The micro-reactor flared to life in Sage's palm, its crystalline structure vibrating at frequencies that shouldn't exist in normal space time. The fractal patterns etched into the crystal lattice started glowing with a light that existed partially outside the visible spectrum, colors the human brain couldn't quite process flickering at the edges of perception.
Sage felt the change immediately, a surge of power that bypassed the planetary dampening field entirely.
The cost was immediate and devastating.
The human brain, that three-pound mass of neurons and glial cells, operated on electrochemical signals. Each thought, each action, each moment of consciousness required the coordinated firing of billions of neurons, electrical impulses traveling along axons, neurotransmitters bridging synaptic gaps. It was a delicate system, balanced on the knife's edge between order and chaos, operating within strict biological limitations.
