Two days after Ascension.
He didn't feel any different.
Two days had passed since Johnson accepted Scar's offer—two days since he became, in Scar's words, "an angel." But standing in front of the mirror, flexing fingers that looked the same, blinking eyes that saw the same reflection, he felt like the same man who stepped into this world from the wrong Earth.
Scar said the transformation was complete. That he was no longer human. That somewhere in the deepest strata of his DNA, something had been rewritten.
But Johnson felt nothing. No power humming beneath his skin. No lightning behind his thoughts. Just the weight of uncertainty and the buzz of fluorescent lights in a room that smelled too much like steel and recycled air.
To be fair, he hadn't had a real chance to test himself. The last 48 hours had been consumed by compressed historical briefings. Each session a deep plunge into a parallel Earth's last 200 years—wars that never happened in his own world, leaders he never heard of, cities renamed, nations redrawn. The lectures were relentless. Twelve hours a day, no breaks except for synthetic meals and short, silent walks.
Still, he'd learned enough.
The war—the real war—had been locked in place for over two decades. The frontlines hadn't moved in years. A cold conflict, shaped more by surveillance, infiltration, and quiet erasures than traditional combat. Skirmishes flared here and there. Explosions rocked forgotten valleys. But to the broader world, things seemed almost peaceful.
The most significant event of the past five years? A battle between two angels. Hidden. Suppressed. Denied.
The public knew nothing.
Johnson wasn't alone in this. There were five other angels in Scar's fold. Six now, counting him.
Barry was the first he met—the one who pulled him through the veil. Barry was eccentric, flamboyant, a whirlwind of color in a facility built of monotones. His ability? Summoning. Anything and everything, bound by strange rules Barry never explained.
Then James. Quiet, gentle, with a gaze like calm water. His gift was healing, but not just mending wounds—James could rebuild shattered limbs, cure poison, even halt death if he acted quickly enough.
Gregory, older, stoic, the kind of man who spoke rarely and always with weight. His power was shapeshifting—subtle, perfect mimicry of appearance, voice, and even scent. Johnson had once mistaken him for Scar in the hallway.
Timothy was the youngest—barely sixteen. He was eager, hyper-focused, with eyes that sparkled at the mention of weaponry. His ability, weapon proficiency, was broad but frightening: give him a weapon, any weapon, and in seconds he'd wield it like a master.
And then there was Charles.
The silent one. The only one who made Johnson nervous. He never raised his voice, rarely spoke at all, and always seemed distant, like his thoughts floated somewhere above the room. His gift? Mimicry. Watch someone do something—anything—and he could master it instantly. Martial arts, piano, codebreaking, sniper fire. There were no limits.
Two years ago, Charles fought one of Yuno's angels. Details were scarce, classified even among the team. All Johnson knew was that the fight ended in less than two minutes—and the other angel didn't survive.
Today was different.
Scar had declared this morning ceremonial. A gift would be given—Johnson's power, born from his will. He'd spent the last two nights tossing in bed, turning over possibilities. He didn't need sleep anymore, but insomnia remained a habit. He settled on an answer just before dawn.
He dressed in the standard black jumpsuit issued to all angels—a sleek, tactical material that adapted to temperature and offered light ballistic protection. Over it, he wore the matching black cloak, though it felt performative. Scar was the only one who wore his full-time; the rest only donned theirs for diplomatic functions or deployment.
A sidearm had been issued too: a single-action revolver, polished silver with a pearl grip. Beautiful. Useless. Johnson left it in his quarters. Guns didn't matter in angel warfare. They were ornaments now.
The corridors stretched long and narrow, a labyrinth of steel and security protocols. When he reached the meeting room, the others were already seated in a half-moon arc before a long console. Scar stood at its center.
But something was different.
This was the first time Johnson had seen him without the mask or the cloak.
Scar looked… human.
Older than expected. Maybe fifty, maybe more. His face was lined, not from age alone, but from countless healed wounds. Thin scars traced his jaw, his temple, one cutting clean across the bridge of his nose. His black hair was still thick, but streaked faintly at the sides.
He looked like a man who had walked through centuries of war—and never once flinched.
Scar glanced up. His voice, as always, was dry but commanding.
"Waldith, you're late. Sit. We have business."
Johnson took his place beside Barry, who offered a smirk and a wink. Despite his delicate appearance and soft voice, Barry identified clearly as male. But among angels, gender wasn't fixed. Biology had long since stopped dictating identity.
Scar continued without ceremony.
"Today, I grant Waldith his gift. After this, I'll be attending a summit with ACS leadership. There will be two meetings. One today. One next Thursday. I want all of you present for the second. You'll act as my escorts."
Barry raised a hand.
"With respect, sir, I'd rather be shot in the foot than sit through a diplomatic posturing session."
Scar stared at him, deadpan.
"I'm not forcing anyone. But if you don't attend, you're in charge of weekly propaganda."
Barry visibly recoiled.
"You monster."
Scar smirked, just faintly. "Back on topic. Until the summit, Johnson will train under Charles. Charles can master Johnson's chosen ability—and, in turn, Johnson can study it from him. Later this week, the two of them will deploy to the Southern Front to investigate angelic activity. If they confirm enemy agents, eliminate them."
Johnson glanced at Charles, but the man didn't meet his eye. Just stared forward with that worn, unreadable expression.
Scar turned back to Johnson.
"Well?"
Johnson stood. His voice was steady. He'd rehearsed it a dozen times.
"Telekinesis."
Scar's answer came without hesitation.
"No."
It was blunt, almost mechanical.
Johnson blinked. "What?"
Scar's eyes locked on his.
"We confirmed last year that ability already exists. One of Yuno's angels has it."
The silence in the room thickened. Johnson clenched his jaw. What now?
Then—quietly—Charles spoke.
"Pick manipulation."
Every gaze turned to him.
Charles didn't flinch. Didn't look at anyone. Just stared at the wall like he was reading something invisible there.
"It's structurally similar. You'll be able to move objects. Guide vectors. Same function. Different origin."
Scar raised an eyebrow, then looked to Johnson.
"Agreed?"
Johnson hesitated. But Charles had acknowledged him. For the first time.
That meant something.
"…Yeah. I'm fine with that."
Scar nodded once. Final.
"Then it's done."
--------------------
"You need to open your mind. This is pathetic."
The insult cracked across the dry air like a whip.
Johnson winced, but didn't respond. His jaw clenched, blood trickling from a split lip. The taste of copper was familiar now. He'd been bleeding most of the day—cuts, bruises, bruises beneath bruises—and it was all thanks to Charles.
Charles hadn't offered a single word of encouragement since they started. Just pressure. Constant, deliberate pressure, like he was trying to squeeze something out of Johnson. And maybe he was. Because apparently just being powerful wasn't enough. No matter how hard Johnson pushed, Charles pushed harder. No matter how fast he moved, Charles moved faster.
It was like trying to outfight a thunderstorm.
"Again," Charles said, his voice flat, bored.
They'd been training in an abandoned clearing—no buildings, just cracked earth, scattered stone, and the faint shimmer of old battle-scorched trees. A testing ground. And Johnson? He was the test.
He staggered to his feet, rolling his shoulders. His arms ached. His knees felt like wet sand. But somewhere inside that exhausted body, he could feel it—the difference. Not just in strength, but in composition. His bones felt denser. His skin, tougher. Muscles rippled under his flesh like braided steel. His reaction time was tighter than it used to be. Faster. Controlled.
He'd come a long way. He just didn't know if it was far enough.
Breathing hard, he planted his feet and dropped into a stance. Not something from a martial art. Not trained. Just instinct—centered, braced, ready. His fingers curled. The ground beneath him seemed to respond, faint tremors swirling as his will gripped the earth.
He reached out—not physically, but with something deeper. Energy. Power. It was no longer unfamiliar. It pulsed in his core like a second heartbeat. He focused and dragged it forward, visualizing the mass below the surface. Rock, soil, weight. Something he could throw. A jagged slab of earth ripped free with a roar and rose into the air, hovering beside him like a loyal blade.
He flung it toward Charles.
It wasn't slow, either. It carved through the air like a missile, an angry blur of force and stone.
But Charles didn't move. He never moved.
He raised one finger.
And stopped it.
Not a jolt. Not a hesitation. Just... stopped.
The five-ton projectile halted like it had hit an invisible wall. Then it crumbled into dust midair, collapsing with a dull crash across the dirt.
Johnson's fists dropped to his sides. His breath shuddered out of him.
It didn't matter how hard he hit. Charles made it look like a child throwing pebbles at a tank.
"Trying it over and over won't make it work," Charles said, voice laced with boredom. "Be creative."
Johnson's shoulders slumped. He could feel it again—that sick frustration crawling up his spine. The kind that didn't come from failure, but from failing when you didn't even understand why. His power was growing. He could feel it. Every day, he was more than he was the day before. But Charles treated it like nothing.
And maybe it was nothing.
Against someone like him.
He wanted to scream. To quit. To punch Charles in the face. But he didn't. Because deep down, he knew the truth: Charles wasn't holding back to mock him. He was holding back because he had to.
Because if he didn't, Johnson would already be dead.
Charles sighed and took a step forward, finally closing the distance a little. He gestured to the rubble. "Let's make this useful."
He flicked his hand. A spike of rock lifted from the ground and launched at Johnson's side. He tried to deflect it, but it caught him across the ribs. His vision flashed white, then dimmed. His legs buckled.
"Feel that?" Charles said calmly.
"Yeah," Johnson gasped, gripping his side.
"Your core just healed a double fracture. Cost you maybe ten percent of your energy."
Johnson's eyes widened.
"You think this is just about throwing rocks with your mind? No. It's about control. Power. And understanding how that power runs out."
Charles's voice turned clinical. "You have a core. Everyone does. It's your reservoir. Your stamina. Your mana. Your life force. Same pool."
He lifted another rock—hovering it above his palm. "Every action you take draws from it. Lifting, shielding, striking, sensing. All of it costs something. But healing? That costs the most. That spike would've crippled a human. Your power paid the price."
Johnson tried to stand straighter, but the fatigue was creeping in now. He could feel the burn. The core he hadn't realized he had was dimming.
Charles wasn't done. "Now here's the part no one likes: celestial power isn't static. It grows. Constantly. Slowly, but steadily. Every celestial is gaining energy every second. That's what makes the strong terrifying. Their core refills faster than you can hurt them."
"So… you can't kill them?" Johnson asked, still panting.
"You can," Charles said. "But you need to outpace the refill rate. You hit them faster and harder than they can regenerate. And that brings us to the three damage types."
He raised three fingers.
"One: Physical. Basic stuff. Fists, blades, bullets, force. You can hurt a celestial this way, but it's slow. Takes effort. They heal it fast."
"Two: Energy-based. You need a Gift for this. Something that lets you shape your power, direct it. Bolts, blasts, pure force. This drains their core directly, but it's tricky."
"Three: Infusion." His eyes locked onto Johnson's. "You take your energy. You push it into your limbs. Your fist becomes a weapon—not just physical, but spiritual. When you strike, you're hitting the body and the core. If you do more damage than the core holds…"
"What happens?"
Charles's gaze went cold.
"It Shatters."
The word dropped like a stone.
"The core explodes. The celestial drops. Mortal again. Forever. No healing. No powers. Just a body. Easy to kill. Or leave, if you've got mercy."
Johnson swallowed.
"And when that happens," Charles added, "every other celestial in the world feels it. A mental shockwave. Instant. Cold. Like hearing a god scream inside your skull."
He gestured to the sky.
"One Shatter can start a war."
Johnson stood there, breathing heavy, processing it all. The cost of failure wasn't just death. It was exposure. Conflict. Reverberations across the whole damn world.
"Why didn't you tell me all this earlier?" he asked.
"Because until today," Charles said, "you didn't have the control to do anything with it."
He paused, then added, "Tomorrow, we hunt angels. You'll see it for yourself."
He turned, starting to walk away.
"Try not to get killed. I need you alive long enough to learn what a Shatter feels like from the other side."
And then he was gone, leaving Johnson alone in the dust, heart pounding, core dimming, and one terrifying truth ringing in his mind—
He wasn't training to win.
He was training to end gods.
------------------
They left before sunrise.
The city behind them was still dark, windows shuttered, the streets silent beneath a heavy dawn haze. Few stirred that early unless they had reason. Celestials moved in the margins—between hours, between worlds—and today was no different. Charles walked with purpose, his cloak slung around his shoulders, hood down, pistol resting in a high holster beneath his left arm. Johnson followed behind him, mimicking the weight, the stride, the quiet that Charles carried like a second skin.
They didn't speak.
The outer districts gave way to ruin faster than expected. Civilization thinned to cracked pavement, sagging buildings, burned-out cars. It had been this way since the last Shatter two years prior. When a god fell, the world shook. Borders shifted. Alliances collapsed. The aftermath didn't just leave scars—it hollowed entire zones into ghostlands.
Their route took them along the border of the waste, where old infrastructure ended and nature tried, in vain, to reclaim the broken. Metal scaffolding twisted into strange shapes. Walls bore claw marks from beasts warped by celestial fallout. The smell of old blood, dust, and ozone lingered in the wind. Johnson tightened his cloak around him, his fingers brushing the cold steel grip of his sidearm. It grounded him.
"They'll sense us before we see them," Charles said eventually, voice low. "Doesn't matter how quiet we are. The moment we crossed the edge, we lit up like flares."
Johnson nodded. He could feel it too—the low hum in his core, like the tension before a power outage. Static in the air. Pressure building in his spine. They were being watched, maybe not directly, but distantly, like a weight balanced on a thread, waiting to fall.
They descended a long slope into dead land.
The road disappeared beneath ash and crumbled stone. Trees—once tall, proud pines—were now little more than petrified stumps, blackened and brittle. Miles passed. The sky warmed from steel gray to gold, then cooled again, light filtered through a high fogbank. And then the terrain changed.
They reached the basin.
A wide crater, more natural than manmade, though likely forged by force rather than erosion. It stretched nearly half a mile across, sloped with ancient rock and shattered obelisks that once held meaning—symbols of dominion, perhaps, or memory. Now, they were just jagged teeth jutting from the earth, reminders of something older than cities.
The wind stilled. The air thickened.
And in the center of it all, standing in loose formation atop a cracked stone platform, were three. Two females and a male
Even from this distance, their presences were unmistakable. Not just from reputation, but from the way the very air moved around them. Like gravity, but wrong. The energy that pulsed from them wasn't dramatic—not a flare or a storm—but a constant thrum. Steady. Relentless. Core pressure that bent reality around it.
"They're not posturing," Charles muttered.
Johnson glanced sideways. "What do you mean?"
"They're anchored," Charles replied. "Stabilized. Locked in. That's not a scouting party. That's a gauntlet."
"This… this is bad," Johnson whispered.
Charles didn't reply immediately. He let the silence hang, heavy and loaded, like the moment before a hammer fell.
"This isn't a skirmish," he said finally. "They want to draw blood. Trigger a response. Maybe bait a Shatter."
"Can we take them?" Johnson asked.
Charles snorted once. "No. Not cleanly. Not alone. But that's not the point."
"Then what is?"
"To teach you where the lines are."
The two of them moved down the ridge slowly, careful to stay balanced as loose stone crumbled underfoot. The edge of the basin loomed like a cliff, each step heavier than the last. Johnson's core was vibrating now—not with fear, but with pressure. Instinct. Recognition.
Power recognizes power.
They reached a plateau just above the basin. From there, the three angels were clear. They hadn't moved to intercept. That was a message. Confidence—or arrogance. Either way, Charles was watching them like a tactician reading a war map.
"Why the cloaks?" Johnson asked suddenly, voice tight.
Charles didn't look away. "Symbol. Shield. Tradition. Cloaks absorb trace kinetic spill. They tell your allies who you are. And most of all—" he rested a hand on the pistol at his side—"they make you look calm."
Johnson adjusted his collar, let his own sidearm settle where he could draw it easily. It wasn't the gun that made him feel ready. It was the act of preparing for it.
Charles took one step forward.
"You've got energy in you," he said, almost conversational now. "And they're going to try to bleed it dry. You'll feel it happen. Your core will burn trying to keep up. Don't fight that feeling. Understand it."
He flicked his wrist, loosening his shoulders. "Energy heals you. Shields you. Fuels every strike. But healing costs the most. Burn too much, too fast… and you're done."
Johnson said nothing. He felt the world narrowing, focusing into the basin, into those three celestial bodies waiting like coiled serpents.
"And if you hit harder than their core can handle?" Charles said, eyes fixed on the smaller girl.
"You shatter them," Johnson answered quietly.
Charles nodded once.
"And then the whole world feels it."
A long moment passed.
The wind picked up again. Charles adjusted his cloak, stepped to the edge of the slope, posture like stone.
"Stay behind me," he said. "And watch."
He rolled his shoulders once, drawing in a breath that felt like it reached to the center of the earth.
Charles smiled.
It was the first time Johnson had ever seen it—cold, confident, effortless. The expression was sharper than any of the insults he'd endured that week. But what came next was worse.
Charles's left eye ignited, glowing like a star compressed behind flesh—pure blue energy swirling violently in the socket, trailing vapor like a comet tail. The temperature around them shifted. The air shimmered. Something ancient and terrifying was moving through the world.
All three of Yuno's angels snapped their heads toward him at once. Not even a heartbeat had passed. They felt it. Power had entered the field, and it wasn't theirs.
Charles didn't look at them. He turned instead to Johnson, that single, unnerving smile still stretching across his face.
"Watch and learn, kid," he said, voice low, electric. "I'll kill them with your power."
And then he vanished.
BOOOOM.
A concussive sonic blast ripped through the forest clearing like a bomb. Johnson stumbled back—almost lifted off his feet. The wind slapped his cloak flat against his chest. Trees bent. Debris skittered. It wasn't just fast. It was violent.
By the time Johnson's ears stopped ringing, Charles was already in the thick of it.
He caught the first angel—a girl in pale armor—off guard, appearing right in front of her. No wasted motion. No flair. Just a brutal, direct punch to the chest.
He didn't pull back.
He held his fist there.
And the air fractured—splintering in white lines that screamed across the battlefield like glass cracking underwater. It was reality breaking, not just bone.
The girl gasped. Her knees buckled.
Her core had shattered.
In the split-second it took Johnson to process that, Charles had already vanished again—another shockwave slamming outward as he closed the distance to the second target. This one was faster, tougher—his Gift flaring in defense, blades of light forming around his body.
It didn't matter.
Charles dodged everything. Bent around attacks like water through fingers. Then—gone again. A blur. A blink.
He reappeared behind the second angel.
No words. No windup.
Just an infused punch through the back, arm elbow-deep.
Another core gone. Another celestial reduced to mortal flesh.
Johnson could barely breathe. How? Charles wasn't supposed to be the strongest here. These angels outranked him—more power, more energy, more everything.
But the damage Charles dealt wasn't proportional. It was precise. Efficient. Lethal.
Now only one opponent remained—hovering midair, face frozen between rage and disbelief.
Charles stood still, 300 feet away.
No movement.
Then slowly, deliberately, he raised his hand—palm up. Fingers curled.
The air swirled in front of his hand. A sphere of compressed energy formed in silence—unstable, pulsing, growing tighter, denser.
He flicked.
The energy sphere launched forward faster than sound, a streak of blue-white light tearing through the battlefield. It punched straight through the final angel's chest—and didn't stop. It tore through the mountain range beyond, vaporizing stone for miles. A single flick had ended her.
She dropped out of the sky without a sound.
Johnson sprinted across the battlefield as fast as his body would allow. His cloak whipped around him, dust rising from every footfall.
By the time he reached them, Charles was crouched over the now-human girl—calm, focused, pistol already drawn from his hip. One clean shot between the eyes.
Three angels. Sixty seconds.
He holstered the weapon without looking back.