Lucas swung at him in rage, and Xavier let him. He blocked it with one forearm, threw his elbow into Lucas' ribs, and drove him back against the wall. Lucas fought hard—stronger than Xavier rembered—but Xavier's training with Viola showed. Every block, every counter, every strike landed where it hurt most.
Every punch Xavier delivered carried months of buried frustration. Every kick was payback for the bullying, the humiliation, the verbal abuse Lucas had thrown at him when he was still powerless.
"You rember pushing down the stairs?" Xavier growled as he slamd Lucas onto a glass table. It shattered under them. "You rember calling trash? Beating in the shower? Making everyone laugh at ?"
Lucas spit blood at him and swung again. Xavier caught his wrist, twisted it behind his back, and slamd his face into the floor.
"You're not killing ," Lucas rasped. "You wouldn't dare—"
"Oh, I'll kill you," Xavier said. "But not easy. You're getting a worse death than Leonardo. And Maximilian. And Ethan."
Lucas froze.
His breath shook.
"You… you killed Ethan and Max?!"
Xavier smiled down at him, almost amused.
"I have clips if you need proof."
Lucas' face drained of color. He tried to crawl away, but Xavier grabbed the nearest object—a broken leg of the shattered table—and smashed it into Lucas' forearm. The bone cracked with a sound that made even Xavier's ears ring. Lucas scread, thrashing on the floor.
Xavier lifted the heavy tal leg again and swung it down with both hands.
The blunt force tore flesh. Splintered bone. A ss of blood and shredded muscle.
He swung again. And again.
Lucas' hand finally separated from his arm with a wet rip and rolled across the floor, leaving a trail of blood like soone dragged a paintbrush dipped in red.
Lucas howled, gripping the stump, kicking the floor, begging through clenched teeth.
More guards rushed in, hearing the screams. Xavier didn't even flinch. He picked up a decorative steel sculpture—so modern art thing shaped like twisting tal vines—and hurled it like a spear. It skewered the first guard through the chest and pinned him to the wall.
The second guard lunged with a baton.
Xavier caught his wrist, twisted it, stole the baton, and shoved it into his mouth before smashing the back of the man's head with a crystal wine bottle. Blood sprayed over the marble.
Another guard tried to retreat.
Xavier grabbed him by the belt and collar and threw him straight through the window. The man fell screaming as his body disappeared into the neon-lit drop outside the tower.
Silence settled.
Only Lucas' ragged breathing, wet and shaky, filled the room.
Xavier stepped over corpses as if he were walking through spilled groceries. He reached the minibar, pulled out a crystal bottle of whiskey, poured himself a glass, and took a slow drink while staring at Lucas.
"Thought you'd enjoy watching drink while you bleed," Xavier said casually.
Lucas didn't answer. His eyes were wide. His pupils trembling. His face soaked with sweat and blood.
Then his severed hand twitched.
Xavier paused mid-sip.
The veins along the stump of Lucas' arm started moving—like sothing alive wriggled under his skin. Bone pushed outward. New muscle fibers spiraled out like roots searching for soil. The regeneration wasn't healing. It was building a new limb, raw and exposed, veins pulsing as if soone was knitting together a fresh body part in fast forward.
"What the fuck…" Xavier muttered.
Lucas lifted his head. Blood dripped down his chin, but he was smiling. A slow, shaky smile that didn't belong to the Lucas Xavier used to know.
"I told you," Lucas whispered, voice trembling with pride. "I'm not the sa. I'm not human anymore."
"I've ascended," he said. "I've beco a Nova. A superhuman."
Xavier set his drink down.
"Oh," he said. "So I get to kill you twice."
Lucas scread as the half-ford arm finished knitting itself together, bone snapping into place with wet crunches, veins crawling under translucent skin before muscle wrapped around it. He rolled to his feet faster than any normal human should have been able to, blood still dripping off his torso, eyes glowing with manic confidence.
"You see?" Lucas laughed, voice cracking with adrenaline. "You can't kill . I'm beyond you now. I'm a god."
Xavier didn't answer right away. He stepped forward and punched Lucas square in the face hard enough to knock teeth loose. The impact sent Lucas flying across the room, smashing through a marble pillar and tearing it in half. Chunks of stone exploded outward, shattering glass panels and alarms nearby.
"A god?" Xavier said calmly, walking toward him. "You were crying like five minutes ago."
Lucas roared and launched himself back at Xavier. His fist crashed into Xavier's ribs and sent him skidding across the floor, tearing up tiles as his boots dug trenches into the ground. Xavier rolled, kicked off the wall, and slamd his knee into Lucas' jaw mid-charge. The force snapped Lucas' head sideways and sent blood spraying across the corridor.
They crashed through the lounge doors and into the main hallway, bodies smashing into security barricades and ergency panels. Lucas grabbed Xavier by the throat and lifted him, slamming him into the ceiling hard enough to crack concrete. Xavier jamd his elbow into Lucas' regenerating arm and heard bone shatter again, then drove his knee into Lucas' stomach and twisted free.
Guards poured in from both ends of the corridor, shouting orders.
Xavier didn't even turn fully toward them. He ripped a tal sign off the wall and hurled it sideways. It cut through two guards at waist height and sent them collapsing in pieces.
Another fired blindly. Xavier kicked the guard's legs out from under him, stomped his skull into the floor, then grabbed the weapon and emptied the magazine into a charging vampire that had decided to join the chaos.
Lucas laughed, blood pouring down his chin as his arm regenerated again, slower this ti, twitching violently.
"You can't win," Lucas said, staggering upright. "The power chose . I was reborn."
Xavier grabbed Lucas by the face and slamd his head through a reinforced glass wall, sending both of them tumbling into the outer corridor that overlooked the city. The wind rushed in. Alarms wailed louder. Below them, traffic scread past hundreds of floors down.
Xavier punched Lucas again and again, breaking his nose, cracking his cheekbones, driving his head into the floor until the concrete spider-webbed beneath them.
"You know what gods don't do?" Xavier said, dragging Lucas up by his hair. "They don't need to convince people."
Lucas shoved him back and launched forward, tackling Xavier through a line of fleeing guests and into a security checkpoint. The desk shattered. Screens exploded. Blood sared across polished floors as they rolled, grappling, smashing elbows and knees wherever they landed.
More guards rushed in. Xavier snapped a man's neck with one hand, ripped a fire extinguisher off the wall with the other, and smashed it into another guard's face hard enough to cave it in. He tossed the empty canister at Lucas and followed it with his own body, slamming Lucas through another wall and into a stairwell.
They tumbled downward together, bodies bouncing off railings and concrete steps. Lucas kicked Xavier off mid-fall and landed hard but upright, coughing and laughing at the sa ti.
"You still don't get it," Lucas said. "I'm immortal now."
Xavier wiped blood from his mouth and cracked his neck.
"Then this is going to take longer," he said. "Lucky for , I've got ti."
Lucas charged again. Xavier t him head-on.
Their collision shook the stairwell as if a bomb had gone off, concrete splitting, rails snapping loose, blood splattering across the walls as the fight dragged outward again, deeper into the tower, bodies smashing through every obstacle in their way.
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