Inside the cocoon, time didn’t exist.
Cashel floated in a sea of light and memory, his body stripped down to its essence. He felt everything—his cells unraveling, his DNA rewriting itself strand by strand. Pain came in waves, but it wasn’t physical. It was emotional. Every memory was dissected, every fear exposed.
He saw his mother’s face the day she slipped into a coma. His sister’s cocoon glowing in the hallway. Leonidas’s lips on his neck, whispering promises in the dark.
Then came the fire.
It started in his chest, a burning pulse that spread outward. His skin shimmered, his bones vibrated. He felt his body shift—muscles reknitting, nerves sparking. And then, the flood.
Visions. Sounds. Sensations.
He could hear thoughts. Feel vibrations in the air. See heat signatures through the cocoon wall. His mind expanded, fracturing and reforming around new abilities. Telepathy. Thermokinesis. Enhanced perception. Too many at once.
He screamed, but no sound escaped.
Then, silence.
And light.
The cocoon cracked.
Cashel gasped as air rushed into his lungs. He collapsed onto the floor, naked, trembling, glowing faintly. His skin was warm, his eyes burned with color. The world felt… louder.
He looked up.
Leonidas was there.
Kneeling beside him, arms open, eyes wide with awe and relief. “Cash,” he whispered, voice breaking.
Cashel reached out, fingers brushing Leonidas’s cheek. “You waited.”
“Of course I did.”
Leonidas pulled him into a fierce embrace, their bodies pressed together, hearts pounding. Cashel clung to him, sobbing into his shoulder. The room pulsed with residual energy, but all Cashel felt was Leonidas—solid, real, grounding.
“You’re different,” Leonidas said softly.
“I feel everything,” Cashel replied. “Too much.”
Leonidas kissed his temple. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”
The news spread fast.
Cashel was one of the few Awakened with multiple powers. The biotech division sent agents within hours. They ran tests, scanned his body, bombarded him with questions. He was a miracle. A weapon. A threat.
He quit the job before they could assign him a number.
His family was… complicated.
His sister was proud, her own powers stable and controlled. His father, still grieving his wife, couldn’t look at him. Friends reached out, some with awe, others with fear. One called him a freak. Another asked if he could “do tricks.”
Cashel shut off his phone.
He spent days in Leonidas’s apartment, relearning how to breathe, how to move without setting things on fire or hearing every thought in a ten-block radius. Leonidas helped. He built dampening fields, taught him focus drills, held him through the breakdowns.
One night, Cashel stood on the balcony, eyes glowing, watching the city pulse below.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” he said.
Leonidas stepped behind him, arms wrapping around his waist. “You’re mine,” he whispered. “That’s all I need to know.”
Cashel turned, kissed him—slow, deep, desperate.
And for the first time since the cocoon, he felt whole.
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