So here it is, another chapter. Hope you are all liking my work, have fun
The transition back to Astoria was a jarring slide from ancient cold into modern, centrally heated silence. Maya sat on her mattress, her sketchbook open to the flawless rendering of the Washington Square Arch, but her mind was entirely anchored in the system.
She needed to get to level 30. But she couldn't keep hunting car thieves. She needed a larger target, and that meant stepping into a fight that would generate real noise. Fisk.
She closed her eyes, visualizing the Blacksmith's Forge.
[Available Essence: 12,450]
It was time to optimize her setup. The boiled leather was fine for thugs, but a high-caliber round—or a Chitauri energy blast—would slice right through it. She needed something modular. Something that covered the vitals but didn't restrict the movement she needed to maximize her 26 Agility.
She navigated the blueprints, bypassing the shining golden plate and the bulky ceremonial suits.
[Purchase: Tier 2 Modular Knight-Gambeson (Reinforced)].
[Cost: 7,500 Essence].
[Transferring materials to the waking world...].
The air in the bedroom shimmered with heat. The familiar smell of white-blue fire, ozone, and old iron flooded the room. The transition materialized over her bed: a heavy, dense gambeson of quilted grey padding, integrated with overlapping plates of blackened, non-reflective iron covering the forearms, shins, shoulders, and chest. The metal was dull, absorbing the dim light, offering no glint of recognition.
She didn't summon the full helmet. Not yet.
[Essence Balance: 4,950].
She sat on the edge of the bed and strapped the greaves onto her shins, the metal locking into place with a subtle, efficient snick. The extra weight was real—at least forty pounds of added mass—but with Might 24, her legs didn't even register the load.
Maya stood in the full suit. She felt encased, protected, and heavy. This wasn't something she could wear under a flannel shirt.
She looked in her mirror. She looked like a medieval ghost that had walked into the 21st century.
This is what people needed to see. They couldn't connect the broken thugs to Maya, the sick girl from Astoria. They couldn't connect them to the art student at SVA. They needed a symbol, a nameless, terrifying force that came from the sky. They needed a Knight.
Maya pulled the ski mask over her face, sheathed the Uru blade on her back, and stepped out onto the fire escape.
The December wind was biting, but the gambeson kept her warm. She dropped silently to the alley below. The 40 pounds of armor didn't slow her down; if anything, the mass provided a new foundation for her movement. She didn't dodge the wind; she cut through it.
She ran toward the Long Island City waterfront. Tonight, the police scanners were quiet, the air calm. It was the perfect silence before a storm. The Kingpin was out there, insulated by layers of fear and money. Tomorrow, she would find the first gap in his armor. And the city would know that the Knight had arrived.
She pulled the black knit ski mask down over her face, adjusting the eye holes. It was a cheap, temporary solution until she could afford to forge a proper helm from the Armory, but it did the job. It erased Maya from the equation.
She turned her back on the river and headed inland into Long Island City.
The target tonight wasn't a chop shop or a localized extortion racket. The Rookery had pointed her toward a non-descript, windowless brick warehouse tucked between a dormant cement factory and a defunct rail yard. It was leased by a shell corporation traced back to Leland Owlsley—Wilson Fisk's primary financial architect.
Fisk's money was his actual power. If she wanted to force the Kingpin to react, she had to burn his wallet.
Maya approached the facility from the roof of the adjacent rail dispatcher's office. She crouched near the edge, the sleet collecting on the dull iron plates of her shoulders.
The warehouse was secure. Two high-definition cameras monitored the front loading bay. A twelve-foot steel security gate blocked the driveway. Just inside the gate, an idling black town car sat with its exhaust pluming in the cold air, a man in a heavy wool peacoat leaning against the fender, smoking.
These weren't the Russians. They weren't street thugs. They carried themselves with the rigid, professional discipline of highly paid corporate security.
Maya reached over her shoulder and drew The Ashen Wake.
The fourteen-pound Uru sword slid from the leather scabbard. It felt different paired with the armor. It no longer felt like a massive weapon she was dragging around; it felt proportional.
She didn't look for a skylight. She didn't check the back door.
If she wanted to build a myth, she couldn't act like a burglar.
Maya stood up on the edge of the roof, completely exposing her silhouette to the harsh glare of the security floodlights.
The guard leaning against the town car happened to look up. He froze, the cigarette slipping from his fingers, bouncing off his polished shoe. He stared at the figure standing three stories above him—clad in heavy medieval iron, a dark mask, holding a broad, dark grey sword.
Maya stepped off the ledge.
She didn't aim for a dumpster. She dropped straight down, her boots hitting the concrete driveway less than ten feet from the guard.
The impact cracked the pavement. The forty extra pounds of armor, combined with her falling mass and hyper-dense musculature, generated a shockwave that threw a puddle of freezing water outward in a perfectly circular splash. She didn't stumble. She bent her knees, absorbed the kinetic force, and stood fully upright.
The guard scrambled backward, his hand darting inside his peacoat. "Hey! We got a—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Maya closed the ten-foot gap in a single, explosive stride. She didn't swing the sword. She stepped inside his reach and drove the iron-plated forearm of her gambeson directly into his chest.
The blow lifted him entirely off his feet. He slammed backward into the hood of the town car, denting the reinforced steel, and rolled onto the concrete, gasping for air he couldn't catch.
The heavy steel security door of the warehouse slammed open. Three men spilled out onto the loading dock, drawing suppressed sidearms.
Maya didn't seek cover. She advanced.
The first man fired twice.
One bullet missed wildly, shattering the side mirror of the town car. The second round caught Maya square in the left shoulder.
The impact felt like being struck by a heavy fastball. It rocked her torso backward a fraction of an inch, but it didn't penetrate. The 9mm slug flattened against the blackened iron plate, the kinetic energy dispersing through the thick, quilted padding of the gambeson underneath.
It hurt—a deep, spreading bruise blooming under the canvas—but it didn't slow her down.
She reached the loading dock, vaulting the four-foot concrete ledge without using her hands.
The shooter's eyes went wide. He tried to backpedal, raising his gun again.
Maya swept The Ashen Wake in a tight, upward diagonal cut. She didn't use the edge. She twisted her wrists at the last microsecond, slapping the flat of the heavy Uru blade against the side of his weapon.
The gun was violently ripped from his grip, the trigger guard snapping his index finger. Before he could scream, she drove the heavy iron pommel of the sword into his solar plexus, folding him in half.
The remaining two guards split up, trying to flank her on the wide loading dock.
Maya's Agility 26 made their movements look incredibly sluggish. She tracked the man on her right, who was struggling to clear a jam in his weapon. She threw a front kick, planting her iron-plated shin directly into his knee joint. It snapped with a dry, terrible sound, and he went down hard.
The third man realized his gun was useless against the armor. He dropped it, drawing a heavy, serrated combat knife, and lunged.
Maya stood her ground. She let him close the distance, bringing the knife down in an overhead strike aimed at her collarbone. She raised her left arm, catching the blade against the iron plating of her forearm brace. Sparks flew as the serrated steel ground uselessly against the armor.
With her right hand, she swung the Uru longsword horizontally.
She didn't pull the strike. The flat of the heavy blade slammed into his ribs. The sickening crunch of bone echoed over the sleet. The man was launched sideways, crashing through a stack of empty wooden pallets and lying completely still.
The dock was quiet.
Maya stood in the freezing rain, her chest rising and falling in a slow, controlled rhythm. The Uru blade hummed in her hand, the dormant green veins pulsing with a soft, hungry light, having absorbed the kinetic force of the bullets and the impacts.
She turned and walked through the open security door into the warehouse.
The interior was massive, brightly lit by rows of high-bay halogens. Unlike the chopped-up car parts in her previous raids, this place was immaculate. It was lined with rows of towering industrial shelving, stacked with cardboard boxes. In the center of the floor, sitting on wooden pallets, were stacks of bound currency wrapped in thick, clear plastic. Millions of dollars. The Kingpin's liquid capital, waiting to be laundered or moved offshore.
Standing in front of the pallets was a man in a tailored suit, clutching a silver briefcase to his chest. His face was completely devoid of color. He was a low-level accountant, one of Owlsley's numbers guys, and he was staring at her as if a demon had just walked out of the storm.
"Don't," the accountant choked out, taking a step backward, his polished shoes squeaking on the pristine concrete. "Please. The money... just take it. Take whatever you want."
Maya didn't say a word. She walked slowly toward him, the heavy iron plates of her boots making a deliberate, rhythmic sound against the floor.
She stopped three feet away from him. He was trembling so violently the latches on the silver briefcase were rattling.
She raised the Uru sword.
The accountant squeezed his eyes shut, turning his head away and whimpering.
Maya brought the blade down, bypassing him entirely. She drove the armor-piercing point of the sword directly into the center of the nearest pallet of wrapped currency. The incredibly sharp edge sheared through the thick plastic and sliced cleanly through thousands of hundred-dollar bills.
She ripped the blade sideways, gutting the pallet. She kicked the ruined stacks of money across the floor, the shredded bills fluttering into the air like dead leaves.
She moved to the next pallet and did the same. And the next.
She didn't steal a single dollar. She destroyed it. She ruined the product, rendering the serial numbers untraceable and the cash entirely useless to Fisk's operations.
When she had slashed every pallet, leaving the floor littered with millions of dollars in shredded paper, she finally turned back to the accountant. He was leaning against a metal support pillar, his breathing shallow and frantic, watching the destruction of his life's work.
Maya pointed the dark grey tip of the sword directly at his chest.
She still didn't speak. She held the pose for three seconds, ensuring the image of the armored, faceless Knight and the heavy, ruined cash was burned permanently into his retinas. He would tell Owlsley. Owlsley would tell Fisk.
She lowered the blade, turned her back on him, and walked out of the warehouse.
As she stepped back out into the sleet, crossing the yard and vaulting the heavy security gate with a burst of her inhuman strength, the familiar golden light flared in her vision.
[Bounty Complete: The Kingpin's Ledger.] [Target: Financial depot neutralized. Faction capital severely depleted.]
[System Assessment: The Host establishes a chilling psychological profile. The Factions now recognize a localized apex predator.]
[Rewards Calculated:] [Renown EXP +200] [Renown Level Up! Vanguard -> Dread Knight] Description: Your presence actively degrades enemy morale. Low-level adversaries may suffer psychological paralysis or flee upon visual confirmation of the Host.
[Agility EXP +150] [Agility Level Up! 26 -> 27]
[Might EXP +120] [Might Level Up! 24 -> 25]
[Vigor EXP +80] [Vigor Level Up! 21 -> 22]
[Essence Granted: 1,200]
Maya checked the numbers as she sprinted across the rooftops, heading back toward the Queensboro Bridge.
It was working. Hitting the larger targets generated significantly higher yields. But Level 27 was still three levels away from 30. The climb was steep, and the calendar was unforgiving.
She reached the midpoint of the bridge, running along the upper maintenance cables, completely invisible to the late-night traffic below. The freezing wind tore at her gambeson, but she ignored it, her eyes fixed on the distant, glowing skyline of Manhattan.
The bruise on Maya's left shoulder was the exact circumference of a baseball, mottled in deep shades of plum and angry yellow.
She stood in the cramped Astoria bathroom, the frosted window letting in the harsh, glaring light of a frozen December morning, and prodded the discolored skin with her thumb. It tender. The 9mm round hadn't pierced the blackened iron plate of her gambeson, but physics still demanded a toll. The kinetic force had transferred through the metal and the thick quilted padding, slamming into her deltoid with enough power to rupture blood vessels.
A month ago, a blunt impact like that would have fractured her collarbone. Today, with her Vigor sitting at Level 22, the muscle tissue was already aggressively knitting itself back together. By tomorrow morning, the bruise would be nothing more than a faint yellow smudge.
She pulled her oversized grey sweater up over her head, letting the thick wool hide the evidence of her nightlife.
When she stepped into the kitchen, the smell of burnt coffee and cheap bacon grease was thick in the air. Eleanor was leaning against the laminate counter, her arms crossed tight over her chest, staring fixedly at the small television perched next to the microwave.
"...authorities remain tight-lipped, but sources within the NYPD confirm that a massive sum of currency was destroyed on the premises," the news anchor reported, his tone grave. The screen displayed aerial footage of the Maspeth warehouse, surrounded by a perimeter of yellow police tape and dozens of flashing cruisers. "Paramedics treated several private security contractors for severe blunt-force trauma. Bizarrely, witness reports claim the assailant was heavily armored, with one guard describing a figure out of the Middle Ages."
Maya walked to the cabinet and pulled down a ceramic mug, making sure to regulate the pressure of her grip. "Armored?" she asked, keeping her back to the television. "Like a SWAT team?"
Eleanor didn't look away from the screen. "That's not what they're saying. The radio this morning said some of the guards thought it was a guy in actual metal plates. Like a knight." She shuddered, rubbing her upper arms as if warding off a chill. "It's madness, May. It's escalating. First it was gang bangers shooting each other at the docks, now it's maniacs in body armor shredding millions of dollars. The city is losing its mind."
Maya poured her coffee, watching the dark liquid steam in the chilly kitchen. "Maspeth is pretty far out, Mom. It's just industrial parks over there."
"It's Queens," Eleanor snapped, turning around. The dark circles under her eyes seemed more pronounced today. "You promised me you were staying in Queens because it was safe. Now this happens five miles from our front door."
"I'm careful," Maya said softly, taking a sip of the bitter coffee. "I just go to the community center and come straight home. I promise."
Eleanor sighed, the fight draining out of her. She walked over and rested a hand on Maya's uninjured shoulder. Maya forced herself not to flinch.
"I know," Eleanor murmured. "I know you are. I'm just on edge. The clinic has been a nightmare. We're getting an overflow of trauma patients from Manhattan. Broken bones, concussions. The nurses are whispering about some gang war on the West Side, and now this 'knight' thing." She checked the clock on the stove. "I have to go. Do you have your portfolio ready? The submission deadline is only a few weeks away."
"I'm finalizing the last three pieces today," Maya said. "I'll be fine."
"Good." Eleanor kissed her cheek. "Lock the deadbolt. Don't answer the door unless you know who it is."
When the front door clicked shut, the apartment fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. Maya stared at the television screen. The news had cut away from the warehouse to a live shot of the Manhattan skyline.
Right in the center of the frame, towering over the surrounding skyscrapers, was the Stark Tower. It was nearing completion. The massive, angular 'A' was partially installed near the upper penthouse, and a faint, pulsing blue glow emanated from the lower levels where Tony Stark was actively testing the self-sustaining arc reactor.
Maya's jaw tightened.
December.
She had five months. One hundred and fifty days until Loki appeared in the Mojave Desert, seized the Tesseract, and brought the Chitauri down on that exact building. If the invasion happened today, her Agility 27 and Might 25 wouldn't be enough to keep her alive, let alone protect the people on the street. She needed to hit Level 30. The benchmark was absolute.
She walked into her bedroom and pulled her heavy canvas portfolio from under the bed.
She untied the black ribbons and opened it on her desk, the smell of graphite and workable fixative wafting up. The Dual Path. The System had been clear. She couldn't lose herself to the violence, or the stats wouldn't stabilize.
She spent the next three hours meticulously reviewing her life drawings. The charcoal sketch of the old man playing chess in Washington Square Park. A graphite study of Eleanor asleep on the couch, her hand resting over her chest. A stark, high-contrast rendering of the elevated train tracks casting jagged shadows over the Astoria pavement.
They were flawless. Her enhanced perception allowed her to capture the exact weight of light and shadow, giving the images a startling, hyper-realistic depth. But as she touched the textured paper, her mind kept drifting to the heavy, fourteen-pound Uru sword buried in the back of her closet.
She packed the portfolio away, tying the ribbons tight. She had satisfied the anchor for today. Now, she needed the grind.
Maya lay down on her mattress, crossing her arms over her chest. She closed her eyes and let the gravity of the waking world slip away.
The transition to the Otherworld was instant.
She didn't land in the Pavilion's open courtyard this time. Her boots hit hard, packed earth.
She opened her eyes. The freezing, ozone-scented air of the Mindscape bit at her lungs. She was standing in the center of a dense, dead forest. The trees were massive, their trunks thick and twisted, entirely stripped of leaves. The sky above the jagged branches was the familiar, bruised plum color, casting everything in a perpetual twilight.
Sir Percy stood thirty yards away, leaning heavily on his battered broadsword. He wasn't wearing his blackened chainmail today. He wore a simple, heavy linen tunic and thick leather trousers, exposing the thick, roped scars wrapping around his massive forearms.
"You have clad yourself in iron in the waking world," Percy's voice boomed, echoing unnaturally through the dead trees. "You have struck the Kingpin's coffers. You have announced yourself."
Maya drew The Ashen Wake from the scabbard on her back. The sword hummed eagerly, the dark grey metal catching the faint ambient light. "I had to escalate. The street thugs aren't giving me enough experience. I need to push my stats to thirty."
Percy pulled his broadsword from the dirt. He didn't drop into a guard. He just stood there, looking at her with a profound, terrifying stillness.
"You think the iron makes you invincible," the knight said quietly. "You think because the bullets flatten against your chest, you have mastered the violence."
"I broke a dozen armed men," Maya countered, her grip tightening on the leather-wrapped hilt. "I moved a three-ton van by myself. I'm getting faster."
"You are relying on the disparity of force," Percy corrected. He began to pace a slow circle around her, his heavy boots snapping dead twigs on the forest floor. "You are fighting men who do not understand what you are. They hesitate. They panic. But the entities you are preparing for do not panic. They are bred for slaughter."
He stopped, pointing the tip of his massive sword directly at her.
"If you want to reach the threshold of the superhuman, you cannot just lift heavier stones. You must survive a predator."
The air in the dead forest suddenly dropped ten degrees. Maya's breath plumed in thick white clouds. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her Aether 14 screamed a warning, a sharp, localized spike of pure dread that made her stomach drop.
"What did you summon?" Maya asked, dropping her center of gravity and raising the Uru blade.
Percy didn't answer. He took three steps backward, dissolving into the shadows of the massive tree trunks, leaving her alone in the clearing.
Silence descended on the woods. It wasn't a peaceful silence. It was the heavy, suffocating quiet of a vacuum.
A twig snapped directly behind her.
Maya spun, bringing the sword around in a blindingly fast horizontal arc.
Clang.
The impact vibrated up her arms, the kinetic force so immense it nearly tore the hilt from her grasp. The Ashen Wake hadn't struck an iron shield. It had struck a massive, clawed gauntlet.
Standing in front of her was not an armored Echo. It was a towering, heavily muscled aberration. It stood nearly seven feet tall, its skin a mottled, sickly grey, stretched tight over dense, grotesque musculature. It didn't wear armor; its flesh was interwoven with thick plates of dark, chitinous bone. Its face was a featureless expanse of grey tissue, save for a jagged, vertical maw lined with serrated teeth.
It was a nightmare ripped straight from the darkest corners of the System's archives. A physical manifestation of brute, alien force.
The creature didn't flinch from the Uru strike. It swatted Maya's sword aside with terrifying ease and lunged.
Maya relied on her Agility 27. She threw herself backward, twisting in mid-air to avoid the creature's grasping claws. The thing's hand whistled past her chest, the displaced air tearing a gash across her sweater.
She hit the dirt and rolled, springing immediately back to her feet.
"Speed is not enough!" Percy's voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere. "It will adapt. It will predict!"
The creature roared—a sound like grinding metal—and charged. It closed the twenty-foot gap in a single, explosive bound.
Maya braced herself, raising the sword in a high guard. As the creature brought its massive fists down, she didn't try to block the blow. She sidestepped, letting the creature smash its fists into the frozen earth where she had been standing a microsecond before. The impact cratered the ground, sending clumps of frozen dirt flying like shrapnel.
She pivoted, driving the star-iron blade directly into the creature's exposed flank.
The Uru bit deep, shearing through the thick grey muscle. But the creature didn't dissolve into golden ash like the Echoes. It let out a deafening screech and violently backhanded her.
The blow caught Maya in the ribs.
Even with Might 25 and Vigor 22, the impact was catastrophic. It felt like being hit by a wrecking ball. Maya was launched horizontally through the air. She crashed back-first into the trunk of a massive dead oak tree. The wood splintered with a deafening crack, and she crumpled to the roots, gasping for breath.
Her vision swam, static creeping into the edges of her sight. Her ribs screamed in agony.
The creature ripped the Uru sword out of its own flank. It didn't bleed; a thick, black ichor oozed from the wound, immediately beginning to coagulate and seal the flesh. It tossed The Ashen Wake aside. The heavy blade embedded itself in the dirt a dozen yards away.
The monster turned its featureless face toward her and began to advance, its heavy footsteps shaking the ground.
Maya struggled to her hands and knees, spitting a mouthful of blood into the dirt. The pain was blinding, but the System's combat adrenaline flooded her veins, suppressing the worst of the shock.
She was unarmed. Her primary weapon was out of reach.
You are not a wall. You are the slope.
Percy's lessons flashed through her mind. She couldn't fight it head-on. She couldn't trade blows with something that hit like a runaway train.
She forced herself up, leaning against the splintered oak tree. The creature broke into a dead sprint, its claws extended, intending to crush her against the trunk.
Maya waited until the absolute last possible millisecond. As the creature leaped, committing entirely to its momentum, Maya dropped flat onto her back.
The monster sailed over her, crashing headlong into the massive oak tree. The impact shattered the trunk completely. The tree groaned, leaning dangerously before snapping and collapsing into the forest with a thunderous crash.
The creature was temporarily pinned beneath the heavy timber, thrashing wildly to free itself.
Maya didn't waste the opening. She scrambled across the frozen earth, diving for the hilt of The Ashen Wake. Her fingers closed around the leather grip. The metal was dark, dormant.
She didn't pull it free immediately. She stayed on her knees, gripping the sword with both hands, her chest heaving. She closed her eyes, forcing her heart rate down, forcing the panic out of her mind.
The metal absorbs.
She needed to charge the blade. She needed kinetic force.
The creature hurled the massive oak trunk aside, letting out a furious, deafening roar. It locked its unseen eyes on her and charged again.
Maya stood up, wrenching the sword from the dirt. She didn't retreat. She ran directly at the charging nightmare.
The creature swung its massive right arm in a devastating horizontal clothesline.
Maya slid underneath the arm, the chitinous bone grazing the top of her head. As she passed its center of mass, she spun on her heel, bringing the heavy Uru sword around in a brutal, two-handed strike aimed directly at the back of the creature's knee joint.
She poured every ounce of her Level 25 Might into the swing.
The blade slammed into the creature's leg. The chitinous plating cracked. The Uru drank the immense force of the impact, the fuller instantly glowing with a violent, blinding violet light.
The creature buckled, falling to one knee. It twisted its massive torso, bringing its left fist down in a crushing hammer-blow aimed at her skull.
Maya didn't dodge. She brought the fully charged sword up, catching the creature's fist squarely on the flat of the blade, and instantly released the binding.
[Gamma Discharge Initiated.]
The resulting shockwave was contained entirely within the span of three feet. The concussive blast of violet energy exploded upward, point-blank, directly into the creature's chest and jaw.
The sheer atmospheric pressure ripped the monster's arm backward, shattering the joints. The kinetic wave tore through its dense musculature, lifting its massive frame off the ground and launching it backward into the dead trees.
It hit the ground a dozen yards away and didn't move. Slowly, the dark grey flesh began to dissolve, turning into thick, oily black smoke that drifted up into the twilight sky.
Maya collapsed onto her knees, using the Uru sword as a crutch. She was breathing so hard her throat tasted like copper. Every muscle in her body trembled with absolute exhaustion.
The air in front of her shimmered brilliantly.
[Combat Milestone Achieved: Apex Predator Defeated.]
[The Host has survived an encounter with a Tier 4 Aberration without the use of physical armor.]
[Massive EXP Yield Detected.]
[Agility EXP +500]
[Agility Level Up! 27 -> 28]
[Might EXP +600]
[Might Level Up! 25 -> 27]
[Vigor EXP +550]
[Vigor Level Up! 22 -> 25]
[Essence Granted: 3,000]
Maya stared at the golden text, her vision blurring at the edges. She had taken a massive leap forward. Her stats were solidifying in the upper twenties.
Sir Percy stepped out from behind a nearby tree. He looked down at her, his expression unreadable.
"You found the opening," the knight said, his voice quiet. "You used the environment. You did not panic when the weapon was lost."
"What was that?" Maya rasped, her voice ragged.
"A shadow of what is to come," Percy replied. "A manifestation of pure, unthinking violence. And you broke it."
He reached out a heavy, scarred hand.
Maya looked at it for a second before taking it. Percy hoisted her effortlessly to her feet.
"The physical vessel is nearly prepared," Percy said, his icy blue eyes locking onto hers. "But the waking world will not give you the luxury of a quiet arena. The men you have robbed will not face you in the open. They will build traps. They will use the innocent as bait."
"Let them," Maya said, her jaw tightening. "I'm ready."
Percy didn't smile, but a glint of dark approval flashed in his eyes.
"Then wake up," the knight commanded. "And show them."
The dead forest dissolved into darkness, and Maya snapped awake in her bedroom, the morning sun streaming brightly through the window. The timeline was ticking, but for the first time, she felt the true, terrifying weight of her own power. She was no longer just a vigilante. She was becoming a force of nature.