A year.
That's how long it had been since the sky cracked open and the alien fell.
Twelve months since the Hadeem crater burned itself into history. Since the world stopped pretending it was safe.
People adjusted. They always did.
Cities lit up again. Schools reopened. Government offices pushed papers and formed new protocols. Scientists launched projects with desperate names—Gene Spark, Awakening Trials, Sympathetic Resonance Activation—as they tried to crack the mystery of human power. They built machines, injected serums, simulated exposure to mana storms.
Nothing worked.
At least not for most people.
But not Nicholas.
Nicholas had changed.
He could do things now. Real things. Not childish sparks or flickers.
Lightning answered him.
It curled through his fingers like obedient serpents, arced across his palms with a low whine of voltage. It danced along his spine when he got angry. It flared from his feet when he ran. He didn't just summon it—he moved with it. Fast, sharp, alive.
Michael saw it all.
And every time, it hit him in the same place: a sharp twist in the gut. A cocktail of pride, awe, and something darker he hated to name.
Jealousy.
Not that he wanted to be Nicholas. God, no. His brother was still getting bullied. Still coming home with busted lips and shredded uniforms. Still getting detention for fights where other kids pushed him too far, and the lightning pushed back harder.
But Nicholas had something.
He had proof.
Michael didn't.
At seventeen—almost eighteen—he still hadn't Awakened. No sparks. No glow. No surge of anything except dull physical training. He was faster now, stronger than before, sure. But that didn't mean anything. Plenty of people without powers were strong.
Strength wasn't the point anymore.
Power was.
And Michael was running out of time.
The apartment didn't feel like home anymore.
It was too quiet when it shouldn't be, and too loud when it shouldn't matter. Their father—once a tall, stable presence in the hallway shadows—was barely ever there. He left early, came home late, and when he was around, his words were few and cold.
Especially toward Nicholas.
He never said it outright. But Michael saw it in the way he walked past his younger son. In the way his jaw clenched whenever Nicholas sparked, even by accident. In the way he stared too long and said too little. Not fear.
Something colder.
Resentment.
Michael had once thought it was about the power. That maybe their dad hated what Nicholas had become—feared he was dangerous. But the older he got, the more Michael realized it wasn't the power he hated.
It was the reminder.
The way Nicholas's eyes sometimes flickered blue in the dark, just like hers.
Their mother had died a year before the alien came. Long before the lightning. But it didn't matter. The grief hadn't softened. If anything, it had calcified—hardened into something that lodged itself between them all.
Michael couldn't even remember the last time the three of them ate in the same room.
"Again."
The punching bag swayed slightly, ropes creaking.
Michael adjusted his stance and drove a right hook straight into the bag's center. Sweat flicked off his brow.
"Again."
His knuckles stung, but he didn't stop. He kept hitting it—not out of anger, not even out of training.
Because it was all he could do.
The garage gym was half-lit, the ceiling fan spinning weakly above him. Outside, distant thunder rolled—not natural, he knew.
Nicholas was practicing again.
Michael had stopped watching. The first few times, it had filled him with a deep, speechless pride. The way Nicholas could call down strikes with a gesture. How the lightning rippled over his skin without burning it. The kid looked like he belonged in a military poster.
Now it just made him feel small.
He hit the bag again.
Harder this time.
The government had promised answers. A way to trigger dormant powers. A test, a machine, a ritual—something. But after a year, nothing had worked. Not for Michael. Not for the other late bloomers.
They said it might be emotional trauma that triggered it. Or genetic purity. Or something to do with mana alignment at birth.
Michael didn't know what any of that meant.
All he knew was that it hadn't happened.
Not yet.
Nicholas transferred into Michael's high school two months ago.
It hadn't gone well.
Middle school was cruel enough, but high school was a different animal. Especially for powered kids. Especially for powered kids with baggage.
Nicholas had both.
His reputation followed him—the kid with lightning in his veins, whose mom died in a building giving birth to him, whose dad never showed up to school meetings, whose older brother kept getting dragged into disciplinary reviews on his behalf.
He got into fights almost weekly. Came home with bruises more often than not. Sometimes he won. Sometimes he didn't. But every time, his smile got a little harder to find.
He'd stopped sharing things with Michael, too.
Stopped talking about the fights. Stopped mentioning the schoolwork. Stopped asking to walk home together. Michael still tried—offered to help with homework, asked him about the lectures on mana structure or discharge control—but Nicholas always brushed it off.
"I'm fine."
"Don't worry about it."
"You wouldn't get it."
Michael hated that one the most.
Because maybe it was true.
Nicholas was changing faster than him. Outgrowing him. Not just in strength. In everything. Even his voice was deeper now. Even the way he stood—shoulders set, eyes hard—felt like someone who'd been forced to grow up too fast.
Sometimes Michael caught him watching the GASA ads on loop—the ones for the elite institution, the one made for high-level Awakened teens.
The Academy.
No uniforms. No fixed schedules. Combat training, elemental dueling, mana sculpting. Power without restraint. A place for kids who didn't fit anywhere else—kids too dangerous for public schools, too gifted to waste time with mortals.
Nicholas wanted in. Michael knew it without even asking.
But he wasn't strong enough yet.
And he knew it.
That knowledge ate at him.
One night, Michael found him outside again—alone in the alley behind their apartment, palms upturned to the sky. Sparks danced across his skin, small bolts flicking between his fingertips like restless insects.
"You'll fry the power grid," Michael said gently.
Nicholas didn't turn.
"I'm practicing."
"I figured."
Michael stood beside him, watching the arcs climb his arms.
"I saw the bruise on your jaw."
"Yeah? I saw the one on your ribs."
Michael chuckled dryly, but there was no humor in it. "You're gonna get suspended again."
"I don't care."
Lightning sparked brighter at that, jumping across his forearm. His breathing was shallow—fast.
Michael looked at him, really looked. And for a second, the tough front cracked. Just for a second.
Nicholas's shoulders sagged.
"I didn't even do anything," he muttered. "I just walked past and they called me a freak. One of them threw a lunch tray. I zapped his backpack. That's it."
"You melted a desk."
"He shouldn't have grabbed me."
Michael said nothing.
Because he understood.
Because he would've done the same.
Later that night, when Nicholas had gone to bed, Michael stayed up, staring at the ceiling. He thought about everything that had changed—how their dad didn't even look Nicholas in the eye anymore. How their apartment was just four walls now. How Nicholas flinched whenever someone touched his shoulder from behind.
He thought about what it meant to have power. And what it meant not to.
And somewhere in the quiet, in the dark, he whispered something to the air—something he never would've said aloud:
"I'm scared I'm never going to catch up."
Not just to Nicholas.
To the world.
To whatever was coming.
And then, as if summoned by his thoughts, thunder rolled again—low and long. A pulse in the atmosphere.
Not natural.
Michael sat up.
And for a heartbeat, he thought he felt something beneath his skin.
A flicker.
A tingle.
Then it passed.
Maybe it was nothing.
Maybe it wasn't.
Their father didn't come home that weekend.
Or the one after.
When he did, it was only for an hour. Long enough to shower, eat, and leave again. He didn't speak to Nicholas. Barely nodded at Michael. He looked older now. More distant.
More hollow.
Michael remembered the man his father used to be. Stern, but steady. The kind of dad who taught them how to build a radio from scratch. Who had once carried Nicholas on his shoulders through a crowd during a mana storm and laughed when they both got soaked.
That man was gone.
Ever since their mother died, it was like something inside him had snapped shut.
And whenever he looked at Nicholas now… Michael saw it.
Not fear. Not grief.
Blame.
Maybe he didn't say it out loud. Maybe he never would.
But the way he moved. The way his voice changed when Nicholas entered the room. The way he stood at the door like he didn't want to cross into the same space.
It was obvious.
And it was tearing them apart.
One night, after their father left again without a word, Nicholas asked the question.
"Do you think he hates me?"
Michael didn't know what to say.
He looked at his brother—at the faint glow under his skin, the sparks that lit his fingertips, the fire in his eyes.
And he didn't lie.
"I think he misses Mom so much he doesn't know where to put it."
Nicholas was quiet.
Then he nodded.
And turned away.
The light in his hands dimmed.
And Michael sat there, helpless, knowing that even if he Awakened tomorrow… there were some things he couldn't fix.
Not with strength.
Not with lightning.
Not even with time so he thought.