The Light That Chose Us
History would later argue about the year.
Some said 1100, others 1101, but every surviving chronicle agreed on one thing: the sky changed first.
On a quiet spring night, the heavens tore open.
A comet, unknown and unnamed burned across the firmament, shattering as it fell. The sky ignited into impossible colors, a vast aurora stretching from horizon to horizon. Then came the light. Not fire, not rain, but something stranger, a radiance that drifted downward like snow, touching rooftops, fields, and flesh alike.
People knelt. People screamed. People died.
The glow lingered for days, sinking into the earth and into those who survived it. When the light finally faded, the world it left behind was thinner. Emptier. By the time the death tolls were counted decades later, nearly half of humanity was gone.
And those who lived were no longer the same.
At first, the changes were whispered rumors. A knight who did not age. A queen who survived wounds that should have killed her. Children born stronger than their fathers, their eyes bright with something unfamiliar.
They were eventually given a name.
Deviants.
Others called them Auraborn, Stellablooded, Blessed or simply the Deviants, depending on who held the quill. They were faster, stronger, and resilient beyond human limits. They aged slowly….so slowly that decades could pass with little change. Most emerged from royal houses and noble lineages, where food had been plentiful and bodies better prepared to endure the comet's touch.
The light had favored the fed.
A few commoners survived the transformation as well, but history rarely remembered them. Many were hunted. Many vanished. Power, as always, wrote the records.
By the thirteenth century, another truth surfaced... one far more dangerous.
Some Deviants reacted to each other.
When certain pairs stood close, their strength increased. Wounds healed faster. Tempers calmed. Lifespans stretched further still. These bonds were not chosen. They were immediate, instinctive, undeniable.
They were called Soulmates.
The revelation changed everything.
Kings and lords began to search obsessively for their other half. Entire villages were summoned. Women were paraded before nobles under the guise of duty and destiny. Any hint of resonance, real or imagined was enough to justify captivity. Those taken were kept close, used to extend lives, stabilize power, and produce heirs who carried the light even stronger than before.
It was an age remembered quietly, spoken of only in sealed archives and burned letters.
An age of resonance and cruelty.
Then, in the early 18th century, a man decided order was better than chaos.
Beneath British soil lay one of the largest surviving fragments of the comet, unearthed after centuries of secrecy. It was a dark, crystalline mass that hummed faintly when approached by certain bloodlines. Scholars called it many things, but history would remember it as the Aetherion Core.
Dr. Alastair Wycliffe Harrington was not a noble, nor a Deviant. He was a scientist. Where others saw divinity or curse, he saw reaction.
Through years of forbidden experimentation, Harrington made a discovery that redefined fate itself. When the blood of two true Deviant soulmates was placed near the Core, it responded, vibrating, glowing, resonating as if alive.
For the first time, soulmates could be identified without chains or flesh.
Harrington founded an institution to control the process.
He named it The Harem Society.
Publicly, it existed to protect humanity from the excesses of the past, to prevent exploitation, to regulate Deviant power, to ensure stability. Privately, it became the greatest authority on Earth, deciding who belonged to whom and why.
Over generations, fragments of the Aetherion Core were refined into machines.
Resonance Engines and distributed across the world. Blood samples were cataloged. Lineages were mapped. At eighteen, every citizen was required to submit a vial and learn whether the light had touched them… and if it had, whether someone else owned part of their soul.
The law claimed neutrality.
Reality favored the rich.
Noble families tested their children early, behind closed doors. Contracts were signed before births. Some lives were planned before names were chosen.
And still, the Society endured.
Because Deviants were stronger. Because Soulmates were rarer still. Because the future, according to the Society's doctrine, belonged to those who could survive forever.
The name Harem Society was not chosen lightly.
History had proven, time and again, that soulmates were not always limited to pairs. Most commonly, resonance occurred between two individuals, and it was not unusual for one of them to be a non-Deviant. Those cases were well documented and socially accepted.
More rarely, however, resonance formed clusters.
There were recorded instances where a single man or woman stood at the center of multiple soulmate bonds. Sometimes the structure was simple, a central figure linked to several others. In even rarer cases, the bonds formed tangled, divergent webs, each connection strengthening the rest. Such phenomena were exceptional, studied extensively, and tightly regulated.
In that context, the word harem carried none of the vulgar or distorted meanings it had acquired over time.
In its original sense, a harem was simply a group, a collective of people meant for one another, whose union allowed all of them to become stronger, more stable, and more complete.
That was the principle the Society had been founded upon.
The name itself had been proposed by the scientist who created the organization, inspired by his closest friend, a British nobleman of that era who was widely known throughout the country. The man possessed an extremely rare resonance pattern: five soulmates, all women, bound to him in a stable and harmonious union. He had spoken often of the balance, strength, and clarity that bond brought to all of them, and his testimony played a crucial role in shaping the Society's philosophy.
Union, not isolation, was the path forward.
It was into such a world that Mathias Blight was born.
Year 2000.
And now, on June 4th, 2018, he had turned eighteen.
Which meant that, like everyone else, he was required to undergo Blood Resonance testing at a Harem Society facility.
His blood had already been drawn.
All that remained was the wait.
Mathias sat in the large waiting hall, slouched slightly in his chair, staring at nothing in particular. He wasn't a Deviant. That much was certain. There was no point fantasizing about soulmates or destiny, those stories belonged to other people.
For an ordinary man, the chance of being a Deviant's soulmate existed, technically, but it was so rare it might as well have been a lottery win. Mathias had never been particularly lucky.
So he expected nothing.
Unfortunately, the longer he waited, the more irritated he became.
The hall was full. Some people clutched result folders with barely contained smiles. Others whispered excitedly to friends or family.
"I wonder who my soulmate is!"
"We'll find out soon, once the appointment is scheduled!"
"I'm so excited to meet her!"
Men and women alike, Deviant or not, shared the same expressions of anticipation, joy, impatience.
Mathias watched them with detached disinterest.
He had skipped class today under the excuse of resonance testing, planning to enjoy a quiet day of games afterward. He hadn't expected the process to take this long. Stranger still, people who had arrived after him were already leaving, results in hand.
His patience finally snapped.
"Damn this…"
He stood up, deciding he'd just come back tomorrow.
Turning toward the exit, he took a step, and then froze.
"Mr. Mathias Blight!"
The voice came from behind.
He turned to see a woman in a lab coat rushing toward him, the emblem of the Harem Society, an interwoven H and S—embroidered over her chest. She was moving fast. Too fast.
She stumbled.
Instinctively, Mathias caught her by the waist before she could fall.
"You okay?" He asked, keeping his face straight.
"Yes! Thank you! Please, follow me!" She said quickly, gripping his arm and pulling him along.
"Hey, wait, I can walk on my own," Mathias said, but she didn't slow down.
They entered a private room.
"Please take a seat!" She said, then immediately left.
"What in the hell?"
Mathias sat down, confused.
His eyes drifted to the desk.
There were papers laid out neatly. One of them had his name on it, clearly visible even upside down.
Frowning, he stood, walked around the desk, and picked it up.
It was his full report. Blood analysis. Genetic markers. Personal data.
His breath caught as his eyes reached the bottom of the page.
"What…?"
His lips parted as he read the final line.
"10 Resonances found."