The impact of the touch wasn't just physical; it was a key turning in a lock Raven never even knew existed. The blue light from the tank flooded his vision, and the blaring alarms of Ward Zero faded away, replaced by an absolute, vibrant silence.
Raven was no longer just in the room. He saw Patient Zero standing before him, but she wasn't floating in liquid. She stood tall—a beautiful woman with a statuesque, albeit slightly slender, frame. Her long hair was as pale as the cold sun on a winter's day, and her pointed ears stood out elegantly.
"Finally... we can speak with more tranquility. My name is Aeliana," her voice echoed, not as a sound, but as a thought inside Raven's mind. "You feel the weight of the System in your mind, do you not? It is not a machine. It is a fragment of your ancestor's power."
"Sixty years ago, I crossed into this world with the man who saved mine. He was a Hero summoned from Earth, someone who learned to shape Mana—the life energy of my dimension—to defeat a mage whose goal was to rule my world and enslave all who opposed him. The System you carry... it is not a gift. It is an inheritance. It is a tool for translation and adaptation that your ancestor developed so that mana would not incinerate your human cells. You inherited it by pure chance, a statistical error that awakened in you the burden of being the bridge between two worlds."
"The collapse I predicted is happening because mana is pouring into this realm. My world and yours are merging with violence. What you see out there—the forests, the metal, the mutations—is mana trying to find a place in a world that has forgotten it. And because you carry the Hero's blood, your body is the only one without a defined 'limit.' The others... they gained simple extensions. You? You have gained the potential to become whatever the situation demands, but the price for that is still very steep."
"The seeds the Mage left behind are working now to create this collapse. They felt the return of mana and are tearing through the veil. You must evolve, Raven. Not to be a soldier for the government, but to be the Hero your blood demands you to be."
Raven looked at her with a certain disdain. "I simply can't stand this anymore. Now I'm forced to save two different worlds? How long is this going to keep happening? I'm a lazy hero who doesn't want any more responsibilities, do you understand?" he said, his voice laced with anger and frustration.
The blue glow began to flicker. Aeliana's ethereal form started being pulled back into her physical body in the tank, though Raven could see her sketching a faint laugh at his outburst.
"The mana is flowing... I can feel consciousness returning to my body, but it is still not enough..."
The vacuum pulled Raven back. He felt the weight of gravity return all at once, and his fingers let go of the glass with a snap of static electricity. He fell to his knees, panting, feeling every nerve in his body throb with ten times the sensitivity.
[ NEURAL SYNC: 100% COMPLETE ]
MANA PERCEPTION - LEVEL 1 [RANK D]
Sarah ran to him, grabbing him by the shoulders. "Raven! What happened? Her monitors... they recorded catastrophic brain activity for ten seconds!"
Raven looked at the tank. Aeliana was still floating, but now there was a faint color in her pale cheeks. She was waking up.
"The world isn't ending, Sarah," Raven said, his voice muffled and tired, as if the words weighed a ton. "I'm the one who's ending. I can't take any more of this. I don't need to be anyone's savior... I just need a very strong coffee and a place where no one asks me to save anything for the next twelve hours."
The silence in Ward Zero after Raven's outburst was cut only by the rhythmic sound of the medical equipment, which now operated at a much more vivid frequency. Helena approached Raven, her eyes fixed on him with an intensity that seemed to want to dissect his mind.
"You speak as if you've had an hour-long conversation, Raven. What happened in there?" Helena's voice was low but charged with urgency. "And what do you mean by 'no one's savior'?"
Raven braced himself on his knees, forcing his body up. The new Mana Perception made the air feel dense, as if he were submerged in an invisible electric current. He looked at the tank, where the woman now rested with a human serenity, and then at the two women in front of him.
"Her name is Aeliana," Raven began, wiping cold sweat from his face. "And she's not from here. She came from another world, a place where what you call 'rift energy' is what sustains life. They call it Mana."
Sarah and Helena exchanged glances. The term "mana" sounded like fantasy, but what had just happened didn't allow for skepticism.
"She explained what's happening," Raven continued, ignoring the pulse of the System in his mind. "Her world and ours are colliding. It's not an organized invasion; it's a forced collapse. The rifts are holes caused by this shock, and the biomes that are appearing... the iron forests, the crystals... they are pieces of her world trying to take root here."
"And why did she speak to you?" Helena took a step forward, her defensive posture returning to normal. "Why were you the only one capable of 'waking' Patient Zero in sixty years?"
Raven let out a dry, humorless laugh. "Because, apparently, I had the misfortune of being born into the wrong family. Sixty years ago, the guy who brought her here, the Hero who traveled between worlds... was my ancestor. I carry his blood. And that's why my body reacts to this energy in a way others can't. I'm a 'bridge,' or a lightning rod for sh*t, as I prefer to call it."
Sarah's eyes widened, processing the scale of that revelation. "You are the descendant of a man who traveled between worlds? Raven, this changes everything the government thinks about the Awakened."
"It doesn't change the fact that things are going to get worse," Raven cut her off sharply. "Aeliana said the collapse is being accelerated. There is something, or someone, on the other side... the 'seeds' of a dark mage that my ancestor faced. They are tearing the veil between worlds. The creatures we've seen so far are just the beginning. Monsters I can't even hurt yet are coming."
He didn't mention the System. To them, Raven's power was purely genetic—an unstable inheritance from a hero of the past. Letting them know there was an interface dictating his evolution would be handing over control of his life on a silver platter, turning him into a lab rat until the end.
"We need to report this to High Command immediately," Helena said, already typing frantically on her tablet. "If what you're saying is true, the 'Reclamation Campaign' is a joke. We aren't reclaiming territory; we're losing the planet to a different reality."
"Do whatever you want with the information," Raven said, walking toward the exit of the ward, his steps still a bit uncertain. "But I warned you: I'm no one's hero. I'm just a tired guy who inherited a bill he can't pay."
He stopped at the door and looked over his shoulder at Aeliana's tank. "And keep an eye on her. She's waking up. And when she really opens her mouth, I doubt the government is going to like what they hear."
Raven left, leaving Sarah and Helena in the wake of a truth that could destroy the little order left in the world. He needed that coffee. And, more than anything, he needed to understand how this entire situation could escalate into something even worse and more troublesome for him.
"How I wish I didn't have to get out of bed tomorrow and deal with all of this again."
Raven was sprawled on the mattress in his quarters, staring at the ceiling with an expression of someone who would rather be anywhere else in the multiverse. The silence of the room was interrupted by a light, constant chill running down his spine—Mana Perception was merely a physical nuisance, as if the air were charged with static electricity before a storm.
"Freedom..." he thought, letting out an anemic laugh. "I always tried to trick myself into thinking that being free is having the discipline to choose to do what you hate. What a joke. That's not freedom; it's just a gourmet way of enslaving yourself. In the end, this thought only serves to grind down my psyche and make me get out of bed when all I wanted was for the world to just end once and for all."
The door opened with that irritating metallic sound. Helena and Sarah entered, and Raven didn't even bother to change his position; he only felt that strange chill intensify with their presence.
"Was the coffee so good that you decided to take a nap in the middle of the end of the world?" Helena snapped, her voice overflowing with its usual bureaucratic coldness.
"It was excellent, Helena. Almost made me forget that I'm the only clown in this circus full of peculiar attractions," Raven replied, his voice muffled by his arm over his eyes.
"You said you are a descendant of the man who brought Aeliana," Helena continued, ignoring the sarcasm. "We cross-referenced the historical archives. Sixty years ago, the only record of someone who vanished in an anomaly and reappeared years later was your grandfather. But the reports don't match this 'Hero' story."
Raven finally sat up, looking at Helena with a crooked smile. "Ah, so you found my grandfather's file? What an honor. From what I remember, my grandmother met him after he returned, but I never heard of him shooting lightning or saving the day. He came back, sat on the couch, drank, smoked, and complained about life like anyone else. He died in a very common way, with no highlight; he was just a good guy who liked to be left alone in his corner."
"If he was the man Aeliana mentioned, he hid it very well," Sarah commented, confused. "Why would someone with so much power choose to live... like that?"
"Because he was smart, Sarah," Raven shot back, standing up and feeling a shiver run down his arms. "He saw what was on the other side and decided that mediocrity was the only safe place. He lived the rest of his life trying to be nobody, hiding so he wouldn't have to deal with what I'm dealing with now. He died as a common human because it was the only thing he wanted to be."
Helena took a step forward, her eyes fixed on Raven, trying to read what he was hiding. "But his blood is in you. And unlike him, you have nowhere to hide. If these 'seeds' you mentioned are tearing the veil, mediocrity is no longer an option. The government will demand you be what he was."
Raven walked toward the door, feeling his skin harden slightly under his clothes as another chill hit him. "Yeah, I realized that. My grandfather was lucky enough to die before the show started. Me? I inherited the bill and this burden, as much as I hate having to accept it. You want to know about the collapse? Ask Aeliana. I just want a minute of peace before I have to save the world again."
He stepped into the hallway, leaving the heavy atmosphere behind. He wasn't going to tell them about the System interfaced in his mind, let alone how every particle of mana in the air now sent a chill through his nerves. To them, it was just the biological inheritance of his ancestor that had given him a peculiar power. Let them keep thinking that.
The base cafeteria was silent, except for the sound of the coffee machine. Raven finally had a steaming mug in his hands. The liquid was black, bitter, and scalding—exactly what he needed to ground his mind after everything he had heard. He sat at a corner table, feeling the chills of Mana Perception climb up his arms every time someone passed by. It was a constant annoyance, as if the air were "heavy."
Sarah and his other teammates entered shortly after. They approached cautiously, noticing Raven was quieter than usual, staring into the bottom of his mug as if trying to read the future there.
"Are you okay, Raven?" Sarah asked, sitting across from him. "I know all of this isn't easy to swallow, but you're strong and you can handle it."
"I'm just tired, Sarah. Tired of being the center of attention for people I don't even know," Raven replied, his voice hoarse, without taking his eyes off the coffee.
The cafeteria door swung open with an unnecessary bang. Kael walked in, strutting as if he owned the place, accompanied by two followers laughing at some tasteless joke. The air around Kael seemed to vibrate; small blue sparks jumped from his shoulders, slightly singeing the fabric of his uniform. He stopped in front of Raven's table with a sneer.
"Look at our laboratory 'golden boy'," Kael taunted, lightly kicking the leg of Raven's table. "I heard you spent the day being pampered by Helena. What was it? Were they trying to figure out why it takes you so long to learn a new move, or were they just giving you a consolation prize for being the weakest link in the group?"
Raven gripped the mug; the heat of the coffee was nothing compared to the irritation rising in his chest. "Kael, I really don't have the patience for your hero complex today. Go jump-start a car battery and leave me alone."
"Hero complex?" Kael let out a dry laugh, and the electric glow in his eyes increased unnaturally. "I'm evolving faster than anyone on this base, Raven. Look at this. I don't even have to try anymore. While you hide in labs, I'm becoming what this world needs. You're just dead weight that got lucky."
Kael, in a sudden and arrogant move, tried to knock the mug out of Raven's hand. But the chill in Raven's body triggered a millisecond before. In a fluid motion, Raven tilted his body, saving his coffee, and with his free hand delivered a sharp, powerful punch straight to Kael's stomach.
The impact threw Kael back, knocking over a chair. The silence in the cafeteria was instant. Kael wheezed, his face red with humiliation and fury.
"You... rat!" Kael roared, losing control completely.
This time, he didn't just use his fists. Kael held out his hand, and a massive blue electric discharge, disproportionate to the level he had shown before, exploded toward Raven. The blast tore through the table and slammed Raven against the metal wall of the cafeteria.
The impact was brutal. Raven felt every nerve in his body scream as the electricity tried to fry his organs. The pain was unbearable for a second, until the System reacted to the trauma.
[ ALERT: HIGH-VOLTAGE ELECTRICAL DAMAGE DETECTED ]
[ ANALYZING FREQUENCY... ADAPTING CELLULAR STRUCTURE... ]
[ NEW ADAPTATION ACQUIRED: ]
ELECTRICAL RESISTANCE - LEVEL 5 [RANK D]
Raven's body stopped spasming. He slid down the wall, landing on his feet, as light smoke rose from his singed clothes. He looked at Kael and felt a different kind of chill. The sparks coming off Kael's body were now denser, almost dark blue. Kael was getting too strong, too fast, as if he were absorbing mana from the air without any filter, in a raw state—but something about him seemed much scarier, as if something inside him were devouring the environment's mana.
"You're evolving too fast, Kael..." Raven murmured, feeling the taste of metal in his mouth. "This isn't normal."
Kael smirked, the electricity crackling on his shoulders like hungry serpents. "What's the matter? Jealous? The world is changing, Raven, and I'm at the top of the food chain. Enjoy your coffee... if there's even any left."
Kael walked out of the cafeteria laughing, followed by his followers who looked startled by the display of power. Raven looked at his own hand, feeling the new resistance under his skin. He realized his grandfather's "burden" wasn't the only problem. The collapse of the world was creating monsters, and some of them wore the same uniform as him.