Blinding Light

  The desert stretches endless under a sky missing too many stars. Four hundred years and sand still gets everywhere – in your teeth, under your nails, in the depths of your immortal soul.

  "You're late," I tell Maxwell without turning around. My strings taste his approach, the way reality bends slightly around him.

  "Traffic was murder," he says, voice like gravel wrapped in silk. "Literally. The Fellowship's new guard dogs are getting creative with quantum entanglement."

  I turn to face my oldest friend. Maxwell Albright stands tall despite the desert heat, immaculate in his three-piece suit as always. His bald head gleams with sweat, but his eyes hold that familiar intensity I've come to trust. Sometimes I still think about the day I found him - or rather, the day he found me. But that's a story for another time.

  "Did you see it?" His usually smooth voice carries an edge I haven't heard before. He reaches into his jacket, pulls out something that looks wrong in ways reality shouldn't allow. "It's happening. They're manifesting."

  My strings go still. Even they can taste the wrongness radiating from whatever Maxwell's brought. "How many?"

  "Thousands. And more every hour." He lets out a laugh that sounds like breaking glass.

  My strings quiver in the desert wind. Maxwell tucks the evidence away, but we both know what's starting. I've spent centuries manipulating reality, stealing powers, breaking rules. Now thousands of regular humans are about to get abilities of their own.

  This was something I saw coming for awhile. Something that Lark and his minions put into motion centuries ago. I was the thorn in their side. Once I was removed from the picture they could finally do what they sought to do…change humanity.

  I remember learning about Lark’s plan. The day I fought the Light Weaver…

  ***

  First rule of unmaking reality: you can't break what's already broken.

  Rain falls sideways in Singapore. Not because of wind – physics just gave up. My strings taste something wrong in the air. Something that shouldn't be. Nyx walks beside me, temporal damage making him flicker between young and ancient with each step. Black blood drips from his nose, chromosomes committing suicide as he forces time to obey.

  "Three more stars went out last night," he says, perfect suit already soaked. "Light Weaver's been busy."

  I watch security footage ripple across skyscrapers. Empty bank vaults. Guards with glass where eyes should be. Reality wearing thin around the edges.

  "Your brother always did think small," I say, letting my strings dance through steam. "Trying to save what can't be saved."

  The ambush comes like they always do – reality having a seizure.Light bends wrong. Creates angles that would make Euclid vomit. Air crystallizes into shapes that shouldn't exist, refracting colors that have no names. The Light Weaver steps through nothing, trailing ribbons of impossible radiance. Young. Asian features twisted in a permanent smirk. Eyes like captured supernovas. She moves like someone who's forgotten gravity exists, each step leaving afterimages of light that hurt to look at.

  "The great puppet master," she says, voice like broken prisms. Her fingers trace patterns in the air, leaving trails of light that cut through reality itself. "I was starting to think you'd never find me."

  I watch her movements, my strings tasting the wrongness in her power. "Wasn't hard. Just had to follow the trail of broken physics and burned-out eyes."

  She laughs, the sound making streetlights flicker and die. "Those guards? They saw too much. Couldn't handle the truth about light." Her smirk widens as she gestures at the city around us. "About what it's really made of."

  "Save the philosophy lesson," Nyx spits blood that glows faintly in the dark. "Where's my brother?"

  "Brother dearest?" Light dances between her fingers like liquid diamonds. "He's busy preparing. For what comes next. For what's already here." Her eyes fix on me, blazing with impossible colors. "But you've felt it too, haven't you? The way reality's starting to fray?"

  My strings arc out, hungry for flesh. Each one crackling with stolen abilities – Maelstrom's storms, Torque's force, Veil's lies. Weather responds, thunder rolling between buildings like artillery fire. She moves like mercury, bending light around her body. The street erupts in laser-sharp death. Cars slice apart. Windows shatter into diamond dust. Concrete forgets how to be solid. I dance through the chaos, strings cutting everything – light, space, truth itself. One catches her shoulder. Draws blood that glows from within.

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  Her response? Nuclear winter in microcosm. Light becomes raw energy becomes something worse. The street doesn't melt – it stops believing in itself. Air turns to plasma. Reality starts coming apart at the seams. Nyx creates his bubble, trying to slow time. Gets three seconds before genetics rebel. His face bubbles under concentrated light, flesh cooking until temporal reversal kicks in. More black blood paints his collar.

  "That the best you've got?" I taunt, letting stolen powers mix and merge. "I've had sunburns that hurt worse."

  She laughs. The sound tastes like burning metal. Light condenses into spears that pierce dimension. First one splits me shoulder to hip. Pain becomes my universe. Blood paints abstract art on liquefied concrete. Perfect. My strings explode outward, a web of electric death and stolen power. Lightning arcs between them. Space warps. Then I feel it. Something ancient in her energy. Something that was old when light first learned to shine.

  "You feel it, don't you?" Her wounds weep luminescence. "What's coming. What's already here."

  Power explodes from her like a dying star. Not just light – something deeper. The kind of radiation that makes physics break down and cry. Images flood my mind. Worlds where causality gave up. Dimensions shattered like mirrors. The kind of darkness that makes darkness afraid.

  "The Unweaving," I whisper, tasting wrongness in the words.

  She nods as light pours from her eyes. "Reality's coming undone. The Fellowship tried to hold it back. To maintain order. But you can't stop entropy with parlor tricks."

  Nyx attacks. Stupid kid. Creates his biggest temporal bubble yet. Her flesh turns to pure energy where his fist connects. The backlash sends him flying, skin blistering under impossible radiation.

  "Your brother understands," she calls to his broken form. "We're not trying to stop it – we're trying to ride it. To become what comes after physics dies."

  My strings pull tight, ready to end this. "Enough poetry. Time to die."

  Her smile turns fractal. "Death's just another rule waiting to break."

  "Your brother found me in Moscow," she says, deflecting another barrage of my strings. "After the incident at the particle accelerator. When I first touched what lives between light." Her eyes flare with remembered pain. "He showed me I wasn't broken. That what I could do was just the beginning."

  I launch more strings, each one carrying a different flavor of stolen power. "He always did have a soft spot for strays."

  She dances through my attack, leaving trails of burning light. "He has a vision. A way to ride the wave when reality breaks. To become something more than-"

  Nyx interrupts her with a temporal-enhanced punch that actually connects. Her jaw shatters, flesh turning crystalline where he hits. But she just laughs, the sound making air molecules commit suicide.

  "You still don't understand," she says as her face reconstructs itself in impossible geometries. "Your brother's building an ark. Gathering those who can survive what's coming. What's already here."

  Then she goes supernova. Light becomes solid becomes energy becomes cosmic wrong. Reality tears along seams we can't see. The street doesn't just cease to exist – it never was.

  "Your power's impressive," I taunt, strings dancing with stolen lightning. "But I've seen better light shows at county fairs."

  She screams, the sound making air molecules vibrate apart. Light condenses into spears that pierce dimensions. The first one splits me shoulder to hip. The second punches through my chest, leaving a hole that glows with impossible radiation. Pain becomes my universe. Blood paints abstract art on liquefied concrete. Perfect. My strings explode outward, a web of electric death and stolen power. She dances through them, each movement leaving trails of burning light. Windows for blocks shatter, raining diamond dust that turns to plasma mid-fall.

  "Tell me about the Unweaving," I demand, launching another barrage. Maelstrom's storms mix with Torque's force, creating a tornado of razor-sharp strings.

  She laughs as her flesh starts dissolving into pure energy. "Reality's sick. Physics is dying. And we? We're the antibodies."

  Nyx attacks from behind, temporal bubble slowing the decay of space itself. His fist connects with her jaw, shattering it into crystalline fragments that radiate wrongness.

  The air fills with blades of solid light. Each one cuts through reality itself, leaving wounds that leak cosmic radiation. My strings drink deep, tasting something ancient. Something hungry.

  "Moscow. Singapore. Berlin." Her body starts coming apart, each piece becoming a new source of reality-breaking power. "We're building a new Fellowship. One that won't just maintain order – we'll transcend it."

  I see it now. The pattern. The plan. Lark isn't just collecting powered individuals – he's gathering those who've glimpsed what comes after physics dies. After reality forgets its own rules.

  "Your brother sends his regards," she says as her form dissolves completely. "He hopes you'll understand. When the stars go out. When the barriers fall. When humanity evolves beyond-"

  My strings surge forward, wrapped in everything I've stolen. They cut through her light, her energy, whatever she's becoming. The scream tears holes in existence itself. When it's over, nothing remains but smooth glass and broken physics. The Light Weaver's gone – transformed into something post-reality. But she left behind knowledge. Understanding. A taste of what's coming. Nyx pulls himself from my protection, perfect suit atomized. Radiation burns refuse to heal, time itself rejecting his attempts at reversal. Black blood flows from everywhere.

  "The stars," he whispers, looking up at a sky missing too many lights. "They're not just going out, are they? Reality's being unmade."

  I study my strings, watching them vibrate with new hunger. "Your brother's preparing for something bigger than power. Something that makes the Fellowship look like children playing with matches."

  "What do we do?"

  I smile, all teeth and bad intentions. "We find the others. The ones who've touched what lives beyond reality. And then?"

  "Then?"

  "Then we accelerate the process.”

  Sometimes you have to unmake the world to build it right.