Luca had never dreamed the guy he used to could be so far off from the man he was becoming. Something within him had ignited amid the terrible aftertaste of betrayal and near-death, a ferocious spark of defiance that refused to be extinguished when the shadows of uncertainty had tried to swallow his soul.
Now Luca experienced the first real rush of strength as he stood among the wreckage of a conflict that had worn on his body and damaged his soul. Born of the wounds almost ending him, it was a deeper, more nuanced power, not the raw, untampered might of pure force. And in that instant he realized his time had arrived: the time for Luca to rise, as he stared out over a field marred with the blood of comrades and foes both.
