The world was not ending. It had already ended.
For seventeen-year-old Reed Blackwell, the apocalypse wasn't a grand explosion or a dramatic war—it was the slow, rhythmic crunch of his boots on the permafrost. It was the way the wind howled through the skeletal remains of high-rise buildings, sounding like the screams of the millions who had died when the System first initialized.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Reed stumbled, his knees hitting the jagged, frozen earth. He didn't try to get up. He didn't have the strength left to try.
Is this it? he thought, his vision blurring. Is this where the 'Loner of the Grey Wastes' finally stops?
In this post-apocalyptic era, humanity was divided into two kinds of people: those with a System Core, and those who were meat for the beasts. The Factions had built their walls high, carving out sanctuaries where the elite practiced their Fire Cores and Storm Cores. But Reed? Reed was a "Null." A mistake of genetics. A boy with no affinity, no family, and now, no future.
He rolled onto his back, staring up at the choked, grey sky. The cold was no longer painful. That was the most dangerous sign. It felt… peaceful. Like a heavy blanket was being pulled over his head.
"At least," Reed whispered, his breath hitching in his throat, "I won't have to be hungry anymore."
Suddenly, the wind died.
The silence that followed wasn't natural. It was heavy. Pressing. It felt as if the very air around Reed had thickened into liquid. Through the haze of his fading consciousness, he saw a pair of boots appear in the snow.
They weren't the ragged, duct-taped boots of a scavenger. They were polished, dark, and seemed to swallow the dim light of the overcast sun.
Reed tried to lift his head, but his neck felt like it was made of lead. "Kill... me... quickly..." he wheezed.
A voice drifted down to him. It wasn't loud, but it resonated deep inside Reed's chest, vibrating against his very bones. It was a voice that sounded like shifting gravel and ancient secrets.
"I have looked across the seven Factions, Reed Blackwell. I have seen kings with Fire Cores that could melt cities, and Queens with Storm Cores that could shatter the sky. But they are all... loud. They are all bright."
The figure knelt beside him. Reed couldn't make out a face—only a cloak that seemed to be made of shifting smoke.
"The world doesn't need more light," the stranger whispered. "It needs a shadow that is long enough to cover the truth."
The stranger reached out a hand. As it moved, the shadows on the ground beneath Reed began to writhe. They didn't just move; they peeled themselves off the earth like living ink.
"Who... are you?" Reed managed to gasp.
"A ghost of your past," the figure replied. "And the architect of your future. I am giving you a gift, Reed. It is not a Core the Academies will recognize. It is not a power the Factions can control. It is the beginning of the end."
The stranger's hand pressed against Reed's chest—right over his heart.
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED SYSTEM OVERRIDE DETECTED]
A screen flashed in Reed's vision. It wasn't the standard blue interface of the Faction Cores. It was a deep, bleeding violet, bordered by flickering black flames.
[INITIALIZING TRANSFUSION...]
[SOURCE: UNKNOWN]
[RECIPIENT: REED BLACKWELL]
"AGHHH!"
Reed's back arched off the frozen ground. It didn't feel like power. It felt like his veins were being filled with liquid nitrogen. The cold of the wastes was nothing compared to this. This was a soul-deep frost, a vacuum that started at his heart and raced toward his fingertips.
[0.1%... 1%... 5%...]
"Hold on, boy," the stranger commanded. "Most would shatter. But you... you have been empty for so long. There is so much room inside you for the darkness to grow."
Reed's eyes snapped open. The whites of his eyes were gone, replaced by a swirling, bottomless black. He could see things now—the "Energy Signatures" of the very air. He saw the faint traces of heat leaving his body, and the massive, crushing weight of the stranger's power.
[TRANSFUSION COMPLETE]
[NEW CORE DETECTED: SHADOW CORE (RANK: NULL/UNIDENTIFIED)]
[CURRENT STATUS: HOST IS IN CRITICAL CONDITION]
The stranger stood up, the shadows around him settling back into place. "The Academy will find you soon. I have left them a trail they cannot ignore. They will think you are a lucky survivor. They will think you are weak."
The stranger began to fade, his body turning into a mist that the wind carried away.
"Let them think that," his voice echoed. "A loner is most dangerous when he is forgotten."
Reed's head hit the snow. The pain was gone, replaced by a strange, humming vibration in his chest. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel alone. He felt like the darkness itself was a living thing, curled up inside him, waiting.
Hours passed. Or maybe days.
The sound of heavy engines eventually broke the silence. A sleek, armored transport vehicle bearing the crest of the Zenith Institute—one of the most powerful Faction Academies—skidded to a halt a few yards away.
Three figures stepped out, clad in high-tech environmental suits. Their scanners hummed as they swept the area.
"Over here!" one of them shouted. "We have a life sign. It's faint, but it's there."
A woman with a glowing Light Core emblem on her shoulder knelt over Reed. She ran a handheld scanner over his chest.
"Is he one of the recruits from the Outer Rim?" her partner asked, his voice crackling through a radio.
The woman frowned, shaking the device. "The scanner is glitching. It says... it says he has no Core. He's a Null. But that's impossible. No Null could survive out here for more than an hour in this storm."
"Check the ID tag," the third man ordered.
The woman reached into Reed's tattered jacket and pulled out a small, black metallic coin that hadn't been there before. On it was the seal of the Institute's High Council.
Her eyes widened. "He has a Golden Invitation? A Null?"
"Doesn't matter," the man grunted, picking up Reed's limp body. "If he has that coin, the rules say we take him. Throw him in the Rank 4 bay with the rest of the trash. We'll let the instructors figure out why a dying nobody is carrying a Council Seal."
As they threw Reed onto the cold metal floor of the transport, they didn't notice the shadows in the corner of the bay. They didn't notice how the darkness seemed to stretch toward Reed, touching his hand like a loyal dog welcoming its master home.
Reed Blackwell was no longer just a loner.
The system was loading. The war was coming. And the shadows were hungry.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: WELCOME TO THE ACADEMY, REED BLACKWELL.]
[OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE INTAKE.]
[REWARD: ???]