"Stop bleeding light!" Kenji spat, hauling Ares-Minus through the rusted steel grate of a dead ventilation shaft."I am not bleeding light, you ignorant turnip!" Ares-Minus’s voice flickered, pitching down into a distorted, electronic warble. "My divine matrix is undergoing rapid localized decay! I am destabilizing!""You look like a scratched holovid!" Kenji slammed his shoulder against a heavy service door, busting the latch with a sharp, gravity-boosted pop. "Get inside before Vax’s perimeter sweeps pick up your neon glare!"They tumbled into the damp, subterranean dark of a disused transit workshop. The air reeked of ozone, wet concrete, and burning rubber. Above them, the distant rumble of surface traffic vibrated through the foundation, but inside the vault-like space, the silence was suffocating.Kenji dropped the god onto a stack of discarded synthetic tires.Ares-Minus didn't land with a heavy thud. He hit with a soft, hollow snap, like static electricity leaping from a wool

"Is that it?" Ares-Minus shimmered, his translucent features knitting together into a look of disdain that barely masked the terror beneath. "You intend to tether my divine essence to a stolen, repurposed industrial battery meant for a floor-scrubbing droid? The indignity is almost as profound as the smell of this wretched hole."Kenji didn't bother looking up. He jammed the leads into the battery port with a grunt, watching as the flickering, neon-blue aura of his companion stabilized into a steady, albeit dim, glow. "If you want dignity, go back to Olympus—or wherever the hell you fell from. Down here, you’re just a battery pack that needs a jump-start. And right now, you’re our only lifeline.""You have no grasp of the hierarchy, Kenji. You treat me like a faulty toaster, yet your entire life has been rewritten by a single drop of my essence.""My life was a scrap-heap before you showed up, and you’re turning into a hazard," Kenji countered, shoving his gear into a grime-streaked b

"Ares, shut it down! Now!" Kenji roared, lunging forward to grab the shimmering, chaotic mass of blue light that used to be a deity.The subway station platform shuddered violently. Overhead, the reinforced concrete tiles groaned, spiderwebbing with cracks as the local gravity suddenly spiked by four hundred percent. A discarded vending machine near the turnstiles groaned, metal screeching as it folded in on itself like a soda can under an invisible hydraulic press.Ares-Minus didn’t respond. His eyes were wide, vacant, staring into a past that shouldn't exist in a Tokyo subway tunnel. "The feast," the entity murmured, his voice layered with the sound of chiming bells and breaking glass. "The nectar flows like rivers, Kenji. Don't you see the columns? The pillars of Olympus are weeping gold.""There are no columns! There’s only a SWAT team three blocks away and they definitely just registered that spike," Kenji screamed, his own knees buckling under the sheer weight of the surging fie

The cell wall groaned—not from the strain of a structural failure, but from the protest of atoms forced into an unnatural configuration. Kenji felt it in the marrow of his bones: a subtle, rhythmic vibration, the hum of a magnetic lock straining against an influence it wasn’t designed to contain. He was tired of being a guest in a room that wanted him broken."Ares," Kenji whispered, his voice sharp enough to cut through the oppressive silence of the detention block. "Stop vibrating. You’re making the locks oscillate."Ares-Minus, still huddled in the corner, lifted his head. His eyes were no longer vacant; they were shards of dying starlight. "I am not doing this, Kenji. The room itself is reacting to you. Your aura—the parasite—it is looking for a way out. It’s hungry.""Focus," Kenji hissed. He stood up, the metal bench scraping against the floor with a sound like a guillotine blade. "If the locks are oscillating, it means they aren't fully engaged. The magnetic seal is compromised

"Duck!"The rusted iron I-beam tore through the rooftop smog before the command even finished ringing in Kenji’s ears.He didn't just duck—he panicked. His heart hammered against his ribs, and instinctively, his power flared through his soles to launch him skyward.BOOM.Instead of leaping, the concrete beneath his boots imploded. A localized gravitational footprint crushed the slab into dust, dropping Kenji three feet into a jagged hole before his feet hit a support girder. The I-beam whistled millimeters above his scalp, taking a clump of black hair with it and crashing into a brick chimney behind him with a deafening screech."Pathetic," a gravelly voice barked from the shadows of the water tower. "You tried to jump, and instead you dropped ten tons of force onto your own ankles."Kenji spat a mouthful of mortar dust, scrambling out of the pit. "You just swung half a ton of scrap at my head without warning!""If I wanted you dead, kid, I wouldn't have shouted first," the woman grow