BRIGHTON
A couple hours after casting fire, I finish editing the video of my dreams. I project the final cut from my laptop onto the TV and I gather everyone in the living room—Emil, Prudencia, Iris, Wesley, and Ruth with Esther, who’s asleep in her mother’s arms.
“I promise you’re not actually ready for this, but are you ready?” I ask.
I get an enthusiastic fist pump from Wesley and encouraging words from Ruth, but Emil, Prudencia, and Iris are a tougher audience. I respect that. As a creator, I always want people to like my work because they actually do and not just because they feel forced to pretend because it’s me.
I hit play.
The video opens with darkness. Then, my voice: “The time has come. . . .” I’m shown on the sand with a quick cut to me in the backyard. It must look pretty basic, but that’s the point. These were my last ordinary moments before I consciously cast my new extraordinary powers. Then the screen splits. On the left I’m running, on the right I’m flicking my hand, but nothing happens. “For another Spell Walker to rise . . .” The focus is back on me on the beach, minutes after I ran across the sea to save Wesley, and I dash away from the camera, edited slightly to show me returning sooner than I did in real time because I scrapped the voice-over idea. Then it moves onto the most glorious moment in the backyard. I get chills watching myself, eyes closed in concentration, as wisps of smoke snaking around my wrists grow into the silver and sapphire flames. My eyes open, and while I grew up dreaming of the day that they would glow like some godlike corner of the universe, I still find these burning eclipses absolutely beautiful. We linger on my smile before shifting to quick cuts of me demonstrating my speed as I chase after one of the country’s fastest celestials and me casting fire-bolts into the sky, the latter a talent that took us all by surprise. The video ends with me carrying fire in my hands before I dash out of sight; it took us a few tries to get that shot right, but we pulled it off.
“Incredible, right?” I ask.
“That’s the trailer to a movie I’d watch,” Wesley says.
“Very inspiring. You put all of that together so quickly too!” Ruth says.
“It’s a shame you don’t have footage of me sweeping sand in your face, but this works too,” Prudencia says.
“It’s pretty epic, Bright,” Emil says.
Happiness surges through me, like watching my follower count increase in the past. “This is only meant to be a teaser of what’s to come. My prologue, if you will.”
Iris scoffs. “Then maybe you shouldn’t open your story with a lie. I never cleared you to become a Spell Walker.”
In the past twenty-four hours, I have been intimate with Prudencia for the first time, had a second shot at life, tapped into my new powers, and put together this video so I can finally have the big moment I’ve been dreaming about for years. Of course Iris has to ruin that.
“But you’re down three team members,” I say.
“Believe it or not, that hasn’t affected my ability to count on my own.”
“I’ve been in this fight when all I had was my camera. Now I have Emil’s and Wesley’s core powers—all in one host! We’re trying to save Ma and Eva and you haven’t been successful tracking them down alone. You need me.”
Iris is staring at me but she seems to be looking through me. If I could read minds I’m sure all of her thoughts would be about Eva. “I might need you, but you won’t be making that decision for me. There’s nothing to suggest that our people haven’t been killed already. So if all I have left is the legacy of the Spell Walkers, I’m going to make sure we don’t do any more damage that will endanger celestials, and keep our numbers from decreasing any further so I don’t have to suffer through another math lesson. The truth is, Brighton, I don’t trust you.”
She gets up and walks toward her room and I’m very tempted to dash in front of her, but I control myself because I know that’s out of line.
Working with the Spell Walkers has had many lows but it’s also been a dream come true. As incredible as it would be to join the ranks like my brother and become even more famous than Bautista, I’m not going to let Iris put me in a corner like this. It’s tough enough feeling like I’m on probation with Emil and Prudencia, but I’m not letting Iris have that power over me too.
“Her loss,” I say.
“She’s not saying you’ll never be a Spell Walker,” Prudencia says. “Just not right now.”
I’m not going to sweat this because I have a lot to be proud of, even though I may never be an official Spell Walker and despite not getting all three sets of powers the Reaper’s Blood promised. It’d be so easy to let Iris’s slight get the best of me like when I didn’t get to be valedictorian, but everything about me now is undisputedly unique. Someone can get better grades than me—while my focus was down because I was grieving, don’t forget that—but it’s not as if there’s another specter running around who is going to stand a chance against me once I master my abilities.
I’m in a league of my own.
I grab my laptop and make a quick edit to the video, swapping out Spell Walker for hero. Before I do anything else I take a selfie, memorializing the Brighton whose extraordinary powers aren’t known to the public. I type out my caption—Brighton Rey just got a little Brighter. #BrightonOfNewYork—and upload first on the Celestials of New York Instagram. Then I get the video up on YouTube and Twitter and I even finally cave in and make a TikTok so I can dominate the primary online spaces. Every video has the event details for the livestream Emil and I are hosting in a couple hours on Instagram. I sit against the wall where I can charge my phone while hopping between all the apps and soaking up the comments. My views and following are skyrocketing, quickly catching up to Mr. Infinity Son himself.
There are so many questions about how I became a specter and I reply to some in my comments section, letting them know that all will be answered during the livestream. Followers around the world tell me all about their plans to watch—stay up late, be sneaky at school, take an early break at work.
I get a DM from Lore and they’re happy that I’m doing better and they would love to do a Q&A in the near future. Even though I have more followers than them, Lore still has an impressive social reach to other important influencers whose radar I need to be on. My growth will be huge as the Infinity Savior, but I expect that’s going to cap somewhere, so tapping into the audiences of the other influencers will be a great refresh. I promise Lore an interview when time allows; I have some missions to tend to first, after all.
“Someone wants to help make merchandise,” I tell Prudencia while checking out the user’s feed. It’d be helpful to have someone handle the administrative responsibilities and I can be the face of it all. “They seem legit.”
“Why don’t you follow up with them after getting ready? Your chat is in thirty minutes, superstar.”
“Please make that my new nickname,” I say.
“Dream on, dreamer,” Prudencia says with a smile.
I’m having a hard time picking what to wear, especially without my full closet in front of me, until I remember every influencer who puts time into looking casual even though they controlled every single-sleeve roll and wrinkle. I don’t need a tuxedo or some trying-too-hard-to-be-cool leather jacket. Ruth gives me her blessing to choose something from her closet, and even though she’s not actively selling anything from her Every Body Is Super line, I make a mental note to credit her in the caption. I choose a blue shirt with white lettering since it’s the closest one that matches my flames.
I go outside with Emil and Prudencia and the evening air is chilly. We go deep into the trees, finding a nondescript area with a couple rocks for us to sit on and enough moonlight so we can be seen. I review the talking points with Emil, making him repeat them back to me because I want this conversation to appear casual and we can’t have that if he’s sitting there with a notepad. Prudencia offers to hold the phone for us so we can stream at a wider angle, but I think it’s going to be cozier if I’m shoulder to shoulder with Emil. This way I also get to see how many viewers are tuned in and read some of the comments.
“We’re still not mentioning my past lives, right?” Emil asks.
We had this conversation back when we were doing the Spell Walkers of New York feature. “That’s not my call. You and Pru were the ones who didn’t want to bring it up.”
“Because people might hate Emil for being Keon once upon a time ago,” Prudencia says.
“Or they’ll love him for being Bautista,” I counter.
“Either way, they’ll take it out on phoenixes once they realize specters can resurrect with their essence,” Emil says. “I’d hate for the Blood Casters to get the jump on us and reveal this to turn the public against me, but they haven’t done it yet. Hopefully they have their own reasons for keeping it quiet.”
“Good point. The secret stays in the vault,” I say.
I still think there can be something so powerful about the world knowing that Emil wasn’t only adopted, but that he was reborn in fire from the two most popular specters in history, but the story isn’t more important than the consequences.
“We shouldn’t mention the ghost specters either,” Prudencia says. “We don’t need alchemists and necromancers pretending to be gods any more than they do.”
The more and more politics are getting involved in my business, the less enthusiasm I have for this livestream. But I hype myself right back up because it’s not like I have to hide any ghostly powers from the public anyway. I still get to show off.
Once it’s nine on the dot, we go live.
“Hey, Brightsiders, it’s your boy Brighton coming at you from somewhere in the world—I can’t say where exactly because I’ve got some ruthless Blood Casters after me—and I’m here with my amazing brother, Emil, for the chat of a lifetime.” I wrap my arm around his shoulders. “Say what’s up, man.”
Emil offers a shy wave. “Hey.”
I’ll never understand how he isn’t fueled by all this attention. I’m so fired up right now, especially as the comments are rolling in. My favorite is from a fan who says they’ve been following me since my first YouTube video and how they’re loving my journey. I shout out their handle and thank them. They immediately react with more love because I noticed them. The power in a simple hello is incredible.
The chat opened with nearly ten thousand viewers and in two minutes we’re already passing one hundred thousand. “There are already so many of you, but we’re going to wait a little longer to start to give everyone a chance to settle in,” I say. “But I got a treat for you early birds.” I watch my eyes burn like eclipses in the livestream and silver and sapphire flames slither around my fingers. The chat section explodes with fire emojis. We’re nearing five hundred thousand viewers when I announce that we’re good to start, which is amazing since it’s relatively short notice, but I hope we cross a million viewers.
“So you’ve shown us what’s new,” Emil says. “I obviously know what’s what, but do you want to walk all your epic Brightsiders on what went down?”
I’m glad he remembered to call them epic. Lore calls their fans “beauteous” so much that it’s almost like they have ownership over the word. I want my brand to be epic heroism and this association will better connect me with my followers.
“My origin story has been a trip,” I say. “Everything changed for us the day that specter tried to kill me. You saved my life, bro. You’ve saved it a lot of times since then too. But there was only so much I could do from behind the camera, especially when the brawl was breaking out.”
“That night was wild,” Emil says.
“You were almost killed. Luna Marnette stabbed you with an infinity-ender blade—a weapon designed to kill phoenixes for good! Show them your scar.” I reach for his shirt but he grabs my hand and pushes it back toward me. “Come on, show everyone what we’ve been through!”
“I’m not lifting my shirt,” Emil says and then I remember all his body business.
“All good. It’s not for those with weak stomachs anyway.” Great recovery. This is why I’ve always thought I’d be a great TV host. “But yeah, one week ago tonight when the Crowned Dreamer was at its zenith, we were battling it out with the Blood Casters. We were down a man after Atlas was killed—may he rest well in the stars—and Luna was about to turn herself into a specter with this new concoction. I was able to take her down before she could drink the elixir and then something came over me and I went for it. I drank it all.”
“And it poisoned your blood,” Emil says. “You almost died like Dad.”
I have a YouTube video I filmed a month after Dad died to explain why I hadn’t been posting as regularly but I share all the details again for everyone new. “Between being scared for my life in Gleam Care and Stanton coming to assassinate me, I really thought I was a goner. But it turns out I’m strong enough so I could become a soldier like you.”
There are so many comments from people hoping to become specters too.
“And Bautista de León,” Emil says. “You’ve loved him since we were kids.”
“I have! There’s no denying that the majority of specters are abusing their powers. But then you have some shining stars like you and Bautista who have done a lot of good.”
“With powers that aren’t ours,” Emil says. “I’m really hoping I can figure out that potion to disempower any specter. No more Blood Casters. No more us.”
I nod along even though that was not a talking point for this discussion. “Until that time comes, we have a lot of work to do making this country safer from the true terrorists—the Blood Casters. Emil and I have both been captured and abused by them. We’re lucky we’re alive. But we don’t know if that’s true for our mother who they kidnapped.”
“They took Eva Nafisi too. Some of you might remember her as the healer from Brighton’s Spell Walkers interviews,” Emil says like I forgot about her.
“Eva made me good as new. She’s an incredible healer and an even more remarkable human. Eva and our mother are strong women, but they don’t stand a chance against the Blood Casters. We need all of you to be our eyes around the city so we can bring them home safely,” I say.
As Emil describes everything about the fight at the Aldebaran Center, I read through the questions that are coming in so fast that I can hardly keep up. People want advice on how to become specters. Others are sharing their own personal struggles that require heroic hands. There are some good ones too I want to address.
“I think it’s time to answer some questions,” I say. It’s a safer move since Emil isn’t exactly sticking to the script anyway. “I see a lot of you asking if I’m planning a rebrand on the series since Emil and I aren’t celestials. Maybe I’ll change it to ‘Gleamcrafters of New York’ so it’s more inclusive. But honestly, I created Celestials of New York because it was my way of feeling close to the lives of those with powers. Keeping up this format of interviewing strangers feels tricky with everything going on that I might make it my own until things settle down. If they ever do.”
There’s immediate support and even a suggestion that I follow Atlas’s lead and how all his posts were dedicated to lives saved and lost. That could be a cool way to honor him.
“Let’s see. . . .” There’s one question that’s been popping up the most and it’s time to get it out of the way. “Okay, okay, okay! Am I a Spell Walker? The answer is . . . NOPE.” I’m tempted to reveal how badly the group’s ranks are fracturing, but I’m bigger than that. “I’m part of a more important unit—the Infinity Kings. Back when you all thought of Emil as Fire-Wing, I joked that he was the Infinity Son since he’s got these amazing powers from a firebird of infinity.”
Once again, my little twist saves the day. I don’t have to reveal why I really gave him that name.
“I’m cool with you all using my name too,” Emil says.
“And I’ll always be Brighton, especially for all of you epic Brightsiders. But once I got my powers I thought it’d be cool to add an edge to my identity too. I came up with the Infinity Savior. What do you all think?”
Engagement is key when growing your following. I might be the influencer but it’s important to let my followers think they have influence over me too. The Brightsiders are really taking to the name. One commenter suggests Infinity Brother and I wish I could block this person who would reduce me as if I’m still shadowing Emil on his missions and not my own individual person. Thankfully their comment gets buried by all the love and that’s when I notice we’ve crossed 1.3 million viewers.
“I’m so happy the name is a hit,” I say with a hand to my heart. “I’ll admit, being a specter with a bull’s-eye on my back is really terrifying. But I’ve got a great support system.” I glance over at Prudencia, wishing I could mention her. “I’ve always been able to turn to Emil and I’m lucky enough to have all of you out there cheering me on too.” I really want to stay and chat all night, but if I answer all these questions now, then my followers, old and new, won’t have any reason to keep hanging around. “Emil and I need to get some rest after an eventful day. I promise to do another chat soon.”
I elbow Emil’s side, waiting for him to initiate our send-off.
“Oh—uh. Before we were the Infinity Kings, we were the Reys of Light,” Emil says.
“And now we’re shining brighter than ever,” I say and salute.
I end the livestream before I’ve lost my cool. To think last night I was dying and now I’m living my best life. I apologize to Emil over the shirt thing and get a fist bump and whistle out of him. My high only gets higher when Prudencia tells us that we did a great job and kisses me softly on the lips. I’m the luckiest human alive.
I spend the rest of the night in bed, scrolling through social media with Prudencia asleep on my chest. There’s already amazing fan art of me fighting every known Blood Caster with my flames and those criminal specters are so screwed when this becomes a reality. I got some haters too who don’t think I’m being real about everything. I go on their profiles and decide I’m not going to take abuse from jealous people with five hundred followers who want what I have, who wish they were me.
It’s a hard pill to swallow that even superhumans need sleep, but I don’t go willingly. I spend every last waking moment soaking up all the Infinity Savior love.
This is only the beginning.