Chapter 1: A World Changed
Blood. Jagged claws. A scream abruptly choked out by the wet tear of flesh.
Kael bolted upright, his lungs screaming for air as his fingers dug into a thin, sweat-soaked mattress. His chest heaved in the suffocating silence of his cramped room. For a long moment, the only sound was the rapid thud of his own heartbeat, competing with the rhythmic dripping of a leaky pipe in the corner.
Three years.
It had been three years since the rift-spawned beasts breached Sector 4, tearing his parents apart in front of his eyes while he cowered behind a collapsed wall, too small and too weak to do anything but watch.
To this day, he still remembers each and every detail clearly as if it had happened just yesterday.
Kael slowly let out a ragged breath, dragging a hand through his damp, dark hair. The nightmare was always the same, but the burning fire it left in his chest never dulled. He swung his legs over the side of the cot, his feet touching the freezing concrete floor of his dilapidated Outer Ring slum apartment.
Morning had come, though in the Outer Ring, "morning" was just a slight shift in the color of the toxic smog outside his cracked window.
He moved to his small kitchen area, popping the seal on a dented tin of nutrient paste. It tasted like stale grease, but he ate it methodically, scraping the bottom to ensure not a single calorie was wasted. Food was a luxury he couldn't afford to squander. Today was a special day, a very important one, and he would need every ounce of his strength.
Setting the empty tin aside, Kael walked over to a small, makeshift shrine resting on a rusted crate. Two cracked, bloodstained identification tags lay there—the only things recovered from his parents' remains.
He didn't cry. He hadn't shed a tear since that day three years ago. Instead, he reached out, his fingertips caressing the cold metal of the tags softly.
"I will eradicate them," Kael whispered to himself, his voice a low, raspy vow that carried the absolute certainty. "Every last one."
He grabbed his worn gray jacket, pulling it tight over his lean frame, and stepped out into the hallway.
The air in the Outer Ring of Black-Dust City was thick with industrial smog. The streets were heavily militarized, a grim necessity in a world where humanity had been cornered by the skies themselves. Barbed wire laced the rooftops, and heavily armored vehicles rumbled over the cracked asphalt. Patrolling the thoroughfares were the City Guards.
Kael watched a pair of them walk by, their chins held high with arrogant pride. They were Ascendors—humans who had harnessed the Astral Force to awaken their Martial Souls. Even though these men were merely Novice Level 3 ascendors, to the unawakened commoners of the slums, they were like walking gods. Their bodies were honed beyond normal human limits, their skin tougher, their reflexes infinitely sharper than what a normal human could ever achieve.
Suddenly, a localized siren shrieked through the district, its blaring pitch making nearby civilians flinch and scatter.
A barrier breach.
Kael stopped, his eyes darting toward the towering energy grid that separated the Outer Ring from the infested wastelands. A shimmering section of the barrier flickered, and a creature the size of a large dog squeezed through the gap, its mandibles clicking furiously.
It was a Slag-Beetle. F-Rank, Level 9. The absolute lowest rung of mutated monsters, yet its armor was thick enough to deflect small-arms fire.
Civilians screamed and ran to save their lives and the scene instantly became chaotic. However, the closest City Guard merely sighed, stepping forward with an expression of profound boredom. He unclipped a heavy, metallic hammer from his back. As he gripped the handle, a faint, pulsing aura of Astral Force channeled from his arms into the weapon.
It was a Tier 1 Low-grade hammer. To Kael, who had nothing to his name, it was an artifact of immense wealth.
The Slag-Beetle hissed, launching itself at the guard with a burst of speed. The guard didn't even shift his stance. He swung the hammer in a lazy, horizontal arc.
CRUNCH.
The sickening sound of shattering chitin echoed down the street. The heavy hammer collided with the beetle mid-air, completely obliterating its upper torso. Sickly green fluid splattered across the pavement as the ruined carcass skidded to a halt.
The guard scoffed, wiping a drop of ichor from his boot before casually re-securing his weapon. "Filthy pests. Sanitation, get this trash off my street."
Kael watched the scene with an unreadable expression. The sheer, casual power of a Novice Level 3 Ascendor was terrifying, for a normal person. Without a Martial Soul, an ordinary human would have been butchered by that beetle in seconds. With one, the beast was nothing more than an annoyance.
He tore his gaze away and kept walking. After thirty minutes of walking through the smog, the narrow slums finally opened up into a massive, heavily guarded courtyard: the Awakening Plaza.
Kael slipped into the crowd, joining around a hundred other sixteen-year-olds. Some of them were dressed in similar shabby clothes like him, while a few ones had neat and swanky, however regardless of their status, all of them had faces pale with terror and desperate hope. Today was the day their fates would be sealed.
At the center of the plaza, elevated on a grand stone dais, was the Altar of Awakening. Ancient, glowing runes flowed across its surface, radiating a dense, pure energy that made the hairs on Kael's arms stand up. That was the Astral Force. The energy that had rained down with the rifts three hundred years ago, giving humanity a fighting chance.
Kael clenched his fists inside his pockets, his eyes locking onto the glowing runic altar. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
Today, he must awaken a power strong enough to exact his vengeance. There was no second option.