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Chapter 2 - Chapter Two: A New Pulse Awakens

Unbeknownst to Sam, as her soul drifted unseen across the stars, a very different scene was unfolding on the world she was destined for.

In the jagged embrace of a wind-swept mountain range, deep within a narrow cave, a young woman lay half-conscious, her breath shallow and ragged. Blood crusted along a gash on her forehead, bones broken, and bruises bloomed like wilted flowers across her limbs. She was eighteen—on the verge of her Integration. A sacred and dangerous rite of passage all born to this world faced upon reaching adulthood.

Before this moment, her life had been consumed with preparation—training in combat, survival, and knowledge under the loving eyes of family, elders, and hired mentors. The goal? To shape her fate. To earn a powerful class, favorable stats, and a future among the strong. For in this world, one's beginning could mean the difference between obscurity and legend.

This was no ordinary world. This was Fractalis, long ago it had mirrored Earth, filled with cities of steel and glass, powered by science and logic. But it had changed—violently, irreversibly.

The Fracturing had ended that age. It was an even so devastating they renamed the world because of it.

In the height of the Technocratic Era, humanity had achieved marvels. Cities pierced the heavens, consciousness could be uploaded, diseases were edited out of genomes, and AI governed lives more efficiently than any government ever had. Energy flowed like blood through a network of global circuits. Technology, it seemed, had conquered mortality itself.

But the planet was dying. Resources stripped from the land. Leaving ugly scars across the environment.

Enter Project Gateway, a multi-national initiative designed to breach the veil between worlds. Dr. Alan Virek, a theoretical physicist worshipped for his brilliance and cursed for his hubris, led the charge. For decades, he had worked to prove the multiverse existed—and now, he intended to open the door.

And he succeeded.

But what came through wasn't land or salvation.

It was mana—a living, formless force that defied logic. A wellspring of cosmic energy that burned through reason like wildfire through dry brush. Where electricity crackled, mana surged. The two could not coexist and for a world where everything ran on electricity, there was cataclysmic results.

With its arrival, the world's power grids imploded. Satellites blinked out of the sky. Cybernetic implants melted. AIs screamed and died. Entire cities darkened in an instant. Civilization collapsed not with war, but with silence. A silence filled with blue flame and arcane winds.

The land itself cracked under the pressure of this new force. Creating a massive chasm stretching out from the lab itself. This crack in the earth went on for hundreds of kilometers and at its widest was approximately seventy kilometers from side to side. It was so far, you couldn't see one end from the other. It separated countries, destroyed some altogether, and was so deep that some thought it reached the center of the planet.

The Fracturing had begun.

Yet within the chaos, a strange convergence occurred.

Unbeknownst to most, deep below the Gateway facility, Dr. Lysa Kael—a renegade geneticist stripped of her credentials for unauthorized experimentation—had been using Project resources to develop a serum. She called it The Genesis Strain. It was designed to forcibly evolve humanity, awakening hidden DNA and mutating the species to better survive what may lay ahead.

She had no idea the serum would interact with the incoming mana.

And in another lab across the complex, Dr. Renji Takoma, a visionary in bio-integrated technology, had completed a self replicating prototype—an elegant device of semi-organic nanites designed to live inside a human host. Meant to replace phones and medkits, it could read thoughts, monitor health, offer knowledge, and even adapt to personality over time. It was supposed to be the next step in human-tech symbiosis.

The mana did not destroy Takoma's invention.

It evolved it.

When the surge struck, mana fused with nanites and mutagen alike. The Genesis Strain mutated into something sentient. The nanites awakened. A triune birth occurred—magic, biology, and machine—intertwined into a living system that no one understood, but that would soon define all life on the planet.

The fusion spread like spores on the wind.

In the years that followed, the children born after The Fracturing were different. Touched by the mana-mutagen-nano synthesis from birth—whether through inheritance, environment, or exposure—they began to change.

Then, at eighteen, it happened.

The S.I.S.T.E.M Integration.

First came the flicker behind the eyes. Then, a voice—silent, internal, and coldly precise. And finally, the interface: a shimmering, translucent blue screen that hovered just beyond the touch of reality. Invisible to all but the user, it responded to thought alone.

The interface provided its users with tools, power, and knowledge. It was the sum of ancient fantasy and lost science—part status menu, part oracle, part god. At least to a less technological mind.

It manifested with five primary functions:

Profile - A comprehensive list of physical stats, abilities and rewards.

Inventory - A personalized dimensional space, tethered to the user's mana. Items could be stored manually or automatically upon looting. Stackable items like herbs or potions fit neatly; things that weren't stackable, like weapons and armor took up full slots. At Level 1, it offered 10 unique item slots, each stackable up to 100—growing with the user's progression.

Crucially, anything stored here vanished if the user died. It made the Inventory the safest place for valuables, discouraging bandits from seeking loot through murder.

Still, items equipped at the time of death were lootable—but not without consequence. The System branded such items with a faint, unmistakable red glow—marking them as stolen by force. Even thieves avoided using such items openly; it was a glowing confession of bloodshed. Relics recovered from long-dead corpses bore no such stigma.

Community — A global, telepathic communication hub. Forums, private messaging, guild announcements, and citywide alerts all passed through here. In a post-tech world, this was the new internet—silent, efficient, untraceable.

Store — The S.I.S.T.E.M.'s marketplace. Users could buy from each other or from the S.I.S.T.E.M itself. Items from the S.I.S.T.E.M had level requirements, but anything could be purchased freely from other players. Gear had minimum stat thresholds to wield, though, so hoarding high-tier items too early was often futile.

Basic sustenance could be bought here in emergencies—cheap, tasteless, nutrient-balanced rations. But the real culinary treasures came from cooks and chefs with specialized classes, whose meals could provide powerful temporary buffs. These, however, spoiled quickly once listed in the Store, keeping food stalls, inns, and taverns very much alive.

The Store also featured diminishing returns on over-listed items, a safeguard built into the code to prevent monopolies and discourage mass hoarding for private armies. It was a system meant to reward effort—not greed.

This was the world Sam's soul approached.

A world where monsters stalked the forests, born from mana-warped beasts. A world where forgotten skyscrapers lay buried beneath moss and earth, their glass bones crumbling under new roots. A world where magic was not a myth, but a law of nature.

And in a cave on a distant mountain, a girl was about to be Integrated into the S.I.S.T.E.M.

And far above, a soul glowed faintly as it fell from the stars.

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