Chapter 1: The Unwanted Throne
Death came for Silas Ender not with screams, but with silence.
The last thing he felt was the world collapsing inward a sensory implosion of memory and terror. His apartment, once a sanctuary of cheap Ikea furniture and takeout containers, became a prison of overlapping timelines.
The first death: Shredded by Vorax claws in the Bleeding Chasm, Year 3.
The second: Burned alive when the K'thari scoured New York, Year 1.
The third, fourth, fifth..
Regression wasn't gentle. It wasn't waking up. It was being born backward through every agony you'd ever endured, compressed into a single second of cosmic whiplash.
Silas's heart hammered once, twice, then stuttered. His hands pale, soft, unscarred hands from Before clutched at his chest. The calendar on his phone glowed: June 1, 2024.
Thirty days.
He had thirty days before The Descent began again.
His mind, already fractured from dying seven times across multiple timelines, couldn't reconcile the contradiction: safety and certain doom existing in the same moment. The cognitive dissonance snapped something fundamental.
A final, silent scream.
Then nothing.
---
...
Cold.
The first sensation was cold analytical assessment.
I am not Silas Ender.
The thought surfaced through the neural static. Consciousness stirred in the corpse-warm body sprawled on stained carpet. Dual memory streams collided:
Stream A: Silas Ender. 28. Data analyst. Seven apocalypses survived then undone. Died of shock 47 seconds ago.
Stream B: [Designation: Chronos]. Transmigrated consciousness. Origin: Unknown. State: Integrated.
The body twitched. Fingers flexed. Eyes opened.
Chronos sat up, movements economical, testing motor functions. He examined the hands his hands now. Pale. Weak. Human-normal. The apartment smelled of old pizza and despair.
System Notification Detected
[Pre-Descent Phase Active]
[Universal Will Integration: 30d 00h 00m]
[Anomaly Detected: Dual Consciousness Merger]
[Processing...]
A blue screen flickered at the edge of vision. Chronos dismissed it with a thought. He stood, walked to the bathroom mirror.
The face staring back was unremarkable: brown hair too long, shadows under hazel eyes, the kind of face that vanished in crowds. But the eyes themselves... there was nothing of Silas's perpetual terror in them. Only assessment.
Silas died because he remembered too much and believed too little, Chronos analyzed. He saw the coming horrors but lacked the will to face them again. A coward's death. Wasteful.
From Silas's memories, Chronos extracted useful data:
· June 30, 2024: The Descent begins. Reality fractures. System integrates.
· 30% of humanity dies in the first hour (mana-sickness).
· Monsters manifest from corrupted biomass.
· Dungeons form at ley line convergences.
· The true enemy arrives from the stars 319 days later.
The K'thari, Chronos thought. Harvesters. Planet-scale predators. They use The Descent as a culling mechanism—weed out the weak before collection.
He had thirty days to prepare.
Most regressors would panic. Stockpile guns. Hoard food. Beg family to flee cities.
Chronos walked to the kitchen, drank tap water. Assessed resources:
· Apartment lease: $1,200 monthly (due in 15 days)
· Bank account: $3,417.22
· Skills: Data analysis, mediocre cooking, system navigation (from Silas)
· Physical condition: Below average. No combat training.
Insufficient.
But Silas's memories contained something more valuable than money: locations.
Mana Springs. Places where ambient energy leaked through pre-Descent. Exposure could trigger early awakening. One existed nearby Central Park, near the turtle pond.
Chronos changed into jogging clothes. Left the apartment without locking it. Nothing there mattered now.
---
The city breathed its last normal breaths around him.
People hurried to work, scrolling phones, drinking coffee, blissfully ignorant of the countdown ticking in Chronos's vision: [29d 23h 17m].
Central Park at 6 AM was quiet. Joggers. Dog walkers. The turtle pond shimmered with morning light.
From Silas's memory: Stand in the shallow end. Face east. Wait for the sun to clear the trees.
Chronos waded in, sneakers sinking into mud. The water was colder than expected. He positioned himself, watched the horizon.
A jogger gave him a strange look. "You okay, man?"
"Testing water quality," Chronos said without inflection.
The jogger shrugged and moved on.
The sun crested the buildings. Light hit the pond. For a normal human, nothing happened.
For Chronos, the world rippled.
Mana raw, unformed cosmic energy seeped from the pond's bottom. It prickled against his skin like static electricity. His cells vibrated in resonance.
System Notification
[Mana Exposure Detected]
[Talent Trigger Attempt: 1/3]
[Willpower Check: Required]
Pain followed. Not physical, but existential as if his DNA were being rewritten without anesthesia. Silas's memories screamed: This is how it starts! The pain! It gets worse!
Chronos ignored the phantom terror. He focused.
I am not Silas. I do not fear transformation. I embrace it as tool.
He reached into the dual consciousness, merging Silas's knowledge of the process with his own transmigrator's detachment. The pain became data: nerve signals, chemical responses, psychological triggers.
He accepted it all.
Willpower Check: PASSED
[Talent Synthesizing...]
[Dual Consciousness Bonus: +50% Efficiency]
[Regressor Memory Bonus: +30% Compatibility]
[Result: S-Rank Growth-Type Talent Generated]
[EXTREME BIOKINESIS - S-RANK]
[Description: You understand biology as code. Life becomes clay. With sufficient biomass and templates, you may reshape flesh, merge species, and eventually command the song of DNA itself.]
[Stage 1: Template Collection Active]
· Touch a living creature to scan its biological template
· Store templates in internal library
· Apply one template per body part (cannot layer)
· Biomass cost: Varies by transformation
Chronos exhaled. Water dripped from his chin.
S-Rank. Silas had awakened this same talent in his first regression. Called it "cripplingly painful" and "useless early on." The man had never understood what he possessed.
A pigeon landed on the pond's edge, cooing.
Chronos waded toward it, movements slow. The pigeon watched, head cocked.
First contact.
His finger touched feathers.
[Template Acquired: Rock Dove (Columba livia)]
[Traits: Flight mechanics (basic), navigation sense, rapid digestion]
[Biomass Cost to Apply: 0.3kg]
[Compatibility: Human-Mammal-Avian (85%)]
The pigeon fluttered away.
Chronos examined his hand. Already, he could feel the template waiting a ghostly blueprint of wings, hollow bones, muscle attachments. With biomass, he could manifest those traits.
But biomass required consumption. Energy. Matter.
His stomach growled.
Priorities, he thought. One: Secure biomass source. Two: Acquire useful templates. Three: Establish territory before Descent.
He climbed from the pond, dripping. Passersby gave him wider berth now.
As he walked back toward the street, a final notification appeared:
[Pre-Descent Quest Available: "First Steps"]
· Objective: Acquire 3 biological templates
· Objective: Secure 10kg biomass
· Objective: Claim territory (0/1)
· Reward: 100 Territory Credits, +1 Template Slot
· Time Limit: 7 days
[Accept? Y/N]
Chronos selected Y.
The countdown in his vision updated:
[29d 22h 59m until The Descent]
He began walking, water squelching in his shoes. The city around him continued its ignorant dance toward oblivion.
Silas Ender had died afraid.
Chronos lived to build a fortress from the coming storm.
And he would start with the most fundamental truth of the new world: in the end, everything was just biomass waiting to be reshaped.