Chapter One — The Birth of Puls
The Release
"Cut the sequence now."
Elira's voice was a blade. The lab's lights stuttered; alarms began their thin, panicked song.
"I'm trying," Kael pounded on the console, sweat stinging his eyes. "The auto-defuse—someone opened it again. They forced the schedule."
The containment chamber at the heart of Project Nucleus thrummed like a living thing. Puls—brilliant, precise, and terrible—hung in the center, a promise that someone would pull the lever and end the world. Around them, applause for the dawn of a new era rose like the tide.
Kael's hands moved on the keys as if by memory. "I buried the fail-safe," he said. "I hid a reroute. It should have softened it—"
"It's fighting," Elira whispered. "It's not content to be used. It wants to be free."
The chamber fissured with a sound the two of them would never forget. An invisible wave spilled out, touching the city, then the country, then the sky. Every living lung took it in.
The world did not die. It changed.
After the Miracle — Three Months
They called it a miracle at first. Old illnesses withered overnight. Babies born blue and thin filled out and cried. People who had waited years for healing found themselves mending faster than any doctor could explain.
But miracles have teeth.
Forests became theaters of the uncanny. Fish swelled and turned glassy; herds bent into shapes that did not belong to nature. The Mutations named themselves in terror and hunger: Neutrons. Where beasts had once grazed, black claws and glowing eyes now hunted.
Kael stood at the broken laboratory window, clutching a cup of cold coffee until his knuckles blanched. Smoke rolled in columns across the ruined vales. "We gave people life, and then we put wolves on the path."
Elira's hand found his. "Stronger bodies, weaker defenses. They suffer more because they outlive the protections they had. The Neutrons—" Her voice broke. "They're not just beasts now. They're—and they eat. They breed."
"Then we must give them something else." Kael's jaw set. "If we can't undo Puls, we can at least give humanity the means to survive it."
She looked at him as if seeing a stranger. "You mean tools."
"We start small," he said. "Pickaxes. Shovels. Stronger harnesses. If we can touch the stones safely, we can harvest them. If we can harvest them, we can learn to wield them."
This pirites contains this elements
. Zephyros Puls (Air/Wind)
Themes: wind, agility, freedom
Abilities:
Flight and gliding
Super speed and reflexes
Push/pull objects short distances using air currents
Silent movement / air cloaking
2. Veyra Puls (Water)
Themes: fluidity, healing, adaptability
Abilities:
Water manipulation (shape, move, form constructs)
Healing and toxin cleansing
Adaptive defense / liquid shields
3. Pyrrion Puls (Fire)
Themes: destruction, energy, intensity
Abilities:
Fire generation and control
Energy blasts / heat waves
Explosive attacks / area control
4. Terralith Puls (Earth)
Themes: strength, stability, endurance
Abilities:
Earth, stone, and metal manipulation
Super strength and durability
Tremors / localized quakes
5. Voltaris Puls (Lightning)
Themes: speed, power, sudden strike
Abilities:
Lightning generation and control
Super speed attacks
Electrical disruption / stun attacks
6. Umbryon Puls (Dark/Shadow)
Themes: shadows, stealth, mystery
Abilities:
Shadow manipulation (cloak, constructs)
Telekinesis (move objects using dark energy)
Stealth / intangibility
Psychological manipulation (fear, confusion)
7. Aetherion Puls (Space/Dimensional)
Themes: void, gravity, dimensional
Abilities:
Gravity manipulation
Spatial distortion / short-range teleportation
Dimensional attacks / void pockets
What They Found in the Wreckage — Nanite Crystals
They learned the hard way what the Neutrons left behind.
After battles between mutated beasts and desperate bands of survivors, the carcasses cooled to black glass and humming cores. At the heart of many fallen Neutrons lay hard, strange crystals — nanite crystals— dense, alive with residual Puls. Survivors discovered a brutal fact: those who could clutch such crystal against them could walk near Pulsarites without dying. Exposure that had torn others apart dulled at the touch of the nanite crystal's aura.
Kael watched a miner—two days bleeding from a torn arm—return, pale and shaking, clutching a fist of glittering stone. "He says the crystal stopped the burn," Kael said, voice raw. "It let him get close to a Pulsarite."
Elira's eyes narrowed. "So they are not just stones. They are keys."
"And keys can be copied or forged into tools." He felt the whole plan fold into place. "If nanite crystals let a human approach a Pulsarite, then we can shape them, temper them—make instruments that survive where flesh alone cannot."
They scavenged what they could from battlefields, paying smugglers and bribing desperate scavengers. The crystals were rare; where one lay, greed followed fast. Still, with scraps and stolen power, the Roys and a handful of trusted engineers began to fashion the first crude solid nano-bots—pickaxes, chisels, blades engineered to take the radiation and the hunger of the stones.
When a miner returned from a shaft clutching a Pulsarite for the first time without being burned, the town sang. Tools meant life. Tools meant food. For a while, hope kept them alive.
From Tools to Weapons
A single truth turned hope into urgency: if a tool could let a man harvest a Pulsarite, that tool could be sharpened into a weapon. The idea arrived the night the trading convoy did not come back.
"We made spades," Elira said quietly. "Spades that do not melt in a Pulsar's light. We learned how to cut the veins out of the stone. We can harden the metal. We can make it fight."
Kael's laugh was brittle. "Do you know what you're proposing? To arm people so they can stand against an S-rank Neutron? It's madness."
"Madness or necessity," she replied. "Every day we watch a village burn because we told them to wait for policy. If our tools can become weapons, then perhaps a village stands a chance."
They changed design. Handles became hilts. Pick heads became blades with serrated edges that sang when swung. The liquid cores that once hardened into tools were engineered to be faster, sharper, adaptive—so that a weapon could change its shape mid-strike. When a band of survivors used those weapons to fend off a pack of mutated hunters, the survivors' faces—those carved, grateful faces—cemented the path.
"It's a dangerous road," Kael warned, closing his eyes. "We are giving fire to the frightened and asking them to become blacksmiths in a storm."
Elira gripped his hand. "We are giving them a chance."
The Clash of Titans — An S-Rank Prize
Chance, however, kept cruel company.
Two S-rank Neutrons met like gods and tore the horizon apart. Kael and Elira rode out with ragged companions, drawn by the awful necessity that had hollowed their lives. When the dust settled and the thunder died, two titans lay shattered—carapaces split open, veins cooling into glass.
Elira stepped closer, breath shallow. "There—at the core." Her fingers pointed and did not tremble now.
In the center of the larger beast's chest sat a crystal the size of a fist, storm-laced and still prey to some terrible pulse. Around it the air bent, shimmering with a heat that seared eyes. The S-rank crystal thrummed with more nutron than anything they had seen. It was not merely a resource—it was a power.
"Do you understand what this means?" Kael asked, hand on the stone as if to feel its pulse. "This could be the heart of a new kind of nano—stronger than any tool, more obedient if we temper it."
Elira swallowed. "We could make a nano-bot that can do more than hold a stone. We could make one that contains power—stores it. Shields it. We could build something that can resist an S-rank's aura."
Kael's face went quiet. "If we take this, no one will forgive us. But if we leave it—if someone else takes it—their son will be used as a weapon."
She looked at him then, a look of cold resolve that had softened in better times. "Then we take it. We forge for our son."
Forging the Purple-Red Venom
The work nearly killed them.
The S-rank crystal resisted every attempt to coax its essence out. Machines warped and sparks turned to small fires. Once, the lab shook and a chamber wall collapsed; once, a wave of Puls nearly took Elira's breath. Still they pushed, because the streets beyond their doors were full of children who would not last another winter without more than miracles.
At last, after months of sleepless nights and small explosions, the core gave itself in a whisper. Melted steel coalesced into a living liquid—black with veins of purple and red running through it like lightning held in oil.
Kael watched the viscous material pulse in the containment tube. "It's alive," he said hoarsely. "It answers to nothing but the crystal's memory."
Elira reached for a panel and fed a string of black inhibitors into the chamber—adaptive nanite clamps designed to bind the core's excess. The liquid flared as if in pain, then smoothed, its light damped to a low, dangerous glow. They formed it around a band, a wristpiece that hummed like a caged storm.
"This cannot be given to just anyone," Elira said. "It will devour those who are not ready."
"That's why we seal it," Kael replied. "We bury its hunger beneath layers of inhibitors. We make it obedient... for now."
The band was finished: a sleek wristband of living metal, black as night with veins of purple-red that flickered when their fingers brushed it. The core—the S-rank essence—sat like a heart inside. It possessed power to store immense amounts of Puls.
Kael placed his palm on the glass and whispered, "For Roy. If the world must be forgiven, let it begin with him."
Elira closed her eyes and imagined a child who could breathe without burning, who could hold power without letting it eat the world. "Make him worthy," she murmured.
Beyond the lab, in a city learning to breathe a new air, babies cried and people learned to live with a fear that never quite went away. The Roys had pulled something monstrous into a small, careful box. They had turned a key into a promise—and promises, once made, set history moving.