Rudra Vira had always woken with the sun.
It wasn't a habit. It was in his bones.
Even before the Reaping, before the voice and the light and the cold silence of the new sky, he had greeted the day like a soldier—feet on the floor, breath steady, eyes open before thought.
Now, he woke standing.
The Cradle Platform beneath his feet pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat trapped under stone. It radiated a strange warmth, and for a brief moment, Rudra thought he could smell the earth. Wet. Alive. Familiar.
He did not panic. He did not speak.
He looked.
The crowd was massive. Thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—staggered in clusters across the vast stone disc, each encircled by pale green script that shimmered faintly in the air. People shouted. Some cried. Others prayed.
But Rudra only stood still.
He took a slow breath and scanned the horizon.
Above him, the sky was wrong. Too green. Veined with silver light. And yet, it did not feel unnatural. It felt... chosen.
He squinted at the nearest tower—a root-like spire spiraling into the sky, bark glowing with slow, golden light. Vines connected it to another in the distance, creating a canopy of living wood that arched like ribs over the platform.
The city—Rudraak, though he did not yet know its name—was alive.
And it was watching.
He tapped the interface floating beside him.
It responded instantly.
[Name: Rudra Vira]
[Species: Human]
[Level: 1]
[Stat Allocation: 0 points]
[Trait: Locked]
[Skill: Locked]
[Title: None]
Nothing special. No answers. No guidance.
But he didn't expect any.
He closed the panel with a thought.
Then looked inward.
Rudra had been born in a village no one remembered. One of those places with dirt roads and coconut trees, with a name that sounded like a sigh and never showed up on maps.
He had grown up with clay on his arms and blisters in his palms, running through millet fields, learning the rhythm of the soil. His father had taught him how to plant. His mother had taught him how to sharpen a sickle.
They died together. A landslide on a pilgrimage road. No mystery. No shadowy cabal. Just life, ending like it always did—without permission.
Rudra had joined the army the year after.
Three years in uniform. Learned to shoot, fight, obey. Saw more than he said. Did what needed doing.
Then came the discharge.
No medals. No disillusionment. He just missed the sky. Missed the soil.
So he went back.
To the fields. To the quiet.
To the rhythm.
He had built a new hut near the edge of the family land, grown rice and sugarcane, trained in the mornings, read in the afternoons, and spoke only when spoken to. There were no ghosts in his past. No hate in his blood.
Only hunger.
Not for power.
For clarity.
For meaning.
Now, he stood among millions.
And he felt the old rhythm again. Not in the soil this time, but in the system. In the air. In the way people moved. Panicked. Huddled. Waited.
Rudra watched them.
Young men scanning their panels, shouting stats like lottery numbers. A woman trying to calm her son while staring blankly at a vending stall with no currency. A cluster of older men arguing about whether this was some advanced simulation run by a hostile country.
No one noticed the roots shifting beneath their feet.
But Rudra did.
He knelt down and pressed his palm to the platform.
Warm.
Faintly pulsing.
Like breath.
[Hidden Interface Detected...]
He blinked.
[System Sync: 100%]
[Trait Awakened: Sovereign Seed – You grow faster in hardship.]
[Skill Unlocked: Ashen Crown (Dormant)]
[Title: Rootless Monarch]
Rudra stared at the words.
Not with awe. Not with fear.
Just... thought.
Then he stood, dusted off his hands, and looked around again.
The city didn't tremble.
But somewhere beneath it, something shifted.
As if waking up.
As if listening.
He turned his head slightly, the way a man does when he hears thunder in the distance.
And he whispered:
"Alright, then. Let's see what kind of seed you've planted."
The air changed.
Not colder. Not warmer. Just... thinner, like a veil had been lifted.
All at once, the shimmer around the edge of the platform dimmed, then fractured into flakes of greenish-gold light. They rose instead of falling, drifting like spores into the sky until nothing remained between the gathered masses and the sprawling world beyond.
And then it came—no voice, no sound—just a compression of thought in every skull at once, as if memory had been downloaded from somewhere else.
Rudra's breath caught mid-inhale.
It wasn't pain.
It was clarity.
A shape, a weight.
The truth of the Reaping delivered in a single burst of awareness: This is your world now. A system not for fairness but for function. The cities are safe zones. The land beyond them is not. Growth requires risk. Reaplight—your new breath, your only currency—must be earned. You will gain power, skills, traits, but only through meaningful action. Monsters await. Dungeons await. Death, too.
But within the walls, none may harm you, nor may you harm.
Profiteers will guide transaction, not truth. And only cities that evolve may endure.
The Reaping has no end. The Game, no mercy. There was no instruction. No map. Just the final command—burned into every mind without mercy: Grow. Survive. Or be replaced.
And then silence again.
Rudra opened his eyes. Around him, others staggered, blinking, murmuring. A man sat down, muttering about madness. A woman vomited quietly into her own hands. Some wept. A few stood, stiff-backed and understanding more than they should have. Rudra stepped forward.
The first to do so.
The roots of the platform flexed beneath him, like testing the weight of the man they were letting go. Then a path unfolded—literally. A walkway of unfurling bark extended outward, coiling into a bridge of mossy wood and glowing threads. It pulsed like a vein. Beyond it, Rudra finally revealed itself.
And it was nothing like the world he remembered.
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What would YOU do if you woke up in this world like our MC did today? 😱
Comment and tell.