The Catalyst happened twenty-five years ago.
Cities were destroyed. Civilization survived.
Governments did not collapse. Humanity did not disappear.
What happened was worse in some ways.
It changed.
The event began with Project AEGIS CORE, a government initiative designed to stabilize dimensional energy. The stated goal was infinite clean power and the controlled anchoring of forces that, until then, existed only in theory.
Official records stress one point repeatedly:
It was not a weapons program.
During a live test, the core overloaded.
Instead of detonating outward, it collapsed inward. Space folded. Pressure accumulated where no pressure should have existed. When containment failed, the release was immediate and absolute.
What emerged was later designated Ætherfall particles.
They were not radiation.
They were not chemical or biological agents.
Ætherfall interacted directly with reality at a structural level, forcing anything exposed to it to adapt to conditions it was never meant to survive. Human DNA either stabilized under the strain—or failed entirely.
Those who failed did not leave remains.
At the same moment, the collapse punctured reality itself.
A breach formed at the site of the failure, opening access to a space not aligned with physical law. From this rift came entities that did not fully exist within the same dimensional state as the world they entered.
They were later classified as The Incongruent.
Conventional weapons proved ineffective. Ballistics passed through incomplete forms. Explosives struck only fractions of mass. Military damage models failed within minutes.
Entire divisions were lost in hours.
The research city of Ashvale was overrun.
Evacuation failed.
The surrounding regions followed.
What stopped the spread was also what caused it.
Individuals whose DNA stabilized after exposure to Ætherfall developed the ability to interact with the invaders directly. Their bodies partially aligned with the same dimensional frequency as The Incongruent.
Where weapons failed, they did not.
Ten of them emerged—survivors who fought not as soldiers, but as people trying to stay alive. In the process, they discovered what their bodies had become.
They would later be known as the Vanguard Ten.
Recognizing their effectiveness, global authorities granted them unprecedented authority: unrestricted jurisdiction, immunity from prosecution, and full access to classified resources.
Each was given a title.
Together, they destroyed the rifts, eliminated the incursions, and prevented total annihilation.
Ashvale was designated a permanent exclusion zone.
Ground Zero.
The rifts vanished after each incursion was destroyed—but they could not be sealed permanently. Instead, they began to appear randomly across the world, drawn to concentrations of Ætherfall energy.
Monitoring systems were deployed.
Emergency protocols were standardized.
Civilian populations were trained to evacuate on signal.
Society adapted.
Power-classification systems were introduced. Insurance models were rewritten. The remains of The Incongruent were repurposed—crafted into weapons compatible with super-abled physiology.
Governments accepted what could no longer be denied.
Power could not be banned.
Only managed.
That is what the book says.
It is written in neutral language—stripped of fear, stripped of failure—arranged so that everything sounds inevitable. Necessary. Clean.
I have read it enough times to know where the history ends…
…and where the protection begins.
He exhales slowly.
His dark hair lifts slightly, standing on end as a faint pressure ripples through the air around him — unseen, instinctive, restrained.
The book closes with a soft thud.