The stone should not have been breathing.
Yet beneath layers of dust, gravel, and forgotten earth, something pulsed.
It waited.
For centuries, it had slept beneath the quarry floor — silent, patient, listening to the tremors of a world racing toward its own destruction. Cities rose. Empires fell. Wars burned. Humanity advanced.
And still, it waited.
Then a crack split the rock.
A single strike of iron against stone echoed through the quarry — sharp, ordinary, meaningless.
But to the thing beneath?
It was a summons.
Light bled through the fracture. Not sunlight. Not electricity.
Something older.
Something alive.
And when the young laborer leaned closer to inspect the strange glow buried in the broken rock, he had no idea the world he knew was already ending.
Because the Core had finally found its host.
The air in the quarry was thick with dust and heat.
Jinu barely wiped the sweat from his eyes before swinging his hammer again. Metal struck stone. The sound echoed across the excavation site, blending with engines and distant shouts. No one noticed him. No one ever did.
He was just another temporary laborer.
Another quiet body in a torn shirt.
Another pair of hands meant to break rock.
"Hey! Move faster!" a supervisor barked from behind.
Jinu lowered his head. "Yes, sir."
He didn't argue. Didn't complain. He never did.
The sun was merciless that afternoon, burning down on cracked earth and broken stone. His muscles trembled with exhaustion, but he kept swinging.
Then—
Clang.
The vibration was different.
Not the dull resistance of granite.
Not the brittle snap of limestone.Not the brittle snap of limestone.
This felt… hollow.
Jinu frowned slightly.
He knelt and brushed away the loose debris. Beneath the fractured rock, something pulsed faintly.
Purple black.
Like a dying ember.
No… like a heartbeat.
His breath caught.
It wasn't gold. It wasn't crystal. It wasn't any mineral he had ever seen.
The purple glow intensified the moment his fingers hovered above it.
And then it cracked.
The stone split open.
Inside was a liquid-like core, suspended without a container, swirling slowly as if alive.
Jinu's heart began to pound.
He should call someone.
He should step back.He didn't.
The liquid trembled—
And shot forward.
Straight into his chest.
There was no impact.
No blood.
But it felt like molten fire spreading through his veins.
Jinu staggered back, eyes wide.
His hammer fell from his grip.
Heat.
Pressure.
A thousand whispers exploding inside his skull.
He dropped to his knees.
"Hey! What's wrong with him?" someone shouted in the distance.
The world tilted.
Sound faded.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
And then—A voice echoed inside his mind.
Cold. Mechanical. Absolute.
[Core Integration: 3%...]
[Host Identified.]
[Compatibility Confirmed.]
[Initializing System Protocol.]
Jinu's eyes snapped open.
But the sky above him was no longer blue.