Sharp electric-blue light sliced through fragile eyelids.
Kai Voss opened his eyes to a world that pulsed.
He lay on warm, cracked obsidian. Above him stretched no ordinary sky but a fractured dome of neon veins—violet and cyan plasma crawling across absolute black, occasionally sparking into silent auroras of raining lightning. Gravity felt loose, negotiable. He pushed up on elbows that answered with unfamiliar, crisp precision. Muscles coiled like they had been waiting centuries.
Where am I? The thought arrived clean, no panic attached. Memory came in fragments: glass-and-steel cities drowning in data, then a deliberate choice toward something vaster. Now this.
He stood. Tall, lean, perfectly balanced. Dark hair fell across his eyes; he brushed it back absently. Clothing was simple—black tunic and pants of some adaptive fabric that shifted with temperature, boots gripping the obsidian without slip. No weapons. No tools. Just himself.
The landscape rolled outward in every direction. Jagged black-crystal spires rose like frozen lightning bolts, their surfaces etched with glowing runes that shifted too fast to read. Between them, rivers of liquid light flowed uphill, defying gravity, pooling into lakes that reflected impossible constellations. Distant horizons shimmered with heat-haze mirages—cities? Ruins? Living things?
Kai inhaled deeply. The air tasted of ozone and hot metal, invigorating rather than choking. This is real. Too consistent. Too indifferent to whether I survive it. He flexed his fingers; joints popped with satisfying clarity. Strength simmered beneath the skin—not superhuman yet, but brimming with promise. Talent, a quiet certainty whispered inside him. Whatever this place rewards, it's talent above all.
He chose a direction without hesitation: toward the brightest convergence of neon veins, where a cluster of spires rose tallest.
Half a kilometer later, voices reached him—real, overlapping, unmistakably human.
Kai crouched behind a low crystal outcrop and peered ahead. A small clearing opened up: five figures gathered around a makeshift camp of salvaged metal plates and patches of glowing moss. Four adults, one child. Their clothing was mismatched and battle-worn—leather wraps reinforced with armor shards, robes that shifted color faintly, practical wraps. Weapons rested close: blades of bone and crystal, a bow strung with luminous thread.
The child—a girl no older than ten—sat cross-legged in the center, eyes closed, palms facing upward. Thin cyan threads drifted from her fingertips, slowly weaving into a fragile, pulsing sphere of light.
A broad-shouldered man with a scarred face watched her intently. "Steady, Lira. Pull from the vein, not your core. You'll burn out."
"I know, Uncle Torv," the girl replied, voice small but stubborn. The sphere brightened for a moment, then flickered. She winced.
A woman with silver-streaked hair knelt beside her. "Enough for now. Rest."
Murmurs drifted on the wind: "…next fracture wave in a few hours…" "…Ascendant Spire might still have shelter…" "…but the guardians…"
Guardians. The word carried weight even to Kai's newborn senses.
He weighed his options for three heartbeats. Stay hidden and observe longer? Approach openly? They had numbers, weapons, and clearly some understanding of this place. He had only curiosity—and a growing certainty that hiding would teach him nothing.
Kai stepped out into the open, hands visible, posture relaxed but ready.
Five heads snapped toward him in an instant. Blades half-drawn in perfect unison.
"Who walks the Fracture alone?" Torv demanded, voice like grinding gravel.
Kai stopped ten paces away. "Someone who just woke up here. Name's Kai. No clan. No grudge. Just trying to understand where the hell I am."
Silence stretched taut. The girl—Lira—stared widest-eyed; her fragile sphere dissolved into harmless sparks.
The silver-haired woman studied him for a long moment. "Neon Fracture claims most newborns within days. You stand without trembling. How?"
"Luck, maybe." Kai shrugged lightly. "Or talent. I feel… potential here. Like the ground itself is waiting for me to prove something."
Torv snorted. "Everyone feels that the first hour. Then the Fracture eats them."
"Yet you're still breathing," Kai pointed out calmly.
A ripple of wry, tired smiles passed through the group. The woman lowered her blade a fraction. "I'm Sera. This is my brother Torv, our scout Mara, smith Joren, and Lira—Mara's daughter. We're bound for the Ascendant Spire. Last neutral ground before the deeper rifts. Join us if you can pull your weight. Die if you can't."
Kai considered the offer for one breath. Safety in numbers—for now. Knowledge he didn't have. And people who clearly chose their own paths rather than following blindly.
"I'll walk with you," he said. "But I choose my own steps."
Sera gave a single sharp nod. "Fair. We all do."
They broke camp with practiced efficiency. Kai fell in beside Mara as the terrain shifted beneath their feet—flat obsidian giving way to narrow bridges of pulsing crystal suspended over abyssal drops. Neon rivers roared upward far below like reversed waterfalls.
"What is this place, really?" Kai asked quietly.
Mara glanced sideways at him. "Neon Fracture. Or what's left after the Ascendance Wars tore the old continuum apart. Worlds bled into each other—martial paths, sword saints, mage towers, cultivation sects, all crashing together. Reality cracked open. Now it's endless rifts, talent veins running through the ground, guardians spawned from the chaos. The strong rise. The weak feed the light."
"No rulers? No lasting empires?"
"Some try to build them." She smirked faintly. "They always fall. The Fracture doesn't bow to thrones. It only respects talent. Prove it, or dissolve."
Kai felt the truth of her words settle into his bones. No convenient prompts. No floating status screens. Just action—and consequence.
They traveled for hours. Kai observed everything: Torv moved with the rooted economy of a lifelong martial artist; Mara ghosted along, senses tuned to every vibration in the crystal; Joren carried hammer and small anvil, forging minor repairs on the move; Lira practiced in stolen moments, drawing tiny wisps of energy.
Kai experimented in silence. He knelt briefly beside a thin blue vein pulsing in the ground, placed his palm over it. Warmth answered—not a flood of power, but an invitation. He pulled gently. A cyan thread rose, coiling around his fingers. No pain. Only clarity. His muscles remembered movements he had never practiced: a stance, a breath cycle, the ghost of a blade arc.
Sword? Or something older? He released the thread, storing the sensation like muscle memory.
Sera noticed. "Quick learner."
"Quick feeler," Kai corrected.
Night fell—or what passed for it here. The neon dome dimmed to deep indigo, stars bleeding through the cracks. They made camp in a natural crystal amphitheater. Torv took first watch.
Kai sat apart, back against a spire, mind turning inward. Talent. But talent in what? Combat? Insight? Creation? He closed his eyes. An internal lattice unfolded before his awareness—dark nodes, waiting pathways. He focused on the sword echo, refining the arc mentally: wrist angle, intent projection, breath timing.
Time slipped. When he opened his eyes again, hours had passed. The cyan blade formed in his palm faster now—almost instantaneous. Pure line of will.
Lira approached shyly, holding out a strip of dried luminous fruit. "You were… glowing. Just a little."
Kai accepted it. Tart. Electric on the tongue. "Practicing."
"Like me?" Hope flickered in her voice.
"Similar. Different path, maybe."
She sat beside him. "Mama says talent isn't given. It's taken from the Fracture. But it fights back."
Kai looked at her. "Then I'll take more than it can give."
Lira smiled—small, fierce, hopeful.
Dawn—or the next surge—came with a low tremor. The ground sang a warning note. A distant roar echoed through the rifts.
Sera stood. "Guardian waking. We move fast or we fight."
Kai rose smoothly. "Fight sounds more interesting."
Torv laughed, dark and approving. "Spoken like fresh meat."
But they readied weapons anyway.
The guardian erupted from a rift tear: a colossal thing of fractured crystal and neon plasma, limbs like sword blades, violet eyes burning. It sensed them. Charged.
Battle exploded.
Torv met it head-on—fists hammering crystal, shockwaves cracking armor. Mara danced around the edges, arrows of light piercing joints. Joren swung hammer, forging mid-blow into a makeshift spear.
Kai watched for one heartbeat.
Then he moved.
No weapon in hand. Didn't need one yet. He flowed to the guardian's flank. His hand shaped an invisible hilt; cyan energy answered, coalescing into a blade of pure intent.
Not a gift. My will made real.
He struck—a clean, perfect arc. Plasma limb severed. Static scream tore the air.
The guardian spun. Blade-limbs whistled. Kai parried—clang of will against chaos—then drove deep into the core. Neon blood sprayed, sizzling on obsidian.
Together they wore it down. Torv's final palm strike shattered the glowing heart. The guardian dissolved into drifting shards of light, absorbed upward by the dome.
Breathing hard, the group stared at Kai.
"Your blade," Sera said quietly. "Born from nothing."
"From intent," Kai corrected. "Talent expressed."
Lira whispered one word, awed: "Ascendant…"
Kai felt the change ripple through him—internal pathways brighter, body subtly sharper. Power not handed over. Power claimed.
They pressed onward toward the distant Ascendant Spire, the tower of infinite neon rising higher with every step, promising deeper truths.
But Kai's thoughts turned inward.
This is only one fracture. Many worlds wait beyond the cracks—martial peaks, sword domains, magic weaves, cultivation seas.
And simulations… A new certainty bloomed inside him. He could choose to step into accelerated realms—live entire lifetimes in a single real-world hour, master arts, return forged stronger.
Not yet.
Real world first. Real risks. Real consequences.
He glanced at the small group walking with him—each carving their own destiny, unbound.
I'll build something here. Not an empire. Not control. A place where talent can breathe free. Where people choose their paths, and the world emerges from their fire.
The spire loomed closer. Neon veins pulsed brighter—welcome, or challenge.
Kai smiled.
Let it come.