Dawn broke over a world that had no clue its heartbeat was about to stop.
Cars groaned through the morning traffic of New York, Lagos, Tokyo. People spilled coffee on their shirts. Teens scrolled through phones under blankets, hunting for dopamine before school. Everything ordinary, everything fragile.
On the edge of the Atlantic, Jack Hunter sat cross-legged on the crumbling pier his father had once taken him to fish. He was seventeen, hoodie zipped, headphones in, sketching mechs in the corner of his notebook. The gulls were fighting over stale bread. The sky above was watercolor blue, streaked with gold. He muttered to himself, shading the edge of a cannon on the mech's arm.
Someday, he thought. Someday I'll build a world where machines fight for us, not against us.
His phone buzzed. "Mom" flashed across the screen.
He ignored it. Music thundered in his ears—bass heavy, violent, like something from a video game trailer. He shut his notebook, shoved it in his backpack, and stood. The tide licked at the pier's edge like a patient predator.
Behind him, a woman cursed in Spanish, dropping her groceries. Someone else laughed. Everything was normal. So normal that Jack almost felt sick.
Somewhere above the clouds, something blinked.
---
High above Earth, unseen by satellites, hung a city of light. Not a spaceship. Not heaven. Something older. A cathedral built across dimensions, its spires skewering black holes, its gates carved from frozen lightning. This was The Loom, a crossroads of gods.
Inside, deities argued.
"I warned you," hissed the Fate Goddess, her eyes two shifting galaxies. "The Systems are activating without our command."
Across from her, the Machine God adjusted his mask of bronze gears. "Impossible. Nothing self-generates in this network. We wrote the codes. We forged the circuits."
"You forged your circuits," said the Solar Warlord. His armor burned like a captive sun. "The Architect whispered this might happen."
A fourth voice, soft as knives: "It was not the Architect." The Whispering Dream emerged from the shadows, her dress a ripple of nightmares. "Something is moving in the blank space. Something we erased before existence."
The gods fell silent. Even the Loom's walls pulsed slower, like a heartbeat skipping.
Beyond the cathedral's gates, far off in the dark, an eye opened. Golden iris, slit pupil. It rolled once, lazily, as if waking from a billion-year nap.
---
Jack took the subway back into the city. The train screamed through tunnels, lights flickering. Across from him a kid played a mobile game, muttering about "rare drops." A businessman in a suit fell asleep clutching a briefcase.
Jack leaned back, thumbed his phone. No notifications except spam. He typed a note to himself: "Write that mech chapter tonight. Make it darker."
The train lights flickered again. This time they didn't come back.
Someone screamed. The train groaned, slowed, stopped. Darkness swallowed the car. Then, without sound, every passenger's phone lit up at once.
A single line of text crawled across Jack's screen:
> [SYSTEM BOOTING…]
Jack frowned. "What the hell—"
The businessman's phone showed the same. The kid's tablet too. The girl two seats down started crying. "Is this some hack?"
The lights returned. But they weren't subway lights anymore. They were white, cold, and full of numbers. The walls melted into code. For a heartbeat, Jack saw the train not as metal but as data: strings of green symbols, endless corridors of math.
Then it snapped back. People gasped. Jack's phone vibrated so hard he almost dropped it.
> [SYSTEM INSTALLED.]
[USER: JACK HUNTER]
[INITIALIZING INTERFACE…]
A voice—not a sound but a thought—slid into his skull.
> User identified. Calibration begins now.
Jack clutched his head. "Who—what are you?"
> I am your System. Do not speak aloud. Thoughts suffice.
Her tone was flat, cold, alien. No warmth, no explanation. Like a knife reading a dictionary.
> Complete daily tasks. Level up. Failure = termination.
Jack's heart thudded. "Termination?!"
No reply.
Around him, chaos bloomed. Passengers were staring at glowing screens, shouting, crying. Some phones exploded in sparks. One man fainted. The train began moving again though no one had touched the controls.
Jack shoved his phone into his pocket. His ears rang with that cold voice. System? Like those dumb webnovel stories? This wasn't a game.
---
Above the planet, The Loom shook. Threads of fate snapped like spider silk.
The Machine God slammed his fist into the floor. "It's begun."
"Too soon," the Fate Goddess whispered. "The Abomination will feel it waking."
"The what?" The Solar Warlord scowled.
In the blank space beyond creation, the golden eye blinked again. Its pupil dilated.
A tail—longer than galaxies, tipped with a blade of nothingness—stirred.
---
Jack stumbled out of the subway onto the street. It was pandemonium. Screens in shop windows flickered with the same text. Drones fell from the sky. A taxi had crashed into a lamppost. People were shouting about "quests" and "stats" like lunatics.
He ducked into an alley, chest heaving. "This isn't real. It's some AR virus. Some—"
> User unstable. Recalibrating.
"Get out of my head!"
> Silence. Task one: Survive 24 hours.
Reward: Basic Adaptation Skill.
Failure: [REDACTED].
Jack's vision blurred. A small, glowing screen appeared in the air before him, like a hologram:
[TASK 1: SURVIVE.]
Time left: 23:59:59
He swore. "Oh holy—"
The ground shook. Not an earthquake. Something else. A ripple through reality.
Across the sky, a line of light appeared. Thin at first, like a scratch on glass. It widened. Through it Jack glimpsed something impossible: a world of chrome towers, walking mechs the size of mountains, alien skies.
People around him fell to their knees. Some reached toward the rift like worshippers.
Jack's system voice whispered:
> Planet Aetherion detected. Acquisition pending.
---
In The Loom, the gods watched the rift bloom.
"The humans found it," the Solar Warlord said, almost admiring. "The mech world."
"They did not find it," the Whispering Dream said. "It was shown to them."
"By who?" asked the Machine God.
No one answered.
Far beyond, the golden eye opened fully. Lion's jaws parted, revealing rows of teeth like shattered suns. Wings unfolded—feathers of light and shadow. Twelve tails uncoiled, each one lined with razors that could split atoms.
The abomination stretched. Chains of forgotten law snapped around its body.
It smiled.
---
Jack staggered back as a shockwave rippled from the rift. His screen blinked:
> [HIDDEN QUEST UNLOCKED.]
"First Witness of the Void."
Reward: Unknown.
"First witness? No thanks!"
> Accepted automatically.
The cold voice. Always cold. No escape.
Somewhere, deep in his bones, Jack felt a pull. Like the rift was calling to him personally. Like something on the other side knew his name.
He squeezed his eyes shut. "This isn't happening. This isn't happening…"
When he opened them again, the sky had turned black. Not night black. Code black. Symbols falling like rain.
And above it all, far beyond the breach, two golden eyes watched.
---
That night, across the planet, every system user dreamed the same dream: a cathedral of light, gods arguing, and a voice whispering:
> It was never meant to exist.
---
Jack jolted awake in his bed hours later, sweat plastering his shirt. His phone glowed on the nightstand. No notifications. The screen was blank. No sign of the System.
But when he sat up, a holographic timer floated in the air:
[TASK 1: SURVIVE.]
Time left: 23:12:07
He stared. Outside, sirens wailed. The city was on fire.
Far away, unseen, the abomination lifted one tail and traced a pattern in the void. Reality shivered. Systems flickered. Gods trembled.
Jack whispered to himself, "Someday… I'll build a world where machines fight for us, not against us."
Eve's voice, cold as the dark, replied inside his skull:
> Someday is now.