Ryu read about the disasters that had taken place all around the world from the start of this year to now. First came the natural disasters—the earthquakes, floods, eruptions, and storms that had already stolen tens of thousands of lives. But the pages didn't stop there.
They turned dark, the hue shifting to a metallic gray, as the Book revealed the artificial disasters.
January 1995: A coal mine explosion in Shanxi, China, killing more than two hundred miners trapped underground. Their final cries echoed in the black tunnels as the Book displayed the collapse of steel beams and the suffocating clouds of dust.
March 1995: The Tokyo subway sarin attack. Hundreds poisoned, twelve killed, thousands injured by the invisible gas that spread like a curse. The Book's pages showed ordinary passengers clutching their throats, their lives undone in moments by human cruelty.
April 1995: The Oklahoma City bombing in the United States. A federal building torn apart in a single deafening blast, leaving 168 dead, including children in a daycare. The Book whispered of smoke, blood, and twisted concrete, symbols of hatred turned into ruin.
It went further. It revealed atomic bomb tests still being carried out in the Pacific by France, shaking coral islands with radiation. Entire ecosystems groaned, even the world tried to look away.
But then—the script on the page bled into violet, and a different kind of record emerged.
Mutants.
February 1995: A newly awakened mutant in Lagos, Nigeria, lost control of seismic powers. An entire neighborhood cracked open like glass. Over three hundred were injured, and dozens perished as buildings sank into the trembling earth.
May 1995: In Moscow, a mutant awakening inside a crowded metro station caused an uncontrolled discharge of electricity. The resulting inferno killed scores of passengers and left the underground rails melted. The official reports buried the truth, calling it "an electrical failure."
June 1995: South America, deep in the Amazon. A mutant attack against logging companies saw jungles burned and machinery twisted into molten slag. While the mutant disappeared into the forest, the fires claimed hundreds of square miles of rainforest, leaving scars visible from the sky.
The Book lingered on these pages, as if to warn Ryu: "Natural or artificial, accident or intention—the world bleeds the same."
Ryu, seeing all this, felt a tightness at his chest—so much death, so much destruction all across the world. Yet, as always, his ability steadied his nerves, cooling the panic before it could overwhelm him. He did not close the [Book of Everything]. He pressed on, eyes following the golden script as it shifted, the heading bending into new words:
[Natural & Artificial Disasters: Probabilities of the Near Future]
[These were not certainties, only outcomes shaped by current patterns, data, and forces already in motion.]
Ryu read on with intent focus, his eyes tracing each line as if the words themselves carried glimpses of what might come in the future.
The first pages spoke of natural upheavals: strong hurricanes gathering over the Atlantic, their probability high because of the unusually warm waters this year; typhoons predicted to sweep across the Pacific, threatening Taiwan and Okinawa with landslides and power loss; the rivers of Bangladesh and northeast India swelling again, where soaked soils promised renewed flooding; and in Nepal's mountains, slopes ready to break loose into deadly landslides.
The Book noted that the volcano at Montserrat would not calm, but continue erupting well into next year, while New Zealand's Mt. Ruapehu hinted at lahars that could devastate valleys in sudden bursts.
Drought would tighten its grip on the Horn of Africa, cutting deep into harvests. Even the earth itself seemed restless, with long-fault lines under quiet strain in Japan, Turkey, and Taiwan—no guarantee of when, but a whisper that pressure was building.
Turning the page, he found the darker ink of man-made catastrophes.
Nuclear testing was marked as "very likely," with France preparing detonations in the Pacific, an act sure to shake both politics and the environment.
Across Eastern Europe and Asia, mines and chemical plants were listed as fragile—accidents and explosions predicted from old equipment and desperate quotas.
Pipelines in the Niger Delta were flagged for sabotage, fires and spills staining land and water. Even the shadow of copycat chemical attacks hung over cities, seeded by the infamy of recent terror, though their methods would likely falter.
The Balkans were named, too—conflict there set to flare violently in the coming months, with civilians bearing the heaviest cost. Farther east, the Book warned of fragile financial systems in Southeast Asia, not yet collapsing, but trembling under the weight of reckless growth.
And woven between these were disasters of another kind—ones Ryu knew only existed in his world: mutant awakenings.
The Book recorded how stress and fear pushed powers to erupt in crowded cities, with deadly side effects: a flame bursting uncontrolled in a subway, a shockwave shattering glass in a school.
It spoke of electrokinetics disrupting power grids, plunging districts into darkness, and of radicals luring mutants into eco-sabotage across forests in South America and Southeast Asia. Some would be stolen, forced into paramilitary hands in the chaos of Eastern Europe's shadow wars.
Ryu exhaled, the tightness in his chest threatening to rise again, but his ability steadied him. He now understood—the Book was not only for knowledge of what had been, but for sensing the fractures of what could be.
Finally, Ryu came to the last chapter of the Probable Future Disasters. But this one was unlike the others. The heading was highlighted in a dark red hue, its letters sharper, colder, almost as if the Book itself was urging caution.
[Category: Man-Made Natural Disaster]
[Title: The Awakening]
The text scrolled into view as Ryu's eyes followed:
[Investigations conducted by hidden research groups in Antarctica are progressing rapidly. These groups are not publicly acknowledged but possess both governmental and private backing. Their objective is the recovery of a dormant entity buried deep beneath the ice shelf. Its nature is unknown, but data collected suggests it is neither geological nor technological in origin. Records indicate it predates human civilization.]
The following section was blunt, almost clinical:
[Projected Consequences:]
– Disturbance of global climate patterns due to release of large-scale unknown energy fields.
– Potential destabilization of magnetic poles and atmospheric systems.
– Biological and psychological hazards anticipated, as exposure to dormant energy signatures has already caused localized environmental anomalies.
– Civil and military structures may fail to contain outcomes once the entity is awakened.
Then came the probability chart:
[Probability of Awakening:]
– Within 1 year: 38%
– Within 5 years: 100%
The Book ended with a cold note:
[Assessment: This event is classified as a man-made natural disaster. The entity would not awaken naturally; external interference is the trigger. Current activity in Antarctica increases the likelihood of this disaster becoming inevitable within the predicted timeframe.]
Ryu suddenly sat up, his eyes widening as the words slipped out before he could stop them: "What in the actual world!" Almost instantly, he clapped a hand over his mouth, but the shock refused to fade.
His equilibrium body did not strip away the emotions this time to leave him fully calm—instead, it only steadied his mind, making sure he could endure the surge of feelings without breaking beneath them, as his eyes traced the lines of that dark and probable future.
This wasn't like the floods, the fires, or the earthquakes. What he saw now was different. This was the work of human hands, reaching into places they never should have touched, dragging into light what the world itself had chosen to bury long ago.
***
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