The lights in the underground facility flickered softly, casting long shadows across cables, machines, and a single metal bed at the center of the room.
A man stood beside it, fists clenched.
"Please… work," he whispered.
Dr. Kael Vale had repeated those words more times than he could count. His eyes were bloodshot, fixed on the transparent screen hovering above the unconscious body of his son. Lines of code scrolled endlessly, each one deciding whether hope would survive—or die with another failure.
Cyborg Neural Chip — Installation: 97%
So close.
Too close to fail.
Kael's hands trembled. If the chip didn't fully integrate, his son would never wake again. Worse—his mind could shatter. He had already gambled everything: his career, his safety, his soul.
And it all started that night.
His jaw tightened as memories clawed their way back.
The screams.
The alley.
The helplessness.
His wife—gentle, brilliant, kind—had crossed paths with the wrong people. Two ability users who treated the world like a playground and human lives like toys. They didn't just kill her. They erased her future. And when his son tried to stop them—
Lightning.
Steel.
Darkness.
Paralysis.
Kael swallowed hard and forced himself back to the present.
This world—Ethereal—was cruel like that.
Decades ago, a colossal battleship from nowhere had torn through the sky and crashed beyond the northern wastes. When it shattered, strange energy flooded the land. Ethereal never recovered. Instead, it changed.
Some people awakened abilities—strength beyond human limits, impossible speed, healing, fire, mind-bending powers. Others awakened nothing at all.
And the world decided which group mattered more.
The weak hid.
The strong ruled.
That was why Kael built this place.
Above them was a tiny, forgettable house on a forgotten street. Beneath it—layers of reinforced earth, metal walls, and a lab that shouldn't exist. A sanctuary. A grave. A final gamble.
A sudden beep shattered the silence.
Kael's head snapped toward the sensor panel.
Warning: Surface intrusion detected.
His blood ran cold.
"No… no, not now."
He moved fast, pulling a handgun from a concealed drawer. With his free hand, he typed a long sequence into the control pad.
Underground Facility: Sealed.
Password Accepted.
Steel doors slammed shut above.
Then—footsteps.
Heavy. Confident.
Kael checked the monitor—and froze.
Two figures stood in the living room upstairs.
Older now. Stronger.
But unmistakable.
The same two hooligans.
The one with the cruel grin—enhanced physique, muscles unnaturally dense.
The other—lean, restless, eyes darting—speed ability user.
His wife's killers.
His son's destroyers.
Rage burned hotter than fear.
They breached the lower level fast. Too fast.
The fight was chaos.
Kael fired first, but his body wasn't made for combat. His healing ability stitched wounds together, kept him alive longer—but it didn't make him stronger. Each punch from the enhanced man felt like being hit by a collapsing wall. The speed user struck from blind spots, laughing as bones cracked and healed again… and again.
"You should've stayed dead," one of them sneered.
Kael gritted his teeth.
Not before this.
He waited.
Endured.
And when the speed user overextended—just for a fraction of a second—Kael pulled the trigger point-blank.
The body hit the floor.
Silence.
The enhanced man roared and drove his fist through Kael's chest.
As Kael collapsed, his healing finally failed.
Blood pooled beneath him.
The killer loomed over his fading vision—but Kael wasn't looking at him.
He was looking past him.
At the lab.
At the bed.
"I'm sorry," Kael whispered—not to the man standing above him, but to the son who couldn't hear him yet. "I wasn't fast enough… but maybe you will be."
The light left his eyes—with regret etched into them.
Deep underground, the machines hummed.
The chip finished integrating.
A pair of eyes snapped open.
The world appeared… different.
Transparent blue text floated before his vision.
[Neural Interface Activated]
[Cyborg Level-Up System: Online]
And somewhere beneath the tiny house, in a world that had already taken everything from him—
Something began to rise.