That was when he changed tactics again. Instead of attacking my places, he attacked my reputation where people came to have fun.
A new rift opened under the Neon Pier, the biggest amusement arcade in Aster. It had sky wheels, food stalls, dancing holograms, racing simulators, electric carnival games, and an ocean view so pretty even Riley slowed down when she drove past it. Families went there because it felt safe. Raiders went there because the prize machines sometimes paid out crystal candy. I went there because Owen claimed the dumpling stand had betrayed him by changing their sauce.
The rift did not explode at first. It whispered.
Every arcade cabinet turned on at midnight. Every racing simulator started driving itself. Every crane game claw opened and closed like a metal crab. The sky wheel stopped at the top with people trapped in the gondolas.
Then monsters began crawling out of the screens.
Not normal monsters. Pixel beasts. Their bodies were made of light blocks, glitching fur, and broken sound effects. They leapt from dance machines, clawed through air hockey tables, and crawled across digital billboards. When guards tried to hit them, the beasts broke apart into static and reformed through the nearest screen.
The entire pier became a ridiculous nightmare made by an arcade with a grudge.
Damian's channel called it proof that my influence over electronics was causing rifts to mutate. That was a lie. But lies with flashing lights travel fast. So I went to the pier with an audience already doubting me.
Harper loved the place immediately, which was a bad sign. Riley looked at the racing simulators and said she could beat all of them at once. Grace looked at the sky wheel and counted trapped families. Owen smelled the dumpling stand and forgot fear for four glorious seconds.
Then a pixel bear burst from a rhythm game and roared in eight-bit fury.
I cracked my knuckles. "This might be art," I said.
Grace told me not to admire the monster.
The pixel bear charged. I threw a lightning spear straight through it. The beast scattered into blue squares, then reformed behind me from a prize counter screen and slapped me into a popcorn cart. Popcorn went everywhere. The crowd watching from behind the barriers gasped. Damian's commentators began smiling.
I wiped butter from my cheek and realized the trick.
The beasts were not bodies. They were programs writing rift energy through displays and speakers. If I destroyed one screen, they would use another. If I overloaded the pier, families on the sky wheel could fall. If I shut everything down, the monsters might jump into phones and spread into the city.
So I did what any responsible god of electricity would do. I challenged the arcade to a game.
I stepped onto the center stage where a giant dance platform flashed under my boots. I sent my voice through every speaker on the pier and told the rift that if it wanted screens, lights, and attention, it could have mine.
Every cabinet flickered. Every pixel monster turned toward me. The giant billboard above the pier flashed a crooked smile made of broken pixels.
Fine. A game it was.
The dance platform lit up with impossible arrows. Left, right, jump, spin, duck, die. The rift wanted my body to follow patterns faster than nerves could move. Every wrong step released a monster toward the crowd.
I smiled, because I had stopped being limited to nerves days ago.
My body became a blur of sparks. I danced badly at first, then better, and then so fast the platform turned white beneath me. I let tiny arcs jump from my boots into the machine, learning its timing, stealing its rhythm, predicting its cruelty.
Harper hijacked the scoreboard and replaced my score with increasingly rude compliments. Riley used a racing simulator as a command seat, steering runaway bumper cars into pixel wolves. Grace climbed the sky wheel support with a rescue kit, because apparently fear had never successfully filed a complaint with her. Owen reached the dumpling stand and defended it from three glitch raccoons with a ladle.
The crowd stopped doubting and started chanting.
The rift cheated. Of course it cheated.
The billboard smile opened, and a giant pixel dragon unfolded from the pier lights. It had wings made of advertisements, claws made of ticket counters, and a tail that dragged sparks across the ocean. It breathed a beam of corrupted static at the sky wheel.
I moved first.
I turned every loose ticket on the pier magnetic. Thousands of prize tickets flew into the air like paper birds, then wrapped around the static beam. Useless by themselves, perfect when each ticket carried a hair-thin electric charge. The beam split across them, diffused, and rained harmless sparks over the water.
The dragon screamed in modem noises. Riley shouted that it sounded like Owen ordering food through a bad connection. Owen, from the dumpling stand, shouted that this was hurtful but accurate.
I jumped from the dance stage to a light pole, from the light pole to a drone, from the drone to the sky wheel. My hand touched the wheel's main motor, and the entire structure became an extension of my arm. I spun it slowly, safely, bringing the trapped gondolas down one by one while the dragon clawed toward me.
That was when the evil raiders made their move.
Not Damian himself. He was too careful for direct dirt when cameras were still uncertain. But one of his paid crews slipped through the back of the pier and attacked the evacuated families, pretending they were trying to help while stealing crystals from the emergency generators.
I felt the generators scream. I also felt every camera Harper had hidden inside plush toys.
The crew leader raised a blade at a frightened parent and told everyone to stay quiet. I let the blade swing only an inch. Then I stopped it with two fingers made of lightning.
The crew leader looked up and found me standing between him and the family, blue sparks crawling over my smile.
"Bad timing," I said.
He tried to stab me. Great. The plush cameras caught it. The barrier screens showed it. The crowd saw the so-called helpers attack first.
I turned the stolen generator crystals into magnets, snapping them back to their sockets and dragging the raiders along the ground like fish on invisible hooks. Riley arrived sideways in a bumper car and knocked three into a cotton candy machine. Harper made the machine wrap them in pink sugar until they looked like embarrassed furniture. Grace refused to waste medical tape on criminals who had been defeated by dessert.
With the family safe, I focused on the dragon.
The rift had grown angry. It pulled every remaining pixel beast into itself, becoming a massive glowing serpent coiled around the pier. Screens shattered. Speakers screamed. The ocean below rose in electric waves.
I could not chase it through every display. So I gave it one screen big enough to trap it.
I reached into the sky wheel, the billboards, the arcade cabinets, the hologram projectors, and every phone held up by the crowd. I did not enter the phones. I asked for light, nothing more.
One by one, people raised them. The blue-white glow joined above the pier, forming a giant square of living electricity in the sky.
The serpent saw the brightest screen in Aster and lunged.
I snapped my fingers. The screen became a cage. Its borders folded inward, a four-sided prison of pure current. The serpent crashed into it, roaring in broken game sounds. I compressed the cage smaller and smaller while running across the sky wheel spokes, sparks trailing behind me like a cape.
When the cage was the size of a basketball, I kicked it straight into the original rift under the arcade.
Then I unplugged the rift. That is the only way I can describe it. I found the flow connecting the pier to the other side, grabbed the current like a cable, and yanked. The portal snapped shut with a pop so silly that everyone went silent for a second.
Then the pier's ticket machines all spat out jackpots at once. Golden tickets rained over the crowd. Owen caught one, looked at the prize counter, and whispered that destiny had chosen him.
Damian's rumor died that night under a pile of free stuffed animals and public evidence. City guards hauled away the fake helpers, still sticky with cotton candy. Families came down from the sky wheel unharmed. Kids begged me to make the pixel dragon again, which proved children could turn trauma into entertainment faster than adults could turn on a camera.
Harper kept one pixel scale that had hardened into a tiny crystal. Riley won every racing simulator before we left. Grace made me sit down while she checked my pulse, then got annoyed because my pulse sounded like a drum solo. Owen returned from the prize counter carrying a plush dumpling larger than his torso and declared the pier forgiven.
I should have felt victorious. I did. But I also felt something else during the fight.
When I grabbed the rift cable and unplugged it, the other side had tugged back. Not like a monster. Like a hand. Something beyond the screens had noticed me, and it had laughed.
The laugh followed me for days. Not in my ears. In the current. Whenever I touched a charging cable, there it was, hiding between pulses. Whenever rain hit the Stormhouse sign, I felt a little vibration under the light. Not words, not a threat. More like someone tapping glass from the other side, amused that the bug had noticed the window.
I did not tell the city. The city had enough fear to chew on. I told my team.
Harper immediately wanted to build a machine to shout back at it. Riley wanted to drive north until we found whatever had laughed and run it over. Grace wanted everyone to sleep before making decisions involving ancient storm laughter. Owen asked if ancient storm things could smell dumplings through dimensions, then became worried when nobody answered quickly.
Harper spent three nights testing the hardened pixel scale from the pier. It did not behave like a normal core. It stored images, sound, and a tiny amount of rift memory, like a video clip burned into crystal. When I touched it, I saw a flash of black water and white lightning again. The same northern pull.
Then the scale did something worse. It rang.
Every powered device in the Stormhouse answered with one short beep. Harper dropped her tools. Grace looked at me. Riley stopped smiling. Owen hugged the monster pup, who had started growling at the wall.