Chapter 3
The System didn’t come from speakers.
It wasn’t broadcast through radio towers, cell phones, or satellites.
It arrived directly inside every mind, across every language, every age, every country. It was seen by blind and heard by deaf alike. It woke everyone sleeping — cold, calm, clear — and unmistakably real.
[Welcome, Humans.]
[This world is now undergoing Multiversal Synchronization. Please remain calm.]
Few remained calm.
Across the globe, chaos ignited like sparks on dry grass.
A woman in New York dropped her phone mid-step and stumbled into traffic, frozen as the words continued to scroll inside her mind, after a second a car crashed through the window of a shop behind her.
Similar episodes happened all around the world, vehicles crashed, construction workers fell from skyscrapers, surgeons dropped scalpels mid-procedure, a child fainted in the middle of a cricket match. In Cairo, an imam paused in prayer, eyes glazed as the words flooded in. Hundreds of thousands died or got injured in lapses of attention and panic.
In the White House, generals were shouting over one another, demanding clarification, demanding control.
“What do you mean it’s not a broadcast?!”
“It’s not on any known frequency!”
“The whole damn planet just heard it, sir—same time. No source. No interference.”
“Is it a weapon? Is it the Russians? Aliens?”
In Moscow, similar words echoed in more frantic tones. In Beijing, in Delhi, in Tehran, in the control rooms of satellites, nuclear arsenals, and underground bunkers, the world’s leaders all faced the same terrifying truth:
This was not a hack.
This was something else. Something new.
Religious leaders dropped to their knees.
Tech billionaires demanded answers no quantum computer could find.
In the streets all around the globe, people screamed, ran, cried, and stared at the skies that hadn’t changed — yet felt completely different.
Some tried to record the moment. Others tried to hide.
Some thought it was Judgment Day. Others thought it was a trick. A few just laughed — because anything that strange had to be a dream.
But no one slept through it.
No one could.
Because the message didn’t stop at the first few lines. In kitchens and subways, in prison cells and parliament halls, the message continued — cold, measured, and inescapable.
[Planetary Classification: Tier 0]
[Multiversal Access Status: DENIED → PENDING]
[System Initialization: 2%]
[World Integration Protocols engaged.]
[Primary World Core identified.]
[Calibrating planetary ley lines...]
[Stabilizing Rifts anchor points...]
[Rift Inoculation: COMPLETED]
[Dimensional Anchors set.]
[First-wave Rifts opening: 14,221 globally]
[WARNING: Uncontrolled rift activity may result in localized anomalies.]
[Resource Allocation in progress.]
[Seeding of Basic System Resources: APPROVED]
[Mana Infusion Protocol: BEGINNING]
[Mana Source: Multiversal Current]
[Delivery Method: Ambient Rift Dispersal]
[WARNING: Atmospheric composition will change over time.]
[WARNING: Fauna and flora may evolve unexpectedly.]
[Tutorial Phase: QUEUED]
[Population: Unawakened]
[Awakening Sequence Preparation]
[Standardized Mana Framework: Selected]
[Core Formation: PENDING]
[Note: Individual performance during Tutorial will influence Awakening.]
[Estimated Time Until Synchronization Lock: 6 years, 157 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes.]
[After which Earth will become a connected node within the Multiversal Network.]
[Tutorial Phase I]
[Start Time: 04:39:57...]
The world got shook again by those words, confusion gripped the hearts and minds of peoples in any corner of the globe,
The silence after the voice was worse than the voice itself.
The System’s words still echoed — not in the air, but behind the eyes, woven into thought. And yet, for one long moment after they ended, the world felt muted. A heartbeat held in stasis.
Then came the chaos.
Phones rang with no one left to answer. Alarm bells blared in empty hallways. Flames rose in places no help could reach. In some corners of the world, people were already looting. In others, they were still kneeling.
Confusion reigned. Panic pulsed. And somewhere far from sirens and static, in the deep hush of a forest now warped by alien air, three figures stood in the clearing, on the edge of where the world had been torn open.
Alessandro didn’t breathe.
He didn’t blink.
He just stared at the perfect circular scar on the forest floor—at the alien vines writhing faintly in the soil, at the sickening lavender light that seemed to cling to the air even with the portal now gone.
Where Raime had stood… there was nothing.
“Wh-where did he go?” Albert asked. His voice was small. Shaking.
Victor didn’t answer. He just clutched his brother’s sleeve, staring at the patch of earth that wasn’t earth anymore.
Alessandro forced himself to move. One step forward. Another. The rifle felt too heavy in his arms. The air smelled wrong—sharp and metallic, like burnt ozone and copper blood.
“I told him to stop,” Alessandro muttered, mostly to himself. “He was just trying to get a better angle. Just… a few more steps.”
The last ripple of the portal was gone now. Only the aftertaste of its energy remained—strange and buzzing, like standing near high-voltage wires.
And above it all… the words still pulsed inside their heads.
The System.
The world was changing. People were dying. Everything was unraveling.
And Raime was gone.
Albert looked up at him with wide, watery eyes. “Is he dead?”
“No,” Alessandro said firmly. Too fast. Too desperate. “No, he’s not. That thing… it didn’t kill him. It took him.”
Victor whispered, “Where?”
Alessandro didn’t know.
He had no answers.
Only a rifle, a frozen rift, and two terrified kids in a world that had just stopped making sense.
He raised his voice toward the shimmering air, toward nothing in particular. “I want to contact the Administrator. Now.”
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then came a soft chime — not sound exactly, but a pressure in the mind. Followed by more words.
[Request received: Contact Administrator (ID#7843-Theta).]
[Administrator currently occupied addressing anomaly: Unauthorized Rift Breach – Entity: Human.]
[Dimensional Access Locked: Tutorial Phase priority.] [Estimated Delay: 19 Earth days OR anomaly resolution, whichever occurs first.]
[No override authorized during Tutorial Phase.]
[Please remain calm. Additional instructions will be provided shortly.]
Alessandro clenched his fists. “That’s not an answer.”
He turned to the portal’s edge again. Still no shimmer. No motion. No sign it had ever existed, except the wrongness left behind.
“Is… is that it?” Victor said behind him. “It’s just gone?”
“They’re fixing it,” Alessandro muttered. “Or they better be.”
Albert was hugging himself again. “What if they don’t? What if it’s too late?”
Alessandro forced himself to kneel beside them, keeping his voice steady even though the whole world felt like it had cracked.
“It’s not too late. They called it an anomaly, right? That means they noticed. That means Raime isn’t lost — he’s just… stuck somewhere. And they know it.”
Victor looked down. “But we can’t do anything.”
“We can,” Alessandro said. “We survive. We stay sharp. We learn whatever this… system wants to teach. Because when this tutorial is over, we’ll be ready. And when that Rift opens again…”
He glanced back at the corrupted patch of earth.
“…I’ll be the first one through.”
The twins didn’t argue. Not because they were confident — but because the fire in Alessandro’s voice was the first solid thing they’d heard in minutes.
“We need to go back, we need to be home and face this with your mother, I need to explain…” Alessandro pressed his hands on his eyes. He composed himself and after a moment he looked at his sons. “Let’s go.”
The forest felt heavier as they walked back.
Each step away from the Rift was a step into silence — not the quiet of nature, but the strained, brittle kind that comes after something breaks. Leaves rustled, twigs snapped underfoot, and birds occasionally called above, as if nothing had changed. But everything had.
The boys didn’t speak. Victor walked with hunched shoulders, occasionally rubbing at his eyes when he thought Alessandro wasn’t looking. Albert kept glancing behind them, as if afraid the Rift might open again and swallow them next.
Alessandro led the way, his rifle slung across his back, his thoughts a storm. Every time he blinked, he saw Raime’s face — the startled shout, the stretch of light, the space warping like water. And then nothing.
You should’ve reached for him. You should’ve stopped him from going there in the first place.
The System’s words echoed again in his mind, cold and uncaring.
[Estimated Delay: 19 Earth days OR anomaly resolution, whichever occurs first.]
[Please remain calm.]
He clenched his jaw, eyes scanning the underbrush on instinct — even though the real danger was now beyond reach.
As they neared the place where they'd first seen the creature, he glanced toward the spot where its corpse still lay in the dirt. Still, twisted. Unnatural.
Earlier, he’d thought to drag it back with them. Proof. Evidence that something had torn open their reality. That this wasn’t just a story told by frightened kids and a desperate man with a rifle.
But now…
What was the point?
Everyone had heard it. Seen it. Felt it press into their minds like a divine truth. The world no longer needed proof.
They believed now.
So he left the creature to rot under the trees, just another piece of a day that no longer made sense.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Alessandro helped the twins into the back seat of the truck. Neither objected. They looked too drained to speak.
He got behind the wheel and turned the key.
The engine hesitated, then it caught.
For the first time since the Rift opened, something worked the way it was supposed to.
The drive home was slow.
The roads weren’t completely blocked, but they were chaos. Cars had pulled off the side. Some were abandoned in the middle of the lanes, doors open, headlights still blinking. He passed a delivery van halfway in a ditch, smoke curling from the hood. A woman stood near it, just… staring at nothing.
There were no police. No sirens. No order.
Just the quiet panic of people trying to make sense of an impossible message.
Alessandro kept the windows rolled up and told the twins not to look outside.
When they neared their neighborhood — quiet, modest homes tucked behind pine trees and cracked sidewalks — Alessandro slowed. The house was just ahead. Same red shutters. Same old mailbox leaning slightly to the left.
But it didn’t feel like home anymore.
He pulled to a stop, hands gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white.
The boys sat silently behind him, waiting.
How was he supposed to walk inside and say it?
How do you tell the woman you love that one of your children is… somewhere else?
Not dead. Not gone. Just taken.
By something no one understood.
With no way to follow. No way to fix it — not yet.
Alessandro let his forehead rest against the steering wheel.
Just for a second.
Just to breathe.
You have nineteen days, he told himself.
Nineteen days to prepare. Nineteen days to hold it together.
Because when that Rift opens again… you're going in.
He opened the door.
And stepped into the new world.
Raime – Anomaly Detected
The world cracked.
Not in sound or sight, but in sensation — as if a hook had reached inside Raime’s spine and yanked.
One instant he was screaming, reaching for Alessandro’s outstretched hand, the next—Darkness.
Not black, not empty — but a howling, humming, living void. A non-space filled with impossible geometry and screaming color that bled across invisible surfaces.
Shapes moved.
Not things. Not beings. Just… impressions. Presences. Cold, ancient, wrong. They pressed against Raime’s mind like oil sliding under skin. No sound. No breath. Just eternity and movement and—
Fear.
He couldn’t feel his body. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t sure he was anymore.
How long have I been here?
There were impressions of clocks shattering. A thousand voices whispering in languages his ears had never learned but his soul somehow knew. A web of light stretching to infinity — then a spiral of teeth, stars, and questions.
And just as quickly, it ended.
Raime fell.
Not physically — but his mind snapped back into him like a rubber band. The void spat him out.
His knees hit earth.
He choked in air.
And he screamed.
Raime rolled onto his back, gasping. And opened his eyes.
Above him stretched a sky of swirling violet and soft grey, two suns hiding behind gauzy clouds like slow-moving ink stains across a painted ceiling. The light wasn’t yellow or white — it pulsed, a cool lavender hue, casting strange shadows over the landscape.
He sat up fast. And felt like vomiting, His body nearly convulsed from the vertigo and pain that was hitting him from every part of his being, it felt like being ground to paste and them being put together again. Luckily his mind was already starting to forget his dreadful experience in the dimension between dimensions, something that he shouldn’t have experienced, that no human mind should experience.
The panic was fading fast as he started to breath deeper, calmer. Raime got on his feet with effort and looked around.
“Dad?”
No answer. Just wind. And silence.
In front of him, just outside the patch of grass that reached his knees, stretched another kind of environment — the grass, if one could call it such, was a black-grey color with strands that shimmered faintly when they caught the light. The trees nearby had bark like tarnished silver, their leaves thin and jagged like glass feathers. The whole place looked… wrong. Like someone had rebuilt a forest from a dream and forgotten half the colors.
And behind him — floating just a few inches above the ground, between two crooked trees — hung a fractured shimmer of light.
The Rift.
Frozen now. Still. A jagged oval of warped space, like glass held over fire. Closed, he didn’t know why he knew it was closed. But it was so.
Raime stumbled on his feet.
His legs were shaking. His heart thudded in his chest. His hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
“No… it can’t be… NO! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!”
“What the fuck do I do? Maybe it’s going to open up again in like 5 minute… it already sent a monster through, and now me, it can’t have run out of battery already.” He thought despair.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Okay. Okay. This is… not good.”
He tried to slow his breathing. Again.
Panic later. Think now.
That was what he always told himself when things got overwhelming.
So he thought.
I went through the Rift. I didn’t mean to. Dad and the twins — they’re not here. It closed after me. There’s no one around. I’m alone. But alive. And they’re safe.
The thought steadied him, a little.
Then — like a finger flicking the inside of his brain — the System returned.
[Status: Unauthorized Rift Entry Registered. Alerting Administrator..]
[Entity Classification: Human – Unawakened – Tier 0.]
[Rift: Tier 2 Active Zone. Tutorial Interference.] [Critical Anomaly Detected.] [Administrative Review Initiated. Please remain conscious.]
“What does that mean—?”
Suddenly, the world twisted.
Not his body — his mind. Pulled forward, out, through something that felt both impossibly wide and skin-tight. Raime screamed, but no sound came out.
And then he was somewhere else.
There was no ground.
No sky.
Only a void of whirling light, swirling threads of gold, violet, and electric blue, stitched together like neurons in a brain far too large to be real.
But he felt a sense of calm while watching those lights and impressions, like nothing here could bring him harm.
And in the center… something watched him.
It wasn’t human. Not remotely. It didn’t have a face. Just a shape — ever-changing, vaguely serpentine, made of coiling tendrils and glowing rings of glyphs that hovered like halos around its form.
When it spoke, it wasn’t in words.
It was understanding, forced directly into Raime’s thoughts like ink soaking into paper.
“Ah… fascinating.”
The voice was vast. Not loud — it didn’t echo so much as resonate, as though it had always been there, waiting to be heard.
“You actually slipped through. Incredible.”
Raime floated — or thought he did. Weightless, formless and disoriented. He tried to speak but had no mouth, no breath. Still, the voice replied as if he’d spoken aloud.
“No need for your body here. This is a metaphysical construct. A System Node — a place of possibilities, intention and pattern. Your mind, your spirit, and... a fragment of mine.”
A shape took form before him — not a face, but a presence: golden threads of light that flickered and danced like the surface of the sun, draped over a vast, shifting silhouette. Coiling like a rope and surrounded by shifting coronas of rune and glyphs.
“Welcome, Raime. You may speak. Simply will it.”
Raime focused. Thought of words. To his surprise, they came, soft and echoing through the space around him.
“Where... am I? What are you?”
The light brightened, pleased.
“I am the Administrator. I curate anomalies, interpret the flow of causality, and enforce the law of the System. In rare cases…”
A beat.
“I am permitted to bend those laws. And this... is one of those cases.”
Raime’s thoughts were racing, unanchored. He latched onto the words like driftwood in a storm.
“I don’t understand. I don’t even know what happened back there. That creature — the portal — what is all of this?”
The Administrator seemed to sigh, or rather pulse, with measured gravity.
“Understand this, Raime: You are what should not be. This Rift — a Tier 2 instanced dimension — is designed to test and temper Awakened beings. Those with formed mana cores, trained channels and proper classification.”
“You have none of these. You are a Tier 0 human. Unawakened.”
Raime’s gut twisted. “Then I’m dead. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Yes. You should be. The passage through the rift alone should have ended you. Your body is ill-suited for this realm. The mana here would destroy your organs, in time. The native threats would hunt you like prey.”
The golden form leaned forward slightly, though its face was formless.
“And yet... you are here. Whole and untouched... for now. Curious, isn’t it?”
Raime swallowed. “How did I survive then?”
“A series of improbabilities. The blood on your weapon for a start.”
“It carried traces of the Rift’s ambient essence. When you struck the creature, a thread of its nature remained on it — unfiltered and alive. That trace bent some of the safeguards, enough for the system to register you not as a foreign entity, but as a marginally valid native of the rift.”
Raime blinked. “So that’s it? A glitch? A fluke?”
“No.”
The Administrator’s tone darkened — not threatening, but profound, like a bell ringing at the bottom of the world.
“The System does not glitch. It adapts. And when faced with an anomaly… it tests.”
“You were not supposed to enter. Yet you did. That makes you an exception. Exceptions… are placed under judgment.”
A ripple moved through the golden form.
“Therefore, Raime… the Tutorial Sequence is now bound to your name. It cannot be undone. It cannot be paused. The Tribunal that could revoke it does not convene for creatures below Tier 7 — and their next assembly is in more than two hundred years. Petitioning for a special assembly would still take too long for you. You do not have that kind of lifespan.”
Raime stared, trembling. “So I’m just supposed to die? In some magic dungeon built for testing someone with superpowers?”
“Not necessarily.”
The words shimmered like gold.
“There is one possibility. Faint. Remote. But real.”
Raime latched onto it like a drowning man latch on driftwood. “What is it?”
“Essence Awakening.”
The Administrator’s glow intensified.
“Traditional Awakening is the act of creating a core and connecting one’s channels to it, then ignite the core with a spark of energy. Most races are born into it. Their cores form naturally at birth, their channels open with time and training. Even then, higher-tiered beings find Essence Awakening… dangerous. Few survive it. For humans, it never happened before. You are not born with magic of any kind. Your race is… mundane, compared to others.”
“But this also makes you unique.”
“A blank canvas. Un-etched. Unwritten.”
“It is precisely this emptiness that creates a sliver of potential — the ability to Awaken manually... without aid from the System.”
Raime scowled. There was something he was missing, something wrong, but the more he focused on it, the more it slipped away. “But you said I’m Tier 0. I’ve got nothing.”
“Exactly.” The Administrator’s glow brightened, not with smugness — but purpose.
“You are blank. Untouched. Your soul has no engravings, no bindings. And that, Raime, is the only reason you might survive.”
Raime looked confused. “You’re saying being weaker is… good?”
“A vessel already full cannot be rewritten, it will die in the process. But an empty one — even fragile — may be reshaped.”
The air around Raime shimmered, and he saw a glimpse of himself: translucent, hollow, unformed. A shadow of a man, untouched by System channels. Beside it, another shape took form, three sets of different channels, interconnected between each other, with a single core burning bright golden in its chest.
“Essence Awakening at Tier 0 is unheard of,” the Administrator continued. “No one has ever managed it. Normally, for unawakened races the System provides for your awakening after the first phase of the tutorial.”
Raime’s heart sank, without awakening how could he survive the tutorial in a rift… the Administrator was right, this shouldn’t have happened.
“But I have interceded,” the Administrator said gently. “I have paused your sequence. I have locked the process temporarily. It will cost me… dearly.”
His golden light flickered — just for a moment — as if holding back a storm.
“Why?” Raime asked, voice cracking. “Why help me?”
“Because you are here. And the System does not make mistakes. Even when it makes mistakes. If you were allowed to slip through the safeguards — even by accident — then it must be for a reason.”
“The System needs change Raime, it has been created eons ago, Its laws are nigh immutable, and this can’t continue, not with the Chaos looming over existence.
”What does this have to do with me?”
The golden light pulsed, and the Administrator’s voice returned — soft now, like thunder wrapped in velvet.
“What does this have to do with you?”
“Everything.”
The threads around Raime coiled inward, forming rings, patterns — echoes of constellations and spiraling galaxies. Symbols danced in the void, ancient and unknowable. A strange gravity pulled his awareness deeper into the moment.
“There are those who believe the System is flawless. That it is eternal, incorruptible, self-correcting. They are wrong.”
“The System is vast, yes. Intricate beyond imagination. But it was made. Forged by beings long vanished, from blueprints even they no longer understood. And for all its brilliance... it is stagnant.”
The Administrator's silhouette shimmered again — not in anger, but in sorrow.
“Across the eons, every Integrated species followed the same path. Prewritten growth. Predictable loops. Nothing truly new is born within its laws. That is why it needs you.”
Raime felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature.
“Me?”
“You are an outlier. Not by design… but by opportunity. You were not meant to enter the Rift — yet you did. Not prepared, not chosen, not seeded. The safeguards failed — or yielded. Either way, the result is the same.”
“You are an anomaly. A variable introduced into a closed equation. And now… the equation must evolve to account for you.”
Raime hesitated. “So what, you think I’m some chosen hero? A glitch that turns out to be a prophecy?”
The Administrator didn’t laugh. It reverberated, and the void lit with sparks of color.
“No. Not a prophecy. The System has no prophets. Only functions.”
A long pause. Then:
“But sometimes… the function becomes aware. And in rare, rare moments… it acts.”
The light dimmed, pulling closer. “I am only a servant of the greater process, Raime. I do not choose.”
“But I interpret. And I see in you a path that was not accounted for. A new path. One that might lead to change.”
Raime’s voice was hoarse. “Change from what?”
“From stagnation. From repetition. From collapse.”
“The Chaos grows stronger, Raime. You will learn more of it — and soon. It seeps between realities, eating the edges of all things. It is not a force, but a void. Not malevolence… but hunger.”
The Administrator pulsed again — not brighter, but heavier now, as if the truth itself bore weight.
“The System has held it back for untold ages. But it is not winning anymore. It is maintaining. Barely.”
A slow beat of golden light passed through the space.
“Something must change. And change, by definition, begins outside the pattern.”
Raime didn’t answer. His breath — real or imagined — caught in his throat.
“You are not a hero, Raime. Not yet. You are not ready.”
“But you are unshaped. And the System has given you this moment — this chance — before it resumes the Tutorial sequence. I see it.”
The vision of the Awakened core appeared again. A burning star at the center of an un-carved soul with veins of pure light crisscrossing Raime’s form.
“Essence Awakening will scar you. It will hurt like nothing you felt before. You are not designed for it. But it is possible only because you are unformed — Tier 0, soul blank and ready. I can void your Tutorial rewards, reallocate them now as fuel to spark the process. That is all I am allowed to do.”
Raime stared at the vision. “And if I die trying?”
“Then your Path ends here. And I will remember you. Even if nothing else does.”
The words cut deeper than he expected.
“...And if I survive?”
“Then you will be the System’s first Awakened human. And your core will be unlike any other — not just Mana, but ki and Vitality, fused into a single spark. Dangerous. Powerful.”
“You will be the first. You will walk forward. And others… may follow.”
Raime felt the weight of the moment press against him like gravity.
“I still don’t know if I believe this. If I try I may die, and if I don’t I will surely die. What choice is even this?”
“Choice is all you have.”
A circle of silver-white light bloomed beneath him again, and this time it called to him — like a heartbeat just out of sync with his own.
“If you step into the light, I will begin the process. There is no return. No second chance. Your body will become your crucible. Your spirit, the hammer. And your life… the fuel.”
The Administrator’s voice quieted to something almost human.
“You are not meant to be here, Raime. But you are. That is enough.”
“Now choose.”
What do you all think is going to happen? No peeking ahead!
