My name is Alexander Kael.
Most call me Zander now, but once I was just a child among millions, born in an age they named golden. History remembers it for its miracles. I remember it for its lies.
If you wish to understand how I shattered the limits of flesh and thought, how I carved a path that would either crown or damn humanity, you must return with me to the beginning—before I was born, when the fire of Phoenix Ash first burned across the Earth.
The year was 2129. Humanity stood on the first steps of what dreamers once called a Type II Civilization. We had drunk deep from the power of our world, bent the sun to our service, and stretched our reach to other planets.
Mars, long a red desert, now held domes of life. In Earth's skies floated cities of glass and steel, suspended five miles above the old world—homes of the powerful, symbols of progress. The surface below seethed with restless billions, but the leaders called it unity. Nations had dissolved, replaced by five Divisions—North, South, East, West, and Center—under one Chancellor.
To the world, it seemed as though paradise had been seized by human hands. But beneath the triumphs lurked a truth: paradise is fragile.
The true shift began nearly half a century earlier, in 2083, when humanity pierced the barrier of space-jump velocity. We leapt into the unknown and collided with destiny.
The Lygari awaited us.
Two meters tall, armored in brown scales, their bodies were built for war. When our ships met theirs, no words passed, no weapons fired. Instead, they summoned their masters—the Celestial Alliance, a federation of more than two hundred forty civilizations spread across the southern quadrant of the universe.
An envoy came, carrying a translator, and words bridged the void. For the first time, Earth stood before the greater cosmos.
And we were judged as nothing.
The Alliance was vast. We were young. To them, humanity was less than dust. Only the Lygari saw value in us. Not as allies, not as equals, but as spoils. Sponsoring a new civilization into the Alliance granted prestige and rewards. And so the Lygari declared us their prize, a banner under which they could bleed Earth in resources while claiming to protect it.
The leaders called it opportunity. Humanity cheered. We always cheer for our illusions.
In those years of false glory came the discovery that changed everything. A drug born of Earth's science, refined by fragments of alien knowledge—the serum called Phoenix Ash.
It was imperfect, but even so, it was a miracle. Soldiers who consumed it doubled their strength, their stamina, their reflexes. Lifespans stretched to one hundred and fifty years. For the first time, humanity touched the edge of what we thought gods might be.
Yet it was incomplete.
Most who took it became stronger than ordinary men, sharper than their ancestors, yet still human. A few became exceptional—champions who towered above their peers—but none were truly altered. Their blood ran hotter, their lives longer, but they remained bound to the same limits.
The masses never questioned. They embraced the fire eagerly, blind to what had been promised behind closed doors. For the scientists had whispered of something more, of a perfected form—an evolution yet to come.
That promise became a project. A secret. A gamble.
They called it Project 24XY. To the world, it did not exist. To those within, it was the future. They took Phoenix Ash, rebuilt it, rewrote it, shaped it into something complete. And then they tested it—on us.
We were eight.
Children born in secrecy, raised in laboratories before we could walk, chosen for reasons never explained. We were told we were prodigies. We were told we were humanity's best hope. What they did not tell us—what even they barely understood—was that we were no longer the same species.
The first Phoenix Ash had made men stronger. The completed serum gave us something else entirely. It rewrote us. Where humanity bore twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, we carried twenty-four. A higher form. A new branch of the human tree.
But no one knew it then. Not the generals who saluted us. Not the scientists who studied us. Not even us, the children shaped by fire.
By four years old, I was taken into their academy, placed beside the seven others who bore the same hidden legacy. We were raised not as children but as weapons, taught combat before we could count, trained to master knowledge that once took lifetimes.
By eleven, I had already memorized the sciences of life, fought in arenas against soldiers twice my size, and learned to bend my body with arts drawn from a thousand cultures. My mind reached faster, grasped deeper, processed more. The commanders called us geniuses. The truth was simpler: we were different.
And among us, one shone brighter.
He was the first of us to awaken power, a boy whose blood sparked into fire. At first it was no more than flickers—heat that shimmered in his hands, flames no stronger than candlelight. But as years passed, it grew. With each training, his blaze burned higher, fiercer. The commanders saw him as the champion, the star of Project 24XY.
He was the one they whispered about in their meetings. He was the one they believed would lead humanity.
And in their shadows, I remained. Watching. Waiting.
Because though his fire burned bright, it was only fire. My path lay elsewhere, in senses unseen, in depths no flame could touch.
They thought Phoenix Ash was their triumph. They thought Project 24XY was their weapon. They thought we were theirs to command.
They were wrong.
From the ashes of that golden age, a new kind of humanity was born. And I, Zander Kael, was among the first.
This is not the story of how humanity rose.
This is the story of how we burned—and how I turned that fire into my own ascension.