Rafael was drenched in sweat. He had just come back from his night job at a scrap tech workshop. Even though it was equipped with cooling vents, the sheer amount of work he had to grind through left his muscles aching.
"I'm home," Rafael said as he pushed the metallic door open.
Cough! cough! cough!
"Welcome back, dear."
"Are you sick again? Why don't you just quit the extra shifts, Mom?" Rafael asked with a worried voice.
"Dear..."
Cough! cough!
"...if I don't work, how can we pay our debts?"
"Am I not here? I am already earning as much as I can."
"You need that money for the academy fees. Until you get a scholarship…" Her tone was soft, but each word carried the weight of illness.
"Mom, I told you that I don't want to go there. Why bother giving them money?"
His mother smiled faintly, though her lips trembled with the effort. "Because it's the only door left open for you."
The only way you say?! I am just a Rank 0 loser.
Rafael wanted to scream at his mother, but he held back. His mother was telling the truth after all. After his father's death during the monster outbreak in the city, their lives had been buried under debt. Loan sharks were never far behind.
Children of those who died in the outbreak were given spots in the academy, and he was one of them—but that didn't make the fees any easier to pay. The academy itself was a place full of opportunities, offering scholarships for those who could prove their talent and show their worth.
But Rafael, proving his worth? That's the greatest joke in this world ruled by power. He couldn't even lift a pen with his Evolved ability. He was weak regarding hand-to-hand combat; melee combat was out of the question. His only plus point is his brain. Not that he used it well, but he had it.
His mother broke the silence. "Rafael… I don't want you to suffer like your father or me…" Cough! cough! cough! "...you have to become strong, self-sufficient… so you can live a good life, and so Raven can… so Raven can have one too. No, you must."
Rafael didn't respond. His little sister Raven was already asleep, curled against their mother, blissfully unaware of the weight pressing down on them all.
"…Fine," Rafael muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'll try. For you… and for Raven."
His mother smiled faintly, and with that tiny victory, she leaned back, pulling Raven closer in her arms. The little girl stirred but didn't wake.
Rafael stood for a moment, then quietly entered his narrow room. He pulled on his sweat-soaked clothes and washed his face. His black hair was disheveled now, his blue eyes tired.
Rafael sat in the darkness, the sounds of the city softly drifting through the thin walls of their apartment. His eyes drifted to the holo-screen in the corner, its surface permanently scarred with burnt-in headlines:
"The Star That Broke the World."
Everyone knew the story. No one forgot.
Six hundred years ago, the sky itself had split apart. A colossal asteroid, glowing with unnatural light, tore through the atmosphere and slammed into the Earth. They called it the Celestial Fragment, but that was too pretty a name for what it did. Continents cracked like glass, seas boiled into vapor, and cities were erased. Humanity nearly ended that night.
But the disaster didn't stop with destruction. From the heart of the Fragment leaked something worse, Void Particles. Invisible, untouchable, yet flowed into air, soil, flesh, and bone. Animals twisted into nightmares. Plants grew teeth and poison. The land itself warped into forbidden zones where no ordinary man could survive.
And then came the Evolved. Humans whose bodies resonated with those particles, forming crystalline Cores that bent the impossible into reality. Fire from empty air. Flesh like steel. Lightning in their veins. Power had rewritten the law of survival, and only the Evolved stood tall in the ruins.
Six centuries later, humanity had rebuilt, but on the foundations of blood. Neon towers climbed the skies, but below them, debt and hunger chained the powerless.
In such a world, Rafael's existence was nothing but irony. A Voidling. A joke.
Rafael lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling. The flicker of his core pulsed softly within his chest, like a candle struggling against the wind. He raised his hand and summoned it.
A thin haze of black mist seeped between his fingers, curling upward. It looked pathetic. Fragile. Like smoke from a dying ember.
He clenched his fist, snuffing it out.
"Worthless," he muttered.
Suddenly, the room felt cold, a feeling that had nothing to do with the broken cooling vent. The shadows along the walls became unusually deep, as if they had a will of their own..
Rafael blinked.
He was falling asleep, not naturally. Something compelled him to sleep. He resisted, tried to keep his eyes open. But the force was stronger than his will. He fell asleep.
Rafael's mind slipped into darkness. Every hum, every noise, the neon lights of the city, everything faded; only the darkness remained. He stood alone on the edge of an endless void. Beneath him was endless black water that reached his ankles. The air was thick, nearly oppressive, and pressed down with the weight of the ocean.
drip… drip… drip…
Something was coming towards him. He could feel it.
"Where am I...? Wh-what is this place?" Rafael muttered under his breath. He was tense, and every moment felt chilling.
Then he felt it—a presence.
"Who… who's there?" His voice trembled, even in the emptiness.
A shadow moved from the darkness ahead. It was long, long enough to sweep across the void, its edges swirling like smoke caught in a storm. Two silver eyes slowly opened, piercing straight through Raphael. There was a glimmer of intelligence in them that felt ancient, patient, and hungry.
"Who… who are you?" His voice cracked.
The shadow pulsed, almost responding, not with words, but with a presence that weighed on him, pressing into his chest. Then it whispered, not with sound but inside his mind:
"You… are weak."
Rafael flinched. The voice was his, and not his. He clenched his fists. "I—I'm not weak!"
"Rank 0… a spark. Pathetic. Yet…"
The shadow swirled closer, coiling around him like smoke, brushing his skin without touching it. "…yet you feel it. The hunger. The need. The desire to be more. To take."
Rafael grew tense. Tiny sparks of black mist twitched along his skin as his Core flickered softly in response. He made an effort to push back, to take a step back, but the void had neither a wall nor a floor, only this presence, which was getting stronger, observing him.
"You flinch at everything… yet here you are. Hungry, trembling. Tell me, do you want to keep crawling, or do you want to take it?"
Rafael stumbled, a scream rising within him—but it didn't sound like his own voice.
The voice inside him, in his head, continued, soft and coaxing:
"Let me… show you."
A cold tendril of black mist came out from the shadow, brushing his chest. The instant it touched him, pain flowed through every nerve. Yet it was thrilling, like tasting power for the first time. His Core flared. It was bright and unstable, responding to the voice.
Rafael gasped. "N-no… stop!"
"Stop? Weakness. You have only two choices: obey… or fade into nothing. Which will it be?"
The water beneath him suddenly trembled, the black waves as if alive, pulling him deeper. The shadows leaned closer, whispering, waiting.
Something inside Rafael snapped. His fists clenched, not with fear, but with defiance. He wanted to resist, but the pull was overwhelming.
And yet… beneath that fear, a single thought struck him, sharp and dangerous.
Maybe I don't have to be nothing. Maybe I can take it. Maybe I can become… more.
The black mist shimmered around him, reaching as if to promise. The void hummed, waiting for his choice.
Rafael's blue eyes, weary yet burning with the first spark of resolve, met the darkness.
"I… will try," he whispered.
The shadows recoiled slightly, as if smiling. And in the heart of that endless void, a voice settled, calm, intimate, almost hungry:
"Good… we begin."
The black water swirled at his ankles, the silence heavy, the darkness waiting like a predator in the brush.
Rafael gasped.
His eyes flew open.
The void was gone. He lay in his room again, staring at the broken ceiling. The city hummed beyond the walls as sweat ran down his face and his chest thudded wildly.
He sat up, clutching his head. The darkness of that place still clung to him, an aftertaste on his skin, his lungs, his thoughts.
Then he noticed it.
In front of him, black mist coiled around his knees, thick and dense, rising slowly with a faint silver glow at the edges.
Words burned themselves into the air. Not letters. Not symbols. Something between them, shifting and alive, yet somehow he understood it.
[VOID PROTOCOL: INITIATED]
The mist flared, forming another line, sharper, more defined:
[HOST IDENTIFIED: RAFAEL]
[CORE RANK: 0 – FLICKER STATE]
[REWRITING PARAMETERS…]
His breath caught. This wasn't a holo-screen. This wasn't a projection. It was inside the air itself, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
The last line flickered, then etched itself into his vision:
[INNER VOID AWAKENED. PATH SELECTION MANDATORY.]
The black mist coiled tighter, like an eye opening, and for a heartbeat, Rafael swore he felt the silver gaze of the shadow staring back at him.
"…What… what is this?" he whispered, but the mist only pulsed once more, as if answering.
[WELCOME, SOVEREIGN CANDIDATE.]