The Price of Resurrection

The air was thick with smoke and panic. Sirens blared in the distance, the kind that made your stomach twist , not because of the sound, but because of what always came after.

“Move! Everyone, move!” shouted a guard as people flooded out of the shattered metro tunnel.

Bruce Miller stumbled forward, clutching his bleeding side. His shirt was soaked crimson. The concrete ceiling above him groaned like a dying beast.

Somewhere behind, the sound of screeching metal ripped through the chaos. “Bruce, get up!” a voice yelled.

He turned, dazed, to see David Foreman, tall, calm, perfectly unhurt, standing amid the carnage, eyes blazing with that same superiority Bruce had hated since their academy days.

“Leave me,” Bruce gasped. “You’ve got people to save.”

David’s jaw tightened. “You were never built for this, Bruce. I told you to quit before someone got killed.”

Bruce forced a bitter smile. “Guess you were right.”

The tunnel shook violently. A creature emerged from the shadows, skeletal, armored, and crawling on all fours.

Its eyes glowed blue, unholy light flickering behind cracked bone. A Hollow Fiend, the kind that devoured energy, not flesh. Bruce froze. He didn’t even have a weapon.

David, however, stepped forward, unsheathing his silver blade with measured ease. “Stay down. You’ll only get in the way.”

Bruce wanted to shout back, to prove he wasn’t useless. But his body gave out, and he fell to his knees as the Fiend lunged.

David met it mid-air, steel flashing, the clash echoing through the tunnel like thunder. Sparks flew. Stone shattered.

Bruce’s vision blurred as he crawled away, his fingers brushing against a jagged piece of rebar. He pressed it against his wound, desperate.

Then the Fiend screamed a horrible, distorted sound, and exploded in a shockwave of blue fire. The blast threw Bruce backward.

His head slammed into the wall. He tasted blood. The world dimmed, sounds fading into dull echoes. “David…” he croaked.

No answer. He forced his eyes open, and saw David walking away through the haze, his back turned, blade dragging behind him. “Don’t” Bruce’s hand trembled. “Don’t leave me.”

No one heard. The world went silent. His vision darkened. He thought of every humiliation, every training failure, every time David smirked when the instructors called Bruce “average.” The word stabbed deeper than any wound.

“Average,” he whispered. “I’ll show you average.”

His heartbeat slowed. One beat. Two. Then stopped. Everything went black, except for a faint light hovering before him. A thread of blue energy curled around his chest, pulsing like a heartbeat. Do you want to live?

The voice wasn’t human. It came from inside him, cold yet intimate. “Who, who’s there?” Bruce whispered. Answer, and pay the price.

His body convulsed. Pain ripped through him, sharp, raw, alive. The blue light burrowed into his wound, spreading veins of energy under his skin.

He screamed, the sound echoing through the void. You heal… or you die.

His eyes snapped open. He was lying amid the wreckage, breath hitching. His wound, gone. The blood, evaporated. His heartbeat, thunderous.

But something was wrong. He could feel everything. The pulse of life in the survivors above. The faint flicker of dying energy from the Fiend’s corpse.

Even David, miles away, glowing like a beacon of arrogance. “What… what is this?” he whispered.

A paramedic ran toward him. “Hey! You’re alive? Stay still, you’re bleeding internally!”

“I’m fine,” Bruce said. His voice was steadier than it had any right to be.

The medic frowned. “Fine? You were clinically dead”

Bruce grabbed his wrist instinctively. The moment he touched him, light surged again, blue veins flaring under both their skins. The medic gasped, then froze as his fractured arm knit back together before his eyes.

Bruce jerked back, horrified. “I didn’t mean to”

“What did you just do?” the medic whispered.

“I don’t, I don’t know!”

He stumbled away, heart pounding. His reflection flashed in a broken mirror, veins glowing faintly, pupils silver-white.

Then the visions came. Buildings burning. David standing atop a hill of corpses. Bruce himself, hands drenched in blood not his own.

He blinked, and they vanished. “Hallucination,” he muttered. “Shock. It’s just shock.”

But the whisper returned. This is only the beginning, Healer.

He clutched his head. “Shut up!”

Sirens neared again. He had to move. If anyone saw him like this, they’d lock him up, or worse, dissect him. He stumbled toward the tunnel exit, light flickering in his veins with every step.

When he reached the surface, the night air hit like ice. Police lights painted everything red and blue. Reporters shouted. Cameras flashed.

And there, standing on the edge of the chaos, was David Foreman, his perfect white uniform spotless, his sword resting casually on his shoulder. Their eyes met.

David’s expression didn’t change, but his fingers twitched, just slightly, as if recognizing something. “Bruce?” he said slowly. “That’s… impossible.”

Bruce’s heart raced. “You left me to die.”

David tilted his head. “I thought you already did.”

Bruce took a step closer. “What did you see back there? The explosion, the light”

David’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what I came to ask you.”

The ground trembled.

Both men froze as the tunnel behind them cracked open, blue light spilling out like liquid fire. From the ruins, something moved, not human, not whole, yet pulsing with the same energy now burning inside Bruce.

The medic screamed. “It’s alive!”

Bruce turned slowly, realizing what he’d done. The creature, the Hollow Fiend he’d watched David kill, was rising again. Its bones twisted, flesh reforming around glowing veins identical to his own.

Its head snapped toward Bruce, jaw splitting into a grin. Healer, it whispered, voice echoing through his mind. You brought me back.

Bruce stepped backward, trembling. “No… no, I didn’t”

David drew his blade. “What the hell did you do?”

Bruce didn’t answer. His hands were glowing again, pulsing like living fire. And deep inside, that cold voice laughed. You heal… or you die.

The monster lunged.