Everyone is born with a path.
A glowing arc across the soul. A number. A level. A system-given destiny. In this world, you either followed it… or died trying.
Except me.
Because I wasn't supposed to be born at all.
The air was cold. Too cold for anything still living.
Kael Veyron stirred beneath a collapsed beam, his body coated in soot and dried blood. Light flickered from the broken walls above—pale, artificial, dying like the final breath of a machine.
He didn't move at first. He didn't even open his eyes. He just lay there, heartbeat echoing in his skull, a slow, heavy thud that felt disconnected from time.
Something pulsed in his hand.
He opened his fingers slowly. A thread. A thin, black thread—soft as smoke, cold as void. It writhed between his fingers, circling them gently, like it was alive.
Like it was waiting.
> "Subject 43..."
"Vitals: Stable."
"Pathway: None Detected."
"Status: Anomaly Identified. Initiating System Mark."
The voice came from nowhere. From everywhere.
It was neither male nor female—just synthetic, empty. The voice of the System.
And it had found him.
Kael's eyes opened, finally, revealing irises as grey as steel dust.
"...No," he whispered. "Not again."
The moment he spoke, the thread surged up his wrist. His vision blurred—time cracked.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
> Code Rejection Thread: Activated.
Probability Disruption Engaged.
A bolt of crimson light shot from a broken ceiling vent—fast, lethal, meant to incinerate him on the spot.
It never arrived.
The moment the light existed, the thread pulsed—and the world rewrote itself.
The beam vanished.
Not deflected. Not dodged.
Unmade.
Like it had never been fired at all.
Kael sat up slowly, bones aching, mind burning.
He wasn't surprised.
He was terrified.
"What… am I?" he whispered.
The system didn't answer. It never did.
The world had changed.
A decade ago, the Rift Event tore reality open like paper—spitting out monsters, systems, and powers humanity barely understood. To survive, they turned to experiments. Mutations. Evolution through forced adaptation.
Everyone alive today bore a Pathway—a stat-based trajectory chosen by the System.
Except him.
Kael Veyron.
Level: N/A
Pathway: None
Rank: Unknown
Threat Level: Cosmic (Unclassified)
He had no stats.
He had no future.
But somehow, he was still alive.
Footsteps echoed through the hallway above. Uniformed figures with weapons that hummed with mana and tech hybrid cores.
Hunters.
They weren't here to arrest him.
They were here to erase him.
Kael stood on shaking legs. The thread slithered behind him like a shadow that didn't follow light. His body screamed for rest, but his mind... his mind was clear.
"You found me," he muttered. "Again."
He didn't know who "they" were anymore. Scientists. System enforcers. The ones who'd left him for dead in this ruin.
Maybe they thought he'd vanish with the failed experiment.
Maybe they didn't expect the Null Factor to survive.
Gunfire erupted down the hall. A flashbang shattered the silence.
Kael clenched his hand, and the thread responded.
> Possibility: Incoming death.
Rejection: Accepted.
In a blink, the bullets never left the chamber.
The Hunters froze—confused, alarmed. Their weapons jammed. One of them reached for a blade embedded with temporal disruption tech.
The thread twitched.
That action?
Denied.
The blade shattered in its sheath.
Kael walked past them. Not fast. Not slow. Just... inevitable.
As if this world had already decided his steps, and now it was learning it couldn't control them anymore.
He reached the exit of the facility, boots crunching over broken glass and old bones. The wind greeted him—ashen and dry.
In the distance, the city skyline still smoldered. Towering arcs of data pillars floated in the sky, signs of a world rebuilt on numbers and evolution.
He didn't belong here.
Not in this world. Not in any.
But he was still here.
Alive.
And that meant only one thing.
He could break everything.
> "Kael Veyron," the System whispered from the static.
"You are not registered. You are not real. You are not allowed."
Kael looked up, eyes burning with something raw and human—grief, defiance… purpose.
"Then maybe it's time to rewrite what 'real' means."
He turned his back on the ruin and walked into the wasteland.
The thread followed.
End of Chapter 1