December 18, 2025 — Central Park South, 4:03 PM
The world smelled of ozone, spilled curry, and blood. Ryton stood on shaky legs, the U-lock still humming with residual destruction energy in his grip. The frost giants were gone, vanished back through the shimmering tear in reality that still hovered over Central Park like a wound that refused to close.
Liora hadn't moved. She watched him with those ancient, emerald eyes, the spear of living wood held loosely at her side. Her posture was relaxed, but Ryton recognized the readiness in her—the coiled potential of a predator deciding whether to pounce or parley.
"So," he said, wiping blood from his lip with the back of his hand. The gesture was casual, almost theatrical. "Alfheim. Third-tier plane. You here to conquer, or just to watch the show?"
Her lips quirked. "Observers, generally. Conquerors tend to be less… subtle." She nodded toward the portal. "The Jotunheim scouts were testing the waters. More will come. Stronger ones."
Ryton's mind was already working, shifting from combat-calm to strategic-assessment. The scar above his brow pulsed gently, a warm counterpoint to the cold settling into his bruised ribs. He glanced at the terrified civilians still hiding behind cars and crumbling storefronts. At the distant wail of approaching sirens—human authorities, utterly unprepared for what was happening.
[They're coming because of you, you know. The energy spike when you awakened registered on every dimensional scanner from here to the Ninth Celestial Plane. You're a lighthouse in a storm, and every ship out there is either seeking shelter or planning to smash you against the rocks.]
The system's voice was dry, matter-of-fact. Ryton acknowledged it with a mental nod but kept his focus external. Information was ammunition, and right now, Liora was his only source.
"Why now?" he asked, his tone conversational, as if they were discussing the weather and not an interdimensional invasion. "Why today?"
"The mana tides follow cosmic rhythms," she said, her gaze drifting to the shimmering sky. "This one was… amplified. Something or someone poured extra energy into the system. Woke Earth up faster than it should have. Rougher, too." Her eyes returned to him, sharp. "You felt it, didn't you? That pull. That longing."
He had. The memory was etched into his bones. He didn't answer.
A new sound cut through the air—not a siren, but a low, resonant hum. From the still-open portal, figures began to descend. Not giants this time. These were humanoid, clad in sleek armor that seemed to drink the light, moving with a fluid, silent grace. They carried no obvious weapons, but the air around them warped with heat haze.
Liora's posture shifted instantly. The relaxed observer vanished, replaced by a soldier falling into a guard stance. "Void-stalkers. Seventh Plane scavengers. They hunt awakening worlds, culling the strong before they become threats."
[Scanning… Void-stalker Kill-Squad. Tier 1, Levels 25-30. Specialization: Speed assassination, energy disruption. Threat level: Extreme. Suggestion: Run. Again.]
There were six of them. They landed without sound, their featureless helmets turning in unison toward Ryton. They had no eyes, but he felt the weight of their attention like a physical pressure. They weren't here for territory. They were here for him.
The calm settled over Ryton once more. The pain in his ribs, the fatigue in his muscles—it all faded into background noise. The battlefield expanded in his mind. Six enemies. Unknown capabilities. Terrain: urban, cluttered, advantageous for ambush but limiting for movement. Ally: one elf of unknown combat commitment.
"Liora," he said, his voice perfectly even. "Are you an observer, or are you invested?"
She didn't look at him. Her spear began to glow with a soft, verdant light. "Let's just say I have a professional curiosity about whether a Dual Primordial can survive his first hour."
That was good enough.
The Void-stalkers moved.
They didn't charge. They flowed. One moment they were twenty yards away, the next they were closing from three different angles, their movements so fast they left afterimages. No wasted motion. No telegraphing. Pure, efficient lethality.
Ryton didn't try to match their speed. He couldn't. Instead, he moved with precision.
He sidestepped the first Stalker's bladed hand-strike, not by dodging the attack itself, but by positioning himself where the attack's arc would be shortest, forcing the Stalker to adjust mid-motion. The fraction of a second of hesitation was all he needed.
His U-lock came up in a short, brutal uppercut. He didn't aim for the helmet. He aimed for the joint where the armor plates met at the throat.
CRACK-THUD.
The sound was wrong. Not metal on metal, but something organic and brittle giving way. The Stalker staggered, a hiss of escaping gas sounding from its neck. Black fluid seeped out.
[Target damaged. Not organic. Construct-based lifeform. Weak point confirmed: armor junctions.]
But there were five more.
One came from above, dropping from a ledge Ryton hadn't even registered. He dropped into a roll, feeling a blade of condensed void-energy slice through the air where his head had been. The energy left a jagged scar in reality itself, a black rip that lingered for a second before sealing.
Their weapons cut space. Avoid direct parries.
The analytical part of his mind filed the information away even as his body moved. He came out of the roll near a shattered newsstand. His hand closed around a loose metal rod—part of a broken signpost.
Two Stalkers converged on him. He threw the rod, not at them, but at the plate-glass window of the boutique behind them.
The window shattered. The sound was deafening. The Stalkers, reliant on some form of enhanced senses, flinched at the sudden auditory overload.
Ryton used the distraction. He didn't attack the Stalkers. He attacked the building.
His foot snapped out, catching the weakened support of the newsstand. It toppled forward, not onto the Stalkers, but into the street, creating a temporary barrier of debris and scattering glass.
He wasn't trying to win. He was trying to control the engagement. To break it into manageable pieces.
Liora was a whirlwind of wood and light. Her spear moved in arcs that seemed to draw vitality from the very air, leaving trails of glowing green in its wake. She fought two Stalkers, her movements a dance of elegant, brutal efficiency. She was holding her own, but she wasn't dominating. She was testing them, too.
The third Stalker came at Ryton from his blind side. He felt the displacement of air a moment too late.
He started to turn, knowing he wouldn't be fast enough.
Then, a different kind of calm hit him. Not the calm of combat, but the calm of acceptance. His Primordial bloodline, that sealed, slumbering power, stirred.
He didn't unlock a skill. He didn't have a flashy technique.
He simply stopped trying to dodge.
The Stalker's void-blade plunged toward his kidney. Ryton didn't move away. He rotated his hips into the strike, presenting a different angle of his body—the meaty part of his side, where damage would be survivable.
The blade bit deep. Agony, white-hot and absolute, screamed through his nervous system.
And his bloodline reacted.
The Destruction energy sleeping in his veins didn't defend him. It consumed. The void-blade, made of exotic energy meant to erase matter, met something that embodied erasure itself.
The blade didn't just stop. It dissolved. From the tip upward, the dark energy unraveled into harmless sparks that hissed and died in the winter air.
The Stalker recoiled, its featureless helmet staring at its empty hand in what could only be shock.
Ryton gasped, clutching his bleeding side. The wound was bad, but it wasn't fatal. And the look on the Stalker's… posture… was priceless.
[Primordial Interaction logged. Host's inherent Destruction energy negates lower-tier exotic matter. Fascinating. And reckless. Do try not to get stabbed again. Your regeneration is good, but it's not that good.]
He had no time to dwell on it. The remaining Stalkers were regrouping. They communicated without words, a subtle shift in their stances signaling a change in tactics. They were no longer trying to capture or cull. They were going for the kill.
Liora disengaged from her opponents, leaping back to land beside Ryton. She was breathing heavily, a thin line of blood on her cheek. "They're adapting. Their command unit is analyzing our patterns."
"Command unit?" Ryton grunted, pressing a hand to his bleeding side.
"The one in the back. It hasn't moved. It's directing them. A hive-mind node."
Ryton followed her gaze. One Stalker stood apart from the others, its helmet subtly different, with faint pulsing runes along the rim. It was observing, processing.
A target.
"Can you keep the others busy for ten seconds?" he asked.
She gave him a sidelong look. "You have a plan that doesn't involve getting stabbed again?"
He flashed her a bloody grin. "It involves geometry."
He didn't wait for her answer. He moved.
Not toward the command unit. Away from it. He sprinted for the wreckage of a taxi, its front end crumpled against a lamppost. The Stalkers reacted immediately, three breaking off to intercept.
Liora's spear became a wall of green light. She didn't attack to kill; she attacked to hinder, to occupy. Vines of solidified mana erupted from the ground, tangling around the Stalkers' legs, slowing them just enough.
Ryton reached the taxi. He didn't stop. He planted a foot on its hood and launched himself upward, not at the building, but at the lamppost itself. He caught the metal pole, his momentum swinging him in a wide arc.
The world spun. He saw the battlefield from above—the struggling Stalkers, Liora holding the line, the command unit still standing calmly in the center of the street.
Physics took over. The arc of his swing reached its apex, and he let go.
He became a projectile. A human missile aimed with terrible precision.
He wasn't holding the U-lock anymore. He'd dropped it. His hands were empty.
The command unit looked up. It finally moved, raising a hand. A shield of distorting void-energy sprang to life before it.
Ryton didn't try to break the shield. He'd seen what his bloodline did to their energy.
He crashed into the shield feet-first.
The void-energy shuddered, rippled, and then parted around him, dissolving where it touched the Primordial aura clinging to his body. It was like diving into water that evaporated on contact.
He passed through the shield and landed directly in front of the command unit.
Before it could react, before it could summon another weapon, Ryton did the simplest, most human thing possible.
He headbutted it.
CRUNCH.
His forehead, reinforced by a trickle of Primordial energy and a lifetime of hard luck, met the alien helmet. The material, designed to withstand energy blasts and psychic attacks, wasn't designed for a determined idiot putting his entire body weight into a skull strike.
The helmet cracked. The runes along its rim flickered and died.
The command unit staggered. The other Stalkers froze in place, their movements becoming jerky, uncoordinated.
Ryton grabbed the unit's head with both hands. He didn't have a weapon. So he used the environment.
He drove the Stalker's head down onto the jagged edge of a broken concrete slab.
Once. Twice.
On the third impact, the helmet shattered completely. Beneath was not a face, but a pulsating core of swirling dark energy, around which intricate crystal circuitry whirred.
Ryton, bleeding, exhausted, and running on pure instinct, reached out and grabbed the core.
His fingers closed around it. Destruction energy met alien technology.
The core didn't explode. It unmade.
It vanished with a sound like a sigh, leaving only a handful of grey dust that scattered on the wind.
All five remaining Stalkers collapsed simultaneously, hitting the ground like marionettes with their strings cut. The light in their armor faded to dull grey.
Silence fell, broken only by Ryton's ragged breathing and the distant sirens.
[Target eliminated. Experience calculated…]
[+300 XP]
[Level Up! Level 4 Reached!]
[Level Up! Level 5 Reached!]
[PRIMORDIAL BLOODLINE SEAL WEAKENED: 99.8%]
[PRIMORDIAL PHYSIQUE SEAL WEAKENED: 99.8%]
[BLOODLINE SKILL UNLOCKED: Destruction Dao Body (Tier 1)]
[PHYSIQUE SKILL UNLOCKED: Wargrave Eyes (Tier 1)]
[System Shop: UNLOCKED]
A wave of power, clean and cold, washed through Ryton. His wounds knit themselves shut. His fatigue vanished. His senses… expanded.
He looked at Liora. And he saw.
With his ordinary eyes, she was a beautiful elf with pointed ears and emerald eyes. With his newly awakened Wargrave Eyes, she was a tapestry of light. He could see the flow of mana through her body, bright and verdant, stronger around her heart and hands. He could see minor stress fractures in the haft of her spear, weak points in her stance from the recent fight, and a faint, curious golden thread of connection that seemed to stretch from her toward… him.
He blinked, and the vision faded to a subtle overlay, information available if he focused.
Liora was staring at him, her spear lowered. "You… broke their hive-mind. By headbutting it."
Ryton touched his forehead. A new bruise was forming, but the skin was already healing. He gave her his best, most charming, utterly ridiculous smile. "I work with what I have."
She shook her head slowly, a genuine laugh escaping her. "You are the strangest Primordial I have ever heard of."
The sound of engines roared closer. Not sirens now, but heavy vehicles. Tanks? Through the streets, figures in advanced tactical armor were moving, their movements too coordinated, too fast for normal soldiers.
"Earth's response," Liora said, her humor fading. "They'll contain, study, or kill anything they don't understand." She looked at him. "That includes you."
Ryton's mind was already analyzing the new skill interfaces floating in his awareness. Destruction Dao Body hummed with potential—a passive ability to absorb and rebound kinetic energy. Wargrave Eyes offered tactical clarity. The System Shop beckoned with promises of power for a currency he didn't yet have.
He looked at the approaching soldiers, then at the still-bleeding portal in the sky, then at the elf who hadn't tried to kill him.
[Decision point, meat-sack. Go with the native authorities and become a lab rat. Go with the pretty elf and step into the wider, more dangerous multiverse. Or run and try to figure this out alone. Choose wisely. I'd hate to have to find a new host so soon.]
Ryton Dragonheart, orphan, delivery boy, and now Dual Primordial, made his choice.
He walked over to the spilled delivery bag, picked up the container of 'Dragon's Breath' curry, now cold and dented, and handed it to Liora.
"One extra-spicy curry," he said, his voice light. "As ordered. Now, about that multiverse tour you mentioned… does it come with a change of clothes?"
She took the curry, her expression unreadable for a moment. Then she smiled, and it reached her eyes. "It comes with survival. For a little while, at least."
She reached out a hand. Not to shake. To pull him into a different world.
Ryton took it.
Above them, the sky wept mana, and the first true day of the new age began.