Chapter Three: Sight Unwanted
Kane locked the apartment door behind him, slid the bolt shut, and exhaled.
The quiet hit harder than expected. No sirens, no footsteps above. Just the buzz of the old ceiling fan, ticking in lazy circles.
He sat on the floor.
The talk with Ivy had rattled something loose. Or maybe it had just confirmed what he already knew.
He wasn't normal.
He wasn't just powered.
He was something else entirely.
The sparks danced on his palms again. He focused, and they obeyed—twisting, coiling like threads waiting to be woven into something bigger. He'd never trained. Never studied any of this. But his body moved like it remembered.
Power hummed in his chest. Not a rush. Not a thrill. A presence. Like something old and infinite was curled up inside his ribcage.
He reached inward.
The world cracked open.
Not literally—but something in him stretched, snapped loose, and surged outward.
And suddenly, he could see.
Not with eyes. Not with light. With… perception. Like he'd opened a window into existence itself.
The room faded.
Space bent.
He hovered outside himself—outside the world—and looked across the vast cosmic machine.
Hell, mostly empty. Its thrones untouched, fires patient. Heaven, tiered and radiant, its highest realm distant and still. Between them, the Multiverse spun like a jewel on fire, each universe a flicker in a sea of endless variation. Earth-Zero. Earth-22. Earth-Prime. Earths forgotten and Earths unborn.
In the Fifth Dimension, nymphs of pure concept danced around logic and will, their bodies ideas and chaos made flesh. He could see them. They winked and flared like neon in his mind, barely noticing him—though one turned, just slightly, and smiled like it knew his birthday.
Beyond even them, he felt the vibrations of power.
The Anti-Monitor, cold and calculating, a shadow in eternal tension. In the far Forge of Worlds, a figure burned—a smith shaping realities with each swing of its hammer, older than myth.
He saw the Guardians of Oa glowing like distant stars, their minds dense with fear and secrets. The Emotional Spectrum pulsed like a heartbeat. Will. Fear. Rage. Love. Hope. Greed. Compassion. He could feel the Lantern energies—flickers of emotion as physics, woven into the universe like blood in a vein.
And he kept rising.
The Judges of Order and Chaos stood vast, unmoving, eyes made of rules and riddles. The Old Gods roared in ancient dialects; the New Gods whispered in technology. They were concepts in motion—eternity with names.
And still none of them looked directly at him.
But they knew. He could feel them noticing without noticing. Like actors on a stage pretending not to see the stranger in the front row.
He hovered there, suspended between awe and dread.
"This is a cheat," he whispered, the words echoing across thought.
Too much. Too fast. No trial. No sacrifice. No journey.
He had barely asked a question, and the universe had flung open its doors.
It wasn't fair.
A sick weight pooled in his gut. His breath came too fast. He dropped—snapped back to his apartment like a rubber band, gasping, heart pounding in his chest like a sledgehammer.
He gripped the floor. Real. Wood. Dirty. Grounded.
The fan still ticked above.
He felt like puking.
Power like that—it wasn't meant to be handed out. Not without purpose. Not without warning.
He scrambled to his feet, staggered into the bathroom, and stared at himself in the cracked mirror.
Same face. Same eyes.
But behind them?
The abyss looked back.
And for the first time, he was scared.
Not of dying.
Of being seen.
Whatever gave him this power—Presence, fate, divine error—it had made him into something massive. But whatever ruled the layers above and below? They were still calm. Watching. Waiting.
And it told him one terrifying truth.
This wasn't a gift.
It was an invitation.
And someone, somewhere, had already RSVP'd.
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