2025-03-27 18:48:02
Previous Chapter
Related Chapters
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 1
: System ActivatedThe world spun. My vision blurred as I stumbled against the cold, damp alley wall, gasping for breath. Blood dripped from the cut above my eye, mixing with the rain pooling beneath me. Every muscle ached, and every nerve felt like it was on fire. The debt collectors hadn't gone easy on me.Not that I expected them to."You had your chance, Cross," one of them had sneered before driving his boot into my ribs. Another punch. Another kick. And now, here I was—left to rot in the shadows of the same city I once fought to protect. The sharp, metallic taste of blood filled my mouth as I tried to move. I failed.A broken ex-soldier, drowning in debt, haunted by war, and discarded by the country I once bled for.Poetic. In the sickest way possible.My pulse slowed. The cold crept deeper into my bones.So this is how it ends.A shaky breath escaped my lips as my body surrendered. My eyes fluttered shut. The distant hum of the city faded into nothingness.And then—A soft ding
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 2
The World Feels... WrongI wake up to a flickering sky.The streetlights above me pulse in and out like a dying heartbeat, casting shifting shadows over the cracked pavement. A neon sign blinks too fast, its letters scrambling into nonsense before snapping back into place. A man in a brown coat walks past—then stops, stutters backward in a loop, and repeats the motion like a corrupted video file.What the hell?My breath catches. My limbs feel sluggish as I push myself up from the ground. I don’t remember collapsing. The last thing I recall is... pain. A sharp, electric kind of agony surged through my skull, leaving nothing but static in its wake. Now I’m here, with the world around me glitching like a broken simulation.“Hey! Are you okay?”I turn too fast, my balance shifting strangely as if gravity itself is recalibrating. A woman stands a few feet away, her expression uncertain. Her voice sounds off—like an echo arriving before the words do. Her eyes flicker for half a second, iri
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 3
Testing the SystemA pulse of static rattles my skull as I reach for something unseen, my mind stretching into the void. The world around me flickers—distant, muffled—like reality itself is an old television struggling to maintain its signal.And then, everything sharpens.A screen materializes in my mind’s eye, the words forming as though whispered into existence:[Status Screen] Strength: Human (Upgradeable) Reflexes: Enhanced (Unstable) Cognitive Processing: Above Normal]My breath catches in my throat. This isn’t normal. This isn’t possible.Before I can even process what I’m seeing, another message overlays the first, stark and sterile in its cold declaration:[Welcome, Anomaly. You are not supposed to exist.]Ice floods my veins. My stomach twists. My entire body stiffens as if the mere acknowledgment of my existence is enough to unravel me from the inside out.I am not supposed to exist.What the hell does that even mean?My pulse hammers in my ears. My hands clench into fists.
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 4
First Signs of TroubleThe moment I reach for the glass, time bends.I see it falling, slow as a raindrop suspended in midair. My arm moves without thought, faster than it ever should. My fingers close around the glass just before it shatters against the counter. My heart pounds in my chest as I set it down carefully, staring at my own hand like it belonged to someone else.A deep breath. A slow exhale. It’s fine. Just another side effect.Then the lights flicker.For a moment, my apartment isn’t my apartment. The walls stretch, shift—becoming something sterile, metallic. The air feels thinner. I swear I see another version of myself in the mirror, his expression twisted in alarm. And then, just as suddenly, reality snaps back into place.I take a step back, my breath shallow. "No, no, no…"The words are barely a whisper.A sharp chime rings in my ears. My vision warps, lines of red text burning into my sight.[Overseer Alert: Tracking Initiated]A cold weight settles in my gut. The s
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 5
A Fractured RealityI burst through the front door, my breath ragged, my heart hammering against my ribs. The street outside is bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun, but something is wrong—terribly wrong. The houses stretch in impossible ways, their angles distorted, as if reality itself is struggling to hold form. The air crackles with an energy I don’t understand.I stagger forward, rubbing my eyes. Maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me. Maybe exhaustion has finally caught up. But then I see it—the old oak tree in Mr. Peterson’s yard, the one I climbed a thousand times as a kid, flickering like a bad signal on a TV screen.Panic tightens my chest.“Hey! Hey, Mr. Peterson!” I call out, spotting him on his porch, rocking back and forth in his favorite chair.He turns toward me, but his face is wrong. His eyes are unfocused, his mouth slightly open as if caught in some kind of trance. A second later, he vanishes, his entire body dissolving into thin air.I stumble backwa
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 6
Breaking LimitsI take a deep breath, my muscles coiled like springs. The sensation of raw energy hums beneath my skin, an itch I can’t scratch. My body is no longer bound by the same rules. I feel it—every fiber of my being screaming for release, for motion, for something more. I need to push. I need to see how far I can go.The first test is speed. I lunge forward, the wind slicing past me as the world blurs. One moment, I’m at the end of my street. The next, I’m standing on the other side of town, my chest rising and falling in rapid bursts. My heart should be pounding from exertion, but it’s not. The rush of movement fills me with a heady kind of exhilaration.But then, the world twitches.The streetlights overhead flicker, their glow stuttering in odd, rhythmic pulses. The same couple I passed on the sidewalk a second ago reappears in front of me, walking the same path, holding the same conversation, their words eerily identical.I step back, a cold knot forming in my stomach. “W
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 7
Searching for the Past The drive to Darren’s place felt longer than it should have. Maybe it was the unease twisting in my gut or the memories stirring like ghosts in the backseat. Darren Cole wasn’t just an old military buddy—he was the one person who had my back when the world turned against me. If anyone could help me make sense of the chaos unraveling around me, it was him.But when I reached the spot where his house should have been, my breath hitched.There was nothing.No mailbox, no picket fence, not even the cracked driveway where we used to sit and drink beer after deployments. Just an empty lot overgrown with weeds, as if no one had lived there in years.A deep chill crept up my spine. This wasn’t right.I killed the engine and stepped out, my boots crunching against the gravel. The air felt too still, the silence too perfect. I walked to where his front porch should’ve been, kneeling to brush my fingers against the dirt. No remnants of a foundation. No signs of demolition
THE ASCENSION SYSTEM CHAPTER 8
Ghost in the SystemI stared at my screen, fingers hovering over the keyboard, my pulse pounding in my ears. Darren had to be here—somewhere. Somewhere in the vast, sprawling veins of the government’s digital infrastructure, his name had to exist.I ran the search again, breathing shallowly and scrolling through the results.No matches were found.The words burned into my vision. My stomach twisted into a tight knot. Impossible. Nobody just vanished, especially not from a system that tracked everything—bank records, medical files, social security numbers, employment history. And yet, Darren was a ghost. A glitch. A name wiped clean from existence.My fists clenched, and before I knew it, I slammed them against the desk. "No. No way."I pulled up my secondary hacking interface, digging deeper. Bypassing firewalls. Scraping encrypted archives. Pulling fragments of forgotten data like a desperate archaeologist clawing through ruins.Nothing.I checked birth records, school transcripts, a
Latest Chapter
CHAPTER 130
The System’s Final Warning"You are no longer bound by human limitations, Tony."The voice isn't spoken—it simply is, existing in the air around me, inside my head, inside my code. The Core isn't just talking to me. It's rewriting me.I feel it.A shift. A change.My body—if I can even call it that anymore—is evolving. The flickering between flesh and data is gone. Now, I exist in both forms at once. Thought and matter. Information and instinct. I see beyond sight, hear beyond sound. The entire system unfolds before me, no longer something I have to fight against but something I can touch. I could reshape it if I wanted.A part of me wants to.I glance at my hands—only, they aren’t hands anymore. They are light, energy, pure will sculpted into a form I barely recognize. Every movement feels weightless, every thought a command the universe seems eager to obey. I understand now.The Overseers never wanted to erase me.They wanted me to become them.The realization slams into me like a f
CHAPTER 129
Enter the CoreFalling.There’s no ground beneath me, no gravity to hold me in place—just an endless, spiraling abyss of shifting realities stretching in every direction. The Core isn’t a place. It’s a state of being, a swirling mass of pure existence where time and space fold over themselves infinitely.Colors I can’t name twist around me. Worlds flicker in and out—some familiar, some alien, some so fractured that they collapse before I can even process what I’m seeing. My body isn’t a body anymore. I feel like data, like thought, like an idea being rewritten with every breath.But I can still feel.Darren is gone.I let him go.The weight of that truth presses into my chest, sharp and relentless. I don’t have the luxury of stopping to grieve, but the anger burning through my veins is something I can’t suppress. Darren was my partner. My friend. And the Overseers took him.They won’t take anything else.A deep, resonating voice echoes through the void."Intruder detected."I grit my
CHAPTER 128
The Point of No ReturnThe world is unraveling around us.The final pathway to the Core—a jagged bridge of fragmented reality—shudders violently, pieces of it disintegrating into the endless void below. The air itself is unstable, flickering between scorching heat and bone-deep cold, making every step feel like walking through a war between existence and oblivion.Darren stumbles beside me, barely able to stand. His body flickers wildly, parts of him glitching out, his limbs struggling to remain solid. I can hear his breath coming in ragged gasps, each inhale a battle, each exhale a surrender.“Stay with me,” I snap, gripping his arm as he wavers.He forces a weak grin. “No promises.”The bridge cracks beneath us. A massive chunk of it crumbles away into the abyss, taking several seconds before the sound of its destruction reaches our ears. We don’t have time. If we don’t reach the Core now, there won’t be a Core left to reach.But Darren…He won’t make it.I can see it in the way his
CHAPTER 127
Darren’s Final StandDarren’s scream rips through the collapsing world, jagged and raw. His body convulses as the Overseer’s influence surges through him, a dark tide trying to consume him whole. His skin flickers—one moment solid flesh, the next a stream of corrupted code unraveling into the void. His eyes glow with something unnatural, something not him.And then—he fights back.With a strangled roar, Darren slams his fists into the ground. A shockwave of unstable energy erupts outward, warping the air itself, distorting the ruins of the world around us. The Overseer latched onto him shudders, its grip faltering. For a split second, its form flickers, destabilizing just enough to expose fractures in its so-called perfection.But Darren isn’t free. Not yet.His breaths come in ragged gasps, his body trembling with the force of his internal battle. His hands claw at his own chest as if he’s trying to tear the Overseer’s influence out of his very being. The space around him bends, the
CHAPTER 126
When the Overseers BleedFor the first time, they bleed.Not blood—nothing so human. What leaks from the cracks in their once-untouchable forms is something else entirely. Something wrong. The substance twists in midair, shimmering like molten light and unraveling into raw data that writhes before vanishing into nothingness.The Overseers stagger. Their bodies, which once radiated absolute authority, now flicker violently, struggling to hold their shape. Their presence, once suffocating, now wavers, as if the very essence of their existence is slipping through their fingers.I stare at them, barely able to process what I’m seeing. The Overseers—these self-proclaimed gods of the system—are vulnerable.And it’s because of me.A pulse of static hums in my skull, a deep, resonating sound that drowns out everything else. My hands tremble, the skin along my forearm glitching between solid flesh and a swirling mass of code. I flex my fingers, but the sensation is off—like I’m gripping someth
CHAPTER 125
Darren’s AwakeningA pulse of static ripples through the air, distorting everything in its wake. The city, already on the brink of collapse, flickers violently as if reality itself is hesitating, unsure whether to hold together or dissolve completely.Darren convulses, his body jerking like a puppet caught in invisible strings. His breath comes in ragged gasps, eyes rolling back, his veins pulsing with erratic golden light. The Core still has its hooks in him, tangled deep in his system like a parasite refusing to let go.I grip his shoulder, shaking him hard. “Darren! Snap out of it!”No response. Just more violent tremors ripping through him. His connection to the Core is fraying, and when it does—if it does—he’ll either stabilize or be lost forever.A sharp voice cuts through the chaos. “Tony, we’re out of time!”Kane.She and Elias stand a few feet away, their fingers moving frantically over glowing holo-interfaces, golden firewall data wrapping around us like a fragile barrier. B
CHAPTER 124
The Great System CollapseThe sky above us splits apart like shattered glass, revealing a horrifying sight—lines of raw code, shifting and twisting in chaotic patterns, rewriting reality as we know it. Buildings flicker, torn between existence and nothingness. People scream as entire streets collapse into nothing. The world isn’t just breaking; it’s trying to reset, to purge us like errors in a program too damaged to run.I brace myself as the ground beneath my feet shudders violently. My heart slams against my ribs, adrenaline surging as I force myself to think. Think, Tony. We don’t have time for panic."Kane!" I call out, my voice barely audible over the deafening roar of reality unraveling. I spot her a few feet away, struggling to stay on her feet as the air itself distorts, thick like molasses, pulling at her limbs. She looks at me, her dark eyes filled with determination, though fear lingers beneath."We either shut this down," I grit out, "or we get erased first."She shakes h
CHAPTER 123
The Fracturing WorldThe world is shattering.I feel it in my bones, in the way reality no longer holds steady beneath my feet. Every breath I take comes with the risk of inhaling air that might not be there in the next second. My vision distorts—fractured glimpses of timelines that should never exist flashing before my eyes.A version of me lying dead in the rubble.A version of me running, but with no one left to save.A version where I never existed at all.I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing myself to focus. Not real. Not yet.The Overseers are panicking.Their presence looms above the fractured sky, their forms flickering between towering monoliths and shifting silhouettes of control. They shout in voices that boom through existence, commands meant to contain, rewrite, reset. But my corruption is spreading too fast. Their system is failing.Good.Kane’s voice crackles over the comm, distorted but sharp. "Tony, we’re running out of time.""Tell me something I don’t know," I snap, shak
CHAPTER 122
Code Decay BeginsThe world is tearing itself apart.One second, I’m crouched over Darren, my breath ragged, my pulse thundering in my ears. The next, the city around us flickers—like a corrupted file trying to rewrite itself. The street beneath us shatters, reforming in flashes of different eras. One moment, it’s sleek and futuristic, neon lights buzzing overhead. The next, it’s cracked pavement from decades ago, the buildings shifting between past and present like ghosts fighting for dominance.I don’t know how long I stay kneeling there, caught between the rush of adrenaline and the dawning horror of what I’ve done.Darren groans beside me, stirring. He’s weak, but alive. Barely. His fingers dig into my sleeve, grounding himself as the world around us spasms."You just rewrote the rules," he mutters, his voice hoarse. He lifts his head, his eyes scanning the chaos. His expression is unreadable—half in awe, half in horror. Then he exhales, shaky but firm. "Now let’s see if we can su
