Ascension Beyond Mortality

The rain finally touched him again.

Slow drops ran down Elior’s face as the warmth in his skin faded. The glow that had protected him moments ago disappeared like a dream dissolving with the dawn.

In his hand, the black card still pulsed with that faint silver-blue light. No words. No logo. Just symbols that shimmered when he turned it in the light.

"Tomorrow night... Sector 12. The old train station."

Elior looked up at the empty street, the stranger already gone—vanished, like a hallucination.

But this wasn't a hallucination.

His body still buzzed with something unnatural. His heartbeat hadn’t returned to normal since the pain passed. And more importantly... he didn’t feel tired. At all.

He slipped the card into his pocket and started walking home through the rain—this time, with a mind full of questions, and a gut full of fire.

The next day moved like a blur.

At work, sounds were louder, details sharper. He could hear the manager whispering behind the counter. He knew the exact moment someone would spill coffee before it even happened.

"It’s like my brain’s running on some next-level processor," he thought. "But how? Why now? Why me?"

His body moved smoother, lighter. His reflexes—flawless. When a glass cup slipped from a customer’s tray, Elior caught it mid-air without even thinking.

Lisa stared. “Whoa. Since when did you become Spider-Man?”

He just laughed it off. “Lucky reflexes, I guess.”

But when night fell, luck had nothing to do with it.

Sector 12 was nearly abandoned—warehouses, closed factories, and roads nobody used anymore. At the edge of it all stood the old train station, long sealed off since the subway line collapse ten years ago.

Faded signs. Rusted rails. Graffiti-covered walls.

Elior stepped past the broken fence, into the shadows.

The card in his pocket began to glow again—brighter now. As if guiding him.

He followed it through the silent platform, past shattered ticket booths and broken benches, until he reached Platform Z—a part of the station that was never on any map.

And there, standing by the tracks... were three figures.

One of them—the same hooded man from before.

The second—a woman with silver hair and glowing tattoos spiraling down her arms.

The third—a huge, armored guy with eyes like red coals.

Elior stopped a few meters away.

“You came,” the hooded man said.

Elior held up the card. “Still not sure why.”

“Because you were chosen. Not by us… but by the system inside you.”

System.

There’s that word again.

“What system?” Elior asked. “What is all this?”

The woman stepped forward now, voice like smooth glass. “A long time ago, fragments of power were hidden across the universe. Some were locked in bloodlines. Others in relics. A few—like yours—were embedded directly into souls.”

“You’re not normal, Elior Rae,” the hooded man said. “You’re a carrier. A spark.”

The armored giant snorted. “Or he’s just another corpse waiting to happen.”

“Then test me,” Elior said, surprising even himself.

Did I just say that out loud?

He wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t even confident. But something inside him—something deeper—was waking up, and it wanted to know what he could become.

The woman smiled. “Then

step forward, Ascendant.”

And the ground beneath them began to tremble.