The world didn't end with a bang.
It changed with a whisper—a silent, global sigh that echoed in the blood of billions. They called it The Singularity Dawn. A day not of destruction, but of bewildering, terrifying rebirth.
One moment, humanity was alone in its skin, masters of a world defined by the limits of muscle and mind. The next, those limits were rendered obsolete.
It did not happen in a lab. It was not a virus. It was an awakening. A latent code, buried deep within the helix of human DNA, spontaneously activated. The Metagene.
A bus driver in Mumbai, stressed by the relentless traffic, suddenly phased his entire vehicle through a gridlocked intersection, the screams of his passengers turning to stunned silence.
A farmer in Kenya, desperate to save his withering crops under a brutal sun, found his tears watering the soil, which then erupted in a fantastical bloom of flora that had never existed before.
A construction worker in New York, falling from a girder, did not plummet. He hung in the air, heart hammering against his ribs, as gravity itself forgot his name.
Chaos, of course, followed. There was fear, violence, panic. The old world order shuddered on its foundations. But humanity, as it always does, adapted. The initial terror gave way to a frantic, global effort to understand, to categorize, to control.
The term "Inhuman" was coined by a committee, a sterile, scientific designation for a phenomenon that was anything but. It was meant to be neutral, but language has a weight of its own. To those who were suddenly Other, it felt like a brand. To those left seemingly behind—the "Baselines"—it became a slur, a word spat out with fear and envy.
Ninety years.
Ninety years to build a new world atop the bones of the old. Gleaning cities constructed by Gifted architects rose beside Baseline neighborhoods. Markets thrived with goods crafted by impossible means. The world was more efficient, more fantastic, more unequal.
Pacific Academy and institutions like it became the crucibles where this new generation was forged, taught to hone their gifts, to navigate the delicate, often hostile, social landscape. It was a world of wonders, but its foundations were still cracked, built over a fissure that ran deep through the heart of society.
The Metagenic Regulatory Agency (MRA) became the scalpel and the shield, tasked with policing the dangerous outliers—the Rogues—and protecting a fragile peace that felt more like a prolonged ceasefire.
And through it all, the mystery remained. Why did the Metagene activate? Was it random? Was it evolution? Or was it something else entirely?
For most, it was a question for philosophers and scientists. For the teenagers now coming of age in this world, it was simply the backdrop of their lives. A fact. Some were blessed with incredible power, destined for greatness. Others were not, destined to watch from the sidelines.
This is the story of one who believed he was meant to watch.
But deep within him, a star was sleeping. A core of molten potential, waiting for the right moment, the right spark, to ignite.
And when it did, it would not just change his life.
It would send a tremor through the very System of the world itself.