In this New Era, mankind evolved out of sheer necessity. How nations selected leaders, fought wars, and built societies had completely shifted around a single supernatural phenomenon: CrystalHeart.
A mystical energy radiating from within the chest, a CrystalHeart materialized in humans around the age of fifteen. It was first discovered when humanity stood on the precipice of extinction, manifested by a savior known only as the Legend of the Earth. Armed with a power unlike anything the world had ever seen, the Legend single-handedly held off an alien invasion of apex predators before finally falling in battle.
Severely crippled by the Legend's sacrifice, the primary invaders fled into deep space, leaving behind evolving monstrosities across the planet known as Jahgreds. In the wake of that war, the Legend's power dispersed across the surviving human race. Today, roughly 73% of the population possessed the ability to manifest a CrystalHeart, weaponizing crystalline energy to defend perimeter cities like Sector 7.
To classify combat readiness, the Directorate established the official CHPower Category System:
CHPower 1–10: Beginner Level (Auxiliary / Baseline)
CHPower 11–30: Low-Intermediate Level
CHPower 31–50: Intermediate Level
CHPower 51–70: Low-Advanced Level
CHPower 71–95: Advanced Level
CHPower 96–110: Expert Level (Tiers 1–2)
CHPower 111–130: Expert Level (Tier 3)
CHPower 131–150: Master Level (Highest recorded human achievement: 138)
CHPower 151–200: High Master Level (Theoretical ceiling modeled after the Legend)
"It's been two years since my CrystalHeart materialized, and I'm still stuck at the absolute bottom."
That bitter thought echoed through Caine's mind every single day.
At seventeen years old, Caine was officially registered as a CHPower 10—a baseline rating that categorized him as barely combat-viable. It had taken him two agonizing years of relentless effort just to scrape his way up to that double-digit benchmark. To the trainers at the Academy, he was a slow grower with an incomplete, glitchy manifestation that couldn't even form a proper weapon handle.
He had wanted to give up a thousand times. The only thing that kept him going was his family.
When Caine was five years old, his father died, leaving his mother alone and pregnant with his little sister, Maya. Growing up in the lower ring, Caine watched his mother destroy her health working double shifts at the Sector 7 fuel refinery just to keep food on the table. Determined to pull them out of the slums, Caine threw himself into physical training early, pushing his body so hard during drill practice that he occasionally collapsed or coughed up blood.
He had spent his childhood dreaming of the day his CrystalHeart would manifest. He read every textbook, studied every war hero, and imagined materializing a brilliant, high-tier blade capable of hunting Jahgreds past the wall and earning top-tier merit credits.
A month before his fifteenth birthday, Caine had felt a strange, cold pressure building beneath his ribs—an irregular sensation unmentioned in any Academy archive. He had brushed it off as pre-awakening nerves.
Then came that chaotic night in his bedroom, when his CrystalHeart awoke in the dead of sleep—not as a flashy, light-emitting weapon, but as an agonizing, dense current that wrapped inwardly around his bone and skin, leaving no external aura for the Directorate's digital sensors to read.
Now, stepping out into the cold morning damp with that same invisible, heavy current locked inside his fist, Caine knew he couldn't ignore his condition any longer.