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disaster

Fragments of Godhood

The sky doesn’t fall. It updates. One night, the world crosses an unseen requirement and reality stamps a verdict across every screen: Qualified. The Awakening window opens for everyone twenty and older—no warning, no handbook, no “trial period.” Some people light up. Some people break. And when they break, they don’t always leave bodies behind. They leave Fragments. Bright, pulsing remnants that feel less like miracles and more like bait. They draw attention. They draw hunger. They turn ordinary streets into places where strangers circle the same patch of air like it owes them something. Kael Vasquez is newly twenty and newly trapped inside a rule-set nobody asked for. His Authority isn’t flashy, and it doesn’t make him safe—just aware. A little too aware. He can feel panic building before it hits, hear the shape of danger in concrete and crowds, sense the moment a person is about to lose control. That awareness doesn’t save anyone by itself. It just tells him exactly how bad the next ten seconds are going to be. In a city where fear travels faster than sirens, Kael has to move through collapsing stairwells, basement shelters, and desperate alliances—while something worse than chaos wakes up alongside the Fragments: people who learn the new rules quickly, and start treating survivors like resources. And the younger ones—too young to awaken, old enough to remember—watch the adults vanish and start believing in whoever looks like they can stop it. Kael doesn’t want faith. He doesn’t want worship. He wants to live through the night. But in a Qualified world, belief is never free—and godhood is just another kind of debt.
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