The first time Nova Kane felt the power, he thought the world was ending.
And in a way, it was.
It was a Tuesday. That awful, ordinary, never-anything-good-happens Tuesday. The skies over Nova City were gray with storm clouds, and traffic buzzed like a swarm of angry wasps thirty stories below his feet. Nova—real name: Jalen Kane, 19, part-time courier, full-time wanderer—was on the rooftop of a corporate building delivering a mysterious silver case.
The instructions were weird: Don't open it. Don't ask. Drop it off and leave.
He should've left. God, he should've left.
Instead, curiosity won. As usual.
Jalen crouched beside the case, fingers hesitating on the latch. The metal was warm. Humming softly, like it was alive. His heart drummed louder than the wind.
Click.
The moment the case opened, the clouds screamed.
A pulse of light—pure, blinding, starfire gold—exploded from the box and slammed into his chest. He staggered back, choking, arms flailing as tendrils of light wrapped around him, sinking into his skin like it belonged there.
And then everything went quiet.
Not normal-quiet. The terrifying kind. No cars. No wind. No sound at all.
He looked up.
The sky had split.
Above Nova City, space itself cracked open. A swirling eclipse of stars, burning violet and black, hung like an eye in the heavens. And it was looking at him.
A voice echoed in his mind.
> You are the key. The balance must be broken for the light to rise.
Then came the pain.
His body lit up with energy—raw, chaotic, untamed. Blue-white fire crackled from his fingertips. His spine arched. Eyes wide, mouth open in a silent scream. The rooftop vanished in white.
---
He woke up in a crater.
Or what used to be a rooftop. Now it was a smoking pit. Around him, scorched metal. Melted concrete. The building's comms tower lay in pieces beside him. Sirens wailed in the distance.
Jalen groaned, rolling to his side. Everything hurt. But he was alive.
He looked down.
His skin shimmered with golden circuits that flickered and faded. Energy coiled in his palms like it was waiting.
Waiting for him to say something.
"…Cool," he muttered.
---
Within the hour, he was running for his life.
Hoverdrones zipped overhead. Black-suited agents spilled into the streets. News feeds screamed about a terrorist attack, about an "energy anomaly" leveling a corporate headquarters.
Jalen didn't know who to trust. Didn't even know what was happening to him. Every time he got scared, the light surged again—blasting street signs, warping concrete, sending shockwaves through the pavement.
He ran until his legs gave out. He hid in a junkyard outside the city, curled in an old car with a half-dead phone and a brain full of fire.
That night, the voice returned. Not in his head this time, but real.
A figure stepped from the shadows.
Tall. Cloaked in black. Eyes glowing red.
"You're the one," the stranger said. "You touched the Ember Core. You don't know it yet, but you've just declared war on every force in the galaxy."
Jalen tried to speak. Failed.
"Run if you want. Hide if you can. But remember this—" the figure raised a hand, and shadows rippled across the junkyard. "The Eclipse is coming. And when it does, you will either save this world… or burn it."
Then the figure vanished.
---
Back in the sky, the eclipse still burned.
Watching.
Waiting.
And deep underground, a thousand miles away, Dr. Veyl watched the footage from the rooftop. Zoomed in on Jalen's glowing hands. His machine eyes narrowed.
"Target identified," he said.
"All units prepare for Phase Zero"