The young man's blue panel suddenly flickered, the text distorting as something fundamental in reality shifted around him.
Then he heard it.
A voice so ancient it felt like dust and starlight.
*[Child...]*
Rael gasped as the panel before him began shifting violently, characters scrambling and reforming. Something was fusing with him—no, with his core specifically. He could feel it burrowing into the center of his being where his energy resided. Something vast and incomprehensible becoming one with his newly formed core.
The burning started in his chest.
Then it consumed everything.
CRACK!
The sound of reality breaking echoed in his ears. Not just sound—he could feel it. Layers of existence peeling apart like old paint.
Visions flooded his mind.
Fire consuming cities.
Monsters the size of mountains.
And then—
A hand.
So massive it covered the entire sky, fingers each the size of continents. It descended slowly, inevitably, crushing the planet into nothing but cosmic dust between its fingers. The death of everything he knew compressed into a single, horrifying moment.
SMACK!
Rael's eyes snapped open. He was on his bedroom floor, gasping, desperately trying to pull air back into his lungs. His shirt was soaked with sweat, his hands trembling as he pushed himself up.
*What...what was that?*
He sat there for several minutes, just breathing. Registering what he'd seen. Processing it.
Rael had always lived by one principle: nothing in life was random. Everything had a reason. A meaning.
This vision, this fragment that had merged with him—it wasn't chance. It was purpose.
He looked back at his panel, still hovering in the air.
The text had changed.
[Name: Rael Andras
Ability: Reality Bending, ???
Core Density: 10
Energy Purity: 100%
Particle Refinement: First Core - 1%]
*Core Density: 10?*
He knew what that meant from the basic education everyone received. A normal, non-awakened human had a Core Density of 1. Someone who just awakened started at 10—ten times stronger than a regular person. The weakest monsters, the ones called Dregs, usually ranged from 15 to 20.
He was barely stronger than a normal human by awakened standards.
*Reality...Bending?*
No description. No instructions. Just those two words that seemed to hold infinite possibility.
His heart hammered in his chest as a cry of joy threatened to burst from his throat. An ability! He had an ability! Not just any ability—something that sounded impossibly powerful.
But what did it do?
Rael stood shakily and grabbed an apple from the small table beside his bed. He stared at it intently, feeling for that new energy in his core. It was there—weak, barely formed from his awakening, but present.
*Change.*
He focused on the apple, imagining it becoming a banana. The energy in his core stirred, and suddenly a third of it drained away, transforming into something else. Something that felt wrong and right at the same time.
Purple energy, barely visible, flickered around his fingers and wrapped around the apple.
The fruit shimmered.
Twisted.
And became a banana.
"Holy shit..."
Rael nearly dropped it. The banana was perfect—yellow skin, the right weight, even the proper smell. He peeled it carefully and took a bite. It tasted exactly as it should.
He could feel his core slowly replenishing itself, the energy naturally returning to the maximum level he'd achieved. Not growing—just refilling what he'd spent.
*So abilities use the energy, but don't consume it permanently. And refining energy condenses the core to allow more energy storage and use.*
Over the next hour, he experimented carefully.
A pencil into a pen—it worked.
A piece of paper into cloth—it worked.
A shoe into a television—nothing. The energy drained but snapped back, the change too drastic.
A small stone into a tiny diamond—surprisingly, it worked. The energy requirement was massive for such a small change, but the similar crystalline structure seemed to allow it.
*The change can't be too different from the original. And if something has high energy density, I need enough energy to match it.*
Rael sat back on his bed, mind racing.
He had power now. Real power. But it was pathetically weak at his current level. Just the lowest possible awakened state.
And those visions...
Something was coming. Maybe in months. Maybe years. But it was coming. That hand that would crush their world into nothing.
Who would believe him if he tried to explain? A newly awakened eighteen-year-old claiming to have seen the end of the world? They'd think he'd gone mad from his awakening.
No. He needed to grow stronger first. Strong enough that people would listen. Strong enough to maybe, possibly, make a difference.
Rael stood and walked to his window, looking out at the city lights. Somewhere out there, at the city's borders, Arya was fighting.
His sister—not by blood, but by everything that mattered.
The Andras family had taken him in when he was just a child, raising him as their own. Arya, with her striking silver hair that seemed to glow in moonlight, had been the perfect older sister. Beautiful enough to turn heads wherever she went, but deadly enough with her ice abilities to freeze monsters solid.
Two years older than him, she'd awakened with powerful ice manipulation. Now at the Ninth Core level, she was approaching the legendary transformation—once her ninth core reached 100%, she could combine all nine cores into her first Star. It made her one of the city's most reliable defenders, one of the few so close to Star transformation.
When the invasion truly began 3 years ago . Their parents had been away on a trip to the capital when the first massive wave of monsters struck. They never made it back.
Now it was just him and Arya in this small home.
She'd been fighting for two years while he'd been waiting, hoping for his own awakening.
Now he had it.
He grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. His small home—just two bedrooms and basic amenities that he shared with his sister—felt suddenly too constraining.
He needed to hunt. To grow. To become something more than just another First Core Condensation awakened.
Because if those visions were true, being ordinary meant being dead.
The door clicked shut behind him as he stepped into the night.
And in a galaxy far from this small world, something ancient stirred. Eyes as large as stars snapped open, flashing with surprise.
"Hmmm?"
The fragment had been activated.
The countdown had begun.