Sanctuary-79, Outer Sector. The tenement building.
Jake pushed open the door to his home. His fingers traced a path through the thick dust on the table—stagnant air, a cold touch, not a trace of living warmth.
"Mom…" The hoarse call dissipated into the hollow silence.
Where had she gone? Was she safe? The questions drove into his heart like a rusted, blunt nail.
Darkness. Thick, suffocating darkness. A sudden, parching dryness gripped his throat. He tried to stand, to get some water…
Abruptly!
A violent explosion of fire detonated deep in his mind. It felt like a red-hot iron rod being brutally hammered into his skull by an invisible force.
"AAAGHH—!!" A scream, not quite human, tore from his throat.
Cold sweat poured down his skin. His consciousness teetered at the edge of a storm of agony, dragged repeatedly toward the abyss of unconsciousness.
His nails dug deep into the cracks of the cold floor until they bled. The pain was bone-deep, consuming…
He didn't understand what was happening, but some primal instinct screamed that he must not black out.
Gritting his teeth, eyes bloodshot and forced wide open, he endured—until the first pale, sickly light of dawn seeped through the window.
And just like the darkness, the night-long torment receded with the coming of the morning.
What… was that?
Struggling to his feet, Jake gingerly touched his head.
He stumbled to the washbasin and forced his bloodshot eyes open. Wiping away the trails of blood from his eyes, mouth, and ears, he cleared his vision—and met his own gaunt reflection in the mirror.
Streaks of white now shot through his hair.
He stared, his gaze initially hollow, then gradually focusing. A faint light flickered deep within his pupils—not of hope, but of resolve—before hardening into something unbreakable.
The agony hadn't shattered him; the despair hadn't consumed him. Instead, overnight, it had forged him.
And so, amid rupture, longing, and pain, Jake became an orphan—an orphan armed with a fierce, burning will to survive.
With all the recent extraordinary events, Jake is dying to figure out what happened.
His thoughts snapped to the violet crystal pendant.
It looked utterly ordinary, like some cheap trinket from a market stall… yet he was certain he had seen visions within it—had even heard his parents' voices.
He ran a thumb slowly over its surface.
[Why did Mom call this pendant 'Tear of Time'? It seems like some kind of magical artifact… but how would she have gotten one?]
Magical artifacts were exceedingly rare. Each originated from a spatial convergence point—those unstable, randomly occurring rifts bridging unknown worlds filled with wonders and horrors beyond comprehension.
Every such item that entered this world came at the cost of countless adventurers' lives. They were treasures only the powerful or the great families could possess.
Jake 's mother, Claire, was nothing more than a tech-augmented Dymin—one who had never awakened any extraordinary abilities.
It's widely known that every ordinary baseline human undergoes genetic enhancement at the age of 18, transcending their origins to become Dymin—the most ordinary class of beings on this planet.
He had a feeling that this pendant was his only clue to finding his parents. Yet, for now, the mystery remained just out of his grasp.
Setting his doubts aside, Jake solemnly hung "Tear of Time" around his neck.
[I will survive… This was the promise I made with Mom and Dad.]
Beyond tuition and medical debts, his most immediate crisis was sheer survival.
He had scraps of food, no water, no electricity, and the rent was overdue. The unit was managed by MK-14—the largest gang in the outer sector of Twilight-79 Sanctuary.
Amid the prolonged war between humanity and the Bisolarans, Twilight-79 Sanctuary was but one of countless sanctuaries—a front line city, a breeding ground for adventurers and factions of all kinds.
A playground for the strong, a graveyard for the weak.
Here, survival was everything.
Even as the interstellar war has settled into a stalemate, humanity remains at a disadvantage.
The relentless pressure to survive has forced human society to enforce the cruelest methods of natural selection and accelerated evolution.
Even modern human laws and institutions are designed to ensure only the fittest prevail— strict, ruthless, and unflinchingly pragmatic.
This is especially true in the outer sectors of the sanctuaries.
A child without parental support might find a place to live, but without excelling academically, they're quickly cast aside as worthless.
Whether in the Martial Arts or Sciences disciplines, achieving top scores requires extensive—and expensive—gene therapies. Without money, there's no path forward.
To avoid mutual destruction through large-scale weapons, both humans and Bisolarans have tacitly confined most conflicts to battlefields and major spatial convergence zones.
These zones have become brutal proving grounds—for seizing resources, testing new forms of combat and warriors, and evolving super-powered beings capable of shifting the war's balance.
Unless there's sufficient incentive, elite warriors' candidates from either species—those regarded as potential super-lifeforms—rarely risk themselves on the front lines or in unstable deadly convergence zones.
So it falls to the lower ranks of all intelligent species to fight over the planet's dwindling resources and territory—clawing upward not just for advancement, but for bare survival.
In the outer sectors of the sanctuary, there's an unspoken rule: orphans, seen as having no potential value, are routinely conscripted by the Reserve Armed Forces.
Stripped of their freedom, they're injected with the cheapest—or most dangerous—experimental gene serums, then trained to become cannon fodder.
They're sent to the battlefields or convergence zones, tasked with missions meant to be risked with lives!!
As a teenager, Jake was well aware of how things worked.
His first priority was survival: earning enough to pay off his debts and pull himself back from the brink of the abyss.
He contacted the building management using his terminal. Soon after, a hover-car parked outside his window, and two figures stepped out.
Jake opened the window to let them in.
Once inside, the two men glanced around with detached curiosity. One of them walked over to the table, wiped a finger through the dust coating its surface, and remarked:
"Thought you lot were already dead."
It wasn't meant as an insult—just a blunt reflection of the everyday reality in the tenement blocks.
"My name is Leo," one of them said, "and this is Marcus. Your rent was due yesterday. Even if you hadn't called, we'd have come to collect. Tell your mother to pay up—now. I'll reactivate your energy supply, but besides the rent, you owe a 500-credit reconnection fee."
"My mother isn't here right now."
"Then you pay."
"I don't have the money."
"What the hell, kid? You messing with us?"
Marcus made a move like he was about to strike, but Jake didn't even glance his way. Instead, he turned and carried out a case from the bedroom—something his mother had brought with her from an inland city, back when his family still had money.
Leo understood immediately. He opened the case and activated the terminal on his forearm, scanning the items inside.
"Straight sale: 20,000 credits. Collateral loan: 30,000. Weekly interest: 5%. interest compounds weekly until principle and interest are fully repaid."
Jake glared. "What kind of scam is this? This stuff is worth at least 60,000."
"You think we're a charity? Try selling it yourself—see how long that takes. But if you don't take our offer, you're out. Now. Let's see how long you last out there with this junk and nowhere to sleep."
Clenching his jaw in anger, Jake knew he was cornered. A hard glint of resolve flashed in his eyes.
"…I'll take the loan."
"Hmph. Smart move, kid. Remember—if you can't make your payments or repay the principal on time, we keep the collateral. No excuses. Understood? Sign here. We've got other business—don't waste our time."
Marcus sneered from the side. "Consider this a rare act of mercy. If we run into you outside this building, we'll take everything you have—down to your last credit."
He tossed a data packet to Jake's terminal. "This is a job even an outer-sector baseline human can take. Don't say we never gave you a way out."
With that, they took the case and returned to their hovercar.
Marcus glanced back through the window at Jake standing alone in the bleak apartment, a smirk twisting his lips. "You think the kid's desperate enough to take it, Leo?"
Leo chuckled coldly. "If he doesn't, he can't pay up. We'll make him wish he were dead. If he does take it… we get a cut of the pay-out. And if he dies out there?"
A grim smile spread. "Everything in that apartment of his becomes ours. Win-win."
Their laughter echoed, harsh and unashamed, as the hovercar lifted away from the crumbling tenement.