Nick woke to the sound of wind.
Not ordinary wind—this one carried a low, humming vibration that crawled beneath the skin. The smell of ash and something metallic hung in the air, thick enough to taste.
He groaned, pushing himself upright.
The courtyard… wasn't a courtyard anymore.
What was left of campus barely resembled the place he knew. Buildings were twisted, cracked open like eggshells. Trees were uprooted. The ground itself seemed wrong—uneven, fractured into jagged lines that pulsed faintly with blue light.
Nick blinked.
The blue wasn't from the ground.
It was from the sky.
Above him, the heavens were no longer a dark canvas of stars. Now, swirling storm clouds of mana—colors he didn't even have the words for—shifted and twisted overhead. The crack across the sky hadn't closed.
It had widened.
Reality still looked broken.
Nick swallowed hard. "This… can't be real."
A sharp chime sounded.
Not from his phone.
Not from any device.
From the air.
A glowing window snapped into existence in front of him—clean, sharp, undeniable.
Nick froze.
[System Initialization Complete]
Another line appeared beneath it.
[Welcome, User: Nick Warborn]
His pulse spiked.
"This is real."
The window unfolded into a larger panel—sleek, elegant, and nothing like the glitchy one from before.
Then came the status.
[STATUS WINDOW — USER: NICK WARBORN]
Race: Human (Awakened)
True Name Lineage: Warborn
Boon:Blank Slate World — Full Access (Locked)
Designation:Origin Variant Detected
Level: 1
Mana Affinity: Undetermined
Bloodline Resonance: Dormant (0%)
Attributes:
Strength: 7
Endurance: 6
Agility: 6
Vitality: 8
Mind: 5
Spirit: 4
Mana: 0 / ?
Unique Conditions:
[Vanguard Protocol: Incomplete]
[Warborn Instinct: Suppressed]
[Origin Path: Hidden]
Warning:Full system interface not optimized. Awaiting stabilization.
Nick stared at it, heart hammering.
"Origin Variant? Blank Slate… what does that even mean?"
The window didn't answer.
But one thing was clear:
This wasn't the same interface other survivors were getting. He had seen people around the courtyard waking up, some screaming as smaller, simpler windows floated in front of them.
Then most of those people were gone.
Either fled.
Or… worse.
Nick's throat tightened.
His brother.
His older brother.
His parents.
He needed to reach them.
He reached inside his pocket and fumbled out his phone. The screen was cracked, but it lit up. For a second, hope surged through him.
The battery icon flickered violently.
No signal. No WiFi. No data.
Just a permanent "Searching…" indicator.
"What about—"
He dug through his ruined backpack and pulled out his laptop. The device powered on with effort. The WiFi icon spun. And spun. And spun.
Nothing.
He checked his smartwatch.
No signal.
Every device that relied on global connections, satellites, towers—dead.
Nick's breathing accelerated.
"I can't contact them. I can't contact anyone."
He opened his laptop camera to see if the mic or speaker had been fried. The video quality was grainy, static twitching across the screen.
Then the image warped.
For a fraction of a second, his own reflection distorted—gold light flickered in his irises, and something like a faint emblem pulsed behind him.
A symbol.
A rune-like mark.
A shape like two mirrored blades crossing over a blank circle.
Nick jerked back.
"That's… that wasn't—"
The laptop sparked.
The screen went black.
The device died completely.
Nick nearly threw it in frustration.
"Why is everything breaking around me? What's happening to me?" His voice cracked.
He forced himself to slow his breathing. Panic wouldn't help.
"Okay. Okay. Focus. First… status. Then I figure out where to go."
He re-opened the System window. The words "True Name Lineage: Warborn" glowed faintly.
Something inside him shivered—like recognition.
Then his heart suddenly skipped.
A low rumble echoed across the campus.
The ground trembled.
Nick whipped around.
In the distance—beyond the shattered dorms and fractured basketball court—the land dipped into a massive canyon that absolutely hadn't existed yesterday.
And far beyond that…
A mountain range.
A mountain range so tall it pierced the clouds.
Mountains that had never been there before.
The world hadn't just broken.
It had changed shape.
Nick whispered, "How big did the Earth become…?"
His mind scrambled for logic, for anything familiar. "Continents don't just—mountains can't just—"
A soft ping cut through his thoughts.
A new System notification appeared.
[GLOBAL SYSTEM NOTICE]
The world has entered the Awakening Stage.
Mana density: 312% above baseline.
Ecosystem: Unstable.
Fauna and flora: Mutating.
Continental boundaries: Reconfigured.
Warning: Global communication infrastructure—irrecoverable.
Survival Probability (Humanity): 22%.
Nick's mouth went dry.
Twenty-two percent.
He squeezed his fists until his knuckles whitened. "My family… where are they? Are they—"
A second notification popped up.
[Quest Unlocked: The First Step]
Objective: Establish your location.
Objective: Secure shelter and resources.
Objective: Survive the next 24 hours.
Reward: System Stabilization
Warning: Failure will result in permanent death.
Nick stared at it.
"Permanent death? What kind of wording is that?"
Then another thought hit him like a punch.
If this was a system…
If this was structured like a game…
Then there were probably people, creatures, forces already adapting better than he was.
He needed to move.
He needed to understand this world.
He needed to survive.
And above all—
He needed to find his family.
Nick took one last look at his dead devices, his cracked phone still "Searching…", his destroyed laptop.
Then he looked at the intimidating mountains in the distance, the shifting sky, the mutated ruins.
"Okay," he whispered.
"I don't understand any of this. But I'm not dying here."
He closed the System window, clenched his jaw, and started walking toward whatever the new world had become.
The first 24 hours of the Awakening had begun.
And Nick Warborn was not going to fail.