Crazy Awakening: My luck can copy Talents.

The spear descended.

Adrián saw it coming in slow motion.

He saw the tip of black light one meter from his chest. He saw the complete trajectory—not an image, a line marked in the air, a guide like the ones a billiards player sees when calculating a shot. He saw where it would enter, where it would exit, which organs it would pass through, how many seconds until he’d be dead.

He saw Sariel’s face behind the spear. Her yellow eyes full of tears. Her mouth clenched tight. Her right hand executing a movement her body had practiced a thousand times and now had to execute with technical perfection because any hesitation would make the death slow.

And underneath all of that—very deep, almost inaudible—he heard a voice that wasn’t his voice, but was completely his own. A voice that told him, with the exact calm of an older brother:

Not like this, Adrián. Not today. Not without a fight.

His body moved without his permission.

His right hand rose. From the back of his fingers burst forth, in a black flash with silver sparks, a dark leather gauntlet with silver knuckles that he hadn’t asked for, hadn’t summoned, had never seen in his life.

And above his head, floating, appeared a mask.

A black mask in the shape of a half-face domino, with gold patterns engraved along the edges that looked like playing cards. It hovered fifteen centimeters above his head, rotating very slowly.

And from the gauntlets, without his control, without his understanding, a pulse of black energy with silver flashes shot out and struck Sariel’s spear of black light in midair, half a meter before it reached his chest.

The spear deflected.

Not much.

But enough that instead of entering cleanly through his heart, it entered at an angle through the right side of his chest, piercing his lung instead of his vital organ.

Adrián felt the impact like a hot rod driving through him from the inside.

The mask disappeared.

The gauntlets disappeared.

And he fell backward onto the pavement with the spear protruding from his chest on the wrong side.

---

Sariel stood frozen in front of him, her eyes very wide.

Her breath caught for two seconds.

"..." she said. Not a word. A sound. A sound of pure horror that escaped her throat before her brain could formulate a phrase.

She looked down at the pavement where Adrián was writhing. The spear was still embedded, piercing his right side, its violet tip emerging from his back.

Then she looked at the air above Adrián’s body, where the mask had just been floating. The image was gone, but the residual energy was not. A faint black glow with silver flashes, slowly dissipating into the night air like smoke.

"No," Sariel said, very quietly. "No, no, no."

She stepped back. One step. Two.

"It can’t be. It can’t be. They told me it was latent, they told me it was dormant, they told me it wouldn’t awaken until—"

Adrián coughed blood.

Sariel brought both hands to her head. The black wings at her back fluttered uncontrollably, scattering ink-feathers across the pavement around her.

"They lied to me," she whispered. "They lied to me or they didn’t know or they didn’t tell me or—"

She looked at Adrián again.

He was conscious. Blood was coming from his mouth and from his side in amounts his body wouldn’t be able to replenish. But he was conscious. Looking at her. Eyes open. Unable to speak, unable to move, but looking at her.

Sariel took another step back.

"..." Adrián tried to speak. Only more blood came out.

"You’re going to die," she said.

She brought a hand to her mouth. Closed her eyes. When she opened them, her professional expression was back, but trembling.

"I have to report," she said. "I have to say the mission was completed. Even though it wasn’t. Even though you awakened. At least... at least you won’t live to use it."

Adrián looked at her.

She straightened up.

The four black wings folded against her back. The spear still embedded in him dissolved into the air, pulling another spasm of pain from him. And Sariel Corvax turned around and walked down Mercier Street to the corner, where she spread her wings again and rose into the moonless black sky in a silent beat of ink-feathers.

And Adrián was left alone on the pavement.

With the same sky Elena had seen for the last time from that same alleyway, three and a half years ago.

How funny, he thought. The same street. Both siblings. The same sky.

Dad’s going to hate this news.

---

Then came the strange time.

The time when one is dying has a different rhythm than normal time. Adrián noticed it. Noticed that seconds stretched and contracted incoherently. Noticed that his thoughts came and went without logic—he thought about Thursday’s breakfast, about Yuki’s hand squeezing his shoulder that afternoon, about the smell of old paper in the library, about the taste of Sariel’s lipstick, about his father’s face when they had to tell him his daughter had disappeared. All mixed together. All important. All saying goodbye.

Elena.

I’m sorry, sis. I didn’t make it. I didn’t find you. I was so close tonight. I was next to the wrong monster. I was kissing the wrong monster. Forgive me.

I’m going to find out who it is. I’m going to—

No. I’m not going to find out anything. I’m dying. I’m not going to find out anything now.

Dad.

Yuki.

Kenji.

He closed his eyes.

Opened them again when he heard heels on wet concrete.

The heels approached. Very slowly, almost curiously. And then stopped beside him.

Adrián turned his head.

He saw first the hem of the deep wine-colored dress dragging through the puddle of blood without its wearer seeming to care. Then the dress rising over legs covered in dark stockings. Then a fitted waist. Then a silhouette crouching down to his level.

Wine-red hair, long, wavy, falling over one shoulder.

Eyes the color of molten gold.

Porcelain skin with a small mole beneath her right eye.

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