The danger came without sound.
One moment, Kael was walking through the dim corridor of NeuroShell-12's lower district. The next, the lights flickered—and reality folded in on itself like crumpled paper.
His breath caught.
The metallic floor dissolved beneath his feet, becoming a pool of shifting liquid glass. The walls twisted into spirals, stretching endlessly before collapsing into nothing.
A voice echoed inside his skull.
"Found you… anomaly."
Kael spun around.
A silhouette stood at the far end of the corridor—or what used to be the corridor. Now it resembled a deformed tunnel, lined with pulsating nerves instead of steel. The figure wore a tattered neural cloak, its patterns glitching with pale blue static.
A Neuro-Logger.
Lesser Grade 3.
Specialization: Perceptual Distortion.
"Why me?" Kael whispered.
"Your mind tremors sing across the NeuroNet," the Logger chuckled, voice vibrating like broken audio. "A newborn system user. Rare. Valuable. I'll take a piece."
His surroundings twisted again.
All color drained from the world.
Kael's body suddenly weighed nothing, then everything. He staggered, trying to stabilize his vision, but the distortions worsened. The Logger snapped his fingers—and Kael's arm melted into dust before reforming upside down.
His heart hammered.
This isn't physics. This is perception manipulation.
He's hacking my senses directly.
Kael clenched his jaw. "System—activate defense!"
No response.
The Neuro-Logger smiled. "Your system is still asleep… little hatchling."
The world turned red.
A blade of neural energy materialized in the Logger's hand, writhing like a living thing.
Kael's legs buckled.
His vision blurred.
Every heartbeat felt like it ripped at the edges of his consciousness.
This… is death?
The Logger's blade pierced through Kael's chest.
Or rather—it felt like it.
No wound appeared, but the pain was so real he screamed, collapsing onto the shifting floor. His nerves burned, his thoughts splintering like shattered glass.
As darkness wrapped around him, a whisper rose deep in his mind.
Not from the Logger.
Not from any human.
Something older.
"…Awaken."
The darkness shattered.
Kael's Awakening
Light exploded outward from Kael's neural core, bursting through invisible chains.
The world froze.
The distortions around him glitched violently, colors snapping back into their original state. Kael gasped, vision widening as a new layer of clarity washed over reality—every line, every vibration, every synaptic ripple visible to him like threads in a web.
He lifted his head.
The Neuro-Logger stepped back, eyes widening. "Impossible—your mind shouldn't recalibrate that fast!"
Kael exhaled slowly.
The pain faded.
His thoughts sharpened to razor precision.
Neuro-System Reactivating…
Core Stability: 4%
Neuro-Awakened State: Partial
Kael stood.
Reality wasn't bending anymore.
It was shifting, but this time under his control.
His fingers traced invisible currents, pulling them together like strands of energy.
"Get out of my head," Kael growled.
He activated Neuro-Intrusion Lv.1—but something in him pushed further. The system trembled, responding, expanding.
The Logger's expression changed from confident to horrified.
Kael reached into the Logger's distortion field—gripped it—and crushed it like fragile glass.
Everything snapped back to the real world.
The corridor, the lights, the metal floor.
No liquid glass, no spirals, no melting limbs.
Just Kael.
And the Neuro-Logger being forced to his knees, clutching his head, screaming as Kael severed the connection.
"You… you're not a normal system user," the Logger gasped. "What are you…?"
Kael's breath echoed softly.
"I don't know yet."
He forced one final surge of intrusion—and the Logger collapsed unconscious.
Aftermath
Kael trembled, leaning against the wall as adrenaline drained from his veins. His heart still raced, but the fear had changed into something else.
Something deeper.
Why was the Infinity created?
The question haunted him suddenly—violently.
It wasn't his thought.
It felt planted, like a seed awakening in his consciousness.
Why must minds expand beyond limits?
Why are neural boundaries illusions?
Why did the Multiverse birth systems at all?
As he fought for breath, he remembered the moment before awakening—
the whisper in the darkness, the presence beyond comprehension.
Kael swallowed hard. "Was that… part of the system? Or… something else?"
A chill ran through him.
A flicker appeared in his vision.
Not a glitch. Not a hallucination.
A towering silhouette—its form both human and not, outlined in cosmic fractals. Eyes like collapsing stars. Limbs made of shifting patterns. A primordial entity gazing directly into his consciousness.
Only for a second.
Only enough for Kael to feel its presence.
Then it vanished.
His knees nearly buckled.
"What… what was that?"
No answer.
Only a lingering feeling that something ancient had awakened with him—
watching, waiting, and whispering from the depths of the Neurocosmos.
And that his journey had just begun.