PROLOGUE — THE FIVE TOMES
A thousand years have passed since the dawn of the New Era—the Era of Evolution.
The age before it, known simply as the Era of Technology, had lasted nearly four thousand years. During that time, humanity pushed its inventions so far that impossibility became a joke. Teleportation gates linked continents. Cellular reprogramming cured entire genetic lines. Quantum forges raised cities overnight. The skies remained perpetually clear, maintained by atmospheric cleansing systems.
If it could be imagined, it could be built.
And then came the Tomes.
Five colossal stone slabs—each nearly three miles tall—descended from the sky without warning. Every Tome bore a single symbol on its surface, one that shifted pattern depending on who looked at it. No two people saw the same mark.
Scientists tried to understand the Tomes. Governments poured every available resource into unraveling their mysteries, but to no avail.
For the first time in centuries, technology proved inadequate. Every scan, every probe, every analysis came back empty. The Tomes simply were—an enigma.
Still, the more they failed, the more invested they became. To them, the Tomes were an exciting new puzzle to crack, the key to yet another breakthrough in science and technology.
Only, a year later, the world paid the price for that arrogance.
A quake erupted from the five impact sites and rolled across the entire planet in waves. Land and sea convulsed as one. Mountains came crumbling. Volcanoes roared to life. The climate twisted and churned as though the world itself were being wrung dry.
The catastrophe lasted barely three hours—but in those hours, billions died. Humans and animals alike. Entire cities erased.
It was a tragedy unlike anything the world had ever experienced. Not even the heavyly infamous Fourth World War came close.
Humanity mourned. People despaired. But with the level of technological advancement they'd achieved, rebuilding was all too easy—though the lives lost could never be restored.
Then the satellites revealed the impossible:
Earth… had expanded.
And not merely by a few inches. Or a few miles. But by scale—more than a dozen times its original.
Landmasses stretched into unfamiliar shapes. Oceans widened into vast, alien chasms. Entire regions that once sat side-by-side were now separated by thousands of kilometers of newborn terrain. Humanity had survived the quake, but the planet they woke up to was no longer the same.
And then came the most profound change of all.
Essence.
An invisible tide that washed over the swollen planet—a force later named as Essence Energy. It seeped into the soil, the seas, the very air. People felt it before they understood it: The atmosphere grew richer, purer even. Bodies felt lighter… stronger. Medical scans recorded subtle increases in life expectancy.
At first, it seemed like a blessing.
Until everything else began changing too.
It started with the animals. House cats grew to the size of dogs. Dogs developed the bite force of crocodiles. Birds flew faster, longer, higher. Out In the wild, creatures became larger, stronger, and increasingly bizarre with each passing day.
Then nature itself distorted.
Trees mutated without warning, sprouting limbs and faces—some capable of uprooting themselves to move about freely. Stones gained life… awareness. The very air coalesced and gave birth to wandering elementals.
Yes, humanity did possess the technological prowess to handle these early shifts—but not for long.
Every sunrise brought new changes. The dog-sized cat of yesterday stood a few sizes taller by morning.
It became painfully clear:
The world was not merely evolving—it was doing so at a pace that left humans behind.
Panic surged once more. The fragile, recovering society threatened to collapse completely when a miracle occurred.
A researcher stationed near the northern Tome reported a breakthrough.
While gazing upon the shifting symbol, his mind entered a state he later struggled to describe. Knowledge flooded him—instinctive, precise. He understood how to perceive essence, how to refine it, how to evolve his body beyond its natural limits.
He became the first evolved human.
And then the dam broke.
Others came to the Tomes. Few ever succeeded in entering that mysterious state, gaining techniques of their own. Some shared what they learned. Others hoarded it. Yet the knowledge spread regardless.
Paths formed.
Orders rose.
And humanity climbed once more—this time not through machinery, but through evolution itself.
Thus began the Era of Evolution.
———————————————
Technological era:
Year: 2025
Whoosh.
A speeding truck tore down an empty highway, headlights cutting through the night. Lucien—the driver—leaned back in his seat, singing at the top of his lungs, hands drumming on the wheel.
"You said you wanna be a big man someday! You got mud on your face… big disgrace!" He didn't even know the words, but that didn't stop him from belting them anyway, off-key and all.
"Kickin' your can all over the place… singin'—let's go! We will, we will rock you. We will, we will rock you!" He laughed at his own mess of lyrics, voice echoing against the empty road.
The chilly wind whipped through the window, and for a moment, nothing else existed—just him, the road, and the chaos of his own voice.
Then a horn tore through the night.
Lucien flinched as blinding headlights burst from the fog ahead—white and overwhelming. A massive log truck emerged from the haze, its horn screaming in warning, tires roaring against the wet asphalt.
"The hell—!"
His earlier glee vanished, replaced by panic that spread through him in slow motion. His heart leapt, stumbled, then pounded wildly in his chest.
Screeeeeee…! He slammed down on the brakes.
Screeeeeee…!
The vehicle jerked widely, leaning on one side—his effort to veer away.
But—
"…shit." Those were his last words, before….
Boom!
Impact and then…
darkness.