When the strength leaves, the truth stays
The first thing Elias noticed was the silence.
Not the peaceful kind that settles over a city after midnight, but the wrong kind. The kind that rings in your ears because something that should be there isn’t anymore. No hum beneath his skin. No familiar vibration in his bones. No crackle of energy itching at his fingertips, begging to be released.
He stood on the rooftop where he had landed a thousand times before, boots planted, cape snapping uselessly behind him in the wind. The clouds above were heavy and bruised, the sort that usually responded to his presence like obedient animals. Tonight, they ignored him completely.
Elias raised his hand.
Nothing happened.
No lightning. No surge. No answering pulse from the sky.
His powers were gone.
He laughed, a short bark of disbelief that died in his throat. Heroes weren’t supposed to lose their powers. Not like this. Not without a dramatic explosion or a tragic sacrifice or at least a glowing warning. Powers were the punctuation marks of his life. Without them, the sentence didn’t make sense.
Below him, the city carried on. Cars crawled along wet streets. A siren wailed somewhere far away. A couple argued on a sidewalk, their words swallowed by traffic. No one looked up.
For the first time in twelve years, Elias didn’t know what to do next.
He remembered the day the lightning chose him.
He had been sixteen, angry, reckless, convinced the world owed him something it hadn’t delivered. A summer storm had rolled in fast, turning the sky green and the air sharp. He’d climbed the old radio tower on a dare, fists clenched, heart pounding, shouting at the clouds like a fool.
The lightning answered.
It didn’t burn him. It didn’t kill him. It filled him. Every nerve lit up like a fuse, every thought sharpened into clarity. When he climbed down, shaking and laughing, the world felt smaller. Manageable. Like a puzzle he finally knew how to solve.
People called it destiny. A miracle. A gift.
Elias had called it relief.
Now, standing powerless on a rooftop, relief was the last thing he felt.
He climbed down the fire escape instead of jumping. The metal rattled beneath his weight, unfamiliar in a way that unsettled him more than the silence. His knees complained when he landed. He nearly stumbled.
So this is what normal feels like, he thought grimly.
On the street, a man recognized him. The cape still gave him away, even limp and rain-soaked.
“Stormbringer!” the man shouted, eyes wide. “Thank God you’re here. There’s—”
Elias opened his mouth, then closed it again.
The lie sat heavy on his tongue.
“I… can’t,” he said finally.
The man stared. “Can’t what?”
Elias gestured helplessly at himself. “I can’t do it anymore.”
Confusion gave way to anger, then fear. The man backed away, muttering, already searching the sky for another miracle. Elias didn’t blame him. Heroes were supposed to be reliable. Predictable. Always charged and ready.
He walked away before the man could say anything else.
The city felt different when he wasn’t hovering above it.
Darker, somehow. Louder. More complicated.
Elias passed places he had saved, corners he had scorched black with lightning to stop something worse. The memories clung to him, but they didn’t warm him the way they used to. Without power, they felt like someone else’s achievements.
He went home, to the narrow apartment he barely used. The lights flickered when he flipped the switch, mocking him. He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his hands.
They looked the same.
That was the cruel part.
News spread fast.
By morning, every screen glowed with speculation. Experts argued. Commentators shouted. Old footage of Elias tearing through storms looped endlessly, a ghost replaying his greatest hits.
“No confirmed sightings,” one anchor said. “Sources suggest the hero known as Stormbringer may be injured… or worse.”
Elias turned the TV off.
He didn’t want pity. He didn’t want theories. He wanted answers.
So he went looking.
The scientist who had studied him for years didn’t look surprised.
“I wondered when this would happen,” Dr. Hale said, folding her hands together. Her lab smelled like ozone and coffee. Familiar. Comforting.
“You knew?” Elias snapped.
She nodded. “Power like yours isn’t static. It’s borrowed. You were a conduit, not a battery.”
“So where did it go?” he demanded.
Dr. Hale met his gaze steadily. “Back to where it came from.”
“The sky?” He laughed, sharp and bitter. “You’re telling me the sky took it back?”
“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “The energy that chose you… it’s moving on.”
Elias slumped into a chair. The fight drained out of him all at once. “Then that’s it. I’m done.”
Dr. Hale tilted her head. “Are you?”
He looked up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You think your power was the lightning,” she said gently. “But I watched you for years. The lightning was the tool. Not the reason.”
He scoffed. “You’re saying anyone could’ve done what I did?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m saying not everyone would have.”
It took time for that to sink in.
Days passed. Then weeks.
The city adjusted. New heroes rose, some flashy, some strange. The sky still stormed without him. Life, rude as ever, kept moving.
Elias stayed grounded. Literally.
He volunteered. He listened. He learned the slow, unglamorous ways people needed help when no one was watching. He patched roofs instead of ripping them apart. He talked down frightened kids instead of dazzling them.
It was harder than fighting monsters.
It mattered more than he expected.
On the anniversary of the storm that had changed everything, Elias climbed the radio tower again.
No one dared him this time.
The wind tugged at his jacket. Clouds gathered, distant and indifferent. He closed his eyes and waited, half-hoping for the familiar hum to return.
It didn’t.
Instead, he felt something else. A steadiness. A quiet resolve that didn’t buzz or crackle. It didn’t ask for attention. It simply existed.
Elias smiled.
He didn’t need the sky anymore.
And somewhere far above, thunder rolled on without him, as it always would.
At the edge of the storm, the hero who once commanded lightning stood powerless, steady, and unafraid, having lost his powers at last and discovered what had never left him at all.
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