Prologue: The Glitch
John Smith, software engineer, was having a bad day. Not a catastrophic, world-ending bad day, just a garden-variety, soul-crushing Monday. The server was down, the code wasn't compiling, and his coffee tasted suspiciously like dish soap. He'd been staring at the same line of spaghetti code for three hours, a digital hydra he couldn't seem to decapitate.
He leaned back in his chair, the cheap plastic digging into his spine. "I need a vacation," he muttered, closing his eyes.
That was his last coherent thought as John Smith.
The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of colors, not the gentle, soothing hues he might have imagined, but a chaotic, screaming vortex of light and sound. He felt himself pulled apart, atom by atom, yet simultaneously expanding outwards to fill the entire universe. Fear, understanding, and a strange sense of homecoming warred within him.
Then, nothing. Except, not really. There was something, a vast, formless consciousness, a potential waiting to be realized. It was primordial, raw, and ancient beyond comprehension.
John Smith was gone. In his place, something new was awakening.