CHAPTER 203: A HERO’S RAGE

Captain Comet was a blur of righteous fury. He didn’t just fly; he was a projectile, a living bullet of pure, unadulterated rage aimed directly at the window of the warden’s office.

"Elisa, door," Nox said calmly.

Elisa just grinned and swung her warhammer. She didn’t hit the incoming hero. She hit the entire wall of the office.

The wall exploded outward in a shower of concrete and steel, meeting Captain Comet in mid-air. The hero, who could have flown through a mountain, was suddenly hit by a hundred tons of unexpected debris. He was thrown off course, his charge broken as he was forced to swerve through the cloud of rubble.

"Let’s go," Nox said, and they leaped from the now-open-air office, their descent slowed by a gentle, controlled use of his own void power.

They landed in the prison yard, which was now the scene of a full-blown, cartoonish riot. Super-villains with names like ’The Puzzler’ and ’Lady Flora’ were engaged in a chaotic, celebratory brawl, using their powers not to fight, but to cause as much surreal mayhem as possible. The ground had been turned into a bouncy castle, and a villain with the power to control weather was making it rain lemonade.

"This is ridiculous," Mela muttered, deftly sidestepping a walking armchair that was complaining about the lack of doilies.

"It is also our cover," Vexia stated. "We must exfiltrate before Captain Comet can regroup."

Captain Comet, however, was not the kind of hero who regrouped. He just got angrier.

He blasted his way out of the debris cloud, his eyes glowing with a white-hot intensity. He was no longer just the smiling symbol of hope. He was a god of wrath, and his city had just been turned into a joke.

He ignored the rioting villains. His gaze was fixed on Nox.

"YOU DID THIS!" he roared, and the sky itself seemed to darken in response to his rage.

He pointed a finger, and a beam of pure, concentrated solar energy, a blast of heat that could have melted a tank, shot toward Nox.

Serian stepped in front of him, her own hands held out. A shield of pure, golden, life-affirming light appeared before them. The solar beam hit the shield, and the two opposite forces of divine energy met in a blinding, silent explosion of pure light.

Serian stumbled back, her face pale. "His power... it is fueled by his conviction. And right now, he is very, very convinced."

’So his power level is tied to his emotions,’ Nox thought. ’And we’ve just pushed his ’anger’ slider all the way to the max. Inefficient.’

"We can’t fight him," Nox said. "Not like this. He’s a walking nuclear reactor of self-righteousness. We have to leave."

He grabbed Serian’s arm and pulled out the small, black business card of the Guild. He focused his will on it. ’Exit, now.’

The familiar, shimmering doorway of the Guild began to form in the air beside them.

But Captain Comet was not going to let them go. He saw the shimmering portal, and he saw his target trying to escape.

He let out a raw, primal scream of pure, frustrated fury. And he unleashed his full power.

It was not a beam or a blast. It was a wave. A wave of pure, kinetic force, an omnidirectional explosion of raw, physical power that erupted from his body. It was the power of a man who could move planets, unleashed in a single, desperate, and utterly uncontrolled burst.

The wave of force hit the prison, and the entire structure just... disintegrated. The walls, the towers, the very foundations, they were all turned to dust. The rioting villains, the bouncy castle, the lemonade rain, it was all erased in a single, silent, overwhelming instant.

The shockwave hit Nox and his team just as they were stepping through the portal. The world dissolved into a storm of pure, deafening white noise and crushing, absolute force.

Nox felt Serian’s hand ripped from his. He felt his own body, his very consciousness, being torn apart by the sheer, raw power of a hero’s grief.

The portal, their only way out, shattered like glass.

The last thing Nox saw before his world went black was the look on Captain Comet’s face. It was not a look of triumph. It was a look of pure, dawning horror at what he had just done.

He had not just destroyed his city’s prison. In his rage, in his grief, he had just destroyed a hero’s most sacred rule.

He had lost control. And the story of Captain Comet, the perfect, flawless hero, had just taken a very, very dark turn.

Nox, and his entire team, were gone, scattered across the chaotic, unpredictable currents of the multiverse, their connection to the Guild, to each other, severed. The Guardians of the Void Imperium were lost. And the story of their own was now well and truly broken.

---

There was no pain. No sound. No light.

Nox was just... adrift. A disembodied consciousness, floating in an endless, chaotic river of pure, raw story. He saw entire worlds, entire narratives, flash past him like fleeting images in a dream. A world of towering, steam-powered robots. A world of quiet, introspective philosophers. A world of singing, sentient mushrooms.

He was in the space between the stories, the raw, untamed current of the multiverse that the Guild’s stable, orderly pathways were built to protect travelers from.

’Liona,’ he thought, his own consciousness a small, flickering candle in the storm. ’Status.’

[ERROR. CONNECTION TO GUILD NEXUS SEVERED.] Liona’s voice was a distorted, glitching mess in his mind. [NARRATIVE ANCHOR LOST. ADRIFT IN UNSTABLE REALITY-SPACE. PROBABILITY OF SELF-RECONSTITUTION: 0.001%.]

’So, we’re screwed.’

[THAT IS A STATISTICALLY ACCURATE, IF CRUDE, SUMMARY.]

He tried to gather his own power, to use the void to create a shield, an anchor. But it was like trying to build a dam in a hurricane with a handful of sand. The sheer, overwhelming force of the narrative stream was too much.

’Serian,’ he thought, a spike of cold, sharp fear, an emotion he had not truly felt in years, piercing through his calm. ’Elisa. Vexia. Mela. The others.’

He reached out with his mind, trying to feel their presence, their connection. But there was nothing. Just the roaring, silent chaos of a million million stories all screaming at once.

They were gone. Scattered. Lost.

He was alone. Again.

The thought was a cold, heavy weight that threatened to extinguish his own, small flame of consciousness. He had spent so long building his family, his kingdom, his home. And in a single, blinding flash, it was all gone.

The despair was a familiar, comfortable darkness. It would be so easy to just... let go. To dissolve into the stream. To become another forgotten story.

’No.’

The thought was a stubborn, angry spark.

’No. I’m not that kid anymore.’

He remembered the choice he had made in the orphanage, the choice to forgive himself. He remembered the choice he had made in the plaza, the choice to trust his people.

He remembered the look in Serian’s eyes.

He was not alone. He was just... lost. And if you were lost, you just had to find your way back.

He stopped fighting the current. He stopped trying to build a dam.

He just... opened himself to it. He let the river of stories flow through him. He did not try to consume them, or control them. He just listened.

He was a Guardian of stories. A librarian of the lost. This was not a storm to be weathered. This was a library to be read.

He felt the story of the steam-powered robots, their war against a sentient cloud of rust. He felt the story of the mushroom-people, their epic quest to find the perfect patch of sunlight.

He was no longer just Nox, a single consciousness. He was becoming a part of the stream, a reader in the ultimate library.

And as his own sense of self began to dissolve, to merge with the infinite stories around him, he felt a flicker.

A single, familiar, and impossibly bright thread of pure, golden light in the chaotic, gray storm.

It was a story he knew. A story of a lost princess, of a fallen kingdom, of an unshakeable, unwavering hope.

It was Serian.

He focused all of his will, all of his being, on that single, golden thread. He was no longer just drifting. He had a destination. He had a beacon.

He did not swim against the current. He used it. He became a story himself, a story of a king searching for his queen, and he let the great, cosmic river carry him toward her.

The journey was long. It was arduous. He felt his own story, his own memories, being frayed and worn away by the constant, abrasive flow of a million other narratives.

But he held on to that single, golden thread.

It was his anchor. It was his home.

And as he finally, after an eternity of drifting, began to coalesce, to pull the scattered pieces of his own consciousness back together, he knew one thing with an absolute, unshakeable certainty.

He would find them. All of them.

He would reassemble his family. He would rebuild his kingdom.

He would find his way back.

And then, he was going to have a very, very long talk with a certain hero in a bright, primary-colored cape. And this time, he was not going to be so subtle.

His new story had just found its first, and most important, plot point:

Reunion. And revenge.