-year-old who had lost everything. She had never grown up; she had never escaped her past. She was still that terrified little child and she always would be.

  Tears rolled down her face as she leaned against a wall, trying to calm herself, as her breath caught in the center of her chest. She pressed a hand over her heart and began to count the beats of her pulse. One, two, three…she lost count. Tried again. One, two, three…one, two, three…but she gave up as she succumbed to the tears.

  There was something wrong with her–there was always something wrong with her. Everything she knew thought so. She could tell. She saw the way her friends looked at her sometimes. She just felt everyone was just watching her, waiting for her to snap…and the worst part was that she was watching herself too.

  Even before she joined the Star Legion, she always thought that she was too violent and too aggressive. When she became Grandmaster, after the fire, it was worse. She became a killer. She killed Blackstar and those humans who had assaulted her; she killed the leader of the Guild of Sapiens and those deviant sentries. She had crossed the line that no one else in the Star Legion had. That was all she was good at: crossing lines and hurting people. Even the people closest to her; especially them.

  But if that was true, then why did she feel this chasm of emptiness inside her at the thought? She could say it was self-defense. Those deviant sentries had starved her and abused her; Blackstar had made him into her pet and raped her; those humans in the Guild of Sapiens had physically tortured her before they tried to kill her by burning her alive.

  What had she forgotten? She had forgotten more than she knew. Entire years of her life had been blotted out, like spots of ink on a pure-white piece of paper. When Astra had acted like her therapist for a brief time, she said that sometimes minds erased trauma to help them move on. She could not remember her sister’s face, or her father’s recipe for chicken rice. She couldn’t remember how to count cards to play a game of poker. All she could remember were some pictures and words, phrases of bits and pieces.

  But every experience she had was memorized into her flesh. Even if her mind forgot, her body remembered. Her body was the map of her life and worn what she went through. So she had not forgotten the cheers as her bones snapped. She had not forgotten the laughter as pieces of her flesh were cut off. And near the end, a little girl, no older than six years, knelt by her. Maggie had tried to utter a sound, to tell her to run away, but then she was set on fire.

  It took six tries for her to burn. And when she finally did, she remembered the inconceivable and ceaseless pain…before a scream snapped from her throat as she obliterated the entire mob.

  And after the humiliation and assault she had endured at Blackstar’s hands, Astra had urged her to go see a therapist. It was a woman with kind owl eyes behind large spectacles. She placed an enormous doll in front of Maggie when she first went, the size of a girl that Blackstar liked touching.

  Point to where his hands were.

  She had pointed to the spot between its legs–the one he fingered out of her like a dark secret.

  How’re you feeling

  She had swallowed the lump in her throat and said, Numb.

  Whenever danger was coming, her mind and body signalled the alarms, and suddenly, the hungry little demons from her past came raging out of her past, screaming, Don’t you forget us–don’t you ever try to leave us behind.

  What did she remember? She remembered plenty.

  And she could grapple with the truth over herself all she wanted, but the truth was, there was no place for her in this world. So instead of teeming with vengeance and anger, she had decided she would make her own place in the world. And even after everything they had done to her, she still wanted to be a hero for them–for both humans and deviants.

  She would create a world with no anger and no pain. No screams and shrieks. A world that was finally quiet. Because despite it all, she still saw something there, and she fought for them. She fought to hold the door open. Just a crack, one last time.

  Reality hummed and pulled at Grandmaster’s skin. Its song of light filled her eyes and its sense spoke to her as she seized its chords. For a brief moment, there was a flashing cluster of stars and a thousand images exhaling throughout her consciousness from that touch of existence.

  And that was when she realized, even before she heard the alarm bells wail…

  They were under attack.

  …

  Grandmaster and the other Legionnaires burst out of the mansion’s front doors as they prepared to face their enemy.

  “Legionnaires, together!” Grandmaster shouted, bursting into flames as they came to stand in front of the Academy for the Empowered, their home and headquarters, and faced down upon their enemy.

  Directly in front of the glamoured wall that hid them from the outside world, blood-red light flashed into a column that connected the earth to the heavens. From that light, a crystal titan strode out. It was at least ten feet tall, with bright green eyes with no pupils and orange skin. Its gaze fixed on the Star Legion and its eyes gleamed with hunger, as if it had not eaten in days.

  “What is that thing?” Shadowstalker muttered. “It’s nothing we have ever faced before.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  Grandmaster’s breath hitched; she recognized this creature. “It’s called a Perpetual,” she said. “When a member of the race known as Eternals dies, they turn into a Perpetual. They are servants to the dark Worldwalker Oblivion, one of those that sees the Fire Source as an ultimate enemy.”

  The Legionnaires stared at her, almost dumbfounded, as the words left her mouth; their expressions were puzzled, and Grandmaster hardly knew what she was saying as well. How on Earth did she know that? What was she talking about?

  But that didn’t matter at the moment. This creature was threatening their home, and the Star Legion had to fight it. That was their job: to fight and defend and protect, no matter what.

  The Star Legion spread out beneath her as Grandmaster took to the air. She held an arm out and the shaft of a glacial bow appeared in her hand. She took an archer’s stance and pulled the string of the bow back. A dark red bow formed on the string, and she focused her spiritual perception on it.

  Not only was the arrow she had made a mass of dense ta’lien carrying a devastating will, but she had layered multiple techniques into and onto it in a blink, she had done it so fast and smoothly that the Legionnaires couldn’t even count them.

  It looked like a shadow had poured onto the arrowhead, a darkness so deep it warped the space around it, as well as a core of purple light shining through its center. But it had felt like she had woven about two dozen intricate tapestries around and through one another in a split second.

  “How’d you do that, sugah?” Riven teased.

  Grandmaster’s astonishment was loud as she gasped playfully. “Do you think that low of me, Riven, or do you mean to attack me with such unreasonable thoughts?” she joked. She released the arrow.

  The arrow flashed out as it ripped through the air. Far beneath its passage, the arrow ripped a trench in the ground with its power. Tempest raised her arms and the winds swirled around her, kicking up into a hurricane. The defensive scripts around the Academy for the Empowered that Grandmaster had installed flared with gold and red light as they protected the building from the backwash of the Perpetual’s attack.

  Shadowstalker focused his attention so he saw everything clearly. When Grandmaster’s arrow came close to the Perpetual, the beast closed its hand into a fist and met it in midair. Gold, purple and black ta’lien swirled in an explosion that tore up the landscape.

  The Perpetual’s fist was unscathed. It kept running…only to take one more step, then skidded to a halt. Earth sprayed up around it in a wave as the titanic beast stopped, and the ground rumbled for miles around the protective field of the Academy.

  Grandmaster’s fingers paused on the string of her bow, astonished. The Perpetual raised its chin and stood proudly, its serpentine tail slowing. She drew back another arrow in one hand as the bow floated and in the other, manifested a sword. This time, she could sense panic along with her power.

  While she fought, Astra’s cold command reached everyone. “All deviants attack now!”

  And then their battle began in earnest.

  The Legionnaires on the wall closest to the Perpetual–Shadowstalker, Astra, and Phantasma–launched themselves forward and began to use their deviations to unleash devastating force. Grandmaster’s arrows staggered the Perpetual back a few steps, but he looked not even annoyed. Phantasma pulled out her twin swords, her strikes and footwork so large they could have been wielded by the colossus himself. The air darkened, twisted and writhed around the titan’s skull as Astra attacked its mind.

  Shadowstalker roared and unleashed bars of shadows the width of his arm span, with the full force of his soulfire and authority behind it. But the Perpetual simply ignored their attacks and pulled its fist back again, and slammed it into the empty air. To his astonishment, the space cracked.

  The Star Legion began to feel the first bits of panic, and their attacks of different constructs launched faster and faster, each striking technique sending spears of pure force into the Perpetual’s stone skin that made it stagger backwards, nearly colliding into the protected wall. Shadowstalker and Grandmaster fired arrows and blades of light and shadow, heavy with force and willpower, but the Perpetual weathered the barrage. Its tail was a mirage, swatting a dozen arrows from the air every second, but enough had landed that its rocky carapace began to break.

  Though not fast enough, Shadowstalker thought with despair.

  The Perpetual landed another blow on the world, and the empty air was now a mass of dark cracks.

  “Grandmaster! What dis cul doin’?” Gauntlet shouted, firing balls of energy at the Perpetual, dancing around its massive legs.

  “Perpetuals have the power to create cracks between worlds,” Grandmaster called back, dropping her bow. “It’s breaking the fabric of this universe and it’s going to bleed into the next unless we stop it!”

  The Perpetual drove the fingers of both hands deep into space and it started to heave them apart, like pulling stuck doors apart. Grandmaster roared and her power erupted out of her; she slammed her foot down on the ground, and for the first time since she returned, they saw her full power.

  A phantom rose in the air behind Grandmaster, an echo of her power like an icon. This was no ordinary animal: this was a phoenix dragon, a feathered and beaked serpent who could breathe fire and destruction. A ruler in plain clothes. This phoenix dragon did not resemble its master, but its expression was cold and fiery at the same time. It was an empress looking down on the enemy.

  Grandmaster’s authority suppressed the entire countryside. Everyone but Grandmaster herself felt it, and even the Perpetual staggered back, nearly losing its footing. Then the specter’s image stepped into her, and it was an enforcement beyond anything they had ever seen before. Grandmaster’s bodysuit was replaced with armor, and the bow she had dropped had shifted into a massive sword. The titan’s tail flicked once, almost as if with curiosity, then stopped. Its fist stopped mid-punch to stare at Grandmaster.

  For a moment, the world was still. Then Maggie moved.

  She twirled and raised her sword, and it seemed as if she had crossed miles in an instant. Her sword struck the Perpetual in the back of its head and the entire world felt it.

  The sky emptied as the storm clouds Tempest created were blasted away and the earth was stripped bare of its features, leaving the ground trembling and heaving like a trickling pool. The defensive scripts at the base of the Academy flickered, then flared to a blinding intensity. Without the scripts taking the brunt of her attack, Shadowstalker was certain that the city of Rochester would have been utterly devastated, either from the Perpetual’s powers or Maggie’s. He stared at her in awe. He knew she had power, but this was almost unlike anything he had ever seen. How was she fighting against a cosmic beast and holding her own?

  The Perpetual staggered back a step, and then it roared. And then the battle continued.

  “Legionnaires, go! Don’t give it a chance to get up!” Grandmaster shouted.

  Gauntlet’s every movement trailed a blinding crimson light as he attacked the titan. Sparks shaped his biokinetic flames into arrows of fire as he propelled himself into the air and blackened the sky, making his power fall like rain, each one piercing the beast’s scales. Shadows curled up from the ground and wrapped its tail tightly, piercing its body and spirit, singing to the soul in such whispers that the people in Rochester could hear from miles away. Tempest launched herself forward and blasted the beast with lightning mixed with a foul acid, leaving corrosive spots on its skin where the electricity zinged into its flesh.

  But the Perpetual matched all of their attacks. Its hands, which appeared to be made of some dark stone, swatted away the blows of Phantasma’s swords as it danced with intricate footwork, leaving trickles of blood on its skin where her blades cut into its flesh. A half-dozen swirling spheres of gold and red energy, churning masses of power, sprang into creation over its head, courtesy of Gauntlet. The explosives rushed at the Perpetual and pushed the beast back, even forcing Grandmaster to raise her own blade and shatter them before they could reach her. Each one detonated in a thunderous explosion that left shrapnel and golden earth raining for miles.

  Since they had engaged in close combat with the Perpetual, only seconds had passed. The other Legionnaires were only a moment behind them. After their first exchange, the others unleashed their own might. Icicles from Cryo pelted the Perpetual like knives, each one carrying the authority of a winter storm. Frost grew over its scales and slowed its movements. Another giant bolt of lightning plunged down and electrocuted it.

  Riven levitated into the air, closing her eyes and reaching into the recesses of her mind. Her eyes glowed gold and spangled gold-and-green energy flared around her. An army of silver ghosts exploded out of her–copies of the soul of each person Riven had ever touched, animated by her wil. They rushed up and over the Perpetual like a swarm of bloodthirsty ants, and it swatted at the writhing beings as though they were bees.

  A living molten cloud of fire flowed out of the cavity in Sparks’ chest and attacked the Perpetual’s skull. Even a bubble of silver light wrapped around it, covering its mouth as Astra distorted its perception. The titan roared and shook off her attack, reducing it to mist, but another appeared immediately: a psionic blast that was a colorless slash of death and destruction, which flashed through the Perpetual’s entire body and sent it staggering back, bellowing with rage.

  Shadowstalker lunged forward and took the opportunity to stab shadows into the Perpetual’s carapace. Chips of stone flew off the beast like sprays of blood, and the Perpetual was pushed farther and farther away from the spider web of cracks in the air.

  But it was important that they allowed the Perpetual to maintain some illusion of control over the battle, to not push it too far, lest it would call in allies. Light flashed in the beast’s eyes, and it roared in the Star Legion’s faces. Destructive light that looked like blood streamed out of its mouth like the breath of a storm.

  Grandmaster spread her arms and caught the blast on her armored forearms, but that was not the only technique the Perpetual had used. Golden light flowed up and around the colossus, armoring it in spectral light and enhancing its strength and speed, filling it with an even greater sense of weight and inevitability.

  At the same time, it slammed its foot down.

  Waves of riven earth and golden light rose up in a circle around the beast as the perpetual blasted out a technique that was both a combination of raw power and ta’lien. It shoved everyone back, even Grandmaster, and when she exchanged a look with Shadowstalker, she came to the conclusion she needed to act.

  Her willpower transmuted into a living authority, and it tore through space and time. She flew forward, shooting away from her position over the Academy and using her own power to move through the world, emerging next to the cracks in the. She craned her neck back to look at it.

  The mass of cracks stretched above and to either side of her, like breaks in an invisible wall that towered over her. When it cracked, it was either going to tear open space like an egg or bring something even worse from the other side–but more likely, both would happen.

  Grandmaster clenched her jaw. This was exactly how Eboltya died, she thought. The details and lore had been muddled over time, but she knew that some jealous humans had constructed some sort of machine that were able to create these cracks in the world using the ability of a deviant named Grail, who could manipulate the fabric of the universe, communicating with Space itself. And now it was threatening to happen again.

  If she was being honest, she had absolutely no idea what she was doing. But these cracks had devastated the world once, and she would not let it happen again. If only she was there on Eboltya that day! she thought. If only she had been born a year earlier, she could have stopped it from happening. And if she was searching deep within herself, some deeper instinct buried within her spoke and told her this was not the first time she had done something like this. Authority and will supplemented her powers, and the Star Legion and even the Perpetual stopped fighting to gaze at her.

  When she spoke, it was like some ancient force was speaking through her. A messiah. A goddess.

  “Close!” she commanded.

  The world fought against wounds like these, and the real world–the natural world–was much stronger than this pocket space that the Perpetual was manipulating. Otherwise, repairing such damage like this would be beyond her…or so she thought.

  But with the world itself on her side, the cracks began to close. But it took a tremendous effort, and her focus trembled as her vision blurred. The smallest cracks disappeared, the middle-sized ones started to seal closed, and the largest ones thinned out. Though Grandmaster’s vision was darkening by the second, excitement flared within her. She was doing it!

  “Maggie!” Arkady shouted. A warning flared in her spirit, and she tried to run away in time before a mighty force seized her and sent her tumbling through the air. She was thrown back to the Academy when her head cleared enough for her to control the winds that flowed around her, and she righted her flight and hovered in midair. The Perpetual’s fist had landed right where she was flowing, shattering space.

  Blood streamed from her nostrils as her head throbbed; her jaw ached, and she was pretty sure it was broken. Though all of that was a distant concern. Her eyes and perception were locked onto the cracks. She thrust out a hand and commanded, “Stop!”

  All around the city, even within the denizens of the Academy, everything froze, including the spreading cracks. But she didn’t have time to stop the Perpetual before it landed one last punch.

  The sky shattered like a glass wall, and in it, the Star Legion saw an endless void, resonating with the powers of nonexistence and annihilation. Distant balls of colors swirled like pockets of life from other dimensions.

  A force pulled at the Perpetual like a strong wind, hauling it closer to the void. The Perpetual resisted, struggling and struggling, but Grandmaster continued to shove him away. The beast roared, like someone had torn out its guts. They were too conceptually heavy to move far…but Grandmaster defied little things like conceptions.

  When she pulled him toward the wall, the sky flashed from silver to gold. And Grandmaster unleashed her power. Her red-orange-gold circle of pure ta’lien spread hundreds and hundreds of yards around her, powered by all the energy and fire she could create. She rose up and caught the entire city of Rochester in her metaphysical hands, within the entirety of deviantdom. Some people saw and ran, thinking she was attacking them. But most did not resist or run. Therefore, they were saved by this wave of domination that passed over the entire city–then the entire planet.

  Dream ta’lien swept out and assaulted millions of minds at once. All over this darkened planet, new spots of light appeared. The crowns of flame that belonged to the Fire Source.

  Grandmaster’s eyes widened. How, by the Throne, did she know that?

  “Star Legion,” the Phoenix whispered into their minds, “I always keep my promises.”

  And that was when the Star Legion realized this attack was not limited to them alone.

  …

  “You will, perhaps, not listen to the entreaties of a mere old woman,” Aftab Ferrara’s mother said, in a voice that was even and calm and had no humility at all. “But I am a daughter of the Eternity Corporation’s oldest line. I am a princess of Eternity. I, and thus you, are descendents of the first mother of flame. I know the judgement of fire, and the price it demands. And here, in this dark, I hear our mothers, Aftab. And I know it is my duty to ensure that fate is done.” She sucked in a deep breath, as if fortifying herself, as if she carried a burden of unfathomable weight. And through the video scream, she turned and looked at her son. “Do not do this, Aftab. Please.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then ignored her.

  “I know what I must do, mother. I see all that there is. I shall do its work while I prepare for what comes next. This world can still be saved. It can still be healed. I have much work ahead of me. It is time to evolve beyond tomorrow itself. Beyond anything you have ever imagined.”

  He pressed down on a button as his mother pressed her hands together and implored, “Surely you must see it. This way only ends in disaster for all of us. You will never be able to recover, Aftab. You have the power of a god, and humans are not god. You are not even a deviant. If the world–”

  The screen shut off. Aftab dipped an arrow in ghee. He held up his flint and lit a spark.

  “I am not going to be like you,” he said.

  He raised and nocked the arrow in a bow with an impassive face of stone. He thought of his own priests in his childhood, who remained behind with their calm eyes. He thought of the way fate was a winding delicate thing, a trail of silk but as tight as a noose, waiting until the time came to tighten its grip.

  Those priests–the Order of Stars who worshiped deviants–must have known his day would have come to pass eventually. Ah, damn him, it felt true. It felt right.

  Behind him–around him–two dozen new points of flame appeared. Then a dozen more. Arrows of fire. Spears of flame. Swords of energy. Aftab released his arrow, and the fire followed the arc of his loosed energy. For a moment, there was nothing more than the tips of those burning arrows in the dark, small motes of fire lighting the world like falling stars.

  And when he spoke, his words echoed through the entire world. It bellowed in ravines, scattered herds in the Serengeti, roared in the depths below water in the Mariana Trench.

  “The gift of the Phoenix was meant for you, not me,” he said, speaking to one person only. “But you people…you people did something to it. And now you…now I am Phoenix.

  “You desperately need my help. I shall take you home to the promised land. I will heal you. I will prepare you. I shall do the work that is necessary while you are prepared for what comes next. This world shall be healed. It shall be saved. I have much work ahead of me that needs to be done. It is time to evolve, evolve beyond the horizon of tomorrow. Beyond everything that one can imagine.”

  In the north, near Transcendents’ Mountain, the leader of the superhero team known as the Transcendents, Titanus wiped his bloody nose and stared up at the sky of his headquarters.

  Men and women in the Indus Valley whispered in foreign tongues as they stared up at the sky, blanketed with a sheet of fire.

  The Cheyene were puzzled, because the season was not about to change, yet they heard whispers of the Thunderbird coming.

  Mindspinner, the tendril-whipping protector of New York City, flipped from one rooftop to another as he listened to this message and shuddered with fear.

  The hero of Nightfall City, Duskvale, tripped fleeing criminals with his escrima sticks as his masked face turned bleak.

  “You’re a lunatic,” Grandmaster breathed to him. “You’re insane. Pyrotechnics and scary voices don’t change that.”

  “Hah. ‘Grandmaster.’ I am more than you now. More than human. More than deviant. My task is more than you can even conceive. As you cannot stop tomorrow, you cannot stop me. Do not even try.”

  And then the planet began to burn.