The cold morning wind slapped Aryan across the face as he stepped out of the house. His fingers were tucked deep into his jacket pockets, but no amount of fabric could protect him from the chill that had started growing inside him since last night.
The mark on his hand—it was still there. Faint, like it had been burned into his skin and then tried to fade. A cube. Just like in the stories. Just like in the dream.
But he wasn't sure it was a dream anymore.
He shook his head, trying to clear it as he walked down the cracked sidewalk toward the school. The city was waking up—sirens howling in the distance, hovercars zipping overhead, and broken neon signs flickering above rundown shops. His neighborhood was the kind that got ignored by the World Government. Crime had a stronger presence than peace here.
And today, crime found him.
A shadow stepped out from the alley near the corner store. Then another. And another.
Three of them.
Older teens—faces covered with cheap masks, carrying steel rods and a pipe. Their eyes were full of that twitchy desperation—the kind you see in people too deep in debt and too far gone.
"Hey, rich boy," the tallest one sneered, spinning the rod in his hand. "Hand it over."
Aryan didn't stop walking.
"I said—" The guy stepped in front of him, jamming the rod into Aryan's chest. "Give us your creds. Your jacket too. Looks new."
Aryan looked up at them with cold, tired eyes. "I don't have anything."
Wrong answer.
The pipe swung—hard. Aryan tried to dodge, but he was too slow. The metal slammed into his ribs and sent him crashing to the ground.
Pain shot through him like lightning. He gasped, trying to crawl back up, but a boot caught him in the gut and kicked him over.
"He doesn't even have a Pluse," one of them laughed. "Freaking weakling."
The cold was creeping in—not from the air, but from inside him.
Something... shifted.
One of the attackers raised his hand, and Aryan saw it: a glowing blue sigil across the boy's arm.
An Ice Pluse.
"Let's chill him down. Might get something good off the corpse."
The temperature around them dropped instantly. Aryan's breath turned to mist as frost began to spread from the boy's fingertips.
A blast of pure freezing energy shot forward, slamming Aryan into the pavement. Ice crawled up his body, locking his legs, then his arms, his chest—until his whole body was entombed in jagged, glistening ice.
He couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Couldn't even scream.
The world blurred. Everything faded.
Then...
Darkness.
Aryan opened his eyes. But he wasn't in the alley anymore.
He stood on an endless black plain, empty and silent. In front of him, towering into the sky, was a cube. Massive. Monolithic. Floating. Its surface shifted constantly, showing different images—wars, gods, demons, stars, death.
It was beautiful. And terrifying.
The Cube spoke without words. It wasn't a voice, it was a feeling, slithering into his bones.
You are not broken... You are the key...
Suddenly, pain exploded through his body. His veins burned like fire. His limbs twisted. His mind screamed.
Then—silence.
Back in the alley, Aryan's eyes snapped open.
The ice around him cracked.
Then shattered.
In a burst of pure, invisible energy, the frost around him exploded outward, blasting the attackers back and freezing their feet to the pavement. One screamed. Another ran.
But one of them—the Ice Pluse user—was too close.
Aryan stared at him, eyes glowing with a strange dark light. He raised a hand—not in rage, not in power, but pure instinct.
And the Ice Pluse around the boy—vanished. Erased. Like it had never existed.
The attacker stumbled back, screaming as frost consumed him instead—his own power turned on him. His body froze in place, a statue of fear and agony.
Then, from the edge of the alley, a figure watched. A boy, not much older than Aryan. Lean, sharp-eyed, hidden under a hood.
He had seen everything.
He whispered under his breath: "That wasn't a normal Pluse…"
Aryan fell to his knees, gasping for breath. The ice had melted from his skin, but his body still shook from the cold, from the pain... from the truth.
He had a Pluse.
But not just any Pluse.
Something darker. Something no one else should have.
Anti Pluse.
[END OF CHAPTER]