Prologue:
The Orphanage of Broken Light
Earth is no longer a home.It is a graveyard with a pulse. A planet kept breathing only so its body can be drained.Once the cradle of humanity—now a power farm at the edge of relevance.
The earth has become a hell now not for the one looking at it but the one living in it.
It's the year 6189. There are seven galaxies stitched together in fragile peace, ruled by the Intergalactic Ascension Council (IAC) — a federation of 32 of the most advanced alien species... and what remains of humankind.
Humans no longer live freely on Earth.
They left centuries ago, fled the collapse they caused — pollution, overpopulation, wars no one won. Now they live in orbit cities, aboard starships, across moons and planets in a life of hollow luxury.
But their bodies still need power.
And so Earth was turned into a harvester planet, managed by artificial intelligence. Robots patrol it. Resources are mined. Humans left behind are exploited, experimented on, or forgotten.
Though the earth is dying the livings of space are living a paradise made out of hell.
The "Outsiders" — the elite humans in space — don't call themselves that. But those on Earth do.
Desperate for infinite energy and tired of burning planets dry, the IAC has one goal now:
Break into the 4th Realm.
The Fourth Dimension — or as some ancient beings whisper, the Nexus — is a plane that exists above time and beyond comprehension. There, matter behaves like thought, and power flows like music. What we know as space and time are just base layers there.
The IAC believes if they can send human minds into the 4D, they can extract energy from reality itself.
They call this mission:
"Project Fractal."
To find those rare enough to enter the 4D without going mad, Earth's remaining children are gathered into Orphanage Units.
There, they are trained like animals, injected with forbidden DNA, and tested mercilessly. Each year, a single "Fractal Candidate" must be produced. If not — the entire facility is liquidated and turned into bioenergy.
Deep in the smog-choked ruins of Sector 73, Orphanage H-Black housed nearly 500 children. It was known as "the dull cell" — because no Fractal candidate had ever emerged from it.
Until one boy.
His name was Solin.
He was different.
He never cried. He never broke. But he never revealed his power, either.
Some called it weakness. But it was defiance.
Solin knew what happened to those who were chosen. He'd heard the whispers — of minds shattered, bodies erased, identities stolen by the IAC.
He wanted no part of it.
But fate doesn't wait.
In Cycle 87, when no prodigy emerged, the liquidation order came. The skies opened. Robots rained death on the orphanage. Children screamed, and fire swallowed hope.
And then — Solin broke.
In a moment of grief and fury, his hidden powers erupted. He fought back with raw Chronon energy, a force that bends time itself. He shattered robot after robot… …but he was too late.
Almost everyone was already gone. He was captured. Declared a prodigy. Drafted into Project Fractal.
Solin saw everything killed and piled in a mountain of corpses including the one he loved:
Elari
She had watched it all. She had always believed in Solin — and in a future where hope was real. But she also knew what being "chosen" meant.
"To be a light… they will burn you until nothing's left."
In despair — and love — she wrote a letter to Solin.
A goodbye.
Then she took her own life?, stringing her body beneath the orphanage's old reactor cables.?
Except Solin there was no one as smart as him or as strong as him to survive but that didn't mean there was no one to survive:
Kael
He was supposed to die.
He was just a shadow — another quiet boy who told stories and read myths. Not strong. Not chosen. Just there.
But when the robots came, he did something no one else could.
He hid in the piles of corpses. Three days. No food. No sound. No sleep.
When he emerged, trembling and hollow, he found Elari's body. And her letter.?
It never mentioned him. Even though the story of hope she wrote — was his.
She died thinking Solin was the future. Not him.?
That day, Kael didn't cry. He burned the letter… and made a vow:
"If I cannot be hope… I will become the illusion of it."
He disappeared into the dead zones — unknown, unrecorded — and began shaping a new path.
Not to save the world. But to steal the destiny that should've been his.
END OF PROLOGUE