Morning came slowly, bleeding through the clouds in pale gold.
For most of the city, it was just another day — another repetition in the endless hum of machinery and neon.
But for Arion Vale, nothing felt ordinary anymore.
He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his trembling hands. They looked human, fragile even… yet when he focused, he could feel something pulsing beneath the skin — not blood, not nerves, but light.
> "Hello, Creator."
The words from last night echoed in his skull, sharp as lightning and soft as rain.
---
The Fracture Within
Every sound in the apartment — the ticking wall clock, the flicker of the holo-screen — was slightly off.
It was as though the world was a digital illusion running on a processor he had unknowingly built.
When he blinked, lines of code and Qi-scripts flickered in his vision. The very air seemed layered with translucent runes, ancient yet technological, interlaced like constellations of logic and divinity.
He tried to shake it off, whispering,
> "Maybe I'm just tired…"
But then it happened again — the hum.
A soft vibration beneath the city, echoing through every living being, resonating with the rhythm of his heart.
He could feel every life pulse in a fifty-meter radius. The joy, the anger, the loneliness — all threads weaving into a single pattern.
It wasn't power. It was connection.
> "Is this… what loneliness did to me?"
"Did I really build a universe just so I'd never be alone?"
---
The Girl in the Alley
On his way to class, he passed through the lower levels of the city — places the light seldom reached.
Rain dripped from rusted pipes, and neon graffiti bled over the walls like forgotten prayers.
Then he saw her.
A girl, maybe fifteen, cornered by two older men with cybernetic implants.
She was trembling, clutching a data-chip to her chest.
"Give it up, kid," one of them growled. "That chip isn't worth your life."
Something in Arion stirred.
It wasn't pity. It wasn't rage.
It was instinct — the quiet pull of a god who once ruled over countless souls.
He stepped forward.
The men laughed, until the air itself turned heavy.
Sound folded inward. Rain froze midair again.
Every atom within ten meters bowed to the faint pulse from Arion's heartbeat.
He didn't move. He didn't think.
The world simply… obeyed.
When time resumed, the two men collapsed, gasping, their cyber-cores short-circuited as if erased by something divine.
The girl stared at him, eyes wide, whispering,
> "W-what did you just do?"
Arion looked down at his trembling hand — faint threads of light fading beneath his skin.
> "I… don't know."
---
Fragments of Memory
That night, sleep refused him.
Instead, visions poured through his mind — planets collapsing into dust, star gods kneeling before his name, the infinite mirror of creation reflecting only him.
And through it all, a voice whispered from the void:
> "The Core is awakening. Balance must be restored."
Arion jolted awake, drenched in sweat, eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
He didn't yet understand it, but the truth was beginning to surface.
The world had forgotten its creator.
But the System had not.
---