[Location: Ravenswood Substation – Exterior]
The lights died.
One by one, they sputtered and flickered out — leaving the substation in silence, its pulse gone flat. The hum of energy that had filled Tristin's body only moments ago had vanished. Cut. Starved.
He stood still in the center of it all, fingertips still faintly glowing, the last of the power evaporating from his skin like mist.
He didn't move.
He didn't scream.
He just… listened.
Somewhere far above, the sky was beginning to warm with morning. Orange brushed the edges of the buildings like the world was trying to forget the night before.
But it hadn't.
And neither had he.
A voice curled in the dark corner of his mind — soft, broken, childlike.
"It's gone. We used it all."
Tristin blinked once. Slowly.
Then he turned. And walked away.
[Location: Upper East Side – 6:23 AM]
The streets were empty. They weren't supposed to be.
Shops were shuttered. Windows locked. Police barricades remained untouched. Armed vehicles waited in silence, their crews ordered not to fire unless absolutely necessary.
Surveillance drones hovered quietly in the higher air currents, tracking his movement with trembling hands behind the cameras.
But Tristin didn't leap.
He didn't hunt.
He walked.
One foot in front of the other. Bare. Blood-slicked. Silent.
The bone mask still clung to his face, cracked along one cheek. The Kagune twitched behind him like sleeping serpents, limp but alert.
He passed a church.
He passed a school.
He passed a mural of children playing, half-graffiti, half-faded.
And then, finally—
He stopped.
[Location: Apartment Complex – Demolished Sector 12-C]
The building was condemned.
Graffiti over caution tape. Windows blown out from the inside. Walls half-collapsed. The door was missing.
He remembered it anyway.
The sidewalk still bore the faint chalk outlines of hopscotch. The cracked stairs still groaned under his weight. There was still a dent in the second railing — from when he'd tripped racing his bike home.
He stepped inside.
Dust fell from the ceiling like snow.
Every sound echoed.
There had been screaming here once. Boots. Sirens. Static over loudspeakers. Someone had cried for him, in a voice that still haunted his ribs when he tried to sleep.
"Mom…"
He reached the hallway.
Apartment 14C.
It was barely a room now. A burnt mattress. An open dresser. A melted doorframe.
But it was his.
It had been his.
Tristin stepped into the room like a ghost retracing its own death.
There was nothing left. No toys. No drawings. No smell of pancakes in the walls. Just ash.
Rot.
Silence.
Still—
He crossed to the center of the space and sat down. Then slowly, he lay back on the floor — where the carpet used to be, where he once fell asleep watching cartoons in his mother's arms.
His breathing slowed.
His body, steam-slicked and humming with absorbed energy, twitched once. Then again.
And then—
The Kagune stirred.
Like living limbs they slithered low, curling inward — not in aggression, but protection.
One wrapped under his head, a cradle.
One around his waist, gently.
The last two folded in slow arcs, weaving overhead, forming a dome — not of threat, but of instinct. A cocoon.
They curled over him like a monster's lullaby.
He didn't sleep.
He just… lay there.
A monster.
A weapon.
And somewhere inside it all—
A child.
Outside the apartment, no sirens blared.
No strikes were ordered.
The world paused, just for a moment.
Because somehow—
They knew the monster had gone to sleep.
And he dreamed of home.
[DREAM SEQUENCE — Four Years Ago]
He was small again.
The living room was alive with color and clutter. Cartoon voices murmured from the TV. Outside, someone was mowing their lawn. The window was open. The air smelled like syrup and shampoo.
He was lying on the carpet, elbows propped up, chin in hands.
His mother was on the couch behind him, her feet tucked up beneath her.
The screen showed a tiger — golden, massive, beautiful — tearing through meat in a flash of fang and muscle.
The narrator's voice was calm. Detached.
"Tigers can consume up to forty kilograms of meat in a single sitting."
He turned.
A shape sat on the couch behind him — a presence, not a person. A blur of soft outlines, the memory unable to conjure the details. No face. No voice. Just the feeling of someone who once ran fingers through his hair and hummed when the world was quiet.
He smiled anyway.
"That's like… two hundred cheeseburgers," he said, proud of the math, the joke, the childness of it.
But the presence didn't laugh.
No warm hand ruffled his head.
No playful "That's too many" echoed back.
He turned again.
And this time, the figure in the doorway wasn't warmth.
It was distance in human shape. Another black silhouette. Shoulders slumped. Hands tucked in pockets.
His father.
He didn't step in. Didn't sit down. Didn't speak.
He just stood there — silent. Then turned away.
Something about a phone call.
Something about bills.
Gone.
The boy blinked.
The tiger on the screen roared.
And no one said anything at all.
Not about the meat.
Not about the boy.
Not about the silence.
And in the memory that never quite healed, Tristin whispered to himself — smaller than his age, quieter than breath:
"…Too many cheeseburgers."
Then—
Arms wrapped around him.
Another boy.
Same frame. Same weight. Same face.
But colder. Paler. Wrong.
He didn't need to turn.
He knew who it was.
Oblivion.
The part of him that had survived.
By becoming something else.
He held Tristin from behind, tight, like anchors.
A whisper, not in his ear, but in his ribs:
"It's okay if they forgot."
Tristin blinked.
Oblivion's breath brushed the back of his neck.
"I didn't."
[Location: U.S. Military Observation Perimeter, Zone 4 – 48 Minutes Earlier]
The room was cold.
Colder than it needed to be.
General William Stryker stood at the head of the mobile command tent, surrounded by tactical monitors, satellite feeds, and a dozen armed men. None of them were looking at him.
They were watching the screen.
The footage played again.
Tristin — Oracle — climbing from the rooftop like something pulled out of myth and nightmare. Soldiers screaming. Glass smeared red. A mask grinning in bone. Helicopters spiraling into fire.
A monster in a boy's shape.
Behind Stryker, a man sat slumped in a folding chair. His hands were locked into fists, nails digging half-moons into his knees. Jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.
Not a soldier.
Not an agent.
Just a man.
"That's not him," he said, voice raw with something between guilt and disbelief.
"That's not my son."
Stryker didn't turn around.
"It is. You just don't want it to be."
The man stood abruptly, his breath hitching. Rage on his lips — fear in his chest.
"You made him into that! You put him in a cage! He was twelve—"
Now Stryker turned.
Cold. Calm. Controlled.
"He was dangerous."
"He was a child!"
The man's fury collapsed into silence. He swayed slightly. Eyes wet. The footage still playing behind Stryker's shoulder like an accusation that wouldn't blink.
Stryker stepped forward — slow and deliberate. He reached the edge of the table and set something down.
He placed an open folder on the table.
Crayon drawings.
A tiger.
A third-grade report card.
A file: Subject 016 — Oracle.
He tapped it once.
"You want forgiveness?"
"Ask your son."
"You want redemption?"
"Walk in that house."
The man opened his mouth — to beg, or run, or deny.
He didn't get the chance.
Safeties clicked.
Rifles raised.
Lasers painted his chest.
Stryker didn't blink.
"You made him."
"Now go meet what you made."
The man stared at the photo inside.
A smiling boy.
A tiger on the screen.
Cartoons in the background.
His knees buckled.
The screen behind froze:
Tristin.
Rooftop.
Eyes glowing.
Tendrils raised like wings of flesh and fury.
"You broke him," the man whispered.
Stryker said nothing.
And the guns didn't lower.
[Apartment 14C.]
The door was already open.
Dust hung in the air like dead breath. Sunlight knifed through the blinds, catching on the peeling wallpaper. The carpet was gone. The furniture stripped. Only the rot of mold and memory remained.
And him.
Tristin sat in the middle of the living room floor.
Where the rug had once been.
Where the couch groaned beneath his mother's weight.
Where the television whispered facts about lions, and wolves, and tigers.
The Kagune lay slack around him — four coils of muscle and memory, curled like sleeping predators in the dirt.
His eyes didn't glow anymore.
They just waited.
Waited for the man in the doorway.
"Tristin."
No response.
"It's me… your father."
The Kagune stirred — not to strike.
Just to listen.
Tristin blinked once.
Calm.
Still as a statue left behind in a house that stopped belonging to anyone.
"They said you'd listen to me," his father tried. "That maybe I could… reach you."
"I didn't know what they were doing to you," he added, quieter. "I didn't know it was like that."
A pause.
He stepped forward.
The Kagune tensed — then relaxed.
One tendril slithered forward, slow and sinuous.
It coiled gently around his arm. Delicate. Like a child hugging a parent's leg.
The man flinched — but didn't pull away.
Tristin tilted his head.
"Do you remember the tiger?" he asked.
"…What?"
"National Geographic. You were home. Just once."
"I was on the floor. You were watching with me."
"They said tigers can eat up to forty kilograms of meat in a single sitting."
"I told you that."
The man blinked. Tried to recall. Said nothing.
"That's like two hundred cheeseburgers," Tristin said softly.
Still silence.
"You were supposed to laugh."
"Or say it was too many."
His voice didn't rise.
It dropped. Duller. Like a sound sinking beneath water.
"But you didn't say anything then."
"And you're not saying anything now."
"I'm sorry, Tristin," his father said, voice shaking. "I didn't know what to say back then—"
Tristin stood.
Not suddenly.
Not violently.
Just… rose.
One tendril looped behind his father's back. Another coiled around his chest. A third brushed his jaw like a mother's thumb wiping away tears.
And the fourth —It waited.
Tristin stepped forward.
Voice low.
Gentle.
"Come."
"Come, Father."
"Let us embrace at last."
The tendrils pulled him in.
His father froze — eyes wide, body rigid. Panic rooted him in place.
But the arms of his son welcomed him.
Held him.
Cradled him like something beloved.
Then — they tightened.
Ribs cracked.
Spine shifted.
Lungs collapsed.
No scream.
Just a grunt.
A final exhale.
Tristin leaned in.
Whispered into his ear.
"You should've said something."
The sound of breaking wasn't violent.
It was inevitable.
Like gravity reclaiming a broken house.
The Kagune loosened.
And the man — what was left of him —
fell.
Softly.
Tristin stood once more.
Lighter.
The boy had come home.
The father never would.