Today I am here offering a special deal if we arrive at 100 powersone for the end of the week, I will unleash on all of you my secret stash of 10 chapters.
The sticky, suffocating heat of a New York June had finally settled over Queens, pressing against the window screens like a damp wool blanket. The rattling box fan in the corner of Maya's bedroom was fighting a losing battle, merely pushing the hot, stagnant air around.
Sweat stung Maya's eyes, dripping from the tip of her nose to splatter against the scuffed hardwood floor.
Thirty-eight.
She lowered herself, her elbows bending at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. Her core was locked rigid, her spine a straight line.
Thirty-nine.
She pushed back up. Her triceps burned—a clean, sharp fire of lactic acid buildup, entirely devoid of the terrifying, suffocating chest pain that used to accompany merely standing out of bed.
Forty.
Maya collapsed onto her stomach, burying her face in her crossed arms, her chest heaving as she sucked in mouthfuls of the humid air. Her heart was hammering a rapid, heavy rhythm against her ribs. But the rhythm was flawless. There was no skip. No wet hiss of a failing valve. Just the strong, mechanical perfection of a healthy muscle doing exactly what it was designed to do.
For the last three weeks, her life had been reduced to a brutal, monastic routine. Sleep. Survive Sir Percy's escalating violence in the Mindscape Pavilion. Wake up. Eat everything Eleanor put in front of her. Wait for her mother to leave for her shift as a medical billing clerk, and then immediately begin grinding the physical requirements of the Avalon Protocol in the cramped space between her bed and the closet.
She had scrubbed the apartment top to bottom to satisfy her Armaments Maintenance. She had spent hours anonymously reporting broken streetlights, helping elderly neighbors carry groceries up the stairs, and feeding stray cats in the alley behind the building to inch her Renown upward.
It had been an agonizing crawl. But lying there on the hardwood, feeling the vibration of the N train passing overhead, the air in the room finally shifted.
The scent of summer asphalt was cut by the crisp smell of ozone and old stone.
The golden knotwork of the Avalon Protocol flared to life, casting a warm, honeyed glow across the floorboards.
[Daily Routine Completed.] [Conditioning logged. Analyzing host effort...]
[Effort Assessed: Optimal.] [Reward Granted: +10 Vigor EXP, +10 Might EXP]
A deep, resonant bell chimed in her mind, sending a shiver down her sweat-slicked spine. The golden text expanded, bold and triumphant.
[Milestone Reached: Baseline Equilibrium.]
[Vigor: 9 -> 10] [Might: 9 -> 10] [Agility: 9 -> 10]
[System Assessment: The Host's physical vessel has reached the parameters of a standard, healthy human adult. The congenital defect previously hindering the vessel has been fully compensated for by biological reinforcement. The foundation is sealed.]
Maya rolled onto her back, staring at the glowing words floating near the ceiling.
The foundation is sealed.
Dr. Aris's voice echoed in her memory from her follow-up appointment three days ago. The cardiologist had stared at her latest echocardiogram with a look of profound, existential confusion, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose as he muttered about "unprecedented tissue regeneration" and "spontaneous structural correction." He had halved her medication on the spot, telling Eleanor that he wanted to write a medical journal article about her.
She wasn't dying anymore. The Sword of Damocles that had hung over the original Maya's head for five years, and Arthur's head for the last month, had finally been removed.
Maya pushed herself off the floor. She walked over to the cheap, full-length mirror screwed to the back of her bedroom door.
She stripped off her sweat-soaked grey t-shirt, tossing it onto the bed, and looked at her reflection in the dim light filtering through the blinds.
The sickly, Victorian-ghost pallor was completely gone. Her skin held a healthy, warm undertone. The sharp, aristocratic angles of her face—the jawline that reminded Arthur of a more imposing Emma Watson—were no longer hollowed out by starvation and poor circulation. Her dark red hair, washed and brushed, fell over her shoulders in thick, heavy waves.
The muscle atrophy was gone. She wasn't bulky by any means, but the soft, fragile frailty had been replaced by a lean, wiry definition. She looked exactly like what the System said she was: a perfectly healthy, athletic eighteen-year-old girl.
She traced her collarbone with her thumb, feeling the solid density of the bone. For the first time since waking up in this universe, she didn't feel like an imposter wearing a corpse. She felt like the owner of the house.
The sound of the front door deadbolt clicking threw her out of her thoughts.
"May? I'm home!" Eleanor called out, the jingle of keys hitting the ceramic bowl in the entryway echoing down the hall. "I brought Chinese! The place on 31st finally fixed their AC!"
Maya grabbed a clean t-shirt from her dresser, quickly pulling it over her head. "In here, Mom!"
Eleanor pushed the bedroom door open a few seconds later, holding a brown paper bag stained with grease spots from the takeout boxes. She paused in the doorway, taking in the sight of her daughter. Maya was standing in the middle of the room, barefoot, slightly flushed from the heat, looking impossibly vibrant.
Eleanor's smile wavered, a flash of something unreadable passing behind her eyes before she forced the grin back into place. Even after weeks of steady improvement, Eleanor still looked at her like she might shatter into a million pieces if someone dropped a heavy book in the next room.
"You're sweating," Eleanor noted, her maternal radar instantly pinging. "Did you take your afternoon pill? Were you doing stairs again? The doctor said—"
"I was just doing some stretching, Mom," Maya interrupted gently, walking over and taking the heavy bag of food from her hands. "And Doctor Aris said I could resume light physical activity, remember? I'm fine. I feel great."
"I know, I know," Eleanor sighed, leaning against the doorframe and running a hand through her hair. "It's just... a hard habit to break. Worrying about you."
"You don't have to anymore."
They moved to the small kitchen table. As Eleanor plated the lo mein and General Tso's chicken, the ambient noise of the city hummed around them. William had flown back to Chicago two weeks ago, his corporate crisis finally demanding his return, leaving the apartment to its usual, quiet matriarchy.
"So," Eleanor said, using her chopsticks to point at Maya over a carton of white rice. "We need to talk about the elephant in the room."
Maya paused, a piece of chicken halfway to her mouth. "Which elephant? The broken AC unit or the fact that the super still hasn't fixed the sink?"
"The future, Maya," Eleanor said softly, dropping the casual banter. She set her chopsticks down, lacing her fingers together on the scarred laminate table. "You spent the last three years in and out of hospitals. You've been doing the home-school packets when you were strong enough, but you technically missed your entire junior and senior years. Doctor Aris says you can live a completely normal life now."
Eleanor searched Maya's face. "What does a normal life look like for you? Do you want to try to go back to the high school in the fall? Talk to a counselor about making up the credits?"
Maya chewed slowly, swallowing the food as her mind raced.
High school. The thought was physically repulsive to Arthur's thirty-two-year-old soul. Sitting in a cramped desk, listening to teenagers complain about prom while she was spending her nights dodging medieval maces and tracking criminal syndicates for an ancient magical matrix? Absolutely not. It was a waste of time, and worse, a massive restriction on her mobility.
But she couldn't just tell Eleanor she was planning to become an underground knight of the realm. She needed a cover. Something that explained why she was out at odd hours, why she was physically active, and what she was doing with her life.
Her eyes drifted down the hallway, toward the bedroom where the black artist's portfolio lay tucked beneath her bed.
The original Maya was incredibly talented. Her sketches of the Hell's Kitchen goons and the Daredevil sightings weren't just crude doodles; they possessed a raw, structural accuracy. Over the last few weeks, Maya had picked up the charcoal pencils during her downtime. Surprisingly, the muscle memory had transferred seamlessly. Arthur's analytical eye for geometry combined with the original Maya's artistic intuition created something genuinely impressive.
It was the perfect alibi.
"No high school," Maya said firmly, meeting her mother's eyes. "I want to get my GED. I can take the test next month. I've been studying the packets."
Eleanor frowned. "Okay. A GED is fine. But then what? A job? College?"
"College," Maya nodded, feeling the lie slide into place, smooth and watertight. "Art college, specifically. I want to put a portfolio together. Apply to SVA, or maybe Pratt, for the spring semester."
Eleanor blinked, clearly caught off guard. "Art? Maya, you haven't drawn in... well, I thought you stopped. You used to just sit by the window with that sketchpad."
"I did stop. When it hurt too much to hold the pencils," Maya lied effortlessly, channeling the grief she knew the original girl had felt. "But I've been looking through my old stuff. I want to do it, Mom. I want to do it for real."
She leaned forward, injecting genuine passion into her voice. "I want to be out in the city. I want to take the subway into Manhattan, sit in Washington Square Park, and sketch the architecture. I want to draw people who are actually moving, not just pigeons on a fire escape. I spent five years trapped in a box. I want to see the world, and I want to draw it."
Eleanor stared at her. The concern on her face slowly melted, replaced by a profound, wavering relief. Her eyes welled with tears, and she quickly reached up to wipe them away, laughing a little at herself.
"God, listen to you," Eleanor whispered, reaching across the table to squeeze Maya's hand. "You sound like you. You finally sound like you again."
Guilt twisted briefly in Maya's gut, a sharp little needle, but she buried it under the necessity of survival.
"So, SVA?" Eleanor asked, sniffing and picking her chopsticks back up. "That's in Manhattan. That's a long commute."
"I can handle it," Maya said confidently. "But it means I need to start building a real portfolio now. Urban landscapes, figure studies. I'll need to go out. Take reference photos. Sketch in different neighborhoods."
"As long as you have your phone on you," Eleanor compromised, her protective instincts still flaring, but yielding to the logic. "And you don't stay out past dark. Queens is safe enough, but the city can get weird after sunset."
If only you knew, Maya thought, taking a bite of the lo mein.
"Deal," Maya said.
The cover was set. She had funding from the System's daily drops, a perfectly healthy body capable of absorbing Sir Percy's training without failing, and an ironclad excuse to wander the streets of New York City carrying a sketchbook.
She finished her dinner, the cheap Chinese food tasting like a victory feast. As she helped Eleanor clear the table, she felt the phantom hum of the Avalon Protocol in the back of her mind.
Tomorrow, she wouldn't just be doing pushups in her bedroom. She was going to take her sketchpad, cross the bridge, and start hunting down the shadows the original Maya had seen in Hell's Kitchen.
The N train was a rolling, metal oven.
Maya stood near the center doors, her right hand loosely gripping the overhead steel rail. The subway car violently rocked side to side as it screeched through the dark tunnel beneath the East River, throwing a group of tired-looking tourists against the plastic partitions. Maya didn't stumble. Her boots remained planted, her center of gravity automatically shifting to absorb the kinetic sway of the train.
She looked up at her arm. Her bicep wasn't trembling. Her knuckles weren't white with the effort of holding her own weight. For a normal person, standing on a moving train was an unconscious act. For Maya, possessing a fully restored Vigor and Might of 10, it felt like an absolute superpower.
She inhaled deeply, taking in the unmistakable, atrocious subway cocktail of burnt brake dust, stale sweat, and spilled cheap beer. She didn't cough. Her lungs expanded effortlessly.
I could run a mile right now, she thought, a giddy, irrational thrill shooting through her chest. I could run five.
The train decelerated with a high-pitched squeal, pulling into the 42nd Street – Times Square station. The doors slid open, letting in a wave of humid, stagnant subterranean air. Maya adjusted the strap of the heavy black canvas messenger bag resting against her hip—her new "art supply" bag, secretly carrying her thick sketchbook, a handful of charcoal pencils, and the heavy, coarse Whetstone of the Vanguard buried securely at the bottom.
She flowed out onto the platform with the crowd. Her Footwork & Stance passive skill, honed to the Apprentice level by Sir Percy's relentless beatings, hummed quietly in the background of her mind. She didn't just walk; she navigated. She subconsciously read the shifting shoulders of a businessman rushing for his connection, stepping smoothly to the left a fraction of a second before he cut across her path. She slipped between a slow-moving family and a concrete pillar without breaking her stride. She moved like water around river rocks.
Surfacing onto 8th Avenue was like stepping onto the surface of a grimy, deafeningly loud sun.
The July heat was oppressive, baking the asphalt and radiating upward in visible, shimmering waves. Maya pulled a pair of cheap sunglasses over her eyes, turning west.
Hell's Kitchen.
In the films, Arthur remembered this neighborhood as a backdrop for spectacular ninja fights and brooding lawyers. In reality, walking down 39th Street, it was a neighborhood caught in a violent, ugly transition. The classic, rusted fire escapes and crumbling brick walk-ups were increasingly overshadowed by massive skeletons of raw steel and concrete.
Scaffolding was everywhere, creating long, claustrophobic tunnels over the sidewalks. And plastered across almost every single chain-link fence, temporary wooden wall, and crane was a crisp, green and white logo.
Union Allied Construction.
Maya slowed her pace, her eyes scanning the street. The original Maya's notebook had flagged a specific block—a row of old, family-owned bodegas and a dry cleaner that had recently been boarded up.
She found it halfway down 44th Street. Half the block was cordoned off behind heavy green plywood barricades. A massive backhoe sat idle in a crater of excavated dirt, its yellow paint dull under the overcast sky.
Maya crossed the street, stepping over a puddle of questionable grey water, and approached a small, rundown coffee shop sitting directly opposite the construction site. The bell above the door jingled weakly as she pushed her way inside. The blast of aggressive AC was a physical relief.
She bought a large iced black coffee with some of her System-provided cash, offering a polite nod to the bored teenager behind the register. She grabbed a few extra napkins and claimed a small, wobbly circular table right pressed against the front window.
It was the perfect vantage point.
Maya unclipped her messenger bag. She pulled out the large, spiral-bound sketchbook and a tin of charcoal pencils. She set the iced coffee down, the condensation immediately pooling on the scratched laminate tabletop.
She opened the book to a fresh, thick page. She selected a medium-soft charcoal stick, testing the tip against her thumb.
She had to make this look real. If anyone was watching the watchers, she couldn't just be a kid staring blankly at a dirt pit.
Maya looked out the window, framing the shot in her mind. The harsh, geometric angles of the green plywood barricade. The slumped, mechanical exhaustion of the backhoe. The jagged silhouette of the scaffolding against the hazy sky.
She touched the charcoal to the paper.
The original Maya's talent woke up instantly, guiding Arthur's spatial awareness. She didn't draw clean, sterile lines. She used the side of the charcoal, laying down heavy, smudged shadows first, building the weight of the scene before defining the edges. Her hand moved with a rapid, confident scratch, the sound entirely masking the low hum of the coffee shop's refrigerator.
For twenty minutes, she just drew. It was strangely meditative. She let herself get lost in the friction of the charcoal, the way the dark dust clung to the paper, capturing the grit of the neighborhood.
But her Aether—sitting at a sharp 13—kept her peripheral awareness wide open.
A black Lincoln Town Car pulled up to the curb directly in front of the Union Allied barricade. It parked completely over the crosswalk, ignoring a faded 'No Standing' sign.
Maya didn't stop drawing. She kept her head down, her hand moving rhythmically, but she shifted her eyes up beneath the rim of her sunglasses.
The front doors of the Town Car opened. Two men stepped out.
They weren't construction foremen. They wore dark, ill-fitting suits that looked too heavy for the summer heat. They were broad-shouldered, their posture rigid and confrontational. The passenger-side guy casually adjusted his jacket, and Maya's hyper-vigilant eyes caught the distinct, heavy bulge resting against his left ribcage. A shoulder holster.
Courtly Etiquette filtered their body language through Maya's mind. They weren't here to inspect a foundation. They were here to collect, or to intimidate. They moved with the arrogant, relaxed swagger of apex predators in an ecosystem that didn't have any natural threats.
A third man stepped out of the back seat. He was older, wearing a sharp grey suit with a pale blue shirt, the collar unbuttoned. He held a thick manila folder.
Maya flipped her sketchbook to a new page. Her charcoal stick snapped against the paper, a sharp, urgent stroke.
She didn't draw the backhoe this time. She drew the men. She focused on the older man in the grey suit, capturing the sharp line of his jaw, the receding hairline, the heavy gold watch on his left wrist.
The three men walked past the green plywood barrier, bypassing the main gate of the construction site entirely. Instead, they ducked down a narrow, trash-strewn alleyway that ran between the excavated lot and the adjacent, still-occupied tenement building.
Maya's charcoal stopped moving.
The alley was a blind spot.
She looked down at her iced coffee. The ice cubes had mostly melted, watering down the dark liquid. She looked back at the alleyway. The shadows had already swallowed the three men.
A familiar, electric warmth prickled at the base of her skull. The air in the coffee shop seemed to distort slightly over the lid of her plastic cup.
[Quest Update: The Shadow of the Kitchen]
[Target Identified: Union Allied Enforcers.]
[The Hunt begins. A knight does not wait for the wolf to strike the flock.]
Maya let out a slow, steady breath. She closed the tin of pencils and shoved them into her messenger bag. She slammed the sketchbook shut, the heavy paper making a solid thwack, and threw it in after them.
She stood up, her pulse ticking upward, the Vigor in her veins humming with a dark, terrifying anticipation.
She slung the heavy bag over her shoulder. She wasn't an invalid anymore. She wasn't a ghost sitting by a window.
Maya pushed the glass door of the coffee shop open, stepping out into the suffocating heat of Hell's Kitchen, and crossed the street toward the alley.