Thiago's POV
"Even without an Arkan… you deserve to live a life with purpose." — Private Dev Log #039
Years before the Celestial Weave broke my son's heart… before the whispers of artificial threading even existed… there was only me. A father. And a screen that wouldn't stop glowing.
Upper Iris – Research Laboratory (Ten Years Ago)
The lab smelled of metal and ozone, the low hum of cooling fans filling the corridors like a heartbeat I couldn't escape. Crystal conduits pulsed in the darkness, their violet holograms flickering like the fragile fragments of half-forgotten dreams.
I slumped in my chair, shoulders aching, staring at a cursor that blinked at me with rhythmic judgment. It knew my failures.
Lines of code rolled past—bio-data modules, early neural-link diagnostics, adaptive health trackers. Years of work condensed into a few thousand lines: a system meant for those the world had forgotten. For those with no healers, no blessings, no luck. It was meant to be a guardian angel—something to stabilize vitals, predict threats, and ease the mental toll of a harsh world.
I called it Project ANGELS—an ambitious acronym for Autonomous Neuro-Genetic Evaluation and Life Support. In my mind, it wasn't just a machine; it was a miracle. It wasn't perfect yet, but it was close enough to taste.
I presented the blueprints to the President, and the ink on the funding was dry before the meeting ended. The administration didn't just approve it; they clung to it.
The math was simple and cruel. In the streets of Upper Iris, the non-Arkan bearers were dying in silence, unable even to reach a hospital. Our healers—the few we had left—were being bled dry, drafted, and sent to the borders where the rebellion raged. While the conflict between Upper and Lower Iris consumed our flesh and blood, my Project ANGELS would be the cold, tireless hands that stitched the city back together.
Years of my life had been sacrificed to this pursuit—a thousand failed iterations buried in the dark. I thought I knew the limits of my own creation. But then came the Day of the Weave, and the world I understood ceased to exist.
I remember the way Hasphien walked toward me afterward. No thread. No glow. Just empty, trembling hands. He moved with a terrifying care, as if he were afraid the world would shatter if it noticed he was hollow.
I saw the truth in the set of his jaw—the way his shoulders stayed frozen, a statue of a boy already grieving himself. He didn't cry, but the silence in the room carried the weight of a thousand screams he was too tired to let out.
I returned to my lab that night with a heart knotted so tight I could barely draw breath. The pale blue glow of the monitors caught the exhaustion etched into my skin, mocking the years I'd spent building a savior for the masses.
"You were meant to be the savior for Upper Iris," I whispered, my voice sounding like a stranger in the empty room. "You were meant to save them all."
I looked at the code—the culmination of my career, the promise I made to the administration, the hope of the non-Arkan. Then, I thought of the boy whom the heavens had ignored.
My son needs me now.
My fingers shook as I initiated the override, the keystrokes sounding like gunshots in the quiet lab. I tore ANGELS apart, stripping away its public protocols and its moral safeguards. I dismantled a miracle for the many to forge a lifeline for one. I was turning a shield for a nation into a ghost in the machine for a boy the world had already written off.
[ Dev Mode: Activated. ]
[ Purpose Reconfiguration: Manual Override. ]
[ Target: Hasphien Maxence. ]
[ Primary Directive: Preserve host at all costs. ]
I renamed the core files, a secret between the machine and my own fractured conscience. SYSTÉMA. It was no longer just code; it was a spark. A hand to hold when the world turned out the lights.
"If the heavens didn't choose you," I whispered, my voice finally breaking as the upload began, "then I will."
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Present Day, 4:00 AM
The blue glow of the tablet cut harsh, skeletal shadows across my face. I had been awake for twenty hours, combing through the logs.
Then, I saw it.
I slid open a hidden developer panel—a section of SYSTÉMA that should have remained dormant for a lifetime. It was glowing a frantic, pulsating gold.
A single line of text appeared. It shouldn't have been possible. It defied every law of mana-dynamics I'd ever taught.
[ Arkan Thread: Confirmed (Unconventionally). ]
"No…" I breathed, the tablet nearly slipping from my numb fingers. "No, that's impossible."
The terminal continued to bleed data:
[ Thread Status: Active (?) ]
[ Type: Unregistered. ]
[ Initial Imprint: Celestial (Unrecorded Variant). ]
[ Mana Intake Rate: -45%/hr — STATUS: ABYSMAL. ]
My hands pressed hard against my forehead, my fingers digging into my skin as if I could physically steady my racing thoughts. I was caught in a sickening collision of awe and cold, rising dread.
The data didn't make sense.
The world called him empty. The heavens did not choose him. But the monitor was screaming a different truth. There, deep within the architecture of his soul, a Thread pulsed. It wasn't the dormant, hollow space I expected. It was vibrant. It was reactive. It was a jagged, brilliant streak of light that defied every law of the Weave I had ever studied.
It was utterly terrifying.
I stared at the flickering light, my breath catching in a throat gone dry. If the Thread was there... why had the heavens stayed silent? Or worse—what kind of god looks at a power this volatile and decides to look away?
This wasn't a gift. It was a parasite.
The mana graph didn't rise like a normal Arkan user. It plunged. It was a bottomless, continuous drain.
"He's draining himself… trying to fill an endless void," I whispered. "Every Arkan user has limits. Boundaries. Endpoints. But this thing… it has no bottom."
I paced the small radius of the lab, my boots echoing like hammer strikes. Why didn't he glow? Why didn't the Weave recognize him?
I returned to the screen, my eyes locking on the final, blinking line:
[ Status: NULL — Host unable to perceive Thread. ]
My chest tightened until it hurt. "He's not empty," I whispered, my voice trembling with a mixture of horror and pride. "He's threaded. And he doesn't even know he's being eaten alive by it."
I shut the tablet and looked at the wall. There was a photo of him as a little boy, sugar dusted on his cheeks, laughing at a festival. Beside it sat his moonlit guardian figurine.
"I designed SYSTÉMA so he could survive without an Arkan," I murmured to the empty room. "But now… it might be the only thing keeping him from being consumed by one."
I grabbed my coat and headed for the door. Outside, the first grey light of dawn was bleeding into the sky.
"You're threaded, son… but something in you doesn't want to be found." I looked back at the lab one last time. "I'll find it anyway. Even if I have to rewrite the laws of the world to do it."