The lab shouldn't have pulsed like that.
In 2030, nestled beneath the skeletal shell of a decommissioned reactor outside Prague, Darian Vex stood among machines of his own design resonance accelerators, neural phase relays, and quantum filament stabilizers. His eyes were fixed on the containment chamber that crackled with a violet-blue shimmer. His team had spent years modeling dimensional vibration theory. They had never once expected the void to respond.
But now it pulsed. Not randomly rhythmically, like something on the other side had started breathing.
Darian's knuckles whitened as his fingers froze over the interface. The readings were beyond anomaly: high-band energy arcs, layered pulse echoes, and a break in the local entropy curve. The machines screamed a language they weren't built to speak.
Behind the barrier glass, a lattice of light twisted into unnatural geometry. One axis folded in reverse. Another bled violet against the chamber walls. A presence looked back from it no eyes, no face, just awareness. A knowing, pulsing hunger that watched not with curiosity… but recognition.
Something was coming through.
"Cut the core!" someone yelled. "Shut it down now!"
Too late.
The Rift opened.
The chamber collapsed inward like a throat swallowing light. Violet fire slashed the air. The ceiling fractured. An implosion of silence crushed Darian's hearing. His mind staggered. He turned to run.
And the world inverted.
He fell.
Not through space, but through reality itself. Memory unraveled into string. Light bent. And in the moment between the end of one world and the beginning of another, Darian Vex died.
Except he didn't.
He awoke with a sky above him that didn't belong on Earth.
It shimmered not with stars, but with designed constellations, light points woven across a synthetic dome. He blinked rapidly. Pain didn't come. The surface beneath him was soft, seamless. No concrete, no floor tiles. Just a light-absorbent material that shaped to his posture.
He sat up slowly, his breath shallow. The air was… perfect. Sterile, not cold. The scent of nanocleaners and recycled oxygen tickled his nose. No hum of computers. No flickering bulbs. No humans yelling. Silence, deep and clean.
And then movement.
A blue panel shimmered into being above him:
[Federation Military Academy – Dormitory Node]
Cadet ID: Darian Vex
Age: 17
Status: Active
Rift Entry Countdown: 22 Days
He blinked again.
Seventeen? Cadet?
"What the hell?"
The words rasped from his throat a younger throat. He staggered to a reflective wall, one of many curved surfaces built into the sleek, oval room. The reflection that stared back wasn't the thirty-year-old physicist with tired eyes and days-old stubble.
It was a teenager. Wide-eyed. Clean skin. Slight frame, Federation uniform folded beside him. The bones were wrong. The face too young. But the eyes… they were still his.
This wasn't a simulation. This wasn't death. This was real.
He moved cautiously through the dorm unit, the door opening to his presence without a sound. The hallway beyond gleamed with brushed alloy and embedded data lines glowing faintly along the walls.
No sharp corners. No harsh colors. Everything was curved, clean, and precise.
He passed other cadets some in uniform, some half-suited walking with the focused, bored confidence of soldiers raised in routine. They ignored him. One boy flicked a hand and opened a floating comm interface mid-stride. Another was arguing with his AI about Rift-entry simulations.
And Darian?
He just walked, overwhelmed.
At the end of the hall, a viewport revealed the city.
And the sky was bleeding.
Massive towers spiraled like coiled spires of DNA, interlaced with glimmering rail lines. Drones zipped between districts like metallic birds. Holographic ads curved across building faces. A dome of hardlight shimmered above the city no, around the entire atmosphere.
And above that dome, hovering in orbit like a wound across heaven, was the Rift.
A vast purple tear in the sky, writhing with dimension-light. Pulsing. Spilling faint energy into the atmosphere like slow poison.
He knew it instinctively.
That's not a storm.
That's a gateway.
And something lived on the other side.
Inside the Civic Orientation Pod, he sat wordlessly while the AI streamed Federation history across the air:
Year 2100 – First Rift opens
Year 2102 – Collapse of global infrastructure
Year 2104 – First successful Awakening: Kael Sarros
Year 2110 – Earth unifies under a global Federation
Year 2125 – Dimen-Essence discovered as post-Rift energy
Year 2131 – Beast Bonding system approved
Year 2154 – Present
Darian leaned back, mind spiraling. The world hadn't just advanced. It had transformed.
Humans now awakened powers by entering dimensional rifts and killing monsters Rift Beasts. If they survived the first kill, they bonded to a Beast, a creature that evolved with them. Beast cores became the primary currency of strength. Dimen-Essence saturated the world.
But Darian didn't have a Beast. He didn't even have combat training.
He had knowledge from a world that no longer existed.
"I don't belong here," he muttered aloud.
The AI chimed back:
"Correction: All cadets belong. Cadet Darian Vex is scheduled for Rift-entry in 22 days."
His legs nearly gave out.
That night, he lay on the soft nanofiber bed beneath the constellations. Above him, stars moved not random, but sequenced. Artificial skies mimicking old ones, perhaps to comfort cadets trained for war.
He closed his eyes.
That's when he felt it.
A presence. Deep, inside his chest. Not pain. Not warmth. Just motion. Like something curled around his soul, sleeping. Not dead. Not active. But waiting.
And then—
[System Sync Initiated…]
[Dormant Beast Core Detected]
[Classification: ???]
[Awakening Delay: Pending First Kill]
He sat up, heart racing.
System…? What system?
No answer came.
Only silence.
And the faint rustle of wings inside a world he hadn't known existed until it stole him from the one that had.