The mines of Veskar-9 always smelled of dust, metal, and hopelessness.
Kael Vyrion wiped the soot from his face as the alarms blared again—another cave-in down Sector G.
Same thing every day.
Same broken world.
Same life where he was nothing.
One more year, he told himself.
One more year and maybe I can buy passage off this rock.
A scream tore through the tunnels.
Kael sprinted toward it, ignoring the supervisors yelling after him. Stones fell from the ceiling as he slid beneath a collapsing support beam.
A young miner—barely twelve—was trapped beneath a slab of obsidian ore. Kael braced himself, gritted his teeth, and pushed, but his strength wasn't enough. The ceiling groaned.
Then something… called to him.
A pulse.
Like a heartbeat not his own.
It came from behind the rubble—an eerie blue glow half-buried in the rock.
What is that?
The pulse hit him again.
Faster. Louder. Urgent.
Kael grabbed it.
It wasn't a stone.
It was a sphere made of shifting light—geometric patterns rearranging themselves like living circuitry.
The moment his fingers touched it, his mind exploded with agony.
A thousand voices whispered at once.
A million memories that weren't his own surged through his skull.
Then a single cold sentence echoed inside him:
[ASCENSION CORE — HOST IDENTIFIED.
INITIALIZING PROTOCOL ZERO]
Kael collapsed, gripping his head.
"What are you?" he gasped.
The voice answered:
[I am the tool of your uprising.
Your limiter remover.
Your evolution engine.
Your path to the Absolute Sequence]
Light poured into his body, rewriting something deeper than DNA.
Kael screamed as power—not strength, not energy, but potential—filled him like fire.
When the pain ended, his vision sharpened.
His muscles felt lighter.
The world felt clearer.
The massive stone trapping the young miner suddenly weighed nothing.
Kael lifted it with one hand.
The kid stared at him like he had seen a god.
"What… what are you?" he whispered.
Kael didn't know how to answer.
Not yet.
The Core spoke again in his mind, colder this time:
Power threshold achieved.
Unlocking first directive.
Words formed before his eyes like a hologram:
[PROTOCOL 1 — SURVIVE.
Host has been detected by Ascendant-level sensors.
Host termination predicted in 147 seconds]
Kael's heart stopped.
Something powerful was coming.
Something hunting him.
The Core's final message hit like a hammer:
Run, Host.
If you die here… all of creation dies with you.
Kael clenched his fists, breath heavy.
He didn't know what the Core had made him into.
He didn't know who wanted him dead.
He didn't know what "Absolute Sequence" meant.
But he knew one thing:
He would not die here.
He would rise.
He would ascend.
No matter what hunted him…
No matter how far he had to climb…
No matter who he had to face…
He would break every limit.
Because now, Kael Vyrion had a power the universe had feared for a million years:
The Ascension Core had awakened—and it chose him.