Chapter 1: A New Day
The bullet missed Neiry’s head by less than an inch.
He didn't flinch. He didn't jump. He simply exhaled a slow, deeply irritated sigh through the black mesh of his featureless fabric mask, tilting his head just enough to watch the copper round ricochet off the brickwork behind him.
"Seriously?" Neiry muttered, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly resonance.
The mugger blinked, his hands shaking violently as he gripped the cheap Saturday Night Special pistol. His knuckles were white, his eyes bloodshot and wide with a cocktail of cheap adrenaline and primal panic. "What the—"
BANG.
Another gunshot echoed through the narrow, rain-slicked Astoria alleyway.
Neiry didn't even shift his stance. He merely tilted his head slightly to the left. The second round flew harmlessly past his ear, cutting through the damp night air before embedding itself with a dull, metallic thud into a dented steel dumpster.
The gunman stared, his jaw going completely slack.
Neiry stared back, his dark eyes cold and unblinking behind the cutouts of his mask. For a long, agonizing moment, neither of them moved. The city streets hummed with distant traffic three blocks away, completely oblivious to the brief display of supernatural evasion unfolding in the dark.
Slowly, Neiry raised his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose right through the fabric. "You know," he said, his tone carrying the genuine, exhausting disappointment of a tired teacher, "most low-level criminals don't open with attempted murder. Usually, there’s a script. You ask for the wallet, I give you a chance to run away, we all go home."
"Shut up! Just shut up!" the man roared, pulling the trigger a third time.
This time, Neiry vanished.
He didn't dodge; he simply ceased to occupy physical space. The pooling shadows beneath his boots surged upward like liquid ink, swallowing him whole a microsecond before the firing pin struck. The third bullet punched through empty air, whistling uselessly down the length of the empty alley.
"What the—where did he go?!"
A shadow stretched unnaturally along the brick wall beside the mugger. Then another elongated across the cracked asphalt. Then a third twisted from the fire escape above. The buzzing overhead alley lights flickered violently, their circuits groaning under a sudden, localized drop in voltage. The ambient temperature plummeted, turning the damp air cold enough to catch the mugger’s ragged breathing in faint white plumes.
"Come out! Where are you?!" the man screamed, spinning in a desperate circle.
Neiry remained hidden inside the fluid architecture of the dark. Watching. Calculating. Waiting.
His eyes drifted past the panicked gunman to the far end of the cul-de-sac. A terrified woman was pressed tightly against a chain-link fence, her leather purse already discarded on the ground, her smartphone shattered into a dozen glittering pieces near her sneakers. Neiry had heard her scream from nearly three blocks away while sitting on a rooftop. Normal human ears would have missed it entirely amidst the ambient roar of the Queens evening traffic.
But Neiry wasn't normal. He never had been.
The first mugger continued to turn in circles, his boots splashing in the oily puddles. The second thug, who had been guarding the alley entrance, stepped forward, tightening his grip on a rusted crowbar. "Come out, you freak!"
A localized tendril of absolute blackness shot out from the shadow of the dumpster, wrapping around the gunman's wrist like a pressurized steel vice.
CRACK.
"Ahhhh!"
The sound of fracturing bone was followed instantly by the clatter of the pistol hitting the wet pavement.
Neiry emerged seamlessly from the brickwork, his physical mass reforming out of the darkness. Wisps of black, smoke-like constructs curled lazily around his forearms, dissipating into the crisp night air. He wore simple, form-fitting black tactical civilian gear. No cape. No high-tech armor plating. No flashy corporate logos. Nothing memorable.
Exactly how he liked it.
The second thug roared, swinging the crowbar in a desperate, horizontal arc meant to crack Neiry’s skull. Neiry stepped aside effortlessly, his movements carrying the economy of someone who had survived celestial battlefields five hundred years before this city was even built. He didn't block. He didn't counter-strike with magic. He simply delivered a single, precise punch to the man's solar plexus.
The thug folded instantly, the air escaping his lungs in a wet gasp as he collapsed into the garbage.
The first attacker, clutching his broken wrist, lunged with a concealed pocket knife, his face twisted in a desperate, ugly grimace. Neiry caught the descending wrist with his left hand. He twisted, applying exactly enough leverage to force the blade to clatter across the asphalt. A sharp, non-lethal knee to the stomach ended the confrontation permanently.
Eight seconds. Maybe nine.
The woman at the end of the alleyway stared at him, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with a profound, paralyzing terror. But as Neiry looked at her, his stomach dropped. She wasn't looking at the groaning criminals on the floor.
She was looking at him.
Neiry hated that look. It reminded him too much of the ancient past. Too much of the primordial battlefields of the demon realm. Too much of Wrath. Too much of the absolute monster he had been forced to become before his exile.
"You're safe," Neiry said softly, modulating his voice back to a calm, human pitch. "The police are already en route."
The woman nodded rapidly, her jaw trembling. "T-thank you..."
Before she could ask anything else—before Neiry could even step back into the dark—a sudden, sharp flash of artificial white light illuminated the brick walls.
Neiry's eyes narrowed instantly. Near the mouth of the alleyway, a teenager stood holding a smartphone, his screen glowing brightly as he recorded the entire aftermath.
Great. Just great.
Without waiting a fraction of a second, Neiry dissolved entirely into liquid vapor, disappearing into the nearest drain shadow. By the time the kid lowered the phone to look with his bare eyes, the alley was empty. Only the groaning criminals and the damp New York air remained.
Thirty minutes later, Neiry sat on the limestone edge of a five-story apartment building in Astoria, his legs dangling over the precipice. The endless grid of New York City stretched below him like a sea of flickering neon and white headlights.
He pulled off the fabric mask, letting the cool night wind hit his face. He adjusted his thick, black-rimmed glasses, the reflections of the streetlights dancing across the lenses.
He hated cameras. He hated the attention. And he especially, deeply hated the modern human internet. Because he knew the routine by heart now. By morning, that kid’s video would be uploaded on a dozen social media platforms. The algorithms would pick it up. The amateur internet sleuths would form wild, ridiculous theories. Someone would coin a stupid, dramatic alias for him. And somehow, his carefully cultivated civilian obscurity would become slightly more complicated.
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of the nearby East River.
Neiry leaned back on his hands, his thoughts drifting away from the crime, away from the internet, and away from the impending reality of tomorrow. Instead, his mind pulled a vivid, agonizingly clear memory from the archives of his long life.
A crystalline waterfall. A massive, weeping willow tree whose leaves glowed like spun gold. A soft, musical laugh that used to cut through the heavy silence of his dark heart.
“Kaylee. NO, MIA!”
His chest tightened with a physical, crushing pain. Five hundred years. Five hundred years of wandering through mortal history, watching empires crumble and technologies rise, and the memory of them still cut like a freshly forged blade.
"If I had just been there..." Neiry whispered to the empty roof, his voice cracking slightly.
The thought appeared automatically, a scripted torture mechanism his mind ran every single night. If I hadn't gone to the waterfall. If I had gotten back to the citadel a moment sooner. If I had broken the seal. If—
Neiry stopped himself, clenching his fists until his knuckles popped. The guilt never changed the weight of the past. It never brought her back from the void.
Below him, the city continued to move. People laughed inside warm apartments. Cars honked down on Broadway. Life continued its relentless, indifferent forward march, even when you desperately wanted the world to stop spinning.
Eventually, Neiry stood up, pulling his backpack over his shoulder. Tomorrow was his first day at Jefferson High School. Tomorrow he had to slide back into the human mold, blend into the background, and pretend to be a normal, unnoticeable fourteen-year-old freshman.
And honestly? Fighting armed thugs was significantly easier.
The next morning, the harsh glare of the autumn sun made Neiry regret being awake before his alarm even rang.
"Freshman year," he muttered, staring at the white ceiling of his small bedroom.
The words sounded utterly ridiculous rolling off his tongue. Five hundred years of existence. Multiple planetary realms. Ancient cosmic crusades that had altered the geography of star systems. And here he was, genuinely experiencing a dose of anxiety about finding his homeroom assignment before the late bell.
His mother would have laughed until she cried. Aliya always wanted something of normalcy for him; it would've been the funniest thing in the universe. A small, bittersweet smile touched Neiry’s lips for a fraction of a second before fading into his usual stoic expression. He grabbed his worn backpack and headed out into the crisp morning air.
He had barely made it halfway down the block when a loud, boisterous voice shattered the neighborhood silence.
"NEIRY! YO! WAIT UP!"
Neiry winced, his shoulders dropping. There was only one human being he knew in this area capable of screaming his own enthusiasm with that level of acoustic volume.
Kaleb.
His best friend came sprinting down the sidewalk like he was actively running for his life from a pack of feral hounds, his unzipped backpack flapping wildly against his shoulders.
"Why are you running?" Neiry asked as Kaleb finally skidded to a halt beside him, panting heavily.
"I... completely... overslept," Kaleb gasped, leaning forward with his hands on his knees.
"Then why are you smiling?"
Kaleb straightened up, a massive, unbothered grin breaking across his face. "Honestly? I don't know, man. Just high energy today."
"Fair enough," Neiry murmured.
The two had met earlier that summer under entirely absurd circumstances. Kaleb had attempted to rescue a stray terrier that had gotten itself wedged inside a deep, concrete drainage ditch near the park. The rescue had gone catastrophically wrong. Kaleb had slipped, falling directly into the mud at the bottom of the ditch and twisting his ankle. Neiry, passing by and unable to ignore the distress, had jumped down to lift him out. The dog, entirely unimpressed by the rescue attempt, had utilized Kaleb’s head as a stepping stone to escape before either of them could climb back out.
Somehow, they had been completely inseparable ever since.
"First day of real high school," Kaleb said dramatically as they crossed the intersection toward 31st Street. "We are officially high school freshmen, Neiry. The bottom of the food chain, but still on the board."
"Unfortunately," Neiry said dryly.
Kaleb laughed, throwing a casual arm over Neiry’s shoulder. Neiry found his defenses softening, a small, genuine smile breaking through his typical reserve. This was exactly what he wanted. Normalcy. A simple friend who knew absolutely nothing about the mantle he carried, about the powers he had, or the wars. Just a teenager talking about high school, not a reminder.
The massive brick facade of Jefferson High School came into view. The front courtyard was an absolute sea of human chaos. Hundreds of students filled the concrete steps, parents were idling in long lines of cars dropping off their kids, and security guards were directing traffic with neon orange vests.
Then, Neiry froze dead in his tracks.
A girl was standing near the large green double doors of the main entrance. She had soft, tumbling brown curls that caught the morning light, light skin, and a quiet, incredibly familiar posture as she clutched a notebook to her chest.
The sounds of the city, the shouting students, the car horns—everything instantly died. The world stopped spinning.
No. No way.
Neiry’s heart skipped a violent, agonizing beat against his ribs.
Mia.
She was here. She was standing twenty yards away from him. Alive. Real. Not a fragmented memory or a phantom born from his grief. It was her. The angel princess. The daughter of the Grand Deity. The girl from the waterfall whom he had loved more than his own immortal soul.
She laughed at something another student said, her eyes crinkling at the corners. She was completely unaware of him. Completely unaware that she had once known him in a life before this one. Completely unaware that her execution had fractured his entire world centuries ago.
Kaleb noticed Neiry’s abrupt halt, nearly tripping over his own sneakers. "Yo? Neiry? You good, bro?"
Neiry didn't answer. His chest felt like it was being compressed. His hands began to subtly tremble inside his hoodie pockets. He previously had spent years wandering, and somehow, simply seeing her face again in a crowded school courtyard hurt more than any weapon ever had.
"Neiry?" Kaleb followed his frozen gaze across the courtyard, tracking it straight to the girl with the brown curls. Kaleb’s eyes widened, and a slow, devious grin spread across his face. "Oh... ho ho. Oh, I see."
Neiry forced himself to blink, his voice sounding hollow. "No. Shut up."
"Oh, it's absolutely an 'oh,'" Kaleb nudged him hard with his elbow. "Don't even try it, man. You have a massive, immediate crush."
"I do not," Neiry muttered, his throat dry as he forced his legs to start moving again toward the entrance.
"You absolutely do! You looked at her like you literally saw an angel drop from the sky!" Kaleb laughed loudly, jogging to keep up as Neiry quickened his pace.
Neiry groan internally, the sheer, dark irony of Kaleb’s words cutting deep into his chest. If only you knew, he thought. If only anyone on this planet knew.
The interior hallways of Jefferson High were significantly louder and more overwhelming than Neiry had anticipated. It wasn't just the physical decibels; it was the ambient psychic noise of human adolescence. The air was thick with shifting emotions—nervousness, desperate desire to fit in, raw fear of the unknown, and explosive hope.
Neiry hated crowds. Not because they intimidated him, but because the sheer volume of ordinary human emotion constantly reminded him of how fundamentally detached he was from them.
A group of upperclassmen pushed past, shouting to each other. Somewhere down the hall, a freshman dropped his entire binder, sending loose sheets of paper flying across the linoleum. Kaleb, however, looked like he had just inherited a small fortune, taking in the chaotic environment with wide, excited eyes.
"This is going to be awesome," Kaleb declared as they navigated the crowded junction near the gym.
Neiry glanced at him through his glasses. "We have been inside the building for exactly three minutes, Kaleb."
"Your point? The vibe is immaculate."
"You're weird."
"And you're a hater," Kaleb countered easily, flashing his schedule at a passing hall monitor.
They finally reached their designated homeroom, Room 204. Students were slowly filing inside, awkwardly choosing desks and looking around to see who they recognized. The teacher, an exhausted-looking woman with a clipboard, stood near the whiteboard. "Take a seat anywhere, folks. Just make sure it’s a seat you want for the rest of the term."
Kaleb immediately claimed a desk near the windows, dropping his heavy backpack onto the floor. Neiry took the seat directly beside him, pulling out a simple spiral notebook.
"You're incredibly lucky I tolerate you, Dude" Neiry said dryly.
Kaleb grinned, leaning back in his plastic chair. "Please. You’d be completely lost without me. You’d just sit in the back of the room staring into space like a Victorian ghost."
"I prefer that, actually."
"Too bad. You're stuck with the high-energy crew now."
The classroom slowly filled to capacity. The ambient chatter rose as groups of kids from the local middle schools recognized each other, laughing and throwing paper airplanes across the rows. Neiry tuned it out entirely, his eyes fixed on the blank lines of his paper.
Until the door clicked open one last time.
Mia walked into the room.
Neiry’s breath caught in his throat, his stomach tightening into a hard knot. She looked exactly the same, yet entirely different. She wore ordinary denim jeans and a simple sweater instead of the flowing, radiant gown of the upper realm. Her hair was styled differently. But the eyes—those soft, perceptive brown eyes—and the subtle, calm grace of her posture were identical.
Five hundred years of separation vanished in a single microsecond. Neiry’s mind instantly flashed back to the waterfall, the sound of rushing water, the feeling of sitting beside her on the mossy rocks while she smiled at his quiet, awkward answers.
Mia glanced around the room, scanning the available seating. For one brief, terrifying second, her gaze swept across Neiry’s row. Their eyes met.
Neiry froze, his entire body locking up as his heart hammered against his ribs. Would she recognize the soul behind the glasses? Would some fragment of the celestial seal crack? Would she remember anything at all?
Nothing happened. Her eyes passed over him with the casual, polite indifference of a stranger looking at a classmate. She found an empty desk two rows ahead of him and sat down, pulling out a pen.
Neiry’s shoulders sloped as he let out a silent, ragged breath. His heart sank into a familiar, cold void. Of course she didn't remember. Why would she? When the execution squad had carried out the Grand Deity’s decree, the High Angels hadn't just stripped her of her life; Her own mother had wiped her memories clean, casting her spirit into the cycle of reincarnation as the ultimate punishment for loving the Prince of Wrath. Every memory, every promise, every shared century—gone.
Kaleb leaned over the aisle, nudging Neiry’s arm hard enough to rattle his desk. "Yo," Kaleb whispered loudly, his eyes wide. "That's her. The girl from the courtyard."
"No," Neiry muttered, staring rigidly at the whiteboard. "It's just a student."
"Bro, stop lying. You literally froze again. You're a terrible actor."
"There is no bro. Listen to the teacher, Kaleb."
Kaleb looked genuinely offended, but before he could argue further, the teacher clapped her hands to start attendance. Neiry only half-listened as the names were read off. His attention kept drifting to the back of Mia’s head. She was quietly writing down the syllabus, occasionally tilting her head when the teacher spoke. Normal. Completely normal. She wasn't a celestial princess bound by divine politics anymore. She was just a fourteen-year-old girl.
Part of his soul was relieved. She had finally found the peace she had been denied in the upper realm. But the ancient commander inside him hated it, because he was left to carry the weight of the echo alone. He remembered the waterfall. He remembered the war that followed. He remembered his own execution trial, his exile, and the day they were violently torn apart. He wondered if she still liked the scent of wild sunflowers, then immediately scolded himself for letting his mind wander into dangerous territory.
By the time the lunch bell rang, the cafeteria was a madhouse of clattering plastic trays and shouting teenagers. Kaleb practically dragged Neiry to a vacant table near the center of the room. "This spot is perfect. Excellent sightlines to the entire room."
"It doesn't matter, it's just any other table, Kaleb," Neiry sighed, sitting down and opening a brown paper bag.
A few tables over, a sudden commotion erupted among a group of sophomores. One of the kids suddenly stood up, slamming his hand on the table. "YO! Drop the link in the group chat right now!"
"No way," another kid shouted, leaning over his shoulder. "Is that actually Queens?” “Idiot yeah, look at the street signs!"
Neiry felt a cold, familiar dread begin to pool in the pit of his stomach. He slowly lowered his sandwich.
"Oh, no," he whispered.
"What?" Kaleb asked, his mouth full of a slice of pizza. "What’s wrong?"
The student at the nearby table turned his phone screen around, showing it to a crowd of onlookers. A viral video thread was playing on a prominent local news forum. The footage was grainy, taken from a shaky smartphone camera in a dark alleyway. It showed two armed muggers, a terrified woman, and a figure clad in black tactical gear who systematically dismantled the attackers in less than ten seconds before literally dissolving into a pool of fluid shadows.
The live comment section on the screen was updating at a dizzying, terrifying speed:
User9918: WHO THE HELL IS THAT? IS THIS APEX?
GothamVibes: No public branding. Fake. CGI.
QueensNative: It’s real bro, that’s the alley behind the diner on 30th Ave!
ShadowFan: Look at how he moves. He literally teleported.
HeroWatcher: He ate those guys into the floor lmao
"Yo, that is absolutely sick," Kaleb remarked, leaning over to catch a glimpse of the screen from their table. "Look at the way the shadow is wrapped around the guy's arm. That's a high-tier power output, for sure. Weird he’s completely unlisted on the Hero Registry."
Neiry leaned his forehead against his hand, staring down at his lunch tray with absolute exhaustion. It hadn't even been twelve hours, and the video had already cleared fifty thousand views.
"The camera quality is terrible," Neiry muttered quietly, trying to guide the conversation away. "You can't even see his face."
"Well, yeah, that’s the point of a mask, genius," Kaleb laughed, taking another bite of his pizza. "Whoever he is, he’s a total badass. He didn't even wait for the media crews. Just handled business and ghosted."
Neiry groaned internally, shifting his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Of course Kaleb would immediately become a fan of his own alter-ego.
Across the noisy cafeteria, sitting at a table near the vending machines, Mia was staring down at her own phone screen. The same viral video was looping on her phone.
She couldn't explain it, but a strange, heavy sensation was tightening within her chest. The darkness on the screen. The fluid, calculated way the masked figure moved through the shadows. The cold, unyielding posture. It felt... strangely cool. Like a half-forgotten dream that slipped away the moment she tried to wake up. A memory sitting just beyond the legal boundary of her conscious mind.
She stared at the masked figure's eyes through the pixels. Her chest felt tight, her breathing hitching slightly. Why? Why does a random internet video feel this important?
Before she could process the thought any further, the loud, mechanical bell rang overhead, signaling the end of the lunch period. The bell shattered her concentration, and the strange feeling vanished back into the background noise of her day. She locked her phone, shook her head to clear the fog, and stood up to head to her next class.
The rest of the school day passed in a standard blur of introductory lectures and locker combinations. By the time the final bell rang, students flooded out into the afternoon air.
Kaleb walked beside Neiry down the front steps, his hands tucked behind his head. "So... I have an amazing question."
"No," Neiry said flatly.
"You don't even know what I was going to ask, man!"
"You were going to tell me to ask Mia for her number because she happens to be in our third-period history class."
Kaleb grinned broadly. "See? This is why we’re best friends. We have total mental synchronization. Seriously, though, you should talk to her. You stared at her for forty-five minutes straight during the lecture on the Industrial Revolution."
"I was studying the chalkboard, Kaleb. Goodnight."
"I hate you, Neiry!" Kaleb laughed, waving a casual goodbye as he split off toward the subway station. "See you tomorrow, crush boy!"
Leaving Neiry alone for the first time all day.
The casual, defensive smile slowly slid from Neiry’s face as he walked down the quieter residential streets of Astoria. His shoulders relaxed, the heavy emotional armor he had worn all day settling back into place. He pulled his hoodie up over his dark hair, blending into the mundane fabric of the city.
He started the walk home, the afternoon traffic humming quietly around him. For a brief moment, the world felt peaceful.
Then, a sudden, violent sensation spread through his entire body.
The shadows stretching from the brick houses didn't just move—they tightened around his neck turning absolute, endless, and cold. It was an ancient, primordial energy.
Infinity.
Neiry stopped dead on the sidewalk, his breath catching. The sounds of the passing cars suddenly felt distant, muffled as if he were underwater. The light of the afternoon sun dimmed, an oppressive cosmic eye focusing directly onto his position. It wasn't hostile. It wasn't an attack. It was simply... watching. Measuring the constraints of his mortal vessel.
A low, echoing whisper reverberated directly inside the architecture of his mind, so faint it was almost an echo.
“Interesting...”
Neiry’s eyes widened behind his glasses, his hands instantly clenching into fists as a wave of mana threatened to flare from his hands.
But the voice vanished as fast as it had arrived. The ambient shadows snapped back to their ordinary dimensions. The sunlight returned to its normal afternoon warmth, and the sound of a passing delivery truck rushed back into his ears. Everything looked perfectly ordinary again.
But Neiry’s heart was racing violently against his ribs. For the first time since his exile, for the first time since he had set foot on the human realm...
Infinity had spoken directly to him. And as Neiry looked toward the horizon, he knew his quiet double life was about to get significantly more complicated.