Chapter 1: Echoes of a Panther
The oppressive heat of the Vietnamese jungle clung to Blake like a second skin. Sweat beaded on his brow, stinging his eyes. It wasn’t the humidity that made his insides clench, though. It was the weight of the M-16 in his hands, a weapon designed by the very system he’d spent years fighting against.
Flashback: South Central Los Angeles, 1968
A low hum of dissent vibrated through the cramped apartment. “They ain’t got no right, man,” Malik snarled, his voice a low rumble. “Draftin’ us to fight their damn wars. We ain’t never seen freedom here, what makes them think we’ll go fight for theirs overseas?”
Blake, co-founder of the South Central chapter of the Black Panthers, felt a familiar fire ignite in his gut. The air crackled with righteous anger. Panther meetings were a refuge, a place where Blake’s voice, his rage, could be heard. But the draft loomed, a cruel irony. Jail for life or become a cog in the very machine they sought to dismantle.
The lawyer’s words echoed in his mind: “There’s a loophole, Blake. Marines. They need bodies. Two years and you’re a free man.” A bitter pill to swallow, but freedom was freedom, even if it came at a cost.
Present Day: New Saigon, 2524
The cacophony of gunfire ripped through the neon-lit streets of New Saigon, a stark contrast to the lush jungle of Blake’s memories. Here, towering chrome skyscrapers cast long shadows, remnants of a humanity long-gone.
Five hundred years. Five hundred years since he’d stepped through that shimmering portal, a reluctant hero drafted into a different kind of war. The Elara Initiative, they called it. A last-ditch effort to preserve humanity after Earth became a graveyard.
Lyrion, the name they’d bestowed upon him, moved with a preternatural grace, a stark contrast to the raw fear etched on the faces of the young soldiers around him. He was a living legend, whispered about in hushed tones, the embodiment of primal darkness. Elara, his counterpart, was the blinding light. Together, they’d pierced the veil between realities, forging a new universe from the chaotic void.
He’d witnessed civilizations rise and fall, the evolution of the twelve races they’d seeded into existence. Yet, a darkness gnawed at him, a memory of a life unlived, a fight unfinished. The echoes of the Black Panther vibrated within him, a constant reminder of the man he once was.
The battle raged on, the air thick with the stench of burnt flesh and ozone from energy blasts. Lyrion felt a pang of something akin to pity for these soldiers, pawns in a game far grander than they could comprehend. He was a god among mortals, a creator turned destroyer.
A searing pain ripped through his shoulder. A rookie, eyes wide with terror, had accidentally discharged his weapon. Lyrion looked down at the wound, a dark amusement flickering in his emerald eyes. Even a god could bleed, a physical reminder of his mortality, a tether to the life he’d left behind.
“Get me Doc,” he rasped, his voice a low growl that resonated with a strange power. As the medic rushed towards him, Lyrion couldn’t help but wonder – was this penance for his past, a cosmic joke played by the very forces he’d helped create?
The answer, like the future of this fledgling universe, remained shrouded in the swirling mists of time. But one thing was certain: the fire that once fueled Blake, the Panther, still flickered within Lyrion, the embodiment of darkness.