I wasn't always like this. The thought drifted through Neru's mind as the Soul Extraction energies swirled around him, time seeming to slow to a crawl. In the space between heartbeats, between the moment of invocation and the moment of impact, memory took hold.
I was seven when it started.
The kitchen had been warm that morning, filled with the smell of his mother's cooking and the sound of his father's laughter. Normal sounds, normal smells, the kind of mundane perfection that only existed in the moments before everything changed forever.
"Neru, come help me with breakfast."
His mother's voice, calling from what felt like a lifetime ago. He had been reaching for the milk pitcher when it happened - the first time his power manifested. The liquid had frozen solid in his small hands, the ceramic cracking from the sudden temperature change.
"Mom, I think I broke something."
The fear in his own voice, young and uncertain. His mother had rushed over, had seen the frozen milk and the frost spreading across the kitchen counter. But instead of anger or fear, there had been understanding in her eyes.
"Oh, sweetheart. It's starting."
Because his mother had known. Had been waiting for this moment, dreading it, preparing for it. In their family, the cold was hereditary, passed down through generations like a beautiful curse that grew stronger with each passing year.
"Am I sick?"
"No, baby. You're gifted. But that doesn't mean it's going to be easy."
His mother had been right. The gift had grown stronger each day, harder to control, more isolating. Other children had stopped playing with him after the incident at school - the day he had accidentally frozen the entire playground during recess. The swing sets had been coated in ice, the slides too slippery to use, and twenty-three children had been sent home with mild frostbite.
I tried to warn them. Tried to tell them to stay away.
But children didn't listen to warnings. They were drawn to the spectacle, the way snow and ice formed around him like a personal winter. They thought it was magic, a party trick, something wonderful and safe.
They were wrong.
The memory shifted, jumping forward. He was twelve now, standing in the ruins of what had been his childhood home. The fire department had done their best, but there was only so much they could do when the source of the blaze was still inside, still burning, still feeding on everything it touched.
"We'll find somewhere else to live."
His father's voice, hollow and defeated. The insurance company had called it an electrical fire, but he knew better. He had seen the scorch marks, smelled the distinctive odor of his uncle's power. His mother's brother, the one who had been born with fire instead of ice, who had always resented the cold side of the family.
"He killed her because she was protecting me."
The truth he had never spoken aloud, not even to himself. His uncle had come that night, had demanded that he be sent away to a facility where his powers could be contained. His mother had refused, had stood between them, had paid the price for her defiance.
I wasn't strong enough to save her.
The memory jumped again. Fifteen years old, standing in the snow outside the facility where they had finally sent him. Not because his father didn't love him, but because he was afraid. Afraid of what he might become, afraid of what he might do to the people he cared about.
"I'll visit every month. I promise."
He had kept that promise for exactly six months before the visits stopped. The letters continued for another year, growing shorter and more distant with each one, until they stopped entirely.
I told myself I didn't care. That I was better off alone.
But the lie had tasted bitter, even to him. The facility had been full of others like him, people with powers that made them dangerous to be around. He had thought he would find kinship there, understanding, maybe even friendship.
Instead, I found fear.
Even among the gifted, he was different. The cold that followed him was deeper, more absolute than anything the other ice-powered residents could produce. He froze their practice rooms, their common areas, their relationships before they could even begin.
"He's not like us."
The whispers followed him through the halls, through the training sessions, through the sleepless nights when he lay awake listening to the frost form on his windows. They were right, of course. He wasn't like them. He was something else, something colder, something that existed in the spaces between warmth and life.
I was eighteen when I killed someone for the first time.
The memory was crystal clear, preserved in perfect detail like everything else his power touched. The facility had been attacked by a group of anti-gifted extremists, people who believed that powered individuals were a threat to normal humanity. They had come armed with weapons designed to neutralize abilities, to capture or kill anyone who couldn't pass for baseline human.
"Please, I surrender. I'll come quietly."
The guard had been young, maybe his own age, his eyes wide with terror as he faced him in the facility's main corridor. He had dropped his weapon, had raised his hands, had done everything right according to the rules of civilized warfare.
I killed him anyway.
Not out of malice, not out of anger, but because he had been afraid. Afraid of being taken, afraid of being used, afraid of never seeing the sky again. The ice had formed around the guard so quickly that he hadn't even had time to scream. One moment he was pleading for his life, the next he was a perfect sculpture of frozen terror.
That's when I learned the truth about myself.
He wasn't just gifted. He wasn't just powerful. He was a force of nature wearing human skin, a winter storm that had learned to walk upright and pretend it had feelings.
The facility director found me afterward, standing over his body.
"Neru, what have you done?"
"What I had to do."
"This isn't what your mother would have wanted."
"My mother is dead. And if she had been stronger, if she had been more like me, maybe she would still be alive."
The memory shifted one final time, to the moment that had defined everything that came after. He was twenty-one, standing in the director's office, listening to him explain why he was being recruited for a special program.
"We need someone who can do what others can't. Someone who can make the hard choices."
"You mean someone who can kill without feeling guilty about it."
"If that's how you want to phrase it."
He had accepted, of course. Not because he believed in the cause, not because he thought he was making the world a better place, but because it gave him purpose. Structure. A reason to exist that didn't involve pretending to be something he wasn't.
I told myself I was helping people. Saving the innocent, stopping the guilty.
But the truth was simpler and more selfish. He was helping himself. Every mission, every target, every perfect victory was proof that he was in control, that he could channel his nature into something useful rather than something destructive.
Until today.
The memory snapped back to the present, to the battlefield where he faced Shen, to the moment where he had finally decided to stop pretending to be anything other than what he was. The Soul Extraction energies were building around him, crystallizing the very air into patterns of impossible beauty and absolute lethality.
Shen wanted to see my real power. He wanted to know what I was underneath all the control.
Across the battlefield, he could see Shen preparing his own technique, his body becoming a living bomb, his very existence a celebration of chaos and destruction. They were opposites in every way that mattered, but in this moment, he understood Shen perfectly.
He's not insane. He's honest.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. Shen didn't hide what he was, didn't pretend to be something softer or more palatable. He was destruction incarnate, and he owned that truth without apology or shame.
Maybe it's time I did the same.
The Soul reached its peak, and reality around him began to crystallize. Not just the air, not just the ground, but the very concept of motion itself. Time slowed, then stopped, then began to move backward as entropy itself was frozen in place.
This is what I really am. This is what I've always been.
Not a hero, not a villain, not even a person in any meaningful sense. He was winter itself, the space between seasons, the moment when everything alive paused to acknowledge the inevitability of ending.
And maybe that's okay.
The technique completed, and the world around him became a sculpture of frozen perfection. The air crystallized into geometric patterns of impossible beauty, the ground became a mirror of polished ice, and in the center of it all, Shen stood motionless, his body encased in a shell of crystalline eternity.
He's not dead. Just... preserved.
The ice around Shen was different from what he usually created. Not the brutal, shattering cold of combat, but something gentler, more perfect. Shen was suspended in a moment of pure potential, his expression frozen in the instant before his own technique would have detonated.
He pushed me to this. Made me stop pretending.
He walked across the frozen battlefield, his footsteps the only sound in the perfect silence. The ice beneath his feet didn't crack or shift - it was beyond such mundane concerns as pressure or weight. This was crystallized possibility, the physical manifestation of absolute zero made manifest.
For the first time in my life, I used my full power without holding back.
He stopped in front of Shen's frozen form, studying the expression on his face. Even encased in ice, he looked... satisfied. As if this was exactly what he had been hoping for.
He wanted to see what I really was. Now he knows.
The ice around Shen was beautiful, he had to admit. Not the crude formations of his normal techniques, but something artistic, something that honored the moment they had shared. Shen was a work of art now, a perfect sculpture that captured the essence of his explosive nature in crystalline stillness.
I should leave him like this. It would be safer for everyone.
But even as he thought it, he knew he wouldn't. Not because he was merciful, not because he felt guilty, but because Shen had earned something better than eternal preservation. He had pushed him to transcend his limits, had forced him to confront the truth of what he was.
That deserves acknowledgment.
He placed his hand against the ice, feeling the perfect structure of the crystals beneath his palm. With a thought, he began to warm them, not with heat but with the simple absence of his power. The ice didn't melt - it simply stopped being, the crystals dissolving back into ordinary air.
Shen gasped as the ice released him, his body suddenly free to move again. He stumbled forward, his eyes wide with shock and something else - wonder, maybe, or recognition.
SHN: Did you see it? Did you see what we became?
NER: I saw.
SHN: That was... that was incredible. You're incredible.
He looked at Shen, this man who had nearly killed him, who had pushed him to the very edge of his control, who had somehow managed to make him feel something other than cold emptiness.
NER: Thank you.
SHN: You can pay me back by letting me follow you.
NER: Guess I wouldn't mind a bit of heat.
The words came out softer than he had intended, but he didn't try to take them back. They were true, and truth was something he had decided to embrace.