Flashback: Subject 000
Before Damien.Before the tournaments.Before fusion serums flooded the veins of soldiers and students—There was Subject 000.
The first success.The only perfect prototype of the Null Sanctum's darkest ambition: to forge a Starborn, not born of stars… but carved from science.
Subject 000 was everything the Sanctum dreamed of—physically unmatched, genetically stable, a fusion of ancient Starborn code with perfected human DNA sequences. His genome housed a controlled storm: speed, precision, endurance, intellect.
But one thing went wrong.
He woke up.
Not as a weapon.
As a man.
He asked questions. Made jokes. Showed restraint. Looked the scientists in the eye and saw them not as gods, but as men trying to play one.
"You didn't create me," he once said. "You assembled me. There's a difference."
That's when the project was deemed compromised.
They ordered the shutdown.
But before the injection could be administered, before the failsafe protocols could erase his mind—Subject 000 fought back.
He tore through the compound like a force of nature. Bone broke steel. Flesh shattered armor. Ten guards dead. Three researchers crippled. Surveillance wiped. Alarms silenced.
Then... he was gone.
Vanished into the underworld of a billion screaming cities. Vanished into myth.
Null Sanctum classified the incident as Echo Zero—a redacted memory, a reminder that perfection without obedience is a threat, not an asset.
They called him the Ghost King after that. A prototype god who refused to be a slave.
And for fourteen years, he remained unseen.
Until a boy with golden eyes walked into a ring and shattered everything, they thought they'd buried.