The sky tore apart.
Not in the usual way of storms or lightning. This was worse—unnatural, impossible. Neon-blue veins laced the clouds like fracturing glass, cutting through the dying light of a sun barely visible through the ash and smog. Entire city blocks trembled, streets cracked, and twisted buildings rotated in midair. Fragments of the familiar world floated like shards of broken glass, colliding with each other in chaotic harmony.
Silas Renvar crouched behind a collapsed overpass, knuckles white as he clutched the strap of his scavenger pack. Dust and rubble rattled around him, each tremor shaking loose memories of a life he barely remembered.
"Not again… not now," he muttered under his breath.
He had survived worse—raider attacks, rogue drones, collapsing infrastructure—but this was on a scale he could not comprehend. His chest burned, every instinct screaming at him to run, yet a strange compulsion rooted him to the cracked concrete. Something deep inside told him: you were meant to see this.
A sharp, electronic ping echoed in his mind.
System Activated.
Silas froze. That tone—sterile, synthetic, almost mechanical—was the same chime that classes like Mages or Engineers heard every time their skills leveled up. But he had never been assigned a class. He had never been chosen.
Yet a floating holographic menu flickered before him, broken and glitching, hovering midair. Lines of code twisted and folded over themselves like a corrupted program. And then, words he could not comprehend fully appeared:
[CLASS ASSIGNED: SCRAPPER] [STATUS: ERROR – UNAUTHORIZED ENTITY]
Scrapper. The weakest class in the System. A joke of a designation. Useless. Worthless. He should have ignored it, should have turned and run, should have stayed hidden like he always did.
But he did not.
A tingling sensation ran up his arms, faint at first, then electric. He looked down at the cracked tablet lying in the rubble. It lifted into the air without explanation. The small collection of glowing rune shards he had scavenged yesterday hovered around it. They merged, dissolving into a pulse of energy that shot up his arm and surged into his chest.
Glitch detected.
The familiar rigid menus of the System appeared—but wrong. They were corrupted, fragmented, impossible to navigate for anyone else. Somehow, for reasons he could not explain, Silas could manipulate them.
[ACCESS GRANTED: HYBRID PROTOCOL – UNAUTHORIZED]
A shiver ran down his spine. The first. The only one. The System had made a mistake, and that mistake was him.
Behind him, the Cataclysm rift widened. Buildings tore themselves apart, roads fractured into floating platforms, and streaks of raw energy shot into the sky. Survivors screamed, clutching debris or clinging to shards of building as they were sucked upward. Silas clenched his fists, feeling the pulse of strange energy in his veins—not magic, not technology, but a fusion of both. Circuits intertwined with glowing runes along his skin. Every scrap of tech, every fragment of rune, resonated with him.
Something moved at the edge of his vision—a rat, mutated and glowing faintly with corrupted mana, scurried across the shattered street. Normally, it would have been nothing. Now, its stats appeared before his eyes:
[ENEMY: MUTANT RODENT] [LEVEL: 1] [HP: 15/15] [ELEMENT: AETHER-TECH HYBRID]
Instinctively, he reached out. A shard of glowing energy shot from his fingertips and struck the rat. It convulsed, then dissolved into light, leaving a small fragment floating in midair.
[ITEM ACQUIRED: MANA-TECH SHARD] [XP +5]
Silas staggered back, blinking. The HUD—his personal interface—flashed around his vision like a broken game screen. He was leveling up. He raised his hands again, sending pulses of hybrid energy at nearby debris. Each pulse absorbed the fragments of tech and mana around him, forming a jagged staff of light, circuits, and runes in mid-air.
The rift above groaned, metal tearing against glass. Waves of mutant beasts and corrupted drones were pulled into the vortex, colliding violently. Silas steadied himself, gripping the floating staff. This… this is survival now.
A whisper echoed in his mind, neither human nor machine:
"Unauthorized… Hybrid… Ascend."
Silas froze. The System itself was speaking. He was alone. The first Hybrid. Capable of fusing mana and tech in ways no one else could. Every other survivor was powerless; every other hero helpless.
His eyes glowed cyan-gold. The world was collapsing, but the System's mistake had given him power beyond anyone's control.
He leapt into the rift.
Wind, light, and corrupted energy tore around him. Buildings shattered, debris spun in zero gravity, and mutant beasts circled in impossible formations. He gripped the floating staff, sending pulses of energy to clear a path.
Every movement, every pulse, every shard of energy that responded to him was proof: he was no longer a scrapper. He was something else. Something forbidden. Something… dangerous.
The rift twisted around him, pulling him faster. Above, below, all directions, impossible angles of space collided. Silas adjusted mid-air, using the staff to propel himself, slashing at fragments of broken drones and shards of debris. Each swing absorbed mana-tech energy, reinforcing his staff, expanding his abilities in real time.
For the first time, he felt alive. Not borrowed, not temporary, not granted—his own power.
Then a massive shadow emerged from the rift—a mutant monstrosity, part machine, part corrupted mana. Its glowing eyes fixed on him. The HUD flickered, highlighting its stats:
[ENEMY: CATASTROPHE HYBRID BEAST] [LEVEL: 8] [HP: 230/230] [ELEMENT: AETHER-TECH] [REWARD: 150 XP, MANA-TECH FRAGMENTS]
Silas tightened his grip on the staff. Level 8 already? He had just started. He had no weapons, no training, no experience. And yet, something inside him clicked.
A pulse of energy shot from his staff, splitting into multiple streams that struck the beast, each stream imbued with a combination of tech circuits and glowing runes. The creature howled, staggering back. His HUD blinked rapidly:
[COMBO BONUS +3] [XP +35]
It was exhilarating, terrifying. Every swing, every absorbed shard, made him stronger. Faster. Sharper.
But the rift's pull was relentless. Buildings, debris, and beasts were being sucked upward into a swirling, chaotic funnel. The city below was gone in fragments. His lungs burned as he propelled himself forward, weaving around floating chunks of rubble and crashing drones.
And then the whisper returned:
"Unauthorized… Hybrid… Ascend."
Silas gritted his teeth. The voice was neither command nor suggestion—it was prophecy.
He tightened his grip on the staff and shouted, voice cutting through the chaos:
"If the world wants to erase me… it will regret it!"
A surge of power erupted from him, the staff glowing so brightly it split the rift's light. Shards of energy spiraled outward, scattering debris, deflecting mutant beasts, and illuminating the chaos.
The Cataclysm consumed everything below and above. But Silas Renvar, the Unauthorized Entity, was rising—alive, powerful, and dangerous.
This was the beginning.
The world had no idea that the first Hybrid had awoken.