In the asphalt-choked labyrinth of 1997 Queens, seventeen-year-old Rohan Chang is suffocating beneath the weight of his family’s laundromat debts and the fading promise of the American Dream.

When a violent subway encounter fractures reality, Rohan unlocks the Shine—a volatile, kinetic power that transmutes pressurized spray paint and ambient thermal heat into solid light and deadly weaponry. Stepping into the city's neon-drenched underworld under the vigilante moniker Talon, Rohan equips himself with high-carbon steel, copper heat-sinks, and a heavy-duty respirator to protect his family.

In Rohan’s world, energy is never free—every spark demands strict thermodynamic calculations, physical stamina, and severe metabolic consequences .

When a string of gruesome murders terrorizes the tri-state area, Rohan discovers he is being hunted by the NY Slasher—a terrifying daylight predator mutating under a parasitic, corrupted red static. Violently ripped across time from the brutal cotton fields of 1854 Mississippi to the neon paranoia of 1980 Manhattan, Rohan must master the Triad—fusing Taiwanese Bèiyǐng (silent parental sacrifice), Puerto Rican El Bregar (the righteous street hustle), and unyielding American grit—to forge his future before history erases him completely.