Chapter 16 – First Fight In Another World
Luke did not hear the footsteps.
He did not hear breathing.
But suddenly, every nerve in his body screamed.
His ninety-two Soul Power flared instinctively. The second awakening from the previous night had sharpened his senses far beyond what the original Luke had possessed. If he still had the old soul power, he would have died before he even understood what was happening.
Luke twisted violently to the side.
The black claw tore through the air where his face had been a moment earlier. It passed so close that the dark energy around the artifact stung his cheek like heatless fire.
The attacker was fully covered in black robes, hood pulled low, face hidden behind a dark mask. Only the clawed hand was clearly visible—curved, black, and edged with unnatural force.
There was no time to think.
Luke's eyes locked onto the figure.
"Freeze."
A silver pulse rippled through the alley.
The assassin stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
His body hung in mid-motion, one foot barely touching the snow, claw still extended from the failed strike. Even the snowflakes around him froze in place, suspended in the dim alley light like scattered bits of broken glass.
Luke moved at once.
He stepped back, hand diving into his coat. His fingers closed around the grip of the handgun Silver Moon had given him earlier that day. He drew, aimed at the assassin's chest, and fired.
Bang!
The gunshot exploded through the narrow alley.
The bullet slammed into the black robe—
and at that exact moment, the silver ripple shattered.
Freeze broke instantly.
The assassin crashed down into the snow and stumbled backward, one boot scraping hard across the frozen ground.
Luke's eyes narrowed.
So that was the limitation.
The moment the target took damage, Freeze ended.
The Will of the World had told him the cost of the ability, but not every weakness. Of course it hadn't. Powers were never that kind. If you wanted to understand them, you learned through danger.
Luke kept the gun raised.
The assassin had already regained his footing.
From the assassin's point of view, reality had simply torn open.
One moment, his claw was less than an inch from the target's face. The next, his chest shook from impact, a gunshot rang in his ears, and the target was somehow several feet away with a smoking weapon in hand.
What—
The assassin looked down.
The bullet had flattened against his robe and dropped harmlessly into the snow.
His heart hammered once in shock.
A defense artifact.
If not for that, he would already be dead.
His eyes snapped back toward Luke.
The target had reacted too fast. Far too fast. The reports had never described that.
No matter.
The gun had failed.
The assassin lowered his center of gravity and rushed forward again.
He moved like a black streak across the alley.
Luke fired twice more.
Bang! Bang!
The first shot hit the assassin's shoulder and deflected off the robe with a metallic crack. The second struck the wall behind him and sent sparks and brick fragments into the snow.
Useless.
Luke released the gun immediately and let it drop.
Holding it would only slow him down now.
The assassin saw the weapon fall and accelerated.
Good, Luke thought. Come closer.
He stamped his foot down.
Soul power surged into the alley floor.
The scattered snow flash-froze. A thick, smooth layer of ice spread over the narrow ground in front of him, turning the alley into a pale, gleaming trap.
The assassin hit it at full speed.
His boots slipped.
His body lurched violently to one side as his momentum betrayed him. He swung one arm out to recover balance, but his first rush was broken.
Speed needed traction.
Without it, speed became a weakness.
Luke raised one hand.
A spear of ice formed above his palm—long, dense, and sharpened to a killing point. He sent it flying toward the assassin's chest.
The black claw flashed.
Dark energy carved through the spear, shattering it into freezing fragments.
But Luke had not aimed to kill with that one.
He had aimed to force rhythm.
The assassin landed badly after the slash, one foot still sliding. Before he could reset, frost climbed the alley wall to his left. Luke pulled his hand sideways, and a jagged sheet of ice burst outward from the brick like a crooked blade.
The assassin twisted sharply. The edge scraped across his robe instead of impaling his ribs, but it shoved him off line again.
Luke moved in.
He drove a short ice spike from the ground toward the assassin's knee.
The man tore his leg aside at the last second, but not fully. The spike ripped through cloth and sliced across the outside of his thigh.
Blood darkened the snow.
The assassin hissed and jumped back, finally giving himself room.
Good.
He could bleed.
The robe was strong, but not complete. The joints and gaps still mattered.
The assassin's breathing had changed now.
Still controlled.
But no longer certain.
He circled instead of charging straight in, boots careful on the frozen ground. The claw in his right hand hummed with low black force. Luke noticed the way the man shifted his weight and adjusted his posture.
He was learning.
That made him more dangerous.
Luke spread his fingers.
Thin streams of frost moved across the ground like pale veins, spreading wider through the alley. They climbed a rusted pipe, touched the lower edge of the wall, and curled around scattered snowbanks. From the outside, it looked like a natural spread of winter cold.
In truth, Luke was shaping the field.
The assassin moved again.
This time he didn't rush directly. He kicked off the wall to his right, using the brick for traction, and came in from an angle. The claw swept down toward Luke's shoulder, then reversed halfway into a lower slash aimed for the stomach.
Feint.
Luke leaned back from the first line, but the second almost took him.
The claw ripped across the front of his coat, cutting cloth and grazing skin beneath.
A sharp sting crossed his side.
Not deep.
Too close.
Luke's expression hardened.
The assassin pressed forward at once, sensing an opening. He slashed again, forcing Luke back across the icy ground.
Luke raised an ice shield no larger than his forearm.
The claw struck it.
Crack.
The shield exploded in a spray of frost, but it bought Luke the fraction of a second he needed.
He whispered, "Freeze."
Silver rippled through the alley a second time.
The assassin stopped mid-step, body twisted from the follow-through of the last strike.
Luke did not attack him directly.
He already knew what would happen.
Instead, he drove both hands downward.
The ice on the ground surged up in thick, solid rings around the assassin's boots and lower legs, locking him in place like a pair of frozen clamps. At the same time, frost climbed behind him and thickened across the alley wall, boxing him into a tighter space.
Luke released Freeze before wasting another heartbeat of soul power.
Time resumed.
The assassin's eyes widened beneath the mask.
His body tried to continue moving—
but his feet would not come with him.
The sudden stop nearly threw him forward.
He hacked downward with the claw, trying to break the ice around his legs. The first blow cracked it. The second cut deeper.
Luke could feel the drain in his body now.
Not emptiness.
But pressure.
Freeze was expensive, and repeated shaping of ice in active combat was beginning to weigh on him. He still had enough left to fight, but not enough to drag this out recklessly. More importantly, every extra second of power use increased the chance of attention.
He needed to end it.
The assassin ripped one foot partially free and lunged anyway, dragging a block of ice with him. His movement was ugly now, forced and uneven, but still fast enough to be dangerous.
Luke stepped aside and raised three narrow blades of ice in the air.
He fired them.
The assassin swung the claw.
One blade shattered.
A second bounced off the mask with a sharp metallic sound.
The third cut across the side of his neck—but not deep enough.
Not enough.
The assassin snarled and came again, desperation replacing precision.
Luke retreated one more step and glanced once at the weak overhead light near the end of the alley.
Then he moved.
Frost raced up the wall beneath the lamp and spread across the fixture. The brittle casing cracked under the sudden cold.
The light burst.
The alley dropped into deeper shadow.
For an instant, the assassin's vision shifted.
Only an instant.
Enough.
Luke shaped one final attack.
This time not large.
Not dramatic.
Small, dense, and precise.
Three thin ice spikes formed low near the ground instead of in front of his hands. Hidden by shadow and snow, they shot upward at an angle the moment the assassin stepped forward.
The first struck the robe and glanced off.
The second scraped along the underside of the mask.
The third slipped cleanly into the narrow gap between mask and collar.
Straight through the throat.
The assassin froze—not from time, but from shock.
His claw trembled once.
The black energy around it flickered weakly.
Then blood spilled hot and dark across the ice.
He dropped to his knees.
One hand clawed uselessly at his neck.
A second later, his body pitched forward into the snow and did not rise again.
The alley fell silent.
Only the snow remained.
Luke stood still for a moment, breathing through the cold.
The fight had taken more out of him than he liked, but he was far from empty. What concerned him more was how quickly a real battle could force him to spend power in bursts. Freeze was devastating, but expensive. It had to be used carefully.
He approached the body slowly.
His groceries were scattered across the alley. One wall was marked by bullet chips and shallow cracks. Frost covered most of the ground in broken white sheets. A section of brick had split where one of his ice strikes hit too hard. Blood stained the snow in dark patches that were already beginning to freeze.
Luke crouched beside the body.
The robe was indeed an artifact.
Up close, he could see the damaged weave more clearly—black outer cloth, thin metallic threading beneath, a defensive layer built to spread impact and absorb force. The claw weapon was attached to a reinforced glove beneath the sleeve, its curved talons sharper than steel and still faintly cold from residual energy.
The mask too.
Just as he suspected.
A full set.
Professionally equipped.
This was no random street attack.
Luke searched the body quickly.
No wallet.
No badge.
No token.
No identifying marks.
Only the kind of careful emptiness left by someone sent to kill and expected not to return.
That, by itself, was an answer.
Someone had sent a real assassin.
Not a thug.
Not an amateur.
Someone who either knew where Luke would be—
or had been watching him.
Snow gathered over the corpse.
Over the blood.
Over the broken groceries.
Luke straightened slowly, and his thoughts returned to the same ugly point.
The novel had never mentioned this.
Not once.
No alley ambush.
No black-robed killer.
No near-instant death hidden in some side street after a grocery trip.
But if this had happened in the original timeline—
if it truly belonged there—
then the implications were bad.
Without the second awakening, without sharpened senses, without Freeze, the original Luke should have died the instant that claw came down.
So why hadn't he?
Luke's eyes lowered to the corpse.
One possibility was simple.
This attack had never happened before because something had already changed.
Another possibility was worse.
It had happened—
and someone had saved the original Luke before he ever knew how close he had come to dying.
Luke stood there in the falling snow, silent and still.
Then his expression hardened.
Either way, the truth remained the same.
The story he knew was incomplete.
And someone, somewhere, had already begun making moves around him.