Rain tapped softly against the windows of the dark cave-like room as lines of encrypted data scrolled across multiple glowing monitors.
A single file remained open on the center screen.
Status: Under Surveillance
Images flickered across the display:
* security footage of exploding transformers,
* and one blurry frame of glowing gold-white eyes in the middle of a storm.
The unseen figure standing before the monitors remained silent.
Another report appeared on screen:
“Atmospheric disturbances increasing around subject.”
Then another line appeared beneath it.
“Unknown energy source connected to emotional stress responses.”
The figure narrowed his eyes beneath the darkness.
Outside, thunder rolled across Gotham City.
Summer arrived heavily in St. Roch.
Graduation had come and gone almost too fast. The routines of school disappeared overnight, leaving the city feeling strangely quieter than before. The air was hotter now. Storm clouds gathered nearly every evening. And Adonis’ powers were getting harder to hide.
Streetlights dimmed when he walked beneath them.
Phones glitched around him constantly.
And sometimes, when his emotions spiked too hard, lightning sparked visibly beneath his skin.
Kaerith had stopped pretending not to notice.
“You’re hiding something.”
Adonis looked up from the bench outside the corner store.
“You say that every day.”
“Because every day weird things happen around you.”
“Adonis, the vending machine literally exploded when you got angry yesterday.”
Kaerith stared at him blankly.
Then the streetlight above them flickered violently.
“Okay… maybe that one was me.”
Kaerith stepped closer now, lowering her voice.
“No jokes. What’s happening to you?”
Adonis opened his mouth to answer—
and suddenly pain shot through his chest.
Electricity burst outward instinctively.
Blue-white sparks exploded around his body as nearby lights shattered instantly.
Kaerith stumbled backward in shock.
The wind around them intensified violently.
Adonis looked down at his trembling hands in horror.
Silence filled the street.
Kaerith stared at him for several long seconds.
“You really don’t know what you are.”
And for the first time since they had met—
A glowing violet symbol appeared in the air above her palm.
The symbol rotated slowly, surrounded by soft purple light before fading away again.
“What the hell was that?”
That night changed everything.
Kaerith explained things Adonis had spent his entire life believing were myths:
* hidden magical communities,
* supernatural beings living unnoticed beside humanity,
* old protections woven into cities like St. Roch generations ago.
Adonis barely knew what to say.
“So magic is just… real?”
“You’re shooting lightning out of your body and this is the part you’re struggling with?”
She began taking him deeper into parts of the city he had never truly noticed before.
Adonis started seeing things.
Tiny imps darting through alleyways causing harmless chaos before vanishing into shadows. Fairies glowing softly in hidden gardens while tending dying flowers back to life. Strange symbols hidden beneath old buildings that shimmered faintly when touched by moonlight.
The magical world had always existed around him.
He had simply never been able to see it before.
Now he couldn’t stop seeing it.
Kaerith believed she understood what he was.
A magical bloodline descendant.
Someone whose family had hidden their magic so long it became dormant through generations until finally reawakening.
At least more sense than anything else.
And for the first time since the museum incident—
Miles away, inside the Watchtower orbiting Earth, three figures stood before a holographic display of St. Roch.
Storm activity illuminated the screen.
Batman stood silently beside the display.
Superman crossed his arms.
“You think this is connected to the missing persons case?”
Wonder Woman studied the hologram carefully.
Adonis’ file appeared above the table.
the photograph of Adonis standing in the rain with glowing eyes.
Batman’s expression remained unreadable.
“I believe the center of these anomalies is this young man.”
Lightning flashed across the hologram of St. Roch.
the storm continued growing.
