After that, Aster split into two opinions. Half the city thought I was a hero. The other half thought I was a disaster waiting for a bigger disaster.
Damian fed the second half with rumors. He claimed my power attracted rifts, even though rifts had existed long before I woke up. He claimed my rescues were staged. He claimed my team was dangerous. He claimed I would eventually lose control.
The annoying part was that one of those claims scared me, because I did not know my limits.
Every night while the others slept, I went to the roof of the Stormhouse and reached upward. The storm crack in the moonlight pulsed like a vein in the sky, and lightning flashed inside it. Something inside me answered.
My power was growing. Not slowly, not normally. Every rift, every monster core, every machine I touched made my senses wider. I could feel street lights four blocks away. Then the whole district. I could hear messages moving through cables like whispers behind walls. I could tell when someone raised a camera toward me before I saw it. I could sense the pulse in human nerves if I stood close enough, which was useful and terrifying.
I began wearing gloves, because touching people felt too intimate, like hearing their hearts speak in sparks.
Grace noticed first. She always noticed. She found me on the roof one morning before sunrise, sitting among the antenna wires while tiny arcs crawled across my hair. She did not ask if I was okay. People ask that when they want a simple lie. Grace sat beside me and handed me coffee.
I told her I was worried that one day I would reach for a light switch and grab the whole city by accident.
She said, "Then you learn gentleness before power makes you lonely."
That sentence hit harder than any monster.
So I trained gentleness. I learned to light one bulb without waking the room. To stop one bullet without crushing the gun. To numb one attacker's hand without stopping his heart. To restart a dying drone without erasing its memory. To calm the electrical panic in a wounded person's muscles. To feel the difference between a machine begging for power and a body begging for rest.
That made me stronger than blasting ever had. Because control made tricks possible, and tricks made evil people walk into cages smiling.
Damian's next move came through an underground auction.
Owen heard about it from old contacts. Stolen rift cores, captured monsters, illegal weapons, and people forced to fight for entertainment in an abandoned aquarium. Damian's crews were providing security. Rich cowards were arriving through hidden tunnels. The city guards had tried to catch them before, but the place had no stable power, no cameras, and too many exits.
No power meant most people would see a disadvantage. I saw a blank canvas.
We entered through the old shark exhibit. The aquarium was dark, humid, and creepy enough to make Owen whisper apologies to every fish skeleton we passed. Harper sent silent drones ahead. Riley carried no weapon because, as she put it, her car was outside and everything else was just delaying the inevitable. Grace came because people were being hurt inside, and arguing with her about danger was like arguing with a hospital wall.
The auction floor was in the main tank chamber, surrounded by thick glass tunnels and dry pools. Criminals filled the seats. Cages lined the walls. A masked host bragged about rare cores while guards patrolled with crystal rifles.
I did not attack. Not yet.
I walked straight into the open wearing a cheap hood and carrying a fake core Harper had built from a flashlight, a battery, and disrespect. The guards stopped me. I told them I wanted to sell a storm core.
They laughed. One shoved me. Another grabbed the fake core. The moment his fingers touched it, the little battery inside sent a harmless pop into his hand. He yelped. The crowd laughed at him.
That made him angry. Angry people make bad choices. He hit me across the face with the butt of his rifle.
The room went quiet. I tasted blood and sparks.
Then I smiled. The guard had attacked first, in front of half the criminal underworld and every hidden camera Harper had smuggled inside disguised as dead fish lights.
"Thank you," I whispered.
He frowned.
Then the aquarium woke up.
Emergency lights that had been dead for years burst on in blue. Old pumps roared. Filtration pipes rattled. Display screens flickered, showing live footage of the cages, the stolen cores, the forced fighters, and the guard hitting me first. The glass tunnels became glowing veins as I poured current through forgotten wiring.
Panic spread. The masked host shouted for everyone to kill me.
I raised both hands, and the dry shark tank behind him filled with lightning. Not water. Lightning. A swirling blue storm spun inside the glass, shaped like a giant electric shark, because Harper had helped with the visuals and refused to be normal. The crowd froze as the shark opened its mouth without sound.
Then the guards attacked.
Riley crashed her car through the aquarium wall at that exact moment. I had not told her to do that. I should have expected it. Her headlights cut through dust. She drifted around the auction floor, knocking weapons from hands with the car's side mirror like she was playing a very expensive sport.
Grace ran to the cages, using my current to pop locks without sparks near the prisoners. Owen guided people toward exits, somehow holding a snack bag the entire time.
I handled the guards. Crystal rifles fired. I bent the shots into the ceiling. Shock nets flew. I turned them into glowing butterflies that wrapped around their owners. One brute charged me with a hammer. I magnetized the hammer to the floor, watched him flip over it, and gave him a tiny round of applause from three floating flashlights.
The host tried to escape through a glass tunnel. I let him get halfway. Then I lit the tunnel around him, and the electric shark illusion swam straight at his face. He screamed, slipped, and crawled back into the auction chamber, where city guards were already storming in through every exit thanks to Harper broadcasting the location.
The criminals were dragged away in wet shoes and expensive outfits, which felt poetic.
But in the deepest cage, I found something that changed everything.
It was not a monster. It was a crystal engine the size of a coffin, wrapped in black cables and humming with stolen storm energy.
The moment I touched it, my vision turned white. I saw a tower made of lightning. I saw a city under black rain. I saw Damian standing beneath a reactor core, smiling as blue fire crawled over his skin. Then I saw myself, not as a man, but as a silhouette of thunder with a crown of wires and a heart like a star.
I pulled my hand away. Grace caught me before I fell. Harper asked what happened.
I said the engine was bait. Not for us. For Damian.
He was collecting storm technology from old rifts. Not just cores, not just weapons. Pieces of something larger, something that could turn a human body into a lightning vessel. He had been resistant to electricity because he had already begun changing himself.
That made sense. Damian did not hate me because I was dangerous. He hated me because I had become naturally what he was trying to build artificially. Men like Damian cannot stand when someone else gets the miracle they think they deserve.