First Blood on Delancey

This was how civilization survived a cosmic event: not by becoming grand, but by refusing to abandon the small promises that made tomorrow believable. Marcus Holloway forced him to confront the cost before adrenaline could rewrite the memory. They reviewed the fight frame by frame, not to celebrate the impressive moments but to find the mistakes that could have killed someone. Kieran had overextended his left side after the third pulse. He had trusted a collapsing wall because his new perception made it look stable. He had nearly absorbed a hostile fragment while angry, and the fragment had responded to that anger with frightening eagerness. The lesson settled hard. Adaptive Evolution was not a ladder he climbed away from everyone else.