The sky didn't crack with thunder. It cracked with silence.
One moment, Kai Mori was worrying about a rent payment. The next, he was standing on gray earth beneath a fissured, porcelain sky. The air smelled of ozone and copper, with an undertone of something sweetly rotten. Text burned itself into his vision, serene and horrific:
System Initialization Complete. Welcome to the Mending.
Primary Directive: Survival is a prerequisite for correction.
Around him, chaos unfolded. A woman to his left was vomiting violently. A man clawed at his own face, fingers coming away bloody as though his skin had become paper. Screams, sobs, prayers—a symphony of human breakdown. Kai stood still, his breath shallow. The cold clarity that had always been his curse in crises wrapped around his mind like armor.
Don't panic. Observe.
The world was wrong. The ground wasn't dirt but something porous and slightly warm, like cooled ash. The sky's cracks glowed faintly blue at the edges. No sun, no clouds—just that broken porcelain dome stretching to horizons that seemed closer than they should.
Another message:
Tutorial Arena: The Silent Grove
Survive for 24 hours.
Population: 1,003/1,003
A counter. They were being counted.
"Everyone! Listen to me!" A man in a business suit stood on a slight rise, hands raised. "We need to organize! There's safety in numbers!"
The crowd began clustering toward him. Basic human instinct: gather, follow the loudest voice.
Kai watched. The man's eyes darted too quickly. His gestures were theatrical. A performance.
Choose your foundation:
[Seek Alliance] - Join a group. Social bonds increase initial survival probability by 45%.
[Accept Solitude] - Walk alone. Environmental threat multiplier: x1.8.
The numbers floated in his peripheral vision. The system was quantifying humanity.
To his right, a teenager with glasses was hyperventilating. "No, no, no—" His skin began to shimmer, taking on a faint metallic sheen. "What's happening to—" His words cut off as his vocal cords seemed to solidify. He clutched his throat, eyes wide with terror, as a smooth, featureless metal plate spread across his neck. An early correction. A "fix" for panic, perhaps—silence the screams.
The business suit man was still shouting. "We'll form groups of ten! Those with combat experience, step forward!"
Kai felt a familiar isolation settle into his bones. He'd always been the observer, the one who saw the cracks in social facades. Alliances meant obligations. Obligations meant vulnerabilities. In this place where people turned to metal at the first sign of fear, connection was just another kind of trap.
His eyes found the [Accept Solitude] prompt. It glowed a dangerous, deep violet, unlike the soft blue of the alliance option.
He chose it.
A jolt went through him—not pain, but a sudden, profound emptiness, as if a background hum he'd never noticed had been switched off. The sounds of the crowd became distant, muffled.
Then, chaos in his vision:
WARNING: PATH CONFLICT DETECTED.
USER PROFILE: KAI MORI - SOLITARY PREFERENCE THRESHOLD EXCEEDS NORMATIVE PARAMETERS.
ACCESSING... BROKEN PROTOCOL.
SCANNING FOR COMPATIBLE ABILITIES...
FOUND: [INSTINCTIVE PREDATION - LVL 0]
DESCRIPTION: PERCEIVE THREAT/OPPORTUNITY TAXONOMIES. INHIBITION REDUCTION: MINOR.
ACCEPT? (Y/N)
Broken Protocol. The words flickered with visual static, as though corrupt.
Kai had no time to consider. The metallic-skin teenager was now fully encased, a statue of silent terror. Other transformations were beginning—a woman's fingers elongating into tools, a man's legs fusing together into a single powerful limb.
He mentally selected Y.
The world shifted.
Colors drained slightly, becoming more contrasted. But the real change was in the people. They stopped being people and became... diagrams. Faint, shimmering outlines appeared around each person, colored in gradients from cool blue to warm red. The business suit man glowed orange-red, with pulsing crimson nodes at his hands and mouth. Manipulator, something in Kai's mind supplied. High social threat. Physical vulnerability: lower back, knees.
The panicked crowd members glowed blue with streaks of yellow—fearful, non-threatening. But some were changing. A large man near the back was shifting to a deep red, his outline sharpening. Predatory emergence, the instinct whispered.
Most disturbing was his own perception of himself. When he looked down, he saw his own body outlined in a shifting violet, with darker patches at his temples and chest. Stress points. Breaking points.
A new sense opened—he could taste the air. Fear had a flavor: acidic, metallic. Determination was earthy, bitter. The business suit man's confidence tasted like burnt sugar, cloying and false.
A system chime, different from the others—dissonant, like broken glass:
Ability Integration: 17%
Side-effect: Empathic Dampening Online
Note: Broken abilities evolve outside standard parameters. Consequences are irreversible.
Irreversible. The word sat heavy in his gut.
"Hey! You!" The business suit man was pointing at him. "You're not joining a group? That's suicide!"
Kai met his eyes. With his new vision, he could see the man's pulse hammering in his neck, a frantic flutter of red light. He was terrified, masking it with authority.
"I walk alone," Kai said. His voice sounded different to himself—flatter, devoid of the social harmonics that usually colored speech.
The man's expression tightened. "Your funeral. But if you change your mind, don't come crawling. We remember who abandons the tribe."
Tribe, Kai thought. We've been here ten minutes, and he's already building a tribe.
He turned away from the gathering groups and walked toward the tree line at the arena's edge. The "Silent Grove" awaited—a forest of tall, gray-barked trees with black leaves that didn't rustle in the still air.
As he reached the first trees, a final notification appeared:
Broken Question Logged: #001
Query: What does it mean to be corrected?
Status: Unanswered
Note: Broken Questions accumulate. Answers may be mandatory.
He stepped into the shadows of the grove. The sounds of the gathering crowd faded completely, replaced by absolute silence. His own breathing sounded obscenely loud.
The first thing his predation instinct highlighted wasn't a monster or a trap.
It was a pattern on the ground—footprints, fresh, leading deeper. Human, but with an uneven gait. Injured or burdened.
And beneath the scent of damp earth and strange vegetation, he caught that acidic-metallic taste again.
Fear.
Someone was already here. Already running.
Kai Mori followed, his footsteps silent on the strange ground. The counter in his vision ticked down from 24:00:00.
23:59:47.
And in the back of his mind, a cold calculation began: How many of the 1,003 will still be human when this ends?
More disturbingly: Will I be one of them?