The world ended at 3:47 PM on a Tuesday.
Kael knew the exact time because the impossible, shimmering blue screens that tore across the sky like cosmic cracks had a timestamp glowing faintly in their bottom right corner. **\[Global Integration Commencing. Standby for Designation.\]** The words pulsed with sterile, indifferent light.
He wasn't surprised. Not really. For months, the forums had buzzed. Conspiracy nuts became prophets. Preppers looked smug. Scientists looked terrified. The signs – freak auroras, animals acting strange, weird energy fluctuations – had piled up. Kael, pragmatic to his core, hadn't prepped canned beans. He'd prepped *builds*. Spreadsheets, theorycrafting, min-maxed stat distributions for every conceivable Class the hypothesized "System" might offer. He knew the optimal path for a Shadowblade, the mana efficiency thresholds for a Pyroclast, the tanking rotations for a Voidwarden Paladin. He was *ready*.
Now, standing on the cracked asphalt of what used to be downtown, surrounded by panicked screams and the distant, echoing roars of *things* that shouldn't exist, Kael felt a cold knot of dread tighten in his gut. Not for the monsters tearing through the stalled traffic a block away. Not for the collapsing buildings. But for the silence in his own head.
All around him, people flickered. One moment, a terrified office worker in a shredded suit; the next, the same man shimmered, clad in rough leather armor, a crude wooden shield materializing on his arm, a notification only he could see blazing in his vision. **\[Designation: Militia Defender. Level 1.\]** A woman shrieking nearby suddenly glowed with faint green light, vines snaking from her fingertips. **\[Designation: Verdant Novice. Level 1.\]** A teenager who'd been cowering behind a dumpster yelped as twin daggers of pure shadow coalesced in his hands. **\[Designation: Umbral Initiate. Level 1.\]**
Blue screens bloomed like digital flowers across the chaos. Levels. Stats. Skills. The promise of power to survive the apocalypse.
Kael's screen finally flashed. His breath hitched. This was it. His meticulously planned future, his survival, hinged on this.
The notification wasn't blue. It was a sickly, decaying grey.
**\[Soul Fracture Detected.\]**
**\[Integration Protocols Incompatible.\]**
**\[Designation: NULL.\]**
**\[System Access: DENIED.\]**
The words slammed into him like a physical blow. NULL. Denied. Soul Fracture? What the hell did that even mean? He felt nothing broken, just the familiar, persistent ache of old regrets he'd buried deep. But the System didn't care. It judged. And it found him *wanting*.
"Kael! Move!" Liam's voice, sharp with panic, cut through the daze. Liam, his roommate, his *friend*, shimmered beside him, now clad in scaled armor, a glowing shortsword in his hand. **\[Designation: Scalebound Sentinel. Level 1.\]** Behind Liam stood Maya, her eyes wide, fingers crackling with unstable arcane energy. **\[Designation: Arcanum Apprentice. Level 1.\]** Jenna, usually so calm, was pale, a spectral wolf forming at her side. **\[Designation: Spirit Caller. Level 1.\]**
They'd all gotten their Designations. Their tickets to survival.
"Kael, what did you get?" Maya yelled over the din of collapsing concrete and inhuman shrieks. "We need to go! The safe zone markers are activating!"
Kael tried to speak, but his throat was sandpaper. He just pointed mutely at the grey notification still hovering, a mark of shame, in his vision.
Liam's eyes flickered, reading the notification Kael's status shared. His face, initially concerned, hardened. "NULL?" Disbelief turned to dawning horror, then chilling calculation. "You… you didn't get integrated? At all?"
Jenna gasped. Maya looked stricken. "What does that mean?"
"It means he's baseline human," Liam said, his voice flat, devoid of its earlier camaraderie. "No stats. No skills. No levels. Dead weight." He looked past Kael, his gaze fixing on the end of the street. "And worse."
Kael followed his gaze. Slinking from the shadow of a burning electronics store came a creature that defied biology. It was the size of a large bear, but built like a nightmare insect crossed with a wolf. Glossy black chitin covered its body, six multi-jointed legs ending in razor-sharp points scraped the asphalt. Its head was a horror of compound eyes and dripping mandibles surrounding a lamprey-like maw. A name tag pulsed red above it: **\[Void-Hound. Level 3.\]**
It sniffed the air, mandibles clicking hungrily. Its cluster of eyes swiveled, locking onto their group. Specifically, onto Kael. The weakest scent. The easiest prey.
"Liam…" Kael started, desperation clawing at him.
"Run," Liam said, not to Kael, but to Maya and Jenna. "Now! To the marker! He'll slow it down!" There was no hesitation, no apology. Just survival instinct, sharpened by the System's gift.
"Liam, you bastard!" Maya screamed, but Jenna grabbed her arm, the spectral wolf snarling at the approaching Void-Hound.
They ran. Away from him. Towards the distant, pulsing blue light of a projected safe zone marker.
Kael was alone. Unarmed. Unchanged. Facing a Level 3 monster with nothing but the clothes on his back and the cold, grey label of **NULL** burning in his vision. The Void-Hound lowered its head, a guttural chittering rising from its throat. It tensed, muscles coiling under its chitinous plates.
This was it. Not a heroic last stand, but a footnote. Designation: Null. Cause of Death: Irrelevant.
The Void-Hound lunged. Time seemed to slow. Kael saw the glistening saliva on the mandibles, the compound eyes reflecting the city's fires, the terrible, inevitable trajectory of those bladed legs. He braced, a useless gesture, a final defiance against the uncaring System.
Then, the grey notification flickered.
It didn't vanish. It *glitched*. Jagged lines of static ripped through it. The words **DESIGNATION: NULL** distorted, stretched, and shattered like breaking glass. In its place, a new screen erupted, not blue, not grey, but a violent, searing *crimson*. Jagged, corrupted text scrawled across his vision, accompanied by a deafening, discordant electronic shriek that seemed to tear at the fabric of reality itself.
**[ERROR! ERROR!]**
**[Null Designation incompatible with Hostile Entity Proximity Protocol!]**
**[Host Survival Probability: 0.0001%... Recalculating... Insufficient System Resources for Null Designation Survival...]**
**[...Accessing Emergency Protocols...]**
**[...Protocol Found: APOTHEOSIS ENGINE (Prototype v.0.01α)...]**
**[...Authorization Override: ERROR/SUFFICIENT...]**
**[...Initializing...]**
Agony. Pure, unadulterated agony unlike anything Kael had ever imagined. It wasn't just physical; it felt like his very soul was being unraveled and rewoven with barbed wire and lightning. His bones vibrated. His blood felt like molten lead. His vision whited out, the crimson screen the only constant, the corrupted text scrolling faster, more frantically.
**[ASSIMILATION IMPRINT ENGAGED.]**
**[TARGET ACQUIRED: Void-Hound Alpha (Lvl.3).]**
**[PRIMARY FUNCTION: SURVIVAL.]**
**[PROCESSING...]**
The Void-Hound was mid-lunge, bladed legs aimed to impale. Kael, consumed by the Engine's ignition, didn't dodge. He couldn't. Instead, his right arm snapped up, seemingly of its own volition. Not to block. To *intercept*.
The Void-Hound's bladed foreleg slammed into Kael's forearm. There was a sickening crunch of bone, a spray of blood. Kael screamed, the sound lost in the Engine's internal shriek.
But the blade didn't emerge from the other side.
It *stuck*. And then, it began to *dissolve*.
Where the chitinous blade met Kael's mangled flesh, a vortex of pure, ravenous darkness bloomed. It wasn't light-absorbing; it was *reality*-consuming. The Void-Hound shrieked, a sound of pure, alien terror. It tried to pull back, but the vortex held it fast, sucking the blade deeper. The glossy black chitin flaked, darkened, turned to ash that was instantly consumed. Tendrils of inky darkness snaked up the creature's leg, dissolving it as they went.
**[ASSIMILATING: Void-Chitin Integrity (Lvl.3 Fragment)...]**
**[ASSIMILATING: Hyper-Adrenal Reflexes (Lvl.3 Fragment)...]**
**[ASSIMILATING: Essence of the Void (Lvl.3 Core)...]**
Raw, alien power flooded Kael. It wasn't gentle. It was an invasion. He felt his shattered forearm bones *knit*, not with human bone, but with something denser, darker, threaded with veins of obsidian. His muscles screamed as they reconfigured, fibers tearing and reforming with terrifying speed and strength. His senses exploded – the world became a cacophony of smells (ozone, blood, fear, void-ichor), sounds (the Void-Hound's dying shrieks, distant screams, the crackle of fire, the frantic pulse of his own corrupted heart), sights (he could see the heat signatures of fleeing people blocks away, the fluctuating energy of the safe zone marker).
The crimson screen updated:
**[APOTHEOSIS ENGINE: ONLINE]**
**[HOST: Kael]**
**[DESIGNATION: APOTHEOSIS PRIME (Anomaly)]**
**[BIOMASS CONSUMED: 17%]**
**[ASSIMILATED TRAITS:]**
* **Void-Chitin Plating (Lvl.1 Fragment):** Right forearm reinforced. Minor physical damage resistance.
* **Hyper-Adrenal Burst (Lvl.1 Fragment):** +50% Reflex Speed (5 sec duration). Cooldown: 60 sec.
* **Void-Sense (Lvl.1 Fragment):** Detect nearby spatial distortions/void entities (50m range).
**[WARNING: ENGINE STABILITY CRITICAL (42%)]**
**[WARNING: ANOMALY SIGNATURE DETECTABLE (Range: 500m)]**
**[DIRECTIVE: FURTHER BIOMASS REQUIRED FOR STABILIZATION. IMMINENT.]**
The vortex vanished. What was left of the Void-Hound's front half collapsed in a pile of rapidly disintegrating ash and ichor. Kael stood, trembling violently, staring at his right arm. From the elbow down, it was encased in jagged, obsidian-black chitin, seamlessly fused to his skin. It felt cold. Alien. Powerful. His fingers ended in short, wicked points.
The agony had subsided to a deep, throbbing ache and a terrifying *hunger*. Not for food. For… *more*. More power. More essence. The Engine pulsed within him, a dark star demanding fuel. The crimson interface flickered erratically.
From the shadows of nearby alleys, multiple pairs of the same glowing compound eyes ignited. Low, guttural chittering filled the air. The rest of the pack. Drawn by the death scream of their alpha.
And drawn, Kael realized with a cold spike of terror cutting through the Engine's demands, by *him*. By the anomalous signal he was now broadcasting like a beacon.
He was no longer Null. He was something else. Something broken. Something glitched. Something *hungry*.
And the hunt had just begun.
**[WARNING: MULTIPLE HOSTILE ENTITIES DETECTED: Void-Hound Pack (x4) (Lvl. 2-3).]**
**[ADVISORY: COMBAT PROBABILITY: 68% SURVIVAL (Current Engine State).]**
**[DIRECTIVE: ASSIMILATE. STABILIZE. SURVIVE.]**
Kael bared his teeth, a grimace that felt more like a snarl. The obsidian claws on his right hand flexed.
"Alright," he rasped, the word sounding alien in his own ears, raw and edged with the void. "Let's grind."