Power Thief's Revenge [BL]

"In the drawer beside my bed." Elder Thales said, voice raspier than usual. "There should be a tape. Labelled WOR Vol 165."

Hermes raised an eyebrow. "WOR? What's that supposed to stand for?"

"Weather Observation in the Rift." The old man replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Dr. Dione Pleiades-Luxuria kept detailed records. That tape is one of the last ones."

Hermes opened the drawer. It was cluttered with loose papers, pressed flowers, and trinkets of all kinds. But he found the tape soon enough, black and old with a faded white sticker, 'WOR Vol 165' scrawled across in looping cursive.

"You said this is Dr. Dione's?" Hermes asked, brushing dust off the plastic.

"Yes. Aphrodite's mother. She was... curious. Too curious, maybe."

"Why did she stop making them?"

Thales didn't answer. He just gestured to the corner, where an old VHS player sat beneath a thin blanket of cobwebs and time.

Hermes kneeled by it, checking the wires. Miraculously, it was still plugged in.

The screen flickered to life, colors distorted for a second before settling into a shaky handheld shot.

A woman's voice crackled through the speaker. "WOR Vol 165. Weather Observation in the Rift. Day 12 of summer… or at least, what the calendar says is summer. The wind says otherwise."

Dr. Dione stepped into frame. She was younger than he remembered from the photos—black hair tied in a thick braid, windbreaker zipped up to her chin. Her eyes sparkled with energy, even if her expression was serious.

Behind her stood her husband, Cael Luxuria, with pink hair and a gentle face, adjusting a tripod camera. Elder Thales was there too, sporting fewer wrinkles and a firmer posture. Another man in hiking gear stood off to the side, his face shadowed by a cap.

"This is the edge of the Danger Zone." Dione continued. "We've set up camp just a few meters from where the rift winds become too erratic to safely measure. Today, we're checking wind direction patterns, temperature shifts, and radiation levels."

The camera cut to the group walking through underbrush. The grass moved strangely—even when they stepped, it bent away from them, like repelled by an unseen force.

"The wind's blowing westward now," Cael said, holding out a wind gauge.

"Northwest." The tour guide corrected, pointing at the trees. "But look. It just shifted."

Dione turned the camera upward. The trees swayed in several directions at once, like tangled dancers with no rhythm.

"It's as if the wind's being sprayed out... like a fan on random mode," she murmured. "Or a hose, spraying particles out into the world."

She looked back at the camera. "What if this is how powers are dispersed? Random particles, carried into the atmosphere by Rift wind. That would explain the seemingly chaotic nature of power inheritance—why some families pass them on, while others don't. Why some are born with gifts, and some are not."

Hermes leaned forward, brow furrowing.

The camera shook violently.

"It's pulling!" Thales shouted.

Leaves tore from branches. The tall grasses whipped inwards. Even the camera jolted as Dione stumbled.

"Grab something!" the tour guide barked.

Cael wrapped an arm around Dione as the guide plunged his hooked walking stick into a tree root and braced them. Elder Thales nearly slipped, but Cael caught him, too.

The wind roared louder. The sound of it wasn't natural—it screeched, like the air itself was screaming.

"Call to it!" The tour guide yelled.

"What?" Dione gasped.

"Call to it! Say something, anything! Let it know you're aware!"

"Stop!" She cried. "Stop, please!"

And then... silence.

As if a switch had flipped. The wind died instantly. Leaves floated gently back to the ground.

Everyone breathed heavily, dusted with dirt and sweat.

Then the camera slowly turned.

The trees ahead of them had vanished.

Not broken.

Not burned.

Just... gone.

As if eaten by the air itself.

A void hovered there—like a mouth. An open, yawning mouth made of shadow and nothingness. Not a shape. Not a creature. Just... absence. Its borders were jagged and twitching, swallowing light itself.

Bits of the forest drifted toward it. A squirrel. A fallen branch. They vanished into it without a sound.

And then it folded inward.

The blackness crumpled into itself like a collapsing lung. It shrank, and with a distant pop—

It imploded.

The camera went white for a second. Then came the sound of crying.

Soft. Fragile.

A baby's cry.

The view refocused. The ground where the rift once hovered now held something new.

A child.

Small. Wrinkled. Pale, but alive. His cries were steady, lungs strong.

"Dione." Cael said, voice trembling. "There's a baby."

The tape ended.

Hermes sat still for a long moment. The static buzzed quietly.

That baby... was him.

Born not from a womb. Not in a hospital. But from the rift itself. From absence. From devouring shadow and cosmic wind.

He turned to Thales.

The old man's expression was unreadable.

"You knew." Hermes whispered.

"I suspected." Thales said. "But seeing it again... it still chills the bone."

Hermes looked down at his hands. They trembled.

"Was I even human? Or just something the rift coughed out? What even am I?"

Elder Thales said: "Even the cosmos was said to be born out of nothing but itself, from a 'Big Bang'. So what is so strange about a being giving existence to itself?"

He patted his head. "What you are is what you choose to be, at this moment. If you want to continue being Hermes, then that is what you are."

He looked at the ceiling. "Meaning and identity is the burden of us sentient beings. That is why we must envy those who could not fathom their own existence. The birds, the beasts, the plants, the nature… You don't hear them struggling about what they are and what they are not. They simply are."

Hermes knew in his heart that this was true. He gets to choose the meaning of his existence, knowing now that he came from literally nothing. But still…

"Why raise me then? I'm not like what you are."

Elder Thales looked at him.

"Because you cried... just like any other child. And so I chose to believe that you are not so different."