Chapter 132 Is That It?

John was heavy in my arms. His body was still warm, but there was no breath, no spark, and no pulse. Charred skin flaked off my sleeves as I held him closer. He was thoroughly burnt. Death would come to us all without exceptions, no matter how strong or clever or desperate we were.

John Wolfe was just another name on the reaper’s waiting list, and now that list had claimed him too.

I’d never been the kind of man to believe in souls. To me, people were patterns, neurons firing, chemicals reacting, predictable and finite. But as I looked at John’s lifeless eyes, part of me wanted to believe there was something beyond this. Something that wasn’t just dust and silence. The idea of an afterlife, of anything that waited past the black… hell, that was a comfort I never thought I’d crave.

A pair of arms wrapped around me from behind. I didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

“Nick…” Onyx’s voice was soft, lilting, but it carried that same blunt honesty she always had. “I don’t really care. But if you keep this up, Nick… you’re going to die.”

Her hands pressed gently against my chest, though I knew she wasn’t truly there. Then another voice joined her. It was Silver, her tone calm, ethereal, and almost melodic. “Yes, Nick… Souls are real. We’re in a better place already. So you should let us go.”

I closed my eyes. The ache behind them wasn’t physical. Instead, it was something heavier, something I didn’t want to name. “You’re not real,” I whispered. “You’re just what’s left of my guilt trying to crawl back into my head.”

Onyx tightened her embrace. “Maybe. But we feel real, don’t we?”

Before I could answer, the world cracked with laughter.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha~!”

Light stood not far ahead, his body fully reformed. What little was left of his wounds evaporated as arcs of lightning ran over his flesh, sealing every burn and tear until he stood pristine again. He was mocking, radiant, and wrong.

He flicked blood from his hand as though it were an inconvenience. “Nice touch, Eclipse! That scared the shit out of me,” he said with a smirk, voice sharp as static. “For a second, I thought you had me. But now…”

He pointed toward John’s body, the tip of his finger glowing faintly. “…what are you going to do, huh? Johnny there was your only chance to leave any meaningful hurt on me. Without him?” He gestured to himself, electricity sparking across his shoulders. “I’m practically untouchable.”

One thing I hated about my Empathy was that it couldn’t call ‘my’ lies. How was I supposed to accept Onyx and Silver were “in a better place” when I had no picture of what that place looked like? They wanted me to trust something I’d never seen. They wanted me to believe in souls. It felt like a cheap trick.

“I like that look in your eyes, Eclipse,” said Light, soft and hungry.

Onyx’s breath tickled my ear. “If you try to run, he’ll just toy with you.”

“Nick, please… Let us go,” Silver begged, voice thin.

“No,” I said. I couldn’t. Letting them go would break something in me I kept tightly wrapped and half-dead. I held on because holding on was all I had left.

Light stepped in closer, smug and casual. He wanted to humiliate me and make a performance out of it. He circled, soft-voiced and cruel. “Come on then. I’ll give you a free shot, right here.” He spat in my face as if to provoke me. His posture and tone braided contempt with the petty pleasure of power. Every nerve in me wanted to close the distance and end him.

A memory of John steadied me. I’d watched the old man marshal empathy and telekinesis together: how he read intent, found seams in motion, and used that knowledge to aim with terrifying accuracy. He’d hit me with telekinetic bullets I’d swear were supposed to phase through me, but instead, he almost killed me.

I folded that lesson into what I had. I let my enhancer ratings give my body perfect, stupid coordination. I folded Empathy into Intangibility, felt for the moment when Light’s balance fractionally shifted, and the microsecond when his mocking breath loosened his center. I narrowed perception until the world flattened to a single timing.

Light leaned in, low and mean, rubbing the length of his shaft as he remarked. “This is just the best, isn’t it? I guess, I can’t ask for a better toy to break.”

“Yeah?”

My entire weight snapped forward in a single, clean motion. Muscle and will in a line, a practiced, angry algorithm. I brought my heel up and drove it into the delicate area he’d just exposed… It was hot, soft, and the only place that would hurt him in ways words never could.

“Balls.”

It connected.

Light’s scream tore through the air. He folded over, clutching between his legs, but I didn’t stop. I grabbed his head, my fingers digging into the slick, blood-slicked shape of his skull, and brought my knee up once, twice. On the third strike, he caught my leg, but I phased down, letting gravity and my will drive his face into the asphalt.

I tried to pull him through the ground with me, but his power outstripped mine. My intangibility faltered as if something inside me refused to sync with the world. Fine. If I couldn’t drown him in the concrete, I’d drag his face across it instead.

In a flicker of blue-white light, he vanished, electricity snapping through the air violently. I felt his killing intent a heartbeat before the strike came; I leaned forward, his kick missing me by inches. My elbow snapped back, burying into his groin again.

“I swear, I’m gonna fucking kill you!” he snarled, wrapping his legs for an arm-bar while levitating just high enough that my feet couldn’t find the ground.

I forced my left arm between his thighs, blocking the chokehold before it fully locked. I noticed his skin was beginning to peel the more he abused his electrokinesis. He was getting tired. Still, it was grotesque, how his fleshless muscles moved with perfect precision, like a corpse animated by fury. His organs glimmered faintly, pulsing with muted electricity. He shouldn’t have been alive, not after what we’d done.

I needed to end this before he regenerates once more.

Light unleashed a wave of current from his body, arcs of lightning licking at my skin. I phased through them, but sluggishly; every surge of electricity made my atoms protest. So I leaned on my empathy, reached for the crack where his emotions bled through the madness, and sank my teeth into him.

“FUCKING BASTARD!” he screamed, his limbs twitching out of rhythm. The moment of weakness was all I needed. I spat out the chunk of ruined flesh, pushed against him, and twisted. His body slammed into the asphalt hard enough to make the ground scream.

My hands went to his throat. I didn’t think. I didn’t need to. “Die. Die. Die!” I screamed, my voice cracking into something feral. My thumbs pressed against his windpipe, his head tilting back just enough for me to see the abyss where his skin should’ve been.

However, he just smiled.

The skinless grin stretched wide, unsettlingly calm.

“Too bad,” he rasped, the sound bubbling with static. “I’m into that shit.”

Light’s body burned brighter than ever, electric veins crawling beneath his peeling skin as if molten lightning sought escape. The air reeked of ozone and scorched asphalt. In one blink, he was behind me, his hand clamped onto the back of my head and slammed me into the ground. The impact rattled through my skull. He pinned my waist with his legs, his arm wrapping around my throat like an iron cable.

I tried to phase through the pavement, desperate to sink away, but static coiled around my body, crawling over my every nerve. My powers flickered, useless. My arms flailed, fingers clawing, but when I touched him… he wasn’t there. My hands passed through flickering light.

He spoke, voice steady despite the distortion of his electric form. “My form of intangibility is different,” he said. “But it works the same way as yours. I’ve already analyzed how your empathy lets you touch me. It’s over, Eclipse. You’ll never reach me again.” He tilted his head slightly, sparks dancing in his hair. “Still, I’m impressed. You read my electrokinesis, bypassed it even. I should’ve trained harder. I didn’t expect you to be this deadly, especially when you haven’t reached your full potential.”

My vision narrowed, tunneling into darkness. The static’s hum shifted into a whisper, then into voices.

Onyx appeared before me, kneeling, her eyes like shards of obsidian. “Is this it?” she asked, voice sharp but trembling. “This is disappointing, Eclipse.”

I blinked, and Onyx was gone. Silver stood in her place, smiling gently. “I know you’re no good at goodbyes, Nick,” she said softly. “But it has to happen. Maybe this isn’t the closure you wanted… but you can always try again.”

Another blink. Silver faded, and Nicole stood there… the final echo of them both. Her smile was wistful, almost maternal. “I believe in you, Nick. Next time, end it properly, okay?”

Tears stung my eyes, cutting through the grit on my skin. I let the tears fall, because men cry, too.

Their voices blended, overlapping, growing into a single resonance that filled my chest.

“You can do it, Nick. Make it hurt.”

Something inside me broke open. It was the part where their souls had been bound, finally set free. Power surged, not burning but steady and clean.

I grabbed Light’s arm. My hand didn’t pass through. Instead, it sank into him. I twisted, merging his limbs together into a single fused mass of energy and flesh, then phased downward, escaping into the ground. When I surged back up behind him, I caught him off guard, slamming his head into the pavement with a piledriver with the intent to phase him on the ground. Light screamed, tearing his own arms apart to free himself. He burst into pure lightning again, appearing beside me in a flash.

“Just fucking die, you piece of shit!” he roared, throwing punch after punch, every strike layered with stormlight.

None landed. His attacks fizzled through me, impotent. I stood still, watching as fear began to creep into his eyes, the same eyes that once looked down on me and many more.

I tilted my head slightly, voice calm.

“Is that it?”