In the year 2173, Earth was full.
Not metaphorically literally!
Every coastline was swallowed by concrete. Skies choked with traffic.
Oceans paved with floating districts. Humanity had stretched itself across the solar system, yet still, it wasn't enough.
People craved silence. Space. Escape.
So they started going backwards to the forgotten places that lacked stable human population.
Some dove into the abyssal trenches beneath the sea.
Some paid fortunes to drift through abandoned moons, yes "moons" not just Earth's but other planets too!
And a few… sailed out to waters marked as "uncharted" on maps that hadn't been updated in decades. Waters left off purposefully.
That's where the ship "Erebus VI" was heading to.
Twelve passengers, sailing through the darkness of night.
All wealthy.
All thrill-seekers.
AND All….vanished without a word.
Three weeks later, a storm that broke records spat out pieces of a unique flag —that was affiliated with Erebus VI —onto a shipping lane off the Pacific grid, giving authorities a slight hope that the ship might still be nearby!
With only one survivor.
A boy — no ID, no belongings, no wounds.
Short stature, long silky black hair. Stinky clothes.
Just standing on a slab of wreckage, greish blue wide open eyes, as if he hadn't blinked in days.
When the drones brought him aboard the rescue craft, he didn't speak.
The Rescue team tried to talk to him but his answer was exactly the same each time, repeating a few words.
The exchange was as follows:
"Kid, what's your name? How old are you?"
He only looked toward the sea and whispered:
"The island is awake."
"Wha-? where are you from dear? Are you from Ka-"
"The Island Is… AWAKE!"
Leaving them no choice but to send him the Red-Zone Shelter number 9
A special shelter built on old oil rigs, now used to quarantine high-risk anomalies — lost crews, COVID-71 affected citizens, void syndrome victims.
The boy; however, was placed in Unit 12C. Which was the most highlighted in all of the units within the Red Zone.
Monitored.
Cleaned.
Fed.
Yet No response from the survivor.
Even his body language was so poor making the idea of reading him impossible.
Neither did he ask questions, cry or even smile.
All night, he mumbled and whispered in his sleep not in fear, but in warning, rolling right and left the whole night searching for a comfortable spot, while sweating all over the blanket.
The staff ended up calling him Kairen, after a famous constellation that used to be visible before the atmospheric overlays blocked the stars.
What kind of thing happened on that ship to make this little guy this mentally shocked.
They were certain he's traumatised.
That was Until…strange things began happening around him. The lights in his room flickered, even when the power grid read stable.
Security camera drones malfunctioned when they entered his corridor. Making the footage blurry and unusable.
One nurse after having a severe panic attack reported she saw her own reflection in bathroom mirror blink at her — even though she hadn't moved.
The facility's AI flagged the room for a "Reality Skew Alert" — something usually seen near unstable tech-cores or black zone rifts. But there was nothing there. Just a quiet boy who stared at walls and whispered to shadows.
These were all very intriguing incidents that started happening since Kairen entered the shelter.
In a desperate attempt to catch attention some reporters got their hands on these documented events and shared them on E-Journals, a platform upon subscription you receive real time news updates from not just Earth but other planets inhabited by humans in an augmented reality model.
How Convenient!
However on that same day after a few minutes no seconds the platform got cyber attacked leading to huge losses for the platform.
That same day, a man in his late thirties arrived.
Tall, Blond, with blue hunter eye gaze and edgy jaw and well built physique.
He didn't come by ship. No transport logs, no clearance, no ID tags.
Just a dark coat, smooth like carbon fiber and humming faintly, like it had a pulse.
His name wasn't given. The guards didn't dare to stop him.
As if something about the man told their instincts to stay silent. And avoid confrontation.
His aura was too intense!
He walked directly to where the boy was…Room 12C.
Kairen looked up before the man even opened the door. As if he sensed his presence…
Their eyes met.
And for the first time, felt more lively, he recognized him.
With a cold expression on his face and emotionally unreadable gaze.
The man paused. Then smiled faintly without showing his teeth.
"So You recognize me? How amusing!"
Kairen didn't blink. "Your name's Nolan...Dr.Nolan"
The moment Kairen saw the man, a message appeared above the man revealing his name:
Name: [Dr. Veyr Nolan]
Without bothering to knock, Nolan came in.
'What a gentleman,' Kairen thought to himself.
The glow of his carbon-fiber coat pulsed faintly under the overhead lights.
He carried a small holo-tablet, its surface flickering with codex data, strings of numbers and runes too complex for most to read.
For him, it was a map to Kairen's hidden potential.
"Kairen."
Nolan said gently, though his voice echoed through the empty corridor beyond the ward.
"We need to try something... Stay still."
His eyes shifted to Nolan with no expression. He didn't speak; he only listened.
Nolan knelt, laying the tablet down on the cot beside him.
"Your codex," Nolan said, almost mumbling, "Is… unusual."
He tapped a rune on the screen.
'A Nulla lineage? Now that island bs makes sense!'.
Nolan thought while reading Kairen's stats.
'Nobody's seen a functioning codex like this in decades.'
He pointed to a flickering bar labeled "Tier 0".
"Tonight, we'll try to nudge it toward Tier 1."
Kairen tilted his head, a faint pulse of violet light rippling beneath his skin. Nolan's gloved fingers hovered over the tablet's runes, drawing a circle in midair.
The holographic glyphs dissolved into the air around Kairen's shoulders, a soft glow that danced like fireflies caught in a gentle breeze.
"Concentrate on the light." Nolan instructed.
"Feel its rhythm, its pulse. Let it flow through you."
Kairen's breath hitching, he watched the glyphs spin.
At first, nothing happened. Then the gentle hum of mana swelled inside him, like a tide of shiny blue mana rising in his veins.
The glyphs erupted into a burst of violet spark that shot toward his chest, leaving a scorch mark on the cotton of his blanket. Kairen gasped, an instinctive breath that felt like trying to inhale a storm.
Before Nolan could steady him, the ward's lights flickered violently. The distant drone of generators groaned, and a low tremor rattled the floors.
A low rumble. Not from engines or earthquakes, but from something deeper, like the heartbeat of the island itself.
Nolan's eyes widened.
He scrambled to his feet, pushing the tablet aside. "Brace yourself," he whispered.
A fissure of violet light tore open across the ward's ceiling, spiderwebbing down to the floor. Sparks of raw mana arced between fractured panels.
Three guards burst in, batons raised, faces pale.
"Stay back!" one shouted.
But he stumbled as his eyes widened—nothing physical restrained him, yet he froze, as though an invisible force gripped his limbs.
Kairen tried to stand, stepping forward, but his muscles trembled. His breath caught.
From nowhere, a translucent barrier bloomed around him, an oval of shimmering light, tinted violet and silver.
The barrier flared bright enough to blind the guards for a heartbeat, then pulsed in time with Kairen's thinning heartbeat.
A bolt of disrupted mana, ripped from the fractured ceiling hurtled toward them.
Time seemed to flow slower.
Nolan's jaw clenched.
He dove for cover.
But Kairen, wobbling on unsteady legs, reached out with one hand.
The barrier expanded, flattening the jagged bolt into a swirl of harmless ash before it could scorch the floor or harm the others.
The ward fell silent. The barrier faded as quickly as it had appeared, leaving everyone blinking against the afterimage of violet light.
Nolan rushed to Kairen's side, grabbing his shoulders.
"You did it," he said, voice both relieved and astonished.
"That was your codex activated, and that was an Echo Shield".
Alarms began to whine softly.
Somewhere, deep below the sea, an ancient grid reactivated.
A name long buried in lost files blinked to life across forgotten servers.
[MODELNULLA#STATUS:REAWAKENED]