The rain hit like gravel across the patchy roofs of Westblock, a no-man's-land stitched together by salvaged metal and false hope. In the darkest alley behind Rotonda Station, Red De Mesa pressed his back against a rusted pipe, fingers stained with oil, blood, and fried wire. The sour scent of burnt circuits lingered on his clothes.
Another day, another fix.
He wiped his hands on his jeans and exhaled. At seventeen, Red had already become Westblock's go-to street tech—when things needed hacking, rerouting, or rewiring on the cheap. Not because he wanted to, but because survival demanded it.
The neighborhood was unforgiving, crawling with micro-gangs, corrupt enforcers, and worse—debt collectors from the Orion Syndicate. Red owed them for a repair job gone wrong last month, and he was running out of days to pay.
He hurried back to his unit—more like a glorified closet tucked behind a water tank on the third floor of an abandoned tenement. The moment he entered, the door groaned, the lights flickered, and his system tablet buzzed erratically.
"Welcome, Red De Mesa. You have 1 Unread Message."
He blinked. No one messaged him. No one even knew his real name outside his immediate neighborhood. Heart skipping, he tapped the screen.
[System Initialization Detected. Primordius Core Awakening...] [Lineage Match: 99.89% - Sunblood Detected.]
User: Red De Mesa System Type: Primordius (Ancestral Variant) Status: Dormant
Initiate awakening? Y/N
He stared at the screen.
Was this a joke? A virus?
Then the room shifted. The lights dimmed completely. A warm golden glow seeped from the floor beneath him, shaping runes in the air. He tried to back away, but his body was locked in place.
A sudden surge of energy knocked him off his feet. Visions flooded his mind: burning cities, a blood-stained gauntlet, a lion crest, and a masked man who looked terrifyingly like him, standing alone against a tidal wave of enemies.
When the glow faded, he lay on the floor, chest heaving.
Welcome, Red. Your blood remembers. Your journey begins.
And just like that, the world shifted beneath his feet.