They said the sky screamed.
Not thunder. Not wind. It was the kind of sound that made blood curdle and souls ache—a soul-deep shriek that rang across the world and silenced even the oceans.
It happened exactly one hundred years ago. June 18th, 2025. Midnight in New York City. Most slept through it, never knowing what had truly begun. Others, the ones who felt the pull in their bones and marrow, woke gasping, clutching their chests as reality twisted. Time spasmed. Matter pulsed. And then—
Light. A wave of radiant, colorless light, washing over the world.
They called it The Surge.
And nothing has been the same since.
Some said it was divine punishment. Others claimed it was an alien intervention, a cosmic event, or a planetary shift awakening dormant strands of humanity's DNA. A few whispered it was manmade. A god-tier experiment gone wrong. A secret weapon detonated in a realm beyond physics. But no one truly knows. Or if they do, they're dead. Or silent.
All that's known is this: when the Surge struck, people changed.
Some more than others.
It began slowly. A man in Tokyo who could breathe underwater. A girl in Madrid who controlled fire with a glance. A woman in Lagos who healed a dying baby with a whisper. Then it spread—powers, anomalies, disasters. Creatures that had no name, dimensions that weren't there before. Humanity split overnight. Awakened and Non-Awakened.
The governments collapsed within weeks. Some fought to contain the Awakened. Others tried to weaponize them. All failed. The world bled for decades.
A new order emerged from the carnage: The Awakened World Council—AWC for short—formed by the surviving world powers, rogue guilds, and mega-corporations. Together they built the framework that still governs the modern world. They created the Rank System to measure power.
From F, the weakest—barely able to lift a dumpster—to SSS, where reality itself bent to the user's will. Then came whispers of World Tier individuals—monsters and men who could level cities. The last tier, Immortal, remains unproven. But legends persist. Every generation has their ghost stories. Their messiahs.
And maybe… just maybe… one of them still walks the earth.
Elijah Voss didn't care about any of that.
He ducked under the rusted beam of a collapsed skybridge, clutching the ratty satchel close to his chest. The bones inside clacked together with every step. Femurs, mostly. A few skull fragments. Useless to most—worth a meal to him. Bone merchants paid well for pieces touched by the Surge, even if no one knew what the hell they used them for.
The sky above him was bruised purple, the city skyline jagged with shimmering towers and flickering sky-ads. Drone traffic buzzed overhead like hornets, their wings glowing soft blue as they zipped across the cracked heavens. New York had survived the Surge… barely. Now it stood as a Frankenstein of tech and ruin. Old buildings caged in chrome scaffolding. Neon stitched over stone. Magic bleeding into machinery.
Elijah's neighborhood—Necro Zone #3—was the lowest of the low. A decaying borough bordering the Old Graveyards, a place where Surge remnants still pulsed in the soil. Cheap rent. Constant nightmares. People disappeared all the time. No one asked questions.
He adjusted the satchel strap and kept walking. Past the corpse of an old subway station turned into a slum hive. Past vendors selling black market dungeon cores and blood-imbued candy. Past the graffiti on the walls:
"THE DEAD NEVER FORGET.""ASCEND OR BE ASH.""IMMORTALS BLEED TOO."
He didn't care.
He had bigger problems.
Namely, his Awakening hadn't come.
At twenty-one, he was already considered a dud. Most people Awakened by fifteen. Seventeen at the latest. But Elijah? Nothing. No spark. No pulse. No abilities. Just the dreams. Oh, god, the dreams.
Every night, he watched himself die.
In fire. In water. Buried. Torn apart. Risen again.
The same eyes always stared back from the shadows. Pale blue. Empty. Kind.
Tonight was no different.
He made it back to the shelter—an old hospice hospital turned into a holding pen for the forgotten. Inside, bodies were crammed into rooms too small for coffins. A flickering sign above the door still read Hope & Mercy Recovery Center. Irony dripped from every letter.
"Yo, Voss!" came a voice from the stairwell.
He turned.
A lanky, nervous boy in a patched-up coat hustled toward him, eyes wide. Mason. Fourteen. Probably still believed in heroes.
"You hear?" Mason panted. "Guild recruiters in District 9. Looking for new blood. F-rank minimum. They say one of the scouts saw someone use blood magic near the Undercity gates. Real flashy shit. Blue aura, shadow wings, maybe even death-type."
Elijah blinked. "So?"
"So?" Mason gaped. "That's you, bro. You hang around the graves every day. You collect bones. That's creepy necro sh—"
"Shut up."
Mason did.
Elijah passed him, heading for the elevator. It hadn't worked in thirty years, but the stairwell beside it still held most of its steps.
Fifteen minutes later, he was on the roof, wind cold and sharp against his cheeks. The city glittered below him, alive and rotting.
He hated how beautiful it was.
The bag of bones sat at his feet. He crouched, laid them out carefully. Something in him always knew how. Femur to tibia. Radius to ulna. A half-ribcage curved gently like a cradle.
And then… he waited.
Nothing happened.
Of course not.
He clenched his fists. "Come on. Come on, you bastard. Do something. Anything."
Silence.
Then.
The sky.
It blinked.
Just once. Like a heartbeat skipping.
Elijah stood slowly. The wind stopped. Not slowed. Stopped.
And the air—it was… thick. Like soup. Like wet cement.
His skin tingled. His breath misted, though it wasn't cold. Lights across the skyline flickered. Alarms went off in the distance. Car horns screamed and then died.
Then he heard it.
A whisper.
No. A chorus of whispers.
"Rise…"
His vision blurred. The bones at his feet shimmered. A blue glow laced the marrow. His heart pounded. Blood raced. His hands trembled as the bones began to… move.
First a twitch. Then a rattle. Then they assembled—faster than they should have. A partial skeleton, incomplete, malformed. But standing.
And staring.
At him.
Elijah gasped.
His hand was glowing.
Blue veins, pulsing up his arm.
The air shifted. A surge of power—raw, hot, ancient—ripped through him. His knees buckled. His eyes rolled back. A memory not his own flashed behind his eyes.
A battlefield. Corpses. Thousands. One man standing among them. Arms raised. The dead obeying. Then—
Darkness.
He collapsed.
The skeleton knelt beside him.
Its hollow sockets glowed faintly.
"Elijah," it rasped. Not a real voice. But he heard it.
Then footsteps.
From the stairwell behind him.
He turned.
And saw her.
Older now. Taller. Hair longer, eyes sharper. But still her.
Selene.
His first friend. His last memory of peace.
She stared at him, mouth open in shock. In awe.
"Elijah?"
He couldn't breathe.
Her Spirit surged around her in soft gold. Gentle. Healing. Powerful.
And completely opposite of his.
Of course.
She had Awakened.
And now, so had he.
But something was wrong.
The skeleton behind him wasn't fading.
It was growing.
And smiling.