2025-09-29 16:45:20Jake stood on the balcony of the old apartment he rented under a fake name. A cigarette burned between his fingers, its smoke curling into the night air.
“Who is he really? How could he know the chip in my body doesn’t work?”
Jake stared at the city lights in the distance, then slowly closed his eyes. Shadows of the past he always buried began to surface again.
Ashborne still felt foreign to him back then. Jake was only twelve, a skinny kid with a worn-out blue backpack, walking home from public elementary school.
“Dad will be mad if I’m late again. He’ll hit me for sure,” he muttered, quickening his pace.
Suddenly, a black van stopped at the end of the alley. The sliding door opened, revealing a man in a gray uniform wearing a mask.
Jake froze, his heart racing. “T-that’s me… who are you?”
The man didn’t answer. Two more men jumped out, moving fast.
“What are you—” Jake didn’t get the chance to scream before a damp cloth pressed against his mouth. A sharp chemical odor stabbed his nose. His head spun, vision blurring.
The last thing he heard was a cold murmur: “Subject twelve, marked.”
Jake woke up in a white room. Neon lights above blinded his eyes. His body was strapped to a metal table. Around him, other kids his age—some crying, some already motionless.
“Who are you!” Jake shouted in panic.
The scientist grinned wide. “Your savior.”
“Let me go! I need to go home before my dad gets mad!”
“You don’t need your father anymore. You’ve been chosen for Project Revenant. The government needs new soldiers. Weak bodies will be strengthened. Children like you are the best test subjects. No records. No families. You’ll vanish from the world, reborn as weapons. The chips implanted in you will be different from normal citizens. We will control and care for you as we would pets.”
Jake thrashed. “Let me go! I’m not weak!”
The scientist stared coldly. “You were chosen because you are fragile. Your bones break easily, your lungs are weak. You’re perfect for this experiment.”
A large needle pierced his arm. Blue liquid surged into his veins. His body trembled, muscles burning from within. The kids beside him screamed, one by one going still.
The machine beside him beeped erratically. Data on the monitor spiked uncontrollably. The scientist frowned.
“Impossible… his body is rejecting the serum. This should be a total failure.”
Jake clenched his teeth as pain surged through his bones. Yet amid the agony, something ignited inside him—like embers in his blood.
“Seems you’ll need a higher dose,” the scientist muttered.
Jake’s eyelids grew heavy, his mouth sluggish. His vision dimmed, the last thing he saw was the scientist stepping away.
Back to the present.
Jake opened his eyes. The cigarette’s smoke vanished into the night breeze.
Their bodies had been discarded. Jake, deemed a failure, had woken among the lifeless kids meant to be incinerated.
Far from home, in an empty small town. Lucky enough, he escaped and was cared for by a kind stranger for two years.
No one knew that his “failed” experiment made him an anomaly—undetectable by the government system, immune to illness, stronger than most men. He barely tired.
A brutal knock snapped him out of his thoughts. Jake stood up instantly.
The door creaked open and, before he could speak, two massive hands yanked his collar forward. His back slammed against the wall, breath knocked out of him.
From the end of the hall, an older man in a shabby suit emerged. His narrow eyes gleamed with greed. James, the landlord.
“Brad!” James sneered. “Six months. You think I’m a saint, letting some freeloader live here?”
Jake sucked in air. “Ah, Mr. James! I actually have goods to sell, but the shops are closed. Still in raw form, you see!”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the golden wristwatch he had stolen earlier—worth tens of thousands of dollars.
“What?” James chuckled. “You think life is that simple?”
Jake forced a nervous laugh. “Then… what do you want me to do, Mr. James?”
James flicked his gaze at his bodyguards. “Teach him a lesson. So he remembers who’s in charge.”
The first man’s fist slammed into Jake’s stomach. He doubled over, gasping. The second’s punch cracked across his jaw, blood spilling from his lips.
James stepped closer, driving his shoe into Jake’s ribs. “You’re no tenant of mine anymore. Get out, trash. And I’ll take this watch.”
Jake lay helpless as the watch was ripped from his hand.
“Take his garbage too!” James ordered.
The bodyguards disappeared into the room, returning with his ragged backpack.
“Of course! He’s dirt poor! Works delivery two days a week—what could he possibly afford?” James scoffed.
He snatched the bag, smacking it across Jake’s head.
His laughter echoed as he turned away. The bodyguards dragged Jake to the stairwell, shoving him down. He tumbled down several steps before landing hard.
Jake crawled, blood mixing with rain dripping through the leaky roof. “Damn it… everything’s gone…”
He staggered outside the tenement, collapsing on the sidewalk. Light rain fell, cold against his battered body. His eyes stared blankly at the busy street, where strangers passed without a care.
“I don’t even have a bed anymore,” he whispered, hoarse.
The low hum of an engine broke the silence. A sleek black car stopped in front of him. The passenger window slid down, revealing a familiar face—the man in the gray suit from the alley.
Jake scoffed, struggling to his feet. “I don’t ride with strangers.”
The man gave a faint smile. “Ah, I never told you my name earlier. Damian Crowne. And you need money. Don’t lie to yourself.”
Jake froze. Those words struck deep, reopening James’s fresh wound.
“I can handle myself,” Jake muttered, unsteady.
“Really?” Damian leaned closer. “If you could, you wouldn’t be sitting here, drenched and broke, face bloodied in front of this dump.”
Jake clenched his jaw. Rain poured harder. At last, he opened the door and slid into the seat.
“That’s better. Why’s it so hard to accept money? Like I said before, we’d meet again, didn’t I?” Damian said cheerfully.
Jake didn’t answer. He turned away, staring out the window, letting the luxury car glide away from the slums he had called home for six years.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
55
Fear did not arrive with thunder, nor with the violent crack of earth splitting open beneath careless feet; instead, it arrived like a subtle pressure against the mind, a tightening sensation that crawled beneath the skin and whispered warnings with a voice too ancient to belong to any living creature.The First City of Light woke to this tension, its luminous towers flickering in unsteady rhythms that betrayed the calm façade its architecture tried desperately to maintain. There was no disaster yet, no visible threat on the horizon, but every person who stepped outside felt a tightening in their chest as if the world had decided to breathe through them whether they permitted it or not. This was not panic created by imagination; this was the world’s fear bleeding through its lungs.Mira felt it instantly when she stepped out from the central root-chamber, the ground beneath her boots vibrating with an uneven pulse that matched the thrum of an anxious heartbeat. The sky hovered in a su
54
The morning began with a taste of iron in the air, the kind that drifted across the landscape right before a storm decides to tear the horizon open. People in the First City of Light paused mid-stride, instinctively lifting their faces toward the shifting sky as it rippled with pale green threads. The sensation wasn’t quite fear and not quite awe; it sat somewhere in the space between, like a word unspoken but ready to burn on someone’s tongue.Mira stepped out onto her balcony, letting the cold wind rush across her face. She inhaled deeply, and her chest tightened. The city’s bioluminescent towers were glowing with an unusual intensity, pulsing like frantic hearts. It wasn’t the gentle rhythm she had grown used to since the world’s rebirth. It was sharper. Faster. Uneven.The city was feeling something it had never felt before.Rage.She whispered, “Elen… what are you doing?”But she already knew the truth.It wasn’t Elen acting out.It was the world itself responding to something bu
53
The dream began the way most dreams begin—softly, without edges, drifting through the mind of a child who still believed the world was a place where everything could be understood if one only stared long enough. Lio had always been quiet, the kind of Resonant boy who listened more than he spoke, sensing the faint whispers of the living earth with more ease than he understood his own thoughts. When other children played near the glowing terraces of the First City, he lingered near the roots, tracing their subtle vibrations with curious fingers.But this dream felt different.It began with light, pale and trembling, flickering like a candle trapped inside fog. Then the light bent inward, collapsing into a tunnel of crimson haze. Lio walked through it instinctively, drawn by a voice that wasn’t a voice, a warmth that wasn’t warm, a call that carried familiarity he could not explain.When the haze cleared, he found himself standing in an enormous cavern lit by threads of dark red luminesc
52
The dream began the way most dreams begin—softly, without edges, drifting through the mind of a child who still believed the world was a place where everything could be understood if one only stared long enough. Lio had always been quiet, the kind of Resonant boy who listened more than he spoke, sensing the faint whispers of the living earth with more ease than he understood his own thoughts. When other children played near the glowing terraces of the First City, he lingered near the roots, tracing their subtle vibrations with curious fingers.But this dream felt different.It began with light, pale and trembling, flickering like a candle trapped inside fog. Then the light bent inward, collapsing into a tunnel of crimson haze. Lio walked through it instinctively, drawn by a voice that wasn’t a voice, a warmth that wasn’t warm, a call that carried familiarity he could not explain.When the haze cleared, he found himself standing in an enormous cavern lit by threads of dark red luminesc
51
The first warning was not a sound but a distortion, a subtle warping of the air that sent a faint metallic taste across the horizon. It drifted above the southern ridges like heat rising from cracked asphalt, except it carried weight—an awareness pressing against the senses of everyone attuned to the living world. Even those who lacked Resonant abilities felt the change, pausing mid-step as goosebumps crawled along their arms, triggered by a shift they could not name but instinctively feared.Mira registered the disturbance seconds before the shockwave hit. She straightened sharply, her gaze snapping to the far south where the sky rippled with unnatural tension. The clouds bent inward, as though pulled by a gravitational breath from deep beneath the crust.She whispered, “It’s happening again.”A Resonant guard rushed toward her, eyes wide. “The southern plates are vibrating in fractured sequences. They’re not following Elen’s rhythm anymore.”Mira inhaled slowly and felt the strain r
50
The city did not rise from blueprints or scaffolding or human ambition; it grew, inch by trembling inch, like a luminous creature testing its limbs beneath the dawning sky. The earth shaped its walls from living stone that pulsed with bioenergetic veins, and every tower curved toward the sun the way flowers tilt for warmth. When viewed from afar, the First City of Light shimmered like a cluster of breathing lanterns—alive, watchful, and intimately aware of every heartbeat wandering through its corridors.Yet even in its beauty, something restless simmered beneath the surface.A hum threaded through the city streets, too rhythmic to be natural, too intentional to be dismissed. Humans and Resonants alike paused mid-step, drawn by the echo vibrating through the root-grown bridges connecting each district. Even the glowing archways, shaped from crystalline sap, brightened and dimmed in uneven intervals, as though responding to a pulse no one understood.Mira stood at the center of the mai
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