Something inside Mark snapped.It wasn't a subtle shift, not the slow unraveling of a fraying thread. It was an eruption—a cataclysmic detonation of everything he had ever buried beneath years of quiet endurance. It wasn't just sadness, nor grief in its purest form. It was rage.A deep, molten rage, ancient and personal. Rage for the endless years of scientific violation, for the stolen childhood spent as a specimen. Rage for his parents, lost in the labyrinth of government labs—names and faces fading like a half-remembered dream. Rage for Ren and Mara, whose simple, kind hands had pieced together his broken soul, only to be crushed under the weight of someone else's carelessness.
The world around him seemed to still, the autumn wind holding its breath.
Mark rose slowly, every movement taut and trembling like a storm coiling before the strike. The firewood he had dropped earlier still smoldered where it had landed, a faint reminder of what had just happened. But his hands no longer shook from shock—they trembled from the terrifying magnitude of something vast awakening inside him.
His once-muted grey eyes ignited, threads of molten gold snaking through his irises like veins of liquid sun. A low, guttural growl tore from deep within his chest—a primal sound that didn't belong to the quiet, kind man who had spent his evenings mending nets by the riverside. It was a sound that split the air itself.
The young men who had moments ago laughed, sneered, and spat on the villagers' land now stumbled backward, the weight of something far greater than themselves pressing down on their lungs. The sneering leader, the one in the designer coat, paled as the golden light reflected in his terrified eyes.
"What the hell is he?" one of them whispered, voice cracking.
"Get away from them," Mark's voice thundered—not shouted, thundered.It was deeper now, resonant, carrying a weight that shook the air like a distant god's verdict. It wasn't merely heard; it was felt.
The youths fumbled for their sleek, compact weapons—symbols of inherited power, not earned strength—but they were already too late. Mark extended his hand.
And then the world broke.
A torrent of raw elemental force erupted outward.Flames burst from his palm—not orange or red, but white-gold, so bright and searing that shadows simply ceased to exist in its radius. The air around him warped with the intensity, blurring into liquid heat. The ground beneath the overturned ground-car buckled like paper, earth splintering outward in jagged cracks that radiated for meters.
The river, usually a soft and gentle ribbon of silver cutting through the countryside, heaved upward like a living creature. Water rose in a colossal, impossible tidal wave, pulled by the gravity of Mark's fury. It surged over the bank, sweeping away shards of the destroyed car and the panicked, screaming youths. Their designer shoes slipped uselessly in the mud as the tidal force dragged them into chaos.
The air thickened with pressure, with fire and water and wind. A violent storm spiraled around Mark's still form, whipping fallen leaves into flaming cinders.
This was it—Celestial Mode.The god-state.A power that was never meant to be awakened by calm reason, but by the crushing weight of despair and wrath.
Mark was no longer just Mark.He was a force of nature unbound.
He walked forward, each step heavy with an unnatural gravity. The forest around him bent, trees groaning and snapping as the elemental storm intensified. Birds fled in panicked flocks, their cries vanishing into the wind. The rich golden glow of his eyes grew brighter still, until they were no longer eyes but twin suns, unblinking and merciless.
By the time he reached the city's outskirts, the once pristine autumn afternoon had become a nightmare of fire and storm.
The first shockwave hit as he stepped onto the main paved street. Windows lining the quiet residential blocks implodedin perfect unison, glass shards spraying like rain. Buildings shuddered as if the earth itself was roaring beneath their foundations. The roads softened into glowing cracks, molten veins threading through the concrete.
Mark's silhouette towered, wreathed in roiling energy—gold and crimson and searing white. His hair whipped violently in the burning wind, his clothes scorched and fluttering like battle banners. Civilians screamed, scattering like dry leaves before a hurricane, their cries swallowed by the roar of the elemental storm.
He wasn't thinking.He wasn't strategizing.He was unleashing.
Every ounce of pain. Every flash of needles in the sterile lab. Every lonely night staring at the stars, hoping for a family. Every warm smile Ren and Mara had ever given him. Every flicker of kindness ripped away in a heartbeat. It all converged into one unstoppable current, flowing through him like a river of molten wrath.
The Vanguard Order's response units arrived within minutes, their sirens cutting through the chaos. Armored vehicles skidded to halts, boots thundered against the broken pavement. A captain—a grizzled man who had faced war fronts and insurgencies—stepped out, and even he faltered at the sight before him.
"What… what is this power?" he breathed, his voice barely audible over the storm. His men raised their weapons, but their hands shook. The very ground rebelled beneath their feet.
In the heart of the inferno, Mark stood—a solitary, radiant figure. Flames coiled around him like living serpents. His breath came in deep, steady rumbles, the air vibrating with each exhale. Above him, the sky churned, clouds swirling into a golden vortex, as if the heavens themselves bent toward the storm.
The elegant city skyline—the shining monument of human progress—now lay in tatters. High towers cracked and tilted. Streets were fissured, burning rivers cutting through their foundations. Sirens wailed. Distant cries echoed. And in the center of it all stood him—not the quiet river boy. Not the gentle soul who once carved wooden birds with an old man on a summer morning.
But The Immortal Demon.
A being carved out of betrayal and forged in the fires of vengeance. A harbinger of reckoning.
The boy who had once only wanted to live a simple life by the river was gone. In his place was the embodiment of Project Genesis, its dormant might fully awakened.
And as the Vanguard Order's forces closed in, the world itself seemed to tremble—not at the thought of a war between men, but at the awakening of a storm that could end them all.