Pitter. Patter.

The steady drumming of rain echoed against the window and rooftop, as it filled the quiet room with its rhythmic sound.

Kate subtly landed on the balcony, her steps were too light to be an ambush, but also too intentful to be innocent.

She slid the balcony glass door aside and stepped in. Dripping water onto the pristine white marble floors. Her boots were muddy and crunchy.

She slid the door close behind her and stepped in fully. Each step echoing like a footfall on dried up leaves.

"Is there a reason why you snuck into my home?" Nightwalker, behind the kitchen counter, and in nothing but boxer briefs that held in a little too tight.

"The train." She said, crossing her arms.

"Yeah, it crashed. I heard." He shrugged. "What a shame."

"Tell me you had absolutely nothing to do with that crash."

"I can't do that." He said simply, not even looking her in the eye. "Friends don't lie to each other."

——BAM!

Spectra burst forward. One hand on his neck while the other folded into a fist next to her and ready to explode.

Her green energy began to engulf her. "Tell me what you did, now."

Nightwalker was never phased, from when she lunged to now that her hand was trying its hardest to choke him.

He smiled through it all, he was somehow always in control. Even when being strangled.

Seeing her jaw clench, he decided to indulge her. "Alright, fine. But only because it's you...

I messed with the brakes a few days back, when I was still in the tracks—"

"Why?!" She snapped, cutting him off. "I gave you everything you wanted. You killed my husband, I rejected the trial... What else did you want?"

Her voice was shaky and the immense grief from the last few days were standing to show itself as cracks in her stoic demeanour.

"Oh, no." He exclaimed, raised a hand and placed it on her shoulder. "I didn't kill them to spite you..." He shrugged with her hand still on his neck. "I did it because they were important."

And that was the final straw.

Her fist shot forward to punch him but he caught it. Peaked at the side like he had just heard a dirty joke. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me you actually think those worms are important."

"Why did you even become a hero?" She forcefully pulled back her hand. "You don't even like the people you save."

He stepped aside. Leaving her question unanswered for a minute.

He stood in front of his balcony's sliding door. "Because..." He took a deep breath, reveling in the background sound of rain and basking in the light of the skyline.

"... I'm the pinnacle of what a true hero is supposed to be. There are only two ways a God can rule, y'know?

Either, they love and respect which they do already. Or, like you, they're stubborn, so they'll resent and fear me."

"And you think you're a God?" She asked.

He shook her head. A grin stretching longer and longer, he stretched out his arms and tilted his head back.

"Baby, I know I'm a God. You might be a Paragon like me but your humanly ties makes you weak...

You should be on your knees thanking me, killing your husband made you slightly less weak, maybe next time I'll go after your daughter."

Spectra rocketed forward. Wrapping her arms around his waist, bursting through the glass, and thrusting them as far as she possibly could.

The balcony dissolved behind her in a spray of glass and rain; shards hung in the air for a heartbeat, glittering like a constellation torn apart.

Nightwalker finally reacted, he stretched his hands to the back and tossed her wide.

She stopped in the air as they both hovered in the air above the city, rain drenching them both and thunderclouds dancing above them.

"You're cute." Nightwalker smiled, wiping off the pieces of glass from his frame. "But I promise you, you don't want to do this."

The green energy intensified, "I don't care what happens to me but you're gonna die tonight."

She lunged forward. moving with the kind of fury that had no patience for words—green light coalesced around her fist, hard as forged steel.

The construct took shape in an instant: a gauntlet the size of a man, knuckles serrated, veins of emerald energy pulsing with each heartbeat she forced into it.

Ian didn't flinch. He let her come, let the gauntlet close around his ribs and felt the pressure like a cannonball.

Where the light met the green, the rain screamed—steam rising in a hiss as two unnatural fires collided.

He answered with a smile that was all teeth and sun. Fingers spread, palms cupped, and the air between them snapped into a blade of pure, white-hot light.

It cut through the gauntlet like a surgeon through silk, leaving a ragged, smoking edge.

The first impact threw them both back. They spun above the city, bodies slick with rain and blood, silhouettes against a skyline that trembled under the thunder.

Below, the metropolis lay like a sleeping animal—streets glistening, neon bleeding into puddles, cars tiny as beetles. For a second, the world felt small enough to crush.

Spectra's breath came ragged.

Her left eye was a crescent of red where a sliver of light had nicked her cheek; blood mixed with rain and ran in green-streaked rivulets down her jaw.

She tasted the metallic iron. She formed a spear—long, jagged, a lattice of emerald that hummed with the weight of her intent—and hurled it like a javelin.

Nightwalker met it with a laugh that sounded like a bell. He split the spear with a pair of twin beams, each one a white-hot seam that seared the rain into steam.

The shards of green fell away and reassembled into a dozen smaller weapons, each one snapping toward him like angry wasps.

He didn't dodge; he let the light take them. Where the constructs struck, his skin flared and then healed, a pale shimmer under the rain. He was a sun that refused to be snuffed.

They traded blows the way tectonic plates trade earthquakes.

Each strike sent shockwaves down into the city—glass trembled, a billboard exploded into a shower of sparks, a rooftop garden collapsed in a cascade of soil and broken pots.

Thunder answered thunder, a drumroll for their violence. Lightning forked across the sky as if the heavens themselves were trying to split them apart.

She built a wall of green that rose between them, then a hammer, then a net that tried to bind Ian like a snare.

He turned his palms outward, and the net dissolved into a halo of light that expanded outward in a blinding pulse.

The halo struck the wall and the wall shattered into a thousand emerald motes that fell like confetti, sizzling as they hit the wet concrete below.

Rain soaked the city in sheets. The water hissed where it met their energies, steam rising in columns that smelled of metal and ozone.

The thunder was a living thing, rolling and hungry, punctuating each strike with a low, accusatory growl.

The skyline—those towers they'd both sworn to protect or dominate—trembled under their shadow.

Nightwalker's light found a seam in her armor. He carved a line across her shoulder with a laser. The wound bled green, the color of her power leaking into the rain.

She snarled and answered by shaping a fist the size of a car and smashing it into his chest. The impact was a thunderclap; the force drove him backward, and for a moment he was a comet streaking away from her gravity.

He recovered mid-fall, folding light around himself like a cloak. He became a blade of white that sliced through the air, and when it struck her, it didn't just bruise—it carved.

The green constructs around her flared and died like candles in a wind.

She tasted copper and the bitter tang of failure.

Spectra's next move was less about force and more about intent.

Beams lanced outward, striking the cathedral and turning its arches into molten green that dripped like wax.

Where the molten light fell, it struck the streets and exploded—cars erupted in geysers of steam and flame, windows shattered, and a dozen people screamed into the night as the world rearranged itself into a tableau of ruin.

Spectra felt each life like a stone in her gut. She had not meant to hurt them; she had meant to hurt him.

But gods are clumsy with mortals. Her constructs were blunt instruments for a blunt heart. She screamed, and the scream became a blade that cut the air. She dove, a comet of green, and struck Nightwalker full in the face.

He staggered. For the first time that night, his smile faltered. Blood—real, red blood—spattered his lips where a shard of glass had found him.

He tasted it and grinned anyway, because gods are addicted to the edge. He answered by opening his mouth and letting light pour out.

The light wasn't just a weapon; it was a verdict. It wrapped around her like a noose, searing into the green, turning her constructs brittle and then ash.

They fell together, spiraling down toward the city. The wind screamed in their ears, carrying the smell of wet concrete and burning plastic.

Below them, a streetlight exploded, sending a shower of sparks that painted their faces in staccato flashes. The rain hammered them, each drop a tiny percussion on the armor of their bodies.

Kate's knuckles were raw. Ian's ribs were bruised. Both of them tasted the same thing now: the metallic tang of inevitability.

He reached for her throat again, not with hands but with a spear of light that pierced the air between them.

She met it with a shield of green so bright it hurt to look at. The two energies collided and the sound was a physical thing—like a bell struck by a hammer, like a building collapsing in slow motion.

The shockwave rolled outward, shattering windows for blocks, setting off car alarms that wailed into the rain.

Down below, people ran. The city that had been their playground became a battlefield. A bus tipped on its side, glass raining.

A neon sign fell and smashed into a storefront, igniting a small, hungry fire that licked at the rain. The thunder roared.

Spectra's vision tunneled. She could see Nightwalker's face through the storm—calm, almost tender in the way a predator is tender to its prey.

She remembered the man she had loved, the promises, the funeral, the trial. She remembered the train and the way the world had tilted and never righted itself.

Rage was a simple thing compared to grief; it was a tool she could wield without thinking.

She let go.

She let go of everything that had been holding her back—memories, mercy, the last threads of humanity—and poured it all into one motion.

Her body became a cannon. The green around her condensed into a single, obscene fist of light and will, and she drove it into Nightwalker's chest.

The impact was not cinematic. It was bone and blood and the sound of a man breaking.

Nightwalker's light flared, a white sun that tried to swallow her fist, but the green held. For a breathless second they were both suspended in a crucible of their own making, the rain frozen in the air, the city below a silent witness.

Then Nightwalker's head snapped back. The force of her blow sent him spinning, and he hit the side of a building with a sound like a tree falling.

Concrete dust filled the air, and for a moment the world smelled like old stone and new blood.

He laughed, a thin, ragged thing, and spat a tooth into the rain. "You always were dramatic," he said, voice ragged but steady. "You can't win this if you still think like a human."

She hovered over him, chest heaving, green light flickering. Below them, the city burned in small, furious places. Sirens began to wail, distant and inevitable. Thunder rolled.

And yet, they weren't done.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.