Keal stared in incredulous, watching the scene before him unfold like a harrowing nightmare.
The towering column of black flames seem like a piller from hell, blazing with such intensity but oddly no heat was emitted instead the surroundings got a bit... Colder.
Keal mind struggle to process what he was seeing. The power before him was something he wished to achieve but also fear, he knew his superpower was incomperably weak but in the face of normal humans he was someone powerful, a figure of fear. But what he felt from this little 10 year old kid was something he hasn't felt even from his brother who is considered a monster and who is also someone he fears deeply.
This time he felt something different, something much more than fear, more primal and depressing. He felt....death.
"Boss?" One of his gang members—Billy, the big one with the chain stepped forward uncertainly. "What do we do?"
Kael's jaw worked silently. His hands trembled, though whether from fear or adrenaline, he couldn't tell. The black flames reflected in his eyes, dancing like demons in the darkness.
Knowing he couldn't just wait for death he missed "spread out, surround him. He's still hurt,look at him, he can barely stand. This is just... just some kind of bluff. Some awakening fever dream. He doesn't know how to use it yet."
Even as he said it, Kael wasn't sure he believed it.
His gang hesitated, then slowly began to fan out, forming a loose circle around Ash. Their confidence had evaporated like water on hot coals, replaced by the jerky movements of people trying to convince themselves they weren't prey.
Ash stood motionless in the center, black flames licking up his arms, across his shoulders, threading through his bloodied hair. His purple-lit eyes tracked each of them with predatory focus, but he didn't move.
"His buying time!". Billy observed" his trying to get a hang of his talent".
"Then we hit him NOW," Kael snapped. "Before he figures it out. Billy!—"
Billy lunged forward with a roar, swinging his chain in a wide arc. The heavy links whistled through the air, ruthlessly aiming for Ash's skull.
Ash's hand shot up.
The chain wrapped around his forearm, the momentum that should have shattered bone simply... stopping. It's seems to lost it's purpose, links beginning to un link where the flame touched.
Marcus's eyes widened. "What the—"
Ash's grip tightened.
Black flame spread forward latching onto Billy hands and melting the chain. Billy screamed, yanking his hand back trying to put out the stubborn flames but it seems to just spread further.
Then Ash moved.
Too fast for someone with cracked ribs and a shattered bones.
He closed the distance to billy in two strides, black flames trailing behind him like wings. His fist wreathed in purple lightening drove into Billy's gut.
The impact sounded like a thunderclap.
Billy flew backward, crashing through a cluster of trash bins with a sound like a car accident. He didn't get up. Smoke rose from his abdomen where Ash had struck. The black flames spreading around his body sealing his fate.
"Oh shit," someone whispered.
Ash turned his burning gaze to the rest of them.
"Who's next?"
Panic broke like a dam.
Two familiar gang members — rin and tog— rushed him from opposite direction, trying to overwhelm him with coordination.
Ash didn't even look at rin.
Black flames erupted from his body in a circular wave, expanding outward like a shockwave. Rin on his left ran straight into it and screamed. He dropped and rolled, frantically trying to put himself out, but the black fire didn't behave like normal fire. It clung to him, feeding on something deeper than cloth and skin, couple of seconds later his screams died down, his fate unknown.
Frightened tog skidded to a halt, eyes wide with horror.
Ash's hand shot forward. Purple lightning arced from his palm, jagged and wild, striking tog square in the chest punching a vaporized hole through it. The electrical discharge lit up the clearing like a strobe, and the gang member convulsed, every muscle seizing at once. He collapsed in a twitching heap, couldn't be more dead.
"Three down" he muttered with a groan.
Ash eyes moved to the next target. The fourth member already turned heels and ran, already making it 10 feet away.
Ash eyes tracked his movement with cold precision. He raised his hand, clawing at the sky and willed. The flames gathered and condensed into a makeshift javelin and threw with all his might.
A tendril of black-fire shot forward like a spear, impossibly fast, impossibly precise. It struck him between the shoulder blades and he went down hard, skidding across the gravel. The flames pinned him there, eating away parts of him.
That's one left, keal.
Kael backed away slowly, his earlier arrogance completely evaporated. His power, Stinger, required touch. And getting close to Ash right now seemed like signing his own death warrant.
"Wait," Kael said, hands raised, voice cracking. "Wait, Ash, let's—let's talk about this. We can—"
"Talk?"
Ash took a step forward. The black flames around him flared.
"Like you 'talked' to my sister?"
Another step. The temperature in the clearing drop. The earth around them began to freeze a little, an impossibility that made Kael's mind reel.
"Like you 'talked' to my mother while your poison ate her from the inside?"
Kael's back hit a tree. No more room to retreat.
"I didn't—I didn't know it would—" he stammered, the lies dying on his tongue. "She—she disrespected—"
"SHE WAS TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD!"
The roar wasn't entirely human. The flames around Ash exploded outward in a corona of fury, scorching the ground, blackening tree bark. The purple lightning crackled with increased intensity, striking the earth around Kael's feet, each bolt closer than the last.
"She worked herself to exhaustion to keep us alive. She smiled every day despite everything. And you KILLED her because your ego couldn't handle rejection!"
Tears streamed down Ash's face, freezing instantly in the cold of his flames. His voice cracked, the layered echo faltering for just a moment, revealing the grief beneath the rage.
"She suffered. They both suffered. FOR WEEKS."
Kael's legs gave out. He slid down the tree trunk, his expensive leather jacket catching on bark, and landed sitting in the dirt. All his cruelty, all his confidence, gone. What remained was just a frightened teenage boy who'd played with power he didn't understand and caused suffering he couldn't comprehend.
"I'm sorry," Kael whispered, though even he knew it was pathetically inadequate. "I'm sorry, I'm—"
Ash stood over him, black flames casting dancing shadows across his tear-stained face. Purple lightning played across his knuckles.
His hand shot forward, clutching keal neck like a strangled chicken.
Kael's fingers clawed desperately at Ash's wrist, but it was like trying to pry iron bars apart. The black flames licked at his throat.
"W-wait!" Kael choked out, his voice strangled and high-pitched. "You—you can't! My brother—do you have ANY idea who my brother is?!"
Ash's grip didn't loosen. His purple eyes stared down without recognition, without mercy.
"Dante!" Kael wheezed, his face turning red. "Dante Voss! He's—he's ranked Top 20 in the underworld! A-rank supervillain: 'Crimson Reaver'! He—he'll hunt you down! He'll kill everyone you've ever—"
"I have no one left to lose." Ash's voice was flat.
"You made sure of that."
The black flames surged.
"NO! NO, PLEASE! I'M SORRY! I'M—"
The fire engulfed Kael's throat, spreading up his face, down his chest. Unlike with the others, Ash didn't hold back. Didn't hesitate. The void-flames burned with savage intensity, consuming cloth, skin, everything.
Kael's screams were brief—cut off as the fire burned through his mind. His eyes went wide with agony and terror, bulging from their sockets as his body convulsed. He tried to activate his Talent, Stinger, tried to inject his poison through any contact point, but Ash's flames were already inside him, burning from within and without simultaneously.
His talent tried and failed to manifest against the all-consuming darkness.
Kael's struggles weakened. His hands fell from Ash's wrist, twitching uselessly. His eyes rolled over then slowly became vacant.
Ash held on, tears streaming down his face, his expression twisted in anguish and determination.
"For Mom," he whispered. "For Sis."
Kael's body convulsed one final time, then went limp. But Ash didn't let go. The flames withdrew and lightning took over, pulverizing keal body reducing flesh to char, char to ash. Bones cracked and crumbled. Within moments, there was nothing left but a pile of grey-black ash and the faint outline of a human shape on the scorched tree trunk.
Ash released his grip.
The ash that had been Kael Voss scattered in the wind.
Ash stood there, staring at his hand still wreathed in flickering black flames and flickering lightening and felt...
Nothing.
The rage was gone. The desperate fury that had pulled him back from death, that had given him the strength to rise from the pit vanished like smoke.
What remained was just... hollow. An empty cavern where his purpose had been.
"It's done," he whispered to the darkness. "They're avenged. Mom. Sis. I... I did it."
But the words rang hollow in his own ears.
They weren't coming back. Revenge hadn't brought them back. Killing Kael hadn't filled the gaping void in his chest where his family used to be.
He was still alone.
Still—
The black flames roared.
Ash gasped, stumbling backward. The fire around his hands, his arms, his entire body—it was growing. Expanding. No longer responding to his will but acting on its own terrible hunger.
"What—no, stop—STOP!"
He tried to will the flames down, tried to pull them back inside whatever well they'd come from. But they wouldn't listen.
The fire spread up his arms, across his chest. The pain doesn't seem to be physical instead it's felt as if his soul was being burned away.
"NO! GET OFF! GET—"
His shirt and skin where unharmed but his mind was in torment. He screamed a raw, primal sound of agony and terror.
He fell to his knees, clawing at himself, trying to tear the flames away. But they were part of him now, emerging from within, consuming him from the inside just as they had consumed Kael.
This is it. This is how it ends. Killed by my own power.The irony would have been funny if he wasn't dying.
The flames engulfed his face. His vision went dark, then purple with lightning, then dark again. His mind slowed.
He was distantly aware of hitting the ground.
Of the world tilting sideways.
Of his consciousness starting to fray at the edges, just like it had in the void.
Mom... Sis... I'm sorry. I'm coming... I'm—
WHACK!!
The sound cut through everything. Ash felt the impact before he processed it. Something had struck him hard right across the back of his skull.
The black flames sputtered flickered then died.
Darkness rushed in, but this time it was the simple, merciful darkness of unconsciousness. His body went limp, the tension draining from his muscles, the agony finally, blessedly ending.
The last thing he registered was a deep male voice edged with surprise and something that might have been... amusement?.
"Interesting "