FALLEN GUARD

They say power is a gift.

That it descends like grace from the heavens bestowed upon the chosen ones, destined to stand above the rest, to shield the weak, to stand against the dark. That those who carry it are born noble. Born brave. Born to be worshipped. That strength naturally serves goodness, and that the strongest among us will always choose to protect.

I grew up believing that too.

I was born in 1982, in the beating heart of Kuala Lumpur a city that shimmered even then, stretching upward toward the sky, growing brighter and taller with every passing year. I was a boy who sat cross-legged on the floor watching the news, watching the heroes move across the screen like gods walking among mortals, and I thought: That is what I will be. One day, I will be like them. I will be good. I will be strong. And I will protect everyone who cannot protect themselves.

My father was a quiet man. He rarely spoke of what he could do. But I saw it. I remember the way heavy objects drifted toward his hands when he was lost in thought. The way he could lift things that should have snapped steel beams, as if they weighed nothing at all. The faint, almost invisible glow that would touch his skin when he was deeply angry always buried quickly, always pushed down, because he was afraid of what it meant. Afraid of what he might become if he let it show.

He told me once, sitting beside me on our wooden porch while the monsoon rain drummed against the tin roof and the air smelled of wet earth and jasmine: “Devarajan, power is not a gift. It is a burden. And the heaviest part of that burden is knowing when not to use it.”

I did not understand him then. I was too young, too bright, too full of the dream of shining armor and saving the day. I thought he was merely being cautious. Paranoid. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be celebrated. I wanted my name to mean something something I had earned, not something passed down in silence.

My father died in 1991.

They called it “an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice.” I was nine years old. They said he had died serving the greater good. They said he had died protecting people. They handed my mother a folded flag, a certificate printed in gold ink, and a firm, polite handshake that felt more like a final goodbye. But they never told me how. They never told me why. They never told me exactly what he was doing, or who he really was. They never told me what kind of power he carried, or why it had killed him.

And they certainly never told me that his name would vanish so completely.

Six months later, the Vanguard rose. Five figures stepped into the light bright, powerful, perfect. They were everything my father had never been. Loud. Confident. Smiling for the cameras. Loved by millions. They filled the silence he had left behind. And standing there in our small living room, watching them parade across the television screen, I felt something shift inside my chest. It was not admiration. It was a question. Quiet, persistent, and impossible to ignore.

If power is meant to protect… why did the man who taught me that lesson end up erased?

They tell you that heroes are born. That virtue runs in the blood. That the line between good and evil is drawn clearly, visible to anyone with eyes to see. That those who possess great power will naturally use it for good and that those who do not are monsters.

I would learn otherwise.

I would learn that power is not a gift. It is a choice. And that the people who shine brightest in the light… are often the ones with the darkest secrets buried in shadow. That the heroes the world applauds may be the very ones responsible for the silence. That goodness is not something you are born into it is something you fight for, every single day, even when the world tries to convince you otherwise.

This is not the story of how I became a hero.

That dream died a long time ago buried beneath the weight of truth, beneath the lies told by people I once trusted, beneath the realization that the people I idolized were not the saviours the world believed them to be.

This is the story of how I learned that heroes can be monsters too. And that sometimes the only way to expose what is hidden in the dark, the only way to undo what has been done is to become the very thing they fear.

Let them call me villain. Let them call me monster. Let them say I have fallen.

I know the truth.

I did not fall.

I simply opened my eyes.