Chapter 1: Essence Record has been activated
The clouds hung low, as if ready to crash down upon the earth. Heavy, leaden, as though something inside them was dying. There was no storm. Not even a breeze. Only a suffocating, sticky silence.
Adam sat on the bus, returning from university after classes. Exhausted, half-conscious, he stared out the window. His brows furrowed when he noticed the glass trembling—not from the engine, not from the wind. As if reality itself was about to crack.
His body tensed without reason. His hand clenched the railing, as if something was about to rip him from his seat. The hairs on his neck stood on end, and his heart struck once—too hard, too fast. The air smelled of ozone. Like before a storm.
"This isn’t normal," he muttered, wiping sweat from the back of his neck.
He looked at the man beside him. The man was staring ahead, eyes wide. He looked like he had just seen death.
Before Adam could speak—everything changed.
There was a sound that wasn’t a sound. As if the world itself inhaled.
Then—light. Blinding, unreal, flooding the interior of the bus like a shockwave. Not from outside, not from any lamp—from nowhere. As if everything suddenly began to emit light: metal railings, plastic seats, even the air. Adam froze. Something invisible passed through his mind, cold and alien. And then, without warning, words formed before his eyes—not on a screen, but... in the air, in his mind. Glowing letters, branded into his consciousness.
[Essence Record has been activated on planet Earth. From now on, you may summon your status window at any time.]
A woman’s voice tore through the air like a razor. It wasn’t a scream of terror—it sounded like someone trying to rip their soul out through their throat. A second voice followed, hoarse and choked, like burning lungs begging for relief. A third one cut off halfway, replaced by a wet sound Adam would never forget. The bus had become a torture chamber, and its passengers—the victims of an invisible executioner.
Adam watched as their bodies lit up—veins glowing like electrified wires. And then... explosion. A human bomb, right beside him.