The rain in Neo Lagos didn't wash away the filth; it just moved it around.
In the Sector 9 "Rust Belt," the air was thick with the smell of ozone and cheap synthetic fuel. Kaelen Thorne sat at the end of a grease-stained bar, his hood pulled low over his eyes. He was nineteen, lean, and looked like he hadn't slept since the previous decade.
On the nape of his neck, hidden by the frayed collar of his jacket, sat a jagged, geometric birthmark—the Origin Mark.
To the local gangs, Kaelen was a "Null." A dud. A human born with a Core that refused to hum. In a world where your worth was measured in Synapse Percentage, being a Null was a death sentence.
"You're in my chair, Null-boy."
The voice was a low growl that vibrated the liquid in Kaelen's glass.
Standing behind him was Jax, a Sub-Type Enforcer for the Iron Fang Syndicate. Jax's skin was already beginning to take on a cracked, basalt texture—the hallmark of his [ CODE: TECTONIC SHIFT ]. Glowing orange veins of geothermal energy pulsed along his forearms.
"The bar is half-empty, Jax," Kaelen said, his voice quiet. "Find another stool."
Jax barked a laugh, a sound like grinding stones. He slammed a heavy, heated hand onto Kaelen's shoulder. "I don't think you heard me. My Core is at 12% Synapse right now. I can feel the vibration of the earth under my boots. And you? You're just... static. You're noise."
Kaelen didn't move. But beneath his skin, something was happening.
He didn't see the world like others did. He heard it. He heard the discordant C-sharp of the neon sign flickering outside. He heard the brittle, high-pitched frequency of the rusted pipes in the walls. And he heard the messy, unstable rhythm of Jax's arm.
"Jax," Kaelen whispered. "You have a hairline fracture in your radius bone from the raid last night. If you swing that arm at me... the resonance is going to shatter it."
The bar went dead silent.
"A Null giving me combat advice?" Jax's face contorted. His fist ignited with white-hot magma. "Die!"
The punch was a blur of orange light, aimed squarely at Kaelen's temple. It was a strike meant to liquefy bone.
Kaelen didn't dodge. He simply turned his head and caught the flaming fist with two fingers.
PING.
The sound wasn't an explosion. It was the clear, piercing note of a crystal wine glass being struck in a vacuum.
[ SYNAPSE OVERCLOCK: 5% ]
The moment Kaelen touched him, the orange glow in Jax's arm didn't just fade—it inverted. The heat turned into a flash of freezing kinetic energy that traveled backward through Jax's limb. Kaelen had found the "Natural Frequency" of Jax's bone and emitted the exact opposite note.
CRACK-SHATTER.
Jax's arm didn't just break; it detonated from the inside out. The carbonized skin fractured into a million microscopic splinters, and the muscle tissue tore itself away from the bone in a wave of harmonic distortion.
Jax collapsed to his knees, his arm hanging like a wet, tattered rag. He couldn't even scream; the vibration had momentarily paralyzed his vocal cords.
Kaelen stood up, the air around him beginning to warp and blur like a heat haze on a desert highway. His eyes, normally a dull brown, were now shimmering with a terrifying, pale amber light.
Behind his head, a faint, flickering arc of golden energy appeared—the first shard of an Origin Halo.
"I told you," Kaelen said, looking down at the fallen enforcer. "You're brittle."
Deep within Kaelen's chest, his Core finally stopped humming. It began to Roar.
[ STATUS: THE VESSEL OF RESONANCE HAS AWAKENED ]