CHAPTER 1: Class Day, Doomsday"Listen up, cunts. This is the final opportunity. A final awakening ceremony. If you still don’t awaken today, congratulations, you're officially an Ordinary. That translates to a mediocre-ass university and a life of mediocrity. You can still grind your cultivation a little bit until the Academy exams, but, in reality? This is it."The voice of the teacher was breaking in the auditorium like a judgment of God through a weary man in starched polyester. Before him was a crowd of about a hundred students, all jammed together shoulder to shoulder, and all with a mixture of sweat, desperation, and youthful delusion on their faces.Among these was Kaelen.Kaelen was not of this world. Technically, Kaelen was not even Kaelen. Three weeks ago he had crash-landed into this life, fired into this new flesh like a cosmic bullet of bad timing. It is the same name, but a different soul. He had been dumped here by a tragic medical discharge out of his old world, stage

CHAPTER 3: Death, LitSeconds ticked like the teeth of a hungry clock, gnawing into Kaelen's skull as he kept his palms flat against the orb. Thirty seconds: that was all. More than that it was mere hope licking the fringe of failure.Ten seconds.Fifteen.Twenty.Twenty-five.The breath of the teacher caught. He was already halfway to raising his clipboard to terminate it. And Kaelen, whose heart sank like a stone in the Mariana Trench, could already feel the burden of disappointment starting to bury him alive--Then it came.A vicious flash of light burst forth out of the orb, not soft and welcoming, but rough and wild, as though the thing was shouting.Kaelen was burning. Not agonizingly, but warm: a breath of strength creeping up his arms, writhing through his blood like intelligent steam. His eyes tunneled. The room disappeared.He was in darkness.Melancholy settled down on him like a tar-fog. Out of the twister a spectral staff had coalesced, blacker than space, overlaid with j

Chapter 5: Registering the DeadThe instructors disappeared like bureaucratic ghosts with hangovers and the nine newly minted Awakeners stood blinking in their newfound freedom. They all hung around as though they did not know what to do, go left, right, or up the social ladder. But Kaelen? He did not tarry.He walked as a man with a mission. He was because.Two things had to be done, and one of them was bureaucratic. The other was holy: to tell the woman who had fed his body, warmed his nights and occasionally slapped sense into him with a spatula that he had not failed. Not this time.The first stop was Supers Association.The basics were already known to the former owner of this body even before Kaelen soul crash-landed into this fucked-up magic-cyberpunk hellscape. Everybody did, hell. This was one of the few things that everyone in the Aurora Realm knew to be true: don not mess with the Association or you would have your kneecaps dissolved in the acid of bureaucracy.The Supers A

Kaelen lost no time. He called a taxi, threw a crisp bill to the driver without batting an eyelid, and dropped back into the close, leather-scented seat. His muscles, freshly stirred and tingling with the electric hum of potential energy, could have managed the walk, but why the hell would he punish himself, when he was now so suddenly cash-rich? His home was miles away, and the Supers Association was a cruel journey that would consume at least an hour and a half, and he was not going to demonstrate how stubborn he was by dragging his weary ass through the streets of Woodstone.Frugality was off the books with fifteen thousand federal bucks flashing happily on his phone. This was not the moment to be the poor kid who was always sweating over bus fares and day old bread.The taxi was sliding through the streets of afternoon light and buzzing neon signs, and Kaelen sent a quick message to Aunt Velithe: Registered. I am on my way. Till later. Then, just when the car was going over a spee

Chapter 9: Secrets of the MarkWhat Kaelen saw on the screen was misleadingly simple: a clean white background, the severe Supers Association logo flashing in the top corner, and two friendly blank bars marked email and password. No glittering symbols or occult writings to suggest that behind this portal are great secrets.Kaelen grinned to himself and quickly typed in the log-in credentials, which that oddly calm woman at the front desk of the Association had provided. His hands were moving on the screen, excitement and anxiety tingling in his flesh.It was not just a regular site, he thought. I am not merely logging into another hellish social media platform, but I am entering a closed club of supernatural cunts.He tapped sign in with certainty and was instantly transported to another world. The dullness of the log in page was replaced by a vivid churning hive of activity that filled the screen like a hive of buzzing information wasps.The new page was like a forum but drenched wit