Ch1 Ryan Lowell

The pale, flickering light of the monitor washed across Ryan Lowell's face as he leaned toward the screen, completely absorbed in the battle unfolding before him.

On the right side of the broadcast, a livestream chat raced downward in a blinding blur. Messages appeared and disappeared so quickly that most of them were impossible to read, but Ryan barely noticed. Hundreds of thousands of viewers were watching the same thing he was, screaming their reactions into the feed in real time.

His phone vibrated on the desk.

Then again.

And again.

Ryan ignored it.

He barely blinked.

On the broadcast, transmitted live from some unnamed, dust-choked world, a lone human stood beneath the merciless glare of a foreign star. Beyond him stretched a barren landscape of cracked earth and red dust, and across that wasteland came a tide of monsters.

The stream's HUD displayed a staggering live viewer count in the tens of millions. Beneath it, the fighter's name was displayed in bold white lettering.

DARKSTAR.

Bro_Is_Cookin: Bro is literally spawn camping them on a random asteroid 💀

X_Rift_X: NO WEAPON DRAWN? HE'S FLEXING ON THEM

SpaceCadet42: Alien 1: "We outnumber him 100 to 1!" Darkstar: "Good, then it's an even fight."

GamerTag_77: Bro is playing on easy mode while the aliens are on nightmare difficulty 😭

The aliens came like a living avalanche.

They were enormous creatures of muscle, bone plating, and chitin, their bodies built for little more than killing. Rows of jagged teeth filled their open jaws as they thundered across the barren landscape, their heavy footsteps tearing chunks from the earth and sending clouds of red dust rolling through the air.

There had to be hundreds of them.

Maybe more.

Yet Darkstar didn't move.

He simply stood there and waited.

He wore a sleek, all-black combat suit that seemed to drink in the harsh sunlight rather than reflect it. The high collar concealed most of his face, and the camera angle hid the rest. From what Ryan could see, the fighter had pale skin, short dark hair, and no weapon in his hands.

Nothing.

Not even a knife.

The leading creatures were almost upon him when something strange happened.

The air around Darkstar began to distort.

At first, it was subtle—a faint ripple that bent the sunlight around his body. Then the distortion spread outward, growing stronger as an almost invisible force wrapped itself around him.

Ryan leaned closer.

And then the shadows came alive.

Darkstar's silhouette detached itself from his feet.

It spread across the cracked earth like a pool of spilled ink, flowing outward in every direction as though the ground beneath him had suddenly turned liquid. The first wave of aliens leaped toward him, their massive bodies blocking out the sunlight.

Jagged spikes erupted from the darkness.

They punched straight through chitinous armor.

The creatures never reached him.

Their bodies were caught in midair, impaled by enormous constructs of solid darkness that held them suspended above the battlefield. Their momentum vanished completely as they hung helplessly from the black spikes.

Walker_99: Bro's shadow is doing 90% of the work, pay it minimum wage! 😭

ShadowStan: THEY ARE SUSPENDED IN MID-AIR ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

Kaisa_R9: Imagine getting clapped by a floor shadow 💀💀

Zero_Cool: Alien insurance companies in SHAMBLES right now

Ryan leaned even closer to the screen, his fingers tightening around the edge of his desk until his knuckles turned white.

That wasn't even the most impressive part.

Darkstar wasn't just controlling his own shadow.

He was controlling theirs.

As the rest of the horde surged forward, the shadows cast by the aliens suddenly twisted and rose from the ground. Tendrils of darkness lashed around their legs, snapping joints and wrenching enormous bodies off balance. Some creatures were dragged violently into the dirt while others were lifted and thrown aside, their own silhouettes turning against them.

The monsters thrashed and roared, fighting an enemy they couldn't touch.

Their own reflections.

NoKrypton: They're literally fighting their own silhouettes like my cat at 3 AM 😂

RiftRider: BRO IS GIVING THEM EMOTIONAL DAMAGE

ApexHunter: REPORT HIM FOR HACKING 🚨🚨🚨

GigaChad_99: Bro remembered he's the main character 🗿

The front line collapsed beneath the assault.

Only then did Darkstar finally move.

He reached down into the sprawling pool of darkness beneath his feet and plunged his hand into it as though it were water. When he pulled his arm free, something followed.

A blade.

It wasn't metal, and it wasn't made from any recognizable form of energy. It was pure, condensed shadow, so dark that it seemed to absorb every particle of light around it. Its jagged edge looked almost unnatural, like someone had torn a hole in the fabric of space and given it a handle.

Stolen novel; please report.

Darkstar disappeared into the horde.

Ryan's eyes widened.

The fighter moved like a phantom, appearing and vanishing between the charging beasts. His blade left trails of absolute black through the air, and with a single fluid sweep, he cleaved through three armored creatures at once.

The weapon met no resistance.

It didn't cut through their armor.

It simply bypassed it.

The blade severed something deeper than flesh and bone, cutting directly through their life force. The three creatures collapsed almost simultaneously, smoke curling from their bodies as they struck the ground.

Another alien lunged.

Darkstar spun.

A rigid shield of shadow formed along his arm, catching the creature's claws with a violent crack. Before the beast could recover, the shield dissolved and the sword flashed upward.

The creature's head hit the ground before its body did.

Darkstar was already moving toward his next target.

Caster_Official: THE ANIME SWORD DRAW SOUND EFFECT JUST PLAYED IN MY HEAD

VanguardFanatic: 3 IN ONE SWEEP?! THEIR ARMOR WAS WET TISSUE PAPER TO HIM

Ryan watched in absolute awe.

He had seen Darkstar fight before. Everyone had. But watching an elite combat streamer tear through an alien horde like this was different from anything Ryan had experienced on a screen.

There was no hesitation in Darkstar's movements.

No wasted motion.

Every step, every strike, every use of his ability seemed perfectly calculated. He wasn't merely overpowering his enemies. He was making them look helpless.

By the time the last of the aliens fell, the battlefield had become a graveyard of smoking corpses and drifting red dust.

Darkstar stood alone in the middle of it.

The livestream exploded.

Donation alerts flooded the screen, one after another, while thousands of viewers spammed emotes and messages so quickly that the chat became little more than a wall of color.

Ryan finally let out the breath he had been holding.

He hadn't even realized he'd stopped breathing.

Slowly, he looked down at his hands.

They were trembling.

The cold glow of the monitor illuminated his fingers as he flexed them, trying to steady himself.

This was why he wanted to become a combat streamer.

In the brutal galaxy humanity now called home, combat streamers weren't merely entertainers. The most successful ones were living legends, their battles watched across the human colonies by millions—sometimes billions—of people.

Broadcasting your battles meant freedom.

The biggest streamers earned millions of X Energy crystals from sponsors and fans, enough to purchase top-tier equipment, rare cultivation resources, and comfortable lives for their families. They could afford things ordinary soldiers could only dream about.

But money wasn't the only reason Ryan wanted it.

Influence mattered more.

A high-ranking streamer had millions of eyes watching them. Military officials couldn't simply make someone disappear without questions being asked, and even powerful alien overlords had to think carefully before silencing someone whose death might ignite outrage across the colonies.

Ryan didn't just want to survive his years in the Exclipse Army.

He wanted to conquer them.

He wanted the fame.

The wealth.

The freedom.

Most of all, he wanted the entire universe to watch him rise to the top.

Bang!

The bedroom door flew open.

"Ryan! The food is done!"

Ryan nearly jumped out of his chair.

The epic atmosphere he'd been drowning in vanished instantly.

Standing in the doorway was his thirteen-year-old sister, Sarah Lowell. Her thick-rimmed glasses sat slightly askew on her nose, while a curtain of long black hair framed her warm brown skin. She stood with both hands planted firmly on her hips, staring at him as though she'd just caught him doing something ridiculous.

"Alright, alright," Ryan grumbled, his heart still hammering against his ribs. "Next time, knock."

Sarah giggled.

"Did I scare you?"

"No."

"You jumped."

"I did not."

"You totally did."

Ryan pointed toward the hallway.

"Get out."

Sarah ignored him.

Her eyes wandered past his shoulder and landed on the glowing monitor.

"Ooooh. Who are you watching?"

"Nobody."

Ryan shifted in his chair, trying to block the screen.

"Now get out of my room. I didn't say you could come in."

Sarah didn't budge.

Ryan narrowed his eyes.

Then his gaze drifted toward the bed.

His hand slowly reached toward the pillows.

Sarah's expression changed immediately.

"Oh, no."

She spun around and bolted into the hallway.

Ryan grabbed a pillow.

"Sarah!"

Her laughter echoed down the corridor.

He threw it.

The pillow sailed harmlessly through the doorway and bounced off the wall just as Sarah disappeared around the corner.

The door clicked shut.

Ryan stared at it for a moment before letting out a long sigh.

The annoyance faded almost immediately. Sarah had been doing this sort of thing for years, and somehow he still fell for it every time.

He turned back toward his desk and tapped the keyboard, pausing the livestream on a frozen image of Darkstar standing victoriously amid the alien corpses.

Ryan pushed his chair back and stood.

He crossed the room, scooped the pillow off the floor, and tossed it onto his rumpled bed.

Before leaving, he stopped and looked around.

His room was essentially a customized metal cube. The walls were almost completely hidden beneath posters, memorabilia, and a few pieces of equipment he'd collected over the years.

Directly above his bed hung a massive, glossy banner of the Exclipse, the military's premier vanguard army.

The poster depicted a phalanx of heavily armored soldiers marching beneath a fleet of angular dropships, their helmets identical and their visors glowing with a unified crimson light.

But the posters Ryan cared about most belonged to the Awakened.

The people with actual powers.

Beside his door was a worn, corner-curling print of Aegis, the famous gravity manipulator. She was shown hovering above a shattered skyline, surrounded by pieces of buildings that floated around her in orbit like a localized asteroid belt.

Beside her was Ignis, another famous Awakened, captured in the middle of a devastating attack. White-hot plasma wrapped around his body as he brought his fist down upon a towering four-armed behemoth.

And then there was Darkstar.

Ryan had even managed to get a poster of him wielding his infamous shadow sword.

He stared at it for a moment.

That same familiar hunger stirred in his chest.

Power.

He wanted it more than anything.

His stomach growled loudly.

Ryan blinked.

"...Right."

Power could wait.

Food couldn't.

He stepped out of his room.

The kitchen was narrow, and with three people sitting around the small wooden table, there wasn't much room to spare.

Ryan pulled out a chair and sat down, taking his usual place across from his mother and beside Sarah.

His mother, Malisa, set a steaming plate in front of him.

She was a strikingly beautiful woman, with porcelain-pale skin and a vibrant cascade of red hair. Tonight, however, there was a trace of exhaustion beneath her eyes that even her warm smile couldn't completely hide.

Sarah noticed Ryan's expression immediately.

She pointed her fork at him.

"Mom, look at him."

Ryan glanced at her.

"What?"

"He's been grinning like that all day."

"I have not."

"You have."

Sarah turned toward their mother.

"I asked him why he was so happy, and he said he can't wait for school tomorrow. Who gets this excited about school? I think he's up to something."

"It's not school," Ryan said as he pulled his plate closer. "It's the test."

Sarah stared at him.

"That's worse."

"Tomorrow is test day."

"Exactly. Who gets happy about taking a test?"

Ryan smirked.

"Someone who's going to pass."

Malisa chuckled softly as she carried her own plate over to the table.

Before sitting down, she glanced at the sleek metallic watch around her wrist and tapped the edge. A faint holographic display flickered to life above it, showing the late hour before fading back into the brushed chrome surface.

"If you brought half this much enthusiasm to your chores, Ryan, our apartment would be spotless."

"Hey." Ryan sat a little straighter. "Trash duty doesn't turn you into an Awakened."

Sarah snorted.

Ryan ignored her.

"Tomorrow is the big day," he said, looking between them. "I'm telling you, everything changes after this."

Malisa's smile lingered for a moment.

Then it softened.

"I know you're excited."

She sat down across from him, her expression becoming more careful.

"But please, Ryan, don't get your hopes too high."

Ryan's confidence faltered slightly.

Malisa folded her hands on the table.

"Only forty percent of candidates actually pass the Aptitude Test."

She spoke the statistic calmly, but there was something beneath her words. A subtle desperation, as though repeating the number might somehow make the possibility easier to accept.

Ryan picked up his fork.

"I know."

"The test isn't something you can simply decide to pass."

"I know."

"And if you don't—"

"I'll pass."

Ryan looked up.

His confidence returned.

"I can feel it, Mom. I'm built different."

Malisa's hand trembled.

It lasted only a second.

She quickly lowered it into her lap so neither of the children would notice.

She didn't contradict him.

The test was mandatory. There was nothing she could do to stop Ryan from taking it, just as there was nothing she could do to stop the sun from rising the next morning.

All she could do was hope.

And prepare herself for the possibility that passing the test might mean losing her son to the Exclipse.

Beside Ryan, Sarah had stopped eating.

The playful expression she'd worn only moments earlier was gone. She pushed her food around her plate with the edge of her fork, staring down at it.

"So..." she murmured.

Ryan looked toward her.

Sarah swallowed.

"Does that mean you're going to leave?"

Her voice became quieter.

"Just like Dad?"

The kitchen fell silent.

Even the faint hum of the air cycler seemed deafening.

Ryan's throat tightened.

He couldn't bring himself to look directly at his sister.

Malisa forced a lighthearted tone into her voice, though her eyes had already begun to glisten.

"Well, that's only if your brother passes," she said gently. "Look at you. Are you really going to miss your big brother that much if he leaves?"

Sarah's head snapped up.

"No!"

Her cheeks flushed.

"I'm going to be an Awakened too, and I'm going to pass."

Her voice cracked slightly.

She looked down at her plate again.

"I just..."

She struggled to get the words out.

"I just want to know if I'll get to see Dad when I pass."

She looked at her mother.

"Will we be together?"

Malisa's forced smile faltered.

The question struck deeper than she wanted to show.

"Aww, honey..."

For a moment, she seemed unable to say anything else.

Instead of answering, she reached for the safest response she could find.

"I know it's been a while," she said softly, "but Dad should be coming back next year on leave. You'll get to see him long before it's time for you to take your test."

Sarah didn't look completely satisfied.

But she nodded.

Ryan watched the two of them in silence.

A few minutes ago, all he'd been able to think about was power. He'd imagined himself standing where Darkstar had stood, surrounded by enemies while millions of people watched him fight.

Now that hunger felt different.

He reached over and gently bumped his shoulder against Sarah's.

"I'm going to miss you guys," he said.

Sarah looked at him.

"More than anything."

Ryan's voice dropped, becoming quieter and more sincere.

"I don't want to leave you. But if I pass... if I get that power..."

He paused.

"I won't just be watching through a screen anymore."

His eyes drifted toward the floor.

"I can actually make a difference out there."

Sarah remained silent.

"Maybe I'll even get strong enough to make sure Dad comes home for good."

Malisa stared at her son.

For several seconds, she said nothing.

A fragile smile eventually appeared on her face, but it trembled at the edges.

She didn't tell him that the military didn't always let people go when their service was over.

She didn't tell him how many soldiers left home believing they'd return, only to become names on memorial walls.

And she certainly didn't tell him how terrified she was of sitting at this table one day and seeing two empty chairs instead of one.

Instead, Malisa reached across the table and gently ran her fingers through Ryan's dark, spiraled curls.

"Eat your food before it gets cold," she whispered.

Her smile remained, fragile but warm.

"My brave boy."