A soft hum filled the air. The steady rhythm of medical instruments pulsed like a heartbeat, their glow casting long shadows across the chamber. In the center of the sealed Evolution Chamber, a translucent medical pod stood upright, its surface alive with faint streams of data. Every flicker of change within its occupant was logged, measured, and catalogued.
The pod was meticulous. The moment it detected twitching in the patient's limbs, a cascade of protocols engaged. A mixture of chemical stabilizers was injected into the bloodstream, smoothing the weakness that usually followed sudden awakenings. The system had done this countless times for cultivators and nobles undergoing breakthroughs. This was routine. Standard.
But tonight was not routine.
Caden stirred within the pod. His eyelids twitched, heavy as stone, before the faintest sliver of light slipped through. His body felt impossibly weightless, caught somewhere between dream and gravity, as if the very laws of existence hadn't quite decided whether to claim him.
He tried to move his fingers, to test the solidity of flesh, but nothing obeyed. It was as if his mind had surfaced while his body remained shackled at the bottom of some unseen sea.
Sleep paralysis. The thought came half-drowsy, half-ironic."I've read about this… yeah, this must be sleep paralysis," he mused to himself, though no sound escaped his lips.
What he did not realize was that this paralysis was no mere quirk of biology.
Deep within his bone marrow, primordial energy surged—an ancient torrent of black-gold light that threaded itself through his very skeleton. Runes older than history carved themselves into his bones, each one alive, each one burning. They arranged themselves not in flat symbols but in impossible structures: spirals that bent space, diagrams folding into themselves like four-dimensional origami.
Seconds bled into minutes. Minutes stretched into hours. Time itself lost meaning inside the pod.
At last, from within the marrow-space, a pinprick of radiance bloomed. It was so small, so fragile—less than the tip of a strand of hair—yet it burned like a sun. How the Clock-System had dragged such a thing from the abyss of existence, no one could fathom.
But its work had only just begun.
From that sun, a droplet was born—a tiny molecule of blood, shining with both crimson and gold. The instant it emerged, Caden's body convulsed. His veins lit like rivers of fire, the pod trembling faintly as his frame shuddered in violent waves.
The droplet spread, multiplying as it entered his bloodstream. It was relentless, moving through his body like a juggernaut. Each passage left devastation in its wake. Tissues collapsed. Organs dissolved. The body was dismantled, not maliciously but with the precision of an artisan tearing down flawed scaffolding.
The blood worked fast, faster than thought. It judged, destroyed, rebuilt—all at once. Where it passed, the body crumbled into ruin. And where it lingered, a new architecture took shape.
Then came resistance.
Buried in his veins was the body's original inheritance—a weaker bloodline, a mere shadow of the primordial. It writhed in protest, lashing out against the invading sun-blood. But the droplet did not destroy it outright. Instead, it absorbed it, consumed it, folding its essence into itself like fuel for its work.
It was not conscious. Not in the way a mind was. Yet it moved with an alien intelligence, as though following blueprints written before the birth of the stars.
Bone densified, compacted into a lattice stronger than any steel. Runic inscriptions embedded themselves in every joint, flowing like veins of molten script across the skeleton.
The heart reformed next—not the soft muscle of mortals, but a sphere, smooth and solid like a polished black bowling ball, etched with eight symmetrical hollows. Within it blazed the sun, impossibly contained yet beating with a steady, sovereign rhythm.
One by one, new organs unfurled into place. They resembled human organs only in function, not in design. Interconnected, seamless, without hinge or pivot, each one adapted to the others in a web of movement and balance. No joint restricted them, no flaw weakened them. This was not the frailty of human biology. This was a vessel evolved.
The body that emerged was heavier than mountains, yet more flexible than water. Every fiber carried potential, a strength that whispered of destruction and creation alike.
At last, blood coursed anew through his veins—deep crimson tinged faintly with gold. The birth of a new lineage. A bloodline so ancient and primordial that its reemergence would one day shake the Empire to its foundations.
Caden, of course, knew none of this.
Inside his trapped awareness, he only felt the strange weightlessness stretching into eternity."…This is lasting too long. Am I even paralyzed anymore? Or is this… something else?"
His thoughts wandered to the tropes of novels he'd read. Body possession always came with side effects, madness, rejection, or worse. Maybe this was his price. Maybe he was dissolving into nothing.
The emptiness gnawed at him, until even his humor began to fray."One more minute like this and I swear, I'd lose it…"
And then—movement.
His fingers curled. His grip, sudden and fierce, pressed against the pod's glass wall. The strength behind it startled even him. The transparent surface groaned and cracked beneath his palm, hairline fractures spiderwebbing outward.
He blinked. The world flickered, his mind chased again by fragmented memories: the distorted sky, runes burning black, a sun dragged screaming from an abyss, and—
The giant.
It loomed in the memory, vast and incomprehensible, its gaze fixed solely upon him. Not the Clock. Something else. Something greater. The kind of fear he had never truly known welled inside him before merciful darkness swallowed the vision whole.
He released his grip. The cracks sealed themselves almost instantly, the pod repairing with quiet efficiency.
Then came the pain.
Merciless, blinding, tearing through every nerve. His chest heaved, breath shallow but real. Light burned at the edges of his vision.
Outside the chamber, Emil sat rigid, his hands clenched behind his back. Doctor Greed stood beside him, arms folded, gaze fixed on the readings scrolling across his holographic console. Neither could step inside. The Evolution Chamber was a sealed entity, a sovereign cocoon where no interference was allowed.
Both of them nearly leapt when the sharp beep echoed through the hall.
Inside, the pod's systems detected awakening. With a hiss, the structure shifted, tilting from its upright station into a gentle horizontal incline. The transparent shell split open, releasing a faint mist into the air.
The medical pod had done its duty.
Its occupant had opened his eyes.
For the first time since the tolling of the Clock, Prince awakened.