I always thought the end of the world would be noisy.
Sirens, screaming, chaos, war. That was how I pictured it. Cities burning, people running through the streets, news anchors shouting warnings while the world fell apart behind them. I imagined I would see it coming. That there would be time to understand, to process, to say goodbye.
But when it came, it was like a breath being held... and never released. No alarms. No flames. No final farewell.
Just silence.
I was at my desk, half-focused on a cybersecurity patch for a client. Their cloud storage had been vomiting error logs for two days, and I was knee-deep in code, hunting down the cause. The hum of server fans filled the room, accompanied by the steady blink of LEDs and the faint stink of cold coffee. It was the kind of moment that made up most of my adult life—banal, forgettable.
My phone buzzed. A message from my sister. I glanced at it, figured I'd call her that night. Catch up, talk about nothing. Like we always did.
I never got the chance.
---
A Decade Earlier
The first hole was microscopic. A pinprick in the fabric of space, torn by human hands.
The Hadron-9 Particle Accelerator was humanity's crown jewel—faster, larger, more powerful than anything before it. It wasn't built to explore atoms, not really. It was built to explore boundaries. And in their arrogance, the scientists pierced one.
They called it a "dimensional fluctuation." A brief and localized anomaly in energy readings. But it was more than that.
It was a hole.
It connected our universe to something else—something older, deeper, and governed by rules no human had ever imagined. From it, mana flowed like invisible fire. At first, it was just a curiosity: instruments failing, animals behaving strangely, people feeling "off" near the collider site.
Then, the changes began.
Mana didn't behave like radiation or heat. It didn't obey conservation laws. It was something else entirely—an energy that responded to intention, emotion, even belief. Entire branches of physics collapsed under its presence.
---
The Rise of Mana
In the years that followed, mana spread across the Earth like a slow, beautiful plague.
It didn't destroy. It transformed.
Plants grew faster—but wilder. Twisted. Some even moved. People began changing too. Not all, but enough to cause panic. Some could heal with a touch. Others could glow, fly, control elements. Governments cracked down, tested, isolated. It didn't matter. Mana didn't care about borders.
The world fractured. Rebuilt.
"The Awakening," the media called it. There were viral videos, livestreams of miracles. Some fake. Many real. Religions split apart or embraced the new age. New cults formed. Economies collapsed and reformed around relics, awakened individuals, and raw mana itself.
I watched it unfold with a mixture of awe and caution. I wasn't some doomsday prepper or tinfoil conspiracy nut. Just a remote cybersecurity analyst who liked fantasy games and modded them in his spare time. But even I noticed the shifts. The way the moon shimmered some nights. How birds flew strange routes. How machines would suddenly stop working, no explanation.
I remember one night clearly. Dr. Ilyana Okar—the physicist who led containment at the collider—appeared on a late-night podcast. Her hair was wild, her eyes sunken. She stared into the camera like she could see what was coming.
"If mana reaches critical atmospheric saturation," she said, "it will escape Earth's gravity. It will seep into dark matter. If that happens, it will never stop. You all think Magic isn't a gift. But it's a virus. And we're feeding it."
They laughed at her. Called her mad. Canceled her funding. She disappeared not long after.
---
The End
Four years later, she was unfortunately proven right.
Mana condensed in the atmosphere like a film of frost. It began to float upward, leaking into orbit, clinging to satellite trails, drifting into the black. When it touched the dark matter web that cradled the galaxies—it ignited.
There was no explosion. No shockwave. No scream of physics being torn apart.
The universe simply converted.
In a span of seconds, all matter, all gravity, all energy—every planet, star, and molecule—was absorbed and transformed into pure mana as our reality ceased to exist. Every atom in every living body unwound into formless light.
I never felt pain. I never saw it coming.
One second I was working.
The next, I simply wasn't.
---
The Sea of Souls
But I still was.
I existed. Not in a body. Not in time. But in awareness.
I floated in a place beyond understanding. A sea without water, colorless yet shimmering. If I could describe it, it would be silver-blue and endless.
I was no longer flesh and blood. I was something else. A soul I would assume, infused with mana.
Around me floated others. Lights. Souls like mine.
Some were gray, flickering, fading slowly until they winked out.
Others glowed brilliantly, vibrant like me. They shimmered, changed shape, and drifted toward vortexes of light. Portals. I knew without knowing that those souls were being reborn. Reincarnated into other worlds, other lives.
But I didn't follow.
Something was wrong. I was stuck, unable to move yet luckily unable to perceive the passage of time.
Most souls were being cleansed—memories erased, minds wiped clean before starting anew. I could tell, as their bright light dimmed and became translucent.
But not mine, nor many others.
I remained intact. Being so saturated with the mana within it was too much, it was too dense. It anchored me in this strange reality. Preserving my memories, my ego.
I remembered.
And I wasn't alone. The few others were like me. Stuck. Saturated. Unerasable. We were anomalies. The reincarnation cycle didn't know what to do with us.
The question echoed in me.
"Why me?"
No voice answered. Just movement.
I was pulled. Slowly at first, then faster, drawn into a swirling current of mana and soul-light. I watched other more transparent souls streak past, each bound for unknown destinies.
Could I ever be reborn in another world? One not my own? Could I start over while still remembering who I was? Will I continue to remember who I was?
The answer came in light.
---
The New Form
I awoke.
But I didn't draw breath - I couldn't. I didn't blink or stretch or sit up. I had no lungs, no eyes, no limbs.
I felt.
And I felt everything.
A vast cavern of dull stone surrounded me, dimly illuminated by glowing specks within the mineral-rich stone. Every pulse of heat, every flicker of vibration in the rock registered within me like echoes in a deep well. I could sense the mana, thick and fluid, flowing through the stone like lifeblood.
Because I was the stone.
Or more precisely, I was within the stone. At its center. A crystal. My form was smooth, faceted, warm with energy. Alive.
I was a Dungeon Core.
A being of mana and instinct. Of purpose. Of potential.
I wasn't human anymore. That truth should have broken me.
But it didn't.
My memories were still there. Earth. My job. My sister's face. The smell of old server rooms. The sounds of rain on glass. All of it felt distant—like echoes from a dream I hadn't finished. But they were mine.
And then came the other memories.
Memories that weren't memories at all, but instincts. Codes written into my mana. I knew how to reshape the rock around me. How to sense movement through tremors and vibrations. How to pull mana through the walls like air through lungs.
Panic surged at first. How could this be me? A mind trapped in crystal, frozen in an alien world? I wanted to scream, to move, to breathe. But I had no voice. No body. My mind raced as the realization I may be confined to a stone for all eternity, unable to move, unable to die. Torture, in the most purest sense.
I was alone. Isolated. Buried in a sea of rock.
But slowly, the panic ebbed. The mana in me pulsed like a heartbeat, rhythmic and calming. It quieted my fear after some time. It gave me the clarity I needed.
And understanding came.
I could shape my surroundings. This cavern. It was my domain. I was more than a prisoner—I was a builder. A shaper. I could carve tunnels, create chambers. I could forge guardians? Beasts of mana to serve me.
I sensed them, even now—blueprints made of mana and will. Partial templates for creatures not yet born. Watchers. Hunters. Protectors. I could breathe life into them with mana and thought alone.
And they would protect me. Help me gather mana. Help me grow.
Realization of this calmed me further.
This should not be a tortured existence as I first imagined, it was a rebirth.
I wasn't Ethan Hayes anymore. Not entirely. But I had my memories of his life, of him. I am still him, but even now I can feel I am missing parts of myself. The sense of smell, lack of lust, the invasive sense of apathy to everything was strong now. Not so much as to dictate my actions, but certainly to influence them to an extent I do not yet know.
But now?
Now, I had a second life.
And this time, I would become something more than I ever was before.