Across the city, three false rifts opened at once.
False rifts are not portals. They are bait wounds. Little cracks that pretend to be weak so raiders rush in, then collapse around them. One opened under a train station. One opened in a shopping mall. One opened on the roof of a broadcast tower. Separate disasters, separate crowds, separate places for me to fail.
Damian's channels began broadcasting within minutes. Of course they did. They claimed the Stormhouse had drawn the rifts by hoarding dangerous cores. They claimed I was losing control. They claimed people needed a real professional before my lightning turned the city into an oven.
I looked at the three live feeds and understood the shape of the trap. No matter which one I saved first, the other two would worsen. If I split my team, Damian's crews could attack them. If I tried to handle all three myself, I might overextend and prove the rumors right.
So I did the thing evil people never expect. I trusted my people to be dangerous without me.
Harper took the train station. Not physically. She sent a flock of battery drones through the tunnel grid and used the station speakers to herd people out in groups. When fake rift tendrils tried to grab the drones, she made them overload into glitter bombs that revealed the invisible edges of the crack. Guards watching from outside suddenly had a perfect map of the danger zone.
Riley took the mall. That sentence should not have made sense, but Riley had never been interested in sense. She drove up the delivery ramp, through an empty department store, across the polished floor, and into the central fountain. Then she turned the fountain's water into a sliding shield with help from my remote current, using her car to pull monsters into loops until they crashed into fake storefronts. Every time a shop display fell, she apologized to no one and looked happier.
Grace took the broadcast tower. Not by fighting. By saving. The false rift on the roof was leaking pulses that made people dizzy and panicked. Grace turned the tower lobby into a triage zone in less than four minutes. She ordered raiders twice her size to carry civilians, made security guards stop arguing, and used the medical network to track heart rhythms floor by floor. I could feel her signal through the city, calm and steady like a lighthouse with a stethoscope.
Owen stayed with me at the Stormhouse command room, which seemed safe until he revealed he had already organized delivery riders to carry batteries, water, and snacks to all three sites. He had also convinced two noodle shops and one dessert truck to move along evacuation routes. I stared at him for a full second.
He said, "People listen better when they are not hungry."
I could not argue with genius.
That left me with the real enemy, because three false rifts do not open perfectly unless something is coordinating them.
I closed my eyes and reached into Aster. Not with force. With patience. Street lights, wires, radios, security cameras, train signals, tower antennas, restaurant signs, scooter batteries, elevator motors, all of them became points on a map inside me. The false rifts buzzed like angry flies. Damian's broadcast vans buzzed too.
But behind them, under the city, there was another signal. Quiet, deep, moving. It ran through the old storm drains below the financial district, carrying stolen crystal engines toward the stadium.
Damian was not trying to destroy the city yet. He was moving pieces while everyone stared at the fake emergencies. Clever. I appreciated it for almost half a second. Then I turned the appreciation into violence.
I stepped through the Stormhouse wall as lightning and traveled down through the power grid, past subway cables, past old maintenance wires, into the storm drains. I reformed on a narrow metal walkway above black water.
Ahead of me, Damian's hidden crew pushed carts of crystal engines through the tunnel, protected by pulse shields and silent drones. They did not see me, so I let them keep moving. A direct attack would scatter them. I wanted all of them. Every engine, every drone, every person who had volunteered to drag a city into disaster for a rich man's smile.
I walked behind them for ten minutes, silent as a bad idea.
They reached an underground junction where three tunnels met. The engines hummed together, forming a low note that made my teeth ache. One crewman opened a case full of black anchors. Another activated a jammer that should have blinded every camera in the drain.
It blinded every camera except the ones I built from reflections. A puddle can be a mirror. A wire can be an eye. A phone screen under cracked glass can still watch if you ask nicely.
I sent the live feed to Harper, who sent it to the guards, who sent it to every public board not currently being used to guide evacuations. By the time the crew noticed their faces above the tunnel on a maintenance display, the city was already watching.
One of them panicked and fired at me. Perfect. His crystal shot hit my chest and vanished. I looked down, then back up.
"Really?" I asked.
They attacked together. Pulse shields flared. Drones fired nets. Engines screamed. The tunnel filled with enough energy to power a small neighborhood, or ruin one.
I did not throw lightning. I turned the tunnel into an instrument.
The walkway vibrated under their boots. Pipes rang like bells. The water carried harmless current in circles around them, trapping their ankles without stopping their hearts. Their drones spun in perfect formation, then rearranged themselves into arrows pointing at the nearest guard entrance. The pulse shields reflected my first little sparks, so I stopped hitting the shields and hit the screws holding the shields together.
Tiny things matter. Every villain protects against the giant attack and forgets the cheap parts. One by one, their shields fell apart.
The crew tried to run, but I lifted the metal walkway just enough to turn it into a slide. They slid backward into a pile of their own equipment, shouting, slipping, and accidentally handcuffing themselves with magnetic cargo straps.
The carts of crystal engines rolled toward the black water. I caught them with magnetism inches from the edge.
Then I felt it again. The laugh from beyond the rift.
The engines pulsed toward the north. For one moment, the tunnel around me vanished from my senses. I stood in a vision of an ocean under storm clouds, staring at a door of white lightning. Behind it, something enormous shifted in the dark. Not a monster with claws. Not a man with ambition. Something old enough to treat both as weather.
The vision pressed against my chest like a hand. Open.
I gritted my teeth. No.
The engines sparked violently. The crew screamed. The water rose as if pulled by a tide that did not belong underground. I slammed both hands onto the nearest engine and grounded the entire set through myself.
Bad idea. Effective idea.
White lightning tore into me. My nerves became roads for a storm trying to find the ocean. I saw Harper at the train station. Riley in the mall fountain. Grace under the broadcast tower lights. Owen in the command room holding his breath. I saw people running because my little lights showed them where to go. I saw the safe spark alleys glowing blue across the district.
I was not alone in the current anymore.
So I pulled back. Every emergency battery Harper had placed, every evacuation sign Riley had raced past, every medical scanner Grace had activated, every delivery scooter Owen had rerouted. Every tiny piece of trust the city had given me became a hook in the storm.
Together we dragged the engines quiet. The tunnel lights came back. The vision broke.
I collapsed onto one knee, smoke rising from my coat. Guards arrived to arrest the crew. One asked if I needed medical help. Grace's voice came through my earpiece before I could answer. She said yes, very loudly.
By dawn, all three false rifts were sealed. The hidden engine crew was in custody, and Damian's rumor machine had eaten itself again. People did not see me solve everything alone. They saw Harper, Riley, Grace, Owen, guards, mechanics, drivers, doctors, vendors, and strangers all move together through blue light.
That scared Damian more than my lightning, because a single god can be challenged. A city learning not to kneel is harder to kill.
The power kept climbing, and the higher I climbed, the clearer the next mountain became.