The nearest corpse—a rat-chewed body from a dumpster—twitched.

  He looked at it.

  It rose, wrapped in a crackling shroud of white and black lightning.

  A grin slowly spread across Caelan’s face.

  “They thought they killed me.”

  He lifted a hand, and the sky above rumbled.

  “Let’s return the favor.”

  The corpse stumbled forward like a marionette yanked by invisible strings, lightning dancing across its limbs. Caelan took a shaky step, then another, feeling each movement strengthen the bond between body and soul. Every breath felt like inhaling a storm. Every heartbeat echoed with purpose.

  The rat-chewed corpse let out a gurgled hiss.

  Caelan waved his hand.

  “Too noisy.”

  Lightning arced from his palm, burning the reanimated thing to ash.

  He didn’t even flinch.

  Somewhere Else

  A temple carved from living sapphire trembled. Choirs of flame-winged seraphs fell silent. One by one, statues of the Sky-Father cracked, their eyes bleeding silver.

  The High Oracle of the Radiant Scale gasped, staggering back from the pool of divine sight.

  “He has returned,” she whispered. “The fractured soul reborn… in blasphemy.”

  Beside her, a paladin in gleaming armor knelt, fist clenched.

  “Name him, Oracle. We will erase his heresy.”

  She stared into the rippling pool, where Caelan’s image shimmered—storm-wreathed, death-touched, grinning.

  “His name is Caelan. And he is the storm the heavens feared.”

  Back on Earth

  Caelan walked the rain-slick streets, barefoot, soaked, and very much alive. The bloodstains on his shirt had faded to rust-colored shadows, but his eyes now gleamed with twin rings of white and violet light.

  He passed through the slums like a ghost, ignored or unseen, lightning weaving silently around him. Where once he’d been a forgotten orphan, now something ancient moved within his shadow.

  The city slept. But the dead did not.

  Behind him, hushed footsteps followed. Bone-dry rustles. Hollow breathing.

  Three figures emerged from the shadows—ghosts of other lost souls, drawn by his call. A woman with a bullet hole in her temple. A child crushed beneath a fallen beam. A junkie with needle marks lacing his arms like tattoos of failure.

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  He turned to face them.

  “You want to follow me?”

  They nodded—or maybe twitched.

  Caelan lifted a hand and drew a symbol in the air: a twisted rune, half divine script, half necromantic sigil.

  “Then be more.”

  Lightning surged from his fingertips and struck them, not to destroy, but to reshape. The dead convulsed, then stood straighter. Stronger. Their eyes glowed with stormlight.

  They were no longer simple undead.

  They were Stormwrought.

  Days Passed

  Caelan hunted at night. Not for food. Not even for vengeance—yet.

  He sought power.

  Every corpse became an experiment. He learned to fuse lightning into their forms, stabilizing decay with divine current. He mapped old graveyards, haunted hospitals, even morgues, building his army in secret.

  The world kept turning.

  No one noticed the storm building beneath their feet.

  Above the Mortal Plane

  The divine realm of Judicar flared like a beacon in the heavens. Thrones of law and balance cracked as the Pantheon of Order gathered.

  “He walks the mortal coil again,” said Lady Virelle, Archon of Balance, her scales trembling.

  “With powers not meant to coexist,” rumbled the Warden of Chains.

  A third voice joined them—one hollow, rich with finality.

  “He bears her mark.”

  The death goddess.

  The Pantheon stirred uneasily.

  “And his.”

  The Storm-Father.

  An impossible union. One born of judgment and rot. Justice and entropy.

  “He must be unmade,” the Warden growled. “Send the Hallowed Inquisitors. Burn out the contradiction before it grows.”

  None objected.

  Back on Earth

  Caelan crouched in an abandoned library, flipping through an old tome with half the pages missing. His dead flickered around him—guardians now, not slaves. One brought him a cracked phone with a working battery.

  Another brought him food.

  They didn’t eat anymore. But he did.

  He stared at the blue flicker of the screen—city maps, power grid layouts, police reports. He was planning something. Bigger than revenge.

  War.

  He needed artifacts. Relics. Sacred texts that still hummed with the essence of divine or necrotic energy. He marked their locations on a stolen map.

  Temples.

  Crypts.

  Tombs forgotten by time.

  The next phase had begun.

  One Night Later

  A shrine burned.

  Not a mortal shrine—but a conduit. A relic-bound temple housing a sliver of celestial will.

  It detonated in violet lightning and sulfuric shadow.

  Caelan stood in the rubble, holding a relic-bound staff, now pulsing with raw energy.

  “Nice,” he murmured.

  Then the sky cracked.

  A spear of radiant light slammed into the earth, and from it stepped a being of gold and wrath—an Inquisitor of the Hallowed Choir.

  “You will answer for your sins.”

  Caelan smiled.

  “I didn’t know I had any left.”

  The fight was short. Brutal.

  Lightning and necrotic flame clashed against divine purity. The Inquisitor was powerful.

  But Caelan was evolving.

  He unleashed Gravecurrent, summoning six storm-infused wraiths mid-battle. They shredded the Inquisitor’s wings. Caelan finished it with a soul-searing Bolt of Absolution, burning the divine core from the angel’s chest.

  When it fell, Caelan staggered, blood dripping from his nose.

  “Too soon,” he muttered. “Need more power.”

  But he smiled again.

  He’d won.

  Far Above

  The heavens screamed.

  Another Inquisitor lost. This one ranked Gold-Tier.

  “We underestimated him,” the High Oracle whispered.

  “No,” said the Warden of Chains, rising to his full, monstrous height. “We let him live.”

  “Then what now?”

  The Warden’s eyes glowed red as a forge.

  “We send the Seraph of Finality.”

  Caelan

  He stood at the top of a ruined tower, staff crackling, storm gathering. His new lair was built from fallen brick, sanctified bones, and stolen sigils.

  Behind him, his lieutenants stood watch: revenants, war-wraiths, a reanimated exorcist, and a priest he had purified in flame and fury.

  Caelan stared out at the sleeping city.

  “They killed me,” he said softly. “Now they’re afraid of what I’ve become.”

  Lightning licked the horizon.

  “And I’ve only just begun.”