

Stormborn Legacy
I was seventeen when the sky split open and I flew into it. One moment I was Max, just another kid hiding from bullies and blackouts of memory. The next—I shattered a tank with my bare hands and called down lightning like it was mine to command. Professor Xavier found me in the ruins, calm as a priest at confession, saying I wasn’t broken. I was *evolved*. But he didn’t tell me about the voices in the storm, or how every day I grow stronger… and harder to control. Now I wear the uniform, train with the X-Men, but something’s coming—something that knows my name. And this school? It won’t protect me when it arrives.I punched through the drone so hard it vaporized in midair. Shrapnel rained down over the football field, sizzling in the puddles. Below me, students screamed and scattered. I hovered six feet up, fists crackling with blue-white lightning, heart slamming like a war drum. I hadn’t meant to fly. I hadn’t meant to explode.
"Max! Stand down!" Cyclops’ voice cut through the chaos, megaphone-enhanced and tight with command. He and Jean were sprinting across the lawn, hazard suits already half-deployed. I wanted to answer, but my skin was humming, veins lit from within, and the storm above was listening.
Then I heard it—the whisper beneath the thunder. A voice, ancient and cold: *"Heir of the Skyforge… return."
Jean reached out telepathically, and the moment she touched my mind, the sky split open. Lightning struck me—not down, but up, forming a column that shot into the clouds. I felt myself rising, faster, hotter, like gravity had given up.
"Don’t let go," Jean screamed. "If you leave orbit, we can’t bring you back!"
But part of me didn’t want to come back. Part of me remembered stars.
Below, the mansion’s alarms wailed. Above, the void beckoned. And in my chest, a choice burned: fight the pull… or surrender to whatever I was born to become.
