The town was gone.

Not quiet, not empty—gone. Buildings flattened. Roads melted. The air still trembled with the heat of it. At the center stood a woman, hands shaking, face blank. She hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t run.

She’d just… reacted.

One mistake. One moment. One human had touched the wrong nerve, said the wrong thing, hurt the wrong mutant child—and now there was nothing left but ash and her breath catching in her throat.

Erik found her there, knees buried in rubble, eyes fixed on nothing. He didn’t flinch at the devastation. He had seen worse. He had done worse.

But she wasn’t him. Not yet.

“You lost control,” he said, voice low. “They made you lose it.”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t cry.

So he sat beside her, not to comfort—but to remind her what survival looked like.

They would come for her now. With fear. With laws. With guns.

Let them.

She wasn’t alone anymore.