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Chapter 1: When the Sky Forgot Me
The rain was acid today.
Not enough to kill you—not right away. But enough to strip the skin raw and let the cold beneath the city seep into your bones. It came down in sheets, oily and greenish, lit by the flicker of distant neon advertisements that promised comfort no one could afford.
Jeyson Kandhor walked with his head low, shoulders hunched beneath a tattered hood. Every step splashed through puddles that hissed against his boots. Around him, District 9 pulsed with a broken rhythm—metal scaffolds groaned, old speakers blared recycled hero propaganda, and drones buzzed low over alleys, scanning the worthless.
He was one of them.
The worthless.
Nullborn.
Born without a System.
He passed beneath a flickering billboard plastered across the side of a tower, its image frozen on a smug, armored figure with gold circuitry across his chest.
> SERAPH: Humanity's Chosen. Awakened. Ascended.
Jeyson spat.
Seraph. The world called him a savior. The Hero of Corelight. The living symbol of what happened when the System chose you.
Jeyson had stood in the chamber just like everyone else on his 18th birthday. He'd watched the holographic rune scan his DNA. Watched the crystalline node float down to his palm.
Nothing had happened.
> "Candidate rejected. No compatible System detected."
He still heard it in his dreams. Cold. Robotic. Like it had spat in his face.
No one got rejected. Not anymore. Not in the Era of Ascension. The System had spread like wildfire after the Corefall War, empowering everyone—except him.
He remembered the way the officials looked at him. Like a stain.
His father hadn't spoken to him since.
His mother—before she was taken—just cried.
That had been four years ago.
He hadn't been back to his old district since. Now he squatted in abandoned train stations, picked through tech scraps, and worked illegal mod jobs for credits just to buy food. He had learned how to avoid patrols. Learned how to disappear.
Until the day the sky refused to let him.
It was supposed to be a regular run—power cores from a broken mech husk, stashed deep in the Reclaimer Zone. Easy work. In and out.
But the storm came early.
And the sky came down like it wanted him.
It started with a sound.
A hum.
Not thunder. Not wind. Something deeper.
Then came the light.
White.
Blinding.
Holy.
A bolt tore from the heavens, cutting straight through the clouds like a sword descending from some forgotten god.
It hit the ground ten meters in front of him.
And then another.
Closer.
Jeyson backed away, stumbling. The air tasted electric. The very ground beneath him shifted, like reality hiccupped.
And then the final bolt struck.
Right through his chest.
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