Resonance//Dissonance [BOOK 2 in progress]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RfS9Z9GvaI song used for inspo

It took a bit more effort to heal up, the shoulders needed to be popped back into the sockets, and the tendon damage in the elbows handling the strain of the projection was enough to force him to meditate for few hours, focusing on the healing matrix to provide direct support there.

It took some long, uneventful hours for his flesh to knit. Hours he used for strategizing and visualising how this would develop. Once the last of his muscle tendons strands connected and his veins stopped bleeding out outside of the circulatory system, he was ready for Creation of something grand.

The child he was meant to conceive—the creation he was consumed with crafting, embodying, and binding into the very sinews of his being—was nearing birth. Not flesh and blood, no. A creature of momentum. A being of movement. A machine of pursuit. It was never meant to bring him salvation. It was meant to deliver him: to his enemies, to the forsaken, to the necessary reckoning that awaited.

It would propel him forward—unflinching, unbound, and unstoppable. A weapon not of destruction, but of purpose. A tool without brakes.

Once again, he stepped into the heart of the field—though at this point, it looked far less like the flat, orderly parking lot it once was. It had been torn asunder, scarred, reshaped by exertion and power. Now it resembled a ravaged battlefield, a warpath where chaos left its claw marks.

Luke moved toward the widest clearing between the surrounding buildings, the only open wound in the city's skin wide enough to accommodate what he was about to birth.

His body lowered—slow, deliberate. Thick, scar-laced fingers, callused and cracked, reached down and brushed against the glassy floor. His back arched in response. One foot slid slightly behind the other. A sprinter's stance, but sharper. More predatory.

He rose again, his spine realigning without a single crack. Smooth. Controlled.

Then, the ignition began.

Magic flared—not wild, not chaotic, but methodical. His telekinetic web, once used for brute reinforcement, now became a silken cocoon of speed. It wrapped around him, whispered across his nerves, seeped into muscle fiber and bone. A shell. A conduit. An exosuit not of steel, but of intent.

It bolstered, subtracted, redirected, rechanneled. All of it woven for this singular goal:

An armor for velocity.

An armor for breakthrough.

An armor for future reckoning.

Lucas reached deep into his mind, focused it, channeled it—used it as a prism through which to shape the image he needed to preserve. The webs, or perhaps strings, of telekinetic magic wrapped tighter around him, constricting with purpose. Normally ethereal, fleeting in nature, they now became physical—more rigid in their structure, more defined in their intent.

They began to shape around his form.

At first, they clung to him like a second skin, thick and dense, forming a skeletal armor. But it did not stop there. The structure expanded, layer by layer. A framework growing with intent, with hunger.

From his back, in the sprinter's crouch he still held, two angular wings burst forth. They were stiff, unmoving—carved not for flight, but for resistance-breaking, drag-cutting, stabilization at speed. They held no feathers. Just edges.

The front of his body elongated, a shimmering sheath of telekinetic force forming into a sharp prow. It thickened, hardened, refined. Its edges honed not just to a point, but to an idea: pierce everything—air, matter, spell, concept.

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What formed before him was no longer armor. It was a spearhead.

A missile.

A living projectile.

A construct born of need, sharpened by intent, and framed by pain.

Luke gave up on using his arms as anchors for his magic—at least for now. It was too destabilizing, too prone to irregularities and interference. He knew it could be done, but not yet. Not in this form. So instead of channeling flames through his palms, he shifted the locus of ignition.

The focal point of the embers formed just behind his scapulae. A dense, concentrated ball of fire coalesced in the air behind him, its surface flickering like molten coal, glowing brighter with every breath. It pulsed with pressure—not just heat, but intent, like a silent countdown to something violent and inevitable.

His focus sharpened, narrowing down to this one point of heat. Behind the curtain of his conscious will, his subconscious mind continued weaving the armor that was meant to guide him—tighter, firmer, more refined.

A hiss escaped his lips.

The flame found its escape.

It seeped outward in a slow, deliberate stream—pressurized, focused, and unrelenting. Every inch it grew created more thrust, more push, more force driving his body forward. And that body, still anchored to the ground by telekinetic hooks dug deep beneath the glass, resisted. It vibrated with tension, like a bowstring pulled to breaking.

Soon, the tension would snap. And when it did, he would fly.

Not yet, there could still be so much more.

He needed to source his anchor, something to latch onto his will while this tremendous pressure crushed him from every point imaginable. And so he reached deep, deeper than he ever felt comfortable.

He all but just forgotten, the sky's blue colour of her eyes, the silver shadow that they carried, the clouds that gave shape to that sky, that single tear that was dropping. Her brave smile that she put up, in that moment that ruined her, that hurt her so much.

In a moment that he has forgotten.

The pressure became barely noticible as the weight of that sin settled in, the rage that overtook him, the rage that burned bright within, and that fuled the flames without, a raging inferno of jet flames that roared from behind his back.

„HOW COULD I?" He howled into the sky, shamed by his rejection of his own sin. The shining that blinded him to his sin, now fueled the flames that illuminated all that was around him.

His own need for excemption of sin disgusted him, that he would deem to abondon such an act he commited. How he hurt her, how he allowed himself to drown.

No more.

„NO MORE!" he yelled, and the coalescence of flames increased in intesity manifold behind him, the glassed floor melting like toffe under the onslaught of directed heat.

„NEVER AGAIN! I WILL NEVER ALLOW FOR IT AGAIN!" And as those maddened promises raigned, the latched of his telekinetic hold finaly gave way.

And pure acceleration was allowed to transpire.

The world turned to streaks as the momentum took over, massive G-Force slammed into his innards, organs being pushed against the cage of bones his skeleton was. More, and more blood was drained from his veins as they tore through the influence of speed aquired, speed gained by loss and shame.

The drag of the surrounding air set his skin aflame as it ground him down into pieces, and through that, he pierced forward with speed increasing.

Pain?Blood?Flesh torn? Let it all be damned.

This was what he lived for.

This was what was worth dying for!

An expression of emotion unbound, life gripped in full, squeezed out of every ounce of meaning, channeled into a miracle unimaginable.

„THIS IS IT!" His mind howled as a maniacal grin tore at his cheeks, eyes watering from the inertia and barrier of wind forcing them within his skull.

With the feeling of his eyes pressing against his brain, his stupor was broken as he understood something.

„I CAN'T SEE SHIT!" panic overtook him as blurr after blurr passed by him with a whistle and snaps.

Before panic could set in, he filtered his senses and abondoned sight and hearing, tried to rely more on touch and other magical ones, touch being enchanced by his telekinetic skill.

And it all failed, condemned to ruin. It simply did not keep up with the speed he was carried with. Franticly he tried to grasp anything he could latch onto, but the domain of his senses was too disrupted to relay information reliably.

And as per one of the oldest rules of this world.

What goes up, must go down.

Lacking a point of reference and capacity to see himself going off course, his body started heading downwards in a raging screech through air, the armor he created for himself dampened his reaction even more, but once he felt the sudden drop of his stomach and lungs being squashed he knew he was in deep shit, and quickly falling even deeper.

And he rememebered his drop from the Nest, but decided that this time he won't Void Warp, Luke tried to reign the speed and direction in. His attempts only worsened the erratic loss of controll, body contorting despite the telekinetic brace, and finally, it met an obstacle.

A building's roof turned to dust upon contact, so did the whole top floor, and north side wing of it as Luke passed through it in under a second.

Only to hard stop in a deep ditch in the ground, spanning good 20 meters, that his body made as he ate dirt face first, bracing all of the momentum as it pushed from every inch of his body inward, making him whimper and spurt blood through skin like a squized sponge. Or a watermelon smashed against the ground. Or a bunch of strawberries squeezed in an iron grip.

„... I could really go for some fruit after this." through the haze of pain and quite a substantial concussion that was the only thing that his mind managed to summon from it's depths.

His body was wrangled once again, and he was tottaly spent. He had no idea how to solve the issues with his senses lacking during the hyper speed movement, so he just let go and allowed his body and mind to mend, leying there in a pool of his own blood, he pondered if he should be worried how used to this he was getting, and how suprisingly snug his thick, perpetually warm blood was, like a heated up water matteras.

„Yes, you should be worried, that's weird." With a crack of his neck he raised his head off the ground and looked downwards, towards the entry poin of the ditch he made. There she stood, arms folded against eachother, a scowl on her moonlit face, eyes glaring at him with a mixture of emmotions, annoyence being most prevelent one.

„Are you done with your messing around?" 'Theru asked him.

„Are you done with your hissy fit, missy?" he slurred out through his teeth, wanting to look casual, yet the bleeding from his orfices made it a bit of a challange.

She just humphed at him and used tendrils of smoke to wrap around his body and lift him into the air, his body's increasing mass a casual weight for her.

„Come on you lug, we got a new lead, I told Baldie I will get you ready, listen well 'cause I won't repeat myself, and heal up faster!" she said as she turned her back towards him and started walking, floating him beside her wrapped up like an umbral tortilla.