Chapter Zero: Before the Fracture
One hundred and twelve years ago, the sky burned.
It was not war.
It was not divine judgment.
It was a solar flare — the largest ever recorded in human history. Satellites failed. Power grids collapsed. The auroras stretched unnaturally far from the poles, bleeding color into skies that had never known them.
They called it The Helios Event.
For weeks, the world recovered from infrastructure failure.
For months, scientists studied radiation spikes and atmospheric anomalies.
For years, nothing happened.
And then the children began to change.
The first documented case was a boy in São Paulo who could ignite the air around his hands. A girl in Nairobi who could lift objects without touching them. A child in Toronto who survived a fall from a five-story building without a scratch.
At first, they were miracles.
Then they were threats.
Then they were regulated.
The phenomenon came to be known as a Spark — an ability manifesting in approximately one in four individuals, emerging any time from birth to fifteen years of age. If it did not awaken by fifteen, it never would.
Governments adapted.
Laws were rewritten.
The Licensed Hero System was born.
Strength became structured. Power became ranked. Influence became quantifiable.
And from that new world order rose institutions dedicated to refining these abilities — shaping chaos into something useful.
Something marketable.
Something controllable.
Among them, one academy rose above all others.
Helios Vanguard Academy.
For over a century, it has produced the highest-ranked heroes in the nation. Its graduates dominate the leaderboards. Its name carries weight in government chambers and disaster zones alike.
Helios stands for excellence.
For legacy.
For light.
But history has a habit of misplacing inconvenient truths.
Because not every effect of the Helios Event was recorded.
Not every decision made in the early years was ethical.
And not every hero born beneath that altered sun chose to stand in it.
Now, a new generation steps forward.
Sixteen students.
Sixteen Sparks.
Raised in a world where power is normalized, commercialized, idolized.
They have grown up watching heroes trend on social feeds.
Watching rankings update in real time.
Watching strength become spectacle.
They believe they are inheriting something glorious.
They do not yet know they are inheriting something fractured.
The sun that remade the world still burns.
And some shadows are long enough to outlive a century.