The first thirty days were not about glory; they were about agony.
Syros knew that the "System" the Angels would eventually deploy acted like a magical exoskeleton—it provided strength, but it made the natural muscles underneath go soft. In his previous life, he had relied on "Stat Points" to become a god. This time, he would become a god through the sheer defiance of his own biology.
He retreated to a remote, abandoned quarry three hours outside the city. It was a jagged scar in the earth, filled with granite dust and silence. Here, there were no cameras, no prying eyes, and most importantly, no celestial interference.
As he sat in the dust, Syros reached out with his senses. In his past life, everyone believed Mana arrived with the Towers—a gift from the heavens to help humanity fight back.
Liars, Syros thought, his fingers digging into the dry soil.
He could feel it now. The Mana was already here. It was a silent, invisible tide rising beneath the surface of reality, saturating the rocks and the air like a storm that hadn't yet broken. The Angels hadn't brought the Mana; they had simply waited for it to reach a high enough concentration to "activate" their System and claim ownership over it.
As of this moment, in the entire world, Syros was the only one who knew how to breathe it in. He was a lone predator in a world of blind prey.
Syros stood in the center of the quarry, shirtless, his skin slick with sweat. He closed his eyes and reached past the surface of his spirit. He didn't look for the "Fire" he once knew—the flickering, erratic Red flame. Instead, he reached for the Brown Fire.
When it ignited, it didn't roar. It grounded.
The flame was thick, like molten terracotta, heavy and viscous. It didn't just burn the air; it seemed to pull on the gravity around him. Syros gasped as the weight of his own power nearly forced him to his knees. Even as his muscles bulged under the pressure, a cold shiver ran down his spine.
Who was it? The question haunted his silence. That "Being with No Name" in the abyss—the one who had overwritten the Archangels' divine code. To rewrite a System made by the Host of Heaven required a power that defied logic. Was he a pawn in a larger game? Was this "Nameless One" just another Architect, or something much older?
He looked at his hands, wreathed in that dense, earthy flame. He felt like he was holding a mountain in his palms, yet he knew with a terrifying certainty that he was only tapping into a tiny fraction of the Brown fire's true potential. It was an ocean, and he was currently only drinking a single drop.
He spent the first month performing "Mana-Compression" exercises that would have killed a normal human. He would ignite the Brown fire within his own bone marrow, forcing his skeletal structure to harden and knit together until his bones were as dense as industrial diamond.
By day forty-five, the heavy, earthy flames began to bleed into a sharp, crystalline hue: Red Jade.
It wasn't a limit; it was a revelation. Unlike the common Red fire of his past, which was chaotic and hungry, the Red Jade fire was structured. It looked like liquid gemstones flowing over his skin. It was sharper than any blade. He tested it by flicking a finger toward a falling leaf; the leaf didn't burn—it was sliced into a thousand microscopic pieces before the heat even registered.
He could feel the Red Jade humming, a secondary layer of power that felt just as vast and untapped as the Brown.
In the evenings, Syros worked on the other half of his plan: The Sabotage.
He used his knowledge of the future to play the world's financial markets. Using dark-web accounts and predictive algorithms based on his memory of the coming collapse, he amassed a fortune in gold and physical assets.
"Electronic money will be worthless in ninety days," he muttered, crossing out a line in his notebook. "I need steel. I need fuel. I need salt."
He began purchasing "Dead Zones"—locations the world thought were useless, but Syros knew were the exact coordinates where the Architects' Towers would pierce the Earth's crust. By the middle of the second month, he legally owned three of the future "Gate Zero" sites.
He buried "Anchors"—heavy lead boxes filled with his own Brown and Red Jade mana. When the Towers eventually tried to manifest there, they wouldn't find an empty plot of land; they would find a spiritual virus waiting to infect their foundation.
Syros stood up, the Red Jade flames dancing at his fingertips, turning the surrounding mist into steam. He was leaner, his eyes glowing with a calm, predatory light.
"Forty-five days until the 'Gift' arrives," he said, looking up at the empty sky where he knew the Archangels were watching. "I'm not the same dog you killed."