Some believe the world began with a spark of Anima, a single act of creation that spread to fill the void. They are wrong.
The world began with a song. A chorus of infinite power, sung by a race known as the Primordials. They were not gods, for gods are made of faith. The Primordials were made of the very substance of reality. Their word was law, and their will was a command that sculpted the universe from raw chaos. They sang concepts into existence: Friction, Gravity, Heat, and Light. The world was their grand symphony for ages, a living testament to their art.
But the song ended.
No one knows why. The archives of the First Empire speak of a great sundering, a cosmic silence that left the world hollow. The mighty Primordials did not die; they vanished, leaving only the faintest echo of their power behind. Their grand concepts, once vibrant and alive, became the quiet, unbreakable laws of the universe. The Anima, which was once a living chorus, became a faint hum. It is a whisper where there was once a roar.
Now, millennia after the Great Silence, the world's mightiest are a group of seven beings known collectively as The Nexus, and they are considered the strongest beings in this world. All believe that the song is over. That the time of the Primordials is a distant, unrepeatable memory.
They have no idea how wrong they are.
Earth - Chicago, Illinois
1:20 PM
The harsh buzz of an alarm pierced through Jordan's sleep, dragging him from dreams he couldn't quite remember. Rolling over with a groan, he grabbed his phone from the nightstand and squinted at the screen. 1:20 PM. His thumb hovered over the snooze button.
"Thirty minutes won't hurt," he muttered, pulling the covers over his head. The darkness was comfortable, familiar—like the orphanage rooms he'd grown up in, where hiding under blankets was the closest thing to privacy he'd ever known.
Just as sleep began to reclaim him, his phone exploded with sound again. This time, it wasn't the alarm. The screen lit up with a name: Twin.
Jordan stared at it for a few seconds, debating whether to answer. Twin wasn't actually his twin—just his best friend since high school, who happened to look enough like him that people assumed they were brothers. Same height, same build, different stories. Where Jordan had grown up with nothing but hand-me-downs and group home furniture, Twin had everything. Maybe that's why they clicked—opposites and all that.
"Yo, Twin," Jordan answered, voice still thick with sleep.
"I'm having a party tonight. You should come." Twin's voice carried that familiar energy that meant trouble. Naomi's going to be there."
The name hit Jordan like cold water. Naomi. His crush since he was eight years old, and thirteen years later, at twenty-one, he still couldn't string together a coherent sentence around her. She'd been in his third-grade class, the girl with the bright smile who'd shared her crayons when his broke. Now she was in college, studying to be a doctor, while Jordan worked warehouse jobs and slept until afternoon. Suddenly, he was completely awake.
"Hell yeah," Jordan replied, sitting up so fast his head spun.
Twin laughed. "I knew you would say that. The fact that you like her but can never find the courage to tell her is insane to me. But listen, come by 8:30. I need help setting up early."
"I got you," Jordan said, already mentally planning his outfit.
"Peace." The line went dead.
Jordan climbed out of bed, his bare feet hitting the cold hardwood floor of his small studio apartment. Living alone had its perks—no one to judge him for sleeping until afternoon, no one to complain about his odd hours. He'd been alone so long that solitude felt like an old friend. Foster homes from age seven, group homes from fourteen, then finally aging out at eighteen with nothing but a garbage bag of clothes and a chip on his shoulder. Three years later, he'd built something resembling a life, even if it wasn't much.
He grabbed a fresh towel from his dresser—a beaten-up thing he'd gotten from Goodwill—along with a black T-shirt and dark jeans—nothing fancy, but clean. The shower's hot water washed away the last remnants of sleep, steam fogging up the small bathroom until it felt like a sauna.
——————-
Stepping out, Jordan stood before the mirror, wiping away the condensation. Water droplets still clung to his brown skin. At six-foot-three, he had the kind of build that came from street basketball and loading trucks rather than gym memberships. His dreads, freshly retwisted last week, hung past his shoulders when wet. Brown eyes stared back at him—eyes that his friends said made him look like Adonis from Greek mythology.
"Man, you're like if Adonis were from the South Side," Twin would joke. Jordan didn't see it. Sure, his face was symmetrical and jawline sharp enough to catch Naomi's friend group stealing glances, but handsome didn't mean much when you froze around the person who mattered.
Those same brown eyes had learned to read people like books, to catch the tiny tells that revealed truth beneath lies. Growing up without parents, siblings, or anyone really had done something to his brain. While other kids were learning social skills from family dinners and bedtime stories, Jordan learned to survive by observation.
He'd spent so many hours alone with just his thoughts that he'd started seeing things others missed—how someone's shoulder would tense before they threw a punch, how people's eyes would flick left when they lied, the subtle shift in breathing when someone was scared. It was like the world moved in slow motion sometimes, every micro-expression a telegraph of intention.
He threw on his clothes, grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter—which was just a bar separating his bed from the "kitchen"—and headed out. The afternoon sun hit him like a slap,
Chicago summer heat is already making the air shimmer above the asphalt. His black Dodge Charger sat in the parking lot like a predator at rest, its paint job so deep it seemed to absorb light. The car was his one real splurge, bought with cash after two years of double shifts at the warehouse. The engine roared to life with a satisfying rumble that never got old.
Pulling out of the lot, Jordan noticed the gas gauge hovering dangerously close to E. He'd been putting off filling up, stretching every dollar until payday, but showing up to Twin's on fumes wasn't an option. The nearest station was three blocks away, one of those sketchy spots where bulletproof glass separated customers from cashiers and half the pumps were always broken.
The bell above the door chimed as he entered. The cashier, a middle-aged man with tired eyes and a faded Cubs jersey, barely looked up from his phone. Jordan slapped three twenties on the counter.
"Sixty on pump six," he said.
The cashier nodded, punching numbers into the ancient register. Jordan's stomach growled, reminding him he hadn't eaten since… yesterday? Maybe the day before? When you lived alone, meals became optional, something you did when you remembered rather than on any schedule. He wandered toward the chip aisle, scanning for his usual spicy nacho Doritos. Nothing. They had
Cool Ranch, regular, even those weird sweet chili ones, but not the flavor he wanted. Typical.
He was about to leave when the door burst open.
Five people rushed in, screaming, guns drawn. Jordan's body went still—not frozen with fear, but with the calculated stillness of someone who'd been here before. Chicago had taught him many lessons, and the first was simple: panic gets you killed.
"Hands up! Open the register, now!" The leader, a wiry man with neck tattoos and wild eyes, pressed his gun against the bulletproof glass like somehow that would make it disappear.
The other four spread out, guns sweeping across the store. Jordan counted six customers including himself. A mother clutched her daughter near the door, trying to inch toward it without being noticed. An old man stood frozen by the coffee machine, his cup shaking in his hand. Two teenagers by the candy aisle, probably high school kids, looked like they were about to piss themselves. And him.
The mother made her move. Too obvious. One of the gunmen—younger, jumpier than the rest—caught her movement and pistol-whipped her across the temple. She went down hard, blood immediately pooling on the dirty linoleum. Her daughter, maybe seven years old, started crying, reaching for her unconscious mother.
Jordan watched it all, his mind already working. This was just another puzzle, another situation to solve. Some people get their adrenaline fix from roller coasters or extreme sports. Jordan? He lived for chaos, for those moments when everything balanced on a knife's edge. He knew it was sick, but when you grew up in the system, when every day was a fight just to keep your stuff, food, and dignity, you either broke or learned to love the battle. Jordan had learned to love it.
His eyes swept over each gunman, cataloging everything:
The leader: favoring his left leg, old injury maybe. Kept shifting weight, trying to look tough but compensating for weakness. Prison tattoos, but faded—been out a while. Desperate.
Gunman Two: the one who'd hit the mother. Shaking slightly, eyes darting between the woman on the floor and the door. First timer, probably. The guilt was already eating at him. Kept wiping his palm on his jeans—sweaty hands, nervous. Would probably freeze if things went bad.
Gunman Three: calm, professional. This wasn't his first rodeo. He stood balanced, gun steady, watching everything. No wasted movement. The dangerous one. Military training, maybe, or just lots of practice. He was the one to worry about.
Gunman Four: young, maybe nineteen. Kept looking to the leader for approval. Follower, not a thinker. His gun was too big for his hands—borrowed, probably. He'd never shot anyone.
Gunman Five: standing by the door, supposed to be watching for cops, but kept checking his phone. Distracted, sloppy. Probably high, judging by the way his eyes weren't quite focused.
Jordan felt that familiar itch under his skin, the one that had gotten him into so many fights over the years. He should stay quiet, let them rob the place, and leave. That's what an intelligent person would do. But Jordan had never been accused of being smart when it came to danger.
He started walking toward Gunman Two, the shaky one. Slow, casual, hands visible.
"Hey," Jordan said, his voice eerily calm.
"Can I just get some free stuff?"
The gunman spun toward him, gun raised. Up close, Jordan could see everything—the desperation in his bloodshot eyes, the sweat beading on his forehead despite the store's aggressive AC, the way his finger trembled on the trigger. The kid—because that's what he was, really, probably not much older than Jordan—was in over his head. Jordan felt a flicker of pity. Then he remembered the mother bleeding on the floor, her daughter's terrified sobs, and the pity evaporated.
People who pointed guns at innocent people for money didn't deserve sympathy. Jordan had been desperate before, had gone hungry, and had slept on the streets, but he'd never done this.
Jordan moved like water. His fist drove into the gunman's liver with surgical precision, a punch he'd perfected in countless street fights. The body shot dropped him to his knees, gasping.
Before anyone could react, Jordan had the gun, his arm wrapped around the man's throat, barrel pressed to his temple.
"Nobody move, or your boy gets a new hole in his head," Jordan said, still in that unsettlingly calm voice. The chaos, the danger—it made everything crystal clear. This was living. "Guns on the floor. Slide them over. Now."
They hesitated. Jordan pressed the gun harder, and the hostage whimpered.
"I'm not asking twice," Jordan said. "And I'm way too calm for someone holding a gun, which should tell you I'm not afraid to use it."
The guns clattered to the floor. Jordan kicked them toward the storage closet, keeping his human shield between him and the others. He backed toward the closet, swept the guns inside with his foot, never taking his eyes off the group.
"Everyone stay calm, and we all go home—"
The punch came from his blind spot. Jordan had made the classic mistake—he'd counted five gunmen when they'd entered, but there had been six. The sixth had been in the bathroom, and Jordan had been too focused on the immediate threat to check. The impact snapped his head to the side, stars exploding across his vision. The gun flew from his hand, skittering across the floor.
What followed wasn't a fight—it was a beating. But Jordan gave as good as he got for a while, years of group home scraps and street fights flowing through his muscles like memory. He broke one attacker's nose with a headbutt, the crunch satisfying even as hands grabbed him. He probably cracked another's ribs with an elbow. Left a third spitting blood from a solid hook to the jaw.
But six on one wasn't a fight; it was math, and the numbers weren't in his favor.
They eventually got him down, boots and fists raining down while they laughed. Jordan curled up, protecting his head and vital organs, and caught glimpses through his arms—the other customers watching with sad eyes, too scared to help, too human to look away.
He didn't blame them. He probably wouldn't have helped either if positions were reversed.
"What a dumbass!" one of them laughed, and the others joined in, the tension of almost being caught turning into vicious humor.
Jordan sighed, tasting blood. What the fuck was I thinking? he wondered. But even through the pain, part of him was satisfied. This was better than sleeping through another afternoon. This was better than standing frozen while bad things happened to good people. This was living, even if it was also dying.
"Well," he muttered to himself, blood bubbling on his lips, "it was fun while it lasted."
"Next time, check for two guns," the sixth gunman said, pulling a revolver from his ankle holster.
Jordan looked up at the barrel pointed at his face. Time seemed to slow, and he had the strangest thought: Either this or getting shot—knew it would end one of these ways. In my next life, reincarnate me as a dragon or something.
He closed his eyes, thinking of Naomi one last time. He'd never get to tell her how he felt. Twin would be pissed he didn't show up to help set up. But at least that little girl would have her mother, even if her mother had a concussion. That was something, right?
The gun fired.
Darkness.
Nothing.
An endless void where thought should be, where Jordan should be, but wasn't.
No pain, no fear, no anything. Just… absence.
And then, somewhere in that infinite nothing, impossibly, incomprehensibly…
A song began to play.