The first thing humanity noticed was the silence.
Airports across the world froze mid-motion.
Runways filled with grounded aircraft, engines whining uselessly as pilots stared at dashboards that no longer agreed with reality. Navigation systems contradicted themselves. Coordinates drifted. Altitude readings flickered like dying heartbeats.
In Tokyo, a bullet train screamed to an emergency halt, sparks ripping down steel rails as automated safeguards triggered all at once. Passengers were thrown forward, screams colliding with the smell of ozone.
In New York, the stock exchange screens went black for exactly twelve seconds.
Twelve seconds was all it took.
When they came back online, trillions had already vanished.
-
GLOBAL – 03:17 UTC
Auroras appeared where they had no right to exist.
Green and violet ribbons tore across equatorial skies - over Brazil, Kenya, Indonesia. In Cairo, people dropped to their knees in the streets, convinced judgment had finally arrived. In Bangkok, tourists raised their phones until the devices died in their hands, screens blinking out one by one like extinguished stars.
The air crackled.
Not thunder.
Not lightning.
Something deeper.
Electrical substations overloaded in cascading failures. Power grids shut themselves down to avoid destruction - an instinct built by human engineers who never imagined they'd be protecting themselves from the planet beneath their feet.
Hospitals switched to backup generators.
Traffic lights failed.
Satellites went blind.
For ninety seconds, the world lost its reflection in space.
-
BEIJING – OUTSKIRTS OF THE GREAT WALL
Jianyu felt it before he saw it.
The ground breathed.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically.
The stone beneath his boots rose and fell by centimeters, dust lifting in trembling waves as if the Earth itself were struggling to inhale.
Behind him, the cavern collapsed with a sound like a continent snapping its spine.
Black roots - thicker than subway tunnels now - lashed through the air, their surfaces veined with faint blue-white pulses, synaptic, rhythmic, alive. They did not thrash randomly. They moved with intent, carving space, reclaiming it.
Jianyu ran.
A shockwave threw him forward. His shoulder slammed into stone. Pain flared white-hot - but he was alive, and the roots did not strike him.
They parted.
As if recognizing him.
The black book skidded across the ground, stopping inches from his outstretched hand.
The moment his fingers closed around it, heat surged up his arm - searing, invasive. Jianyu screamed, expecting flesh to blister, bone to char.
But the pain stopped at the skin.
The book burned without harming him.
Behind him, boots thundered.
Men in sealed tactical gear flooded the cavern's mouth, weapons raised, scanners whining uselessly as electromagnetic interference shredded their readings.
One agent froze when he saw Jianyu holding the book.
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"Project Vein predicted this… the Awakening Phase."
Another voice snapped orders.
Containment protocols.
Full blackout.
No witnesses.
Too late.
The Earth had already spoken.
-
ROME – VATICAN CITY
Church bells rang without hands touching ropes.
The vibration rose through stone foundations, resonating ancient architecture tuned - by accident or designto the planet's deeper frequencies. Priests stumbled into courtyards as auroras burned the sky green above St. Peter's Basilica.
Some cried miracle.
Others wept in terror.
Deep beneath the city, seismic sensors registered anomalies that didn't match any known fault line. Not movement.
Growth.
-
(WASHINGTON D.C. – EMERGENCY SESSION)
Screens filled the Situation Room wall—feeds from across the globe, each one worse than the last.
Roots breaking through highways in Mongolia.
Ice fracturing in Antarctica.
Rivers glowing faintly blue at night in the Amazon basin.
A general slammed his fist on the table.
"This isn't a natural disaster."
A scientist swallowed hard.
"No, sir. It's a system coming online."
Silence followed.
Then a single phrase appeared across classified channels worldwide, unlocking files sealed for decades:
-
(PROJECT VEIN — ACTIVE STATUS CONFIRMED)
Names scrolled beneath it.
Five highlighted in red.
-
BEIJING – CONTAINMENT ZONE
Jianyu was on his knees when it started.
Symbols crept across his skin.
They emerged from beneath the flesh - black lines threading along veins, blooming into glyphs that pulsed in time with the distant roots. Not tattoos. Not wounds.
Interfaces.
The soldiers backed away.
"What the hell is he?" someone whispered.
Jianyu looked down at his hands, breath shaking.
He understood one thing with terrifying clarity:
The world wasn't just changing.
It had noticed him.
And somewhere beneath every continent, something vast and ancient was waking fully for the first time.
END OF PART I
The day the world panicked had only just begun.