The second year of the Xyprus Academy Combat Tournament had begun—an annual spectacle of controlled violence broadcast across the system, where reputations were forged and futures were bought. The elite brought enhancements. The desperate brought ambition. And Damien brought his fists.
Still unaugmented. Still unbreakable.
He'd refused fusion offers from half a dozen minor sponsors and ignored the jeers of classmates who called him prehistoric. But on the battlefield, it was always the same—he climbed, round after round, crushing enhanced rivals with sheer will, grit, and timing that felt almost… unnatural.
Whispers followed him now. "A freak." "A fluke." "Maybe he's hiding something."
By the time the semi-finals arrived, the pressure was impossible to ignore. Major sponsors and academy officials, under pressure from corporate backers and competing students, mandated blood testing. Officially, it was to scan for illegal serum doping. Unofficially, it was to discredit the rising anomaly in their midst.
That was when the real problem began.
Null Sanctum, cloaked in silence for over a decade, breached Xyprus.
Hidden among technicians and observers, their operatives infiltrated the testing labs. Their internal scanners weren't looking for banned compounds. They were looking for legacy DNA—and they found it.
One student's blood pattern triggered every encrypted flag in their black database.
A lost subject. One they believed died fourteen years ago.
Embedded deep in the boy's genome was an impossible trinity: Canelo. Ali. Foreman. Not simulated. Not spliced. Integrated. Inherited.
Natural.
The operatives panicked. This wasn't artificial fusion. This was genetic birthright—a blueprint Null Sanctum had tried and failed to stabilize through science.
They traced the boy's records. Everything checked out. Normal upbringing. No parental involvement in the academy. No fusion exposure. No lab history.
And yet he stood there, fists wrapped in cloth, golden eyes staring through his next opponent, oblivious to the war he had just reignited.
The question echoed across encrypted channels of Null Sanctum and high offices alike:
"How the hell was he born?"