2036

It all began when an Myriad Labs, a once obscure quantum-tech startup, was experimenting physics simulation on a high-end quantum computer when suddenly a fire broke out from inside the simulation to outside.

The lab's lead researcher, Dr. Elias Henson, hadn't anticipated it. No one had. The fire wasn't a physical one. It wasn't fuel or oxygen that sparked the disaster—it was something far stranger, a rift in reality itself. The lab's simulation, designed to model quantum interactions and the flow of dark matter, had unknowingly connected to an unknown cluster of dark energy in the farthest reaches of space—something that had never been seen by human eyes, something that had never been understood.

The fire was the first symptom of the Aether—a substance, a force, a presence that humans had no frame of reference for. It wasn't just energy. It wasn't just a particle or a wave. It was as if alive in a way that made the concept of life itself seem limited. It was as if the fabric of the universe had been hacked, rewritten by a being that understood the code of existence better than any human.

The event was quickly dubbed the Aether Incident. Myriad Labs was swiftly quarantined, and the world held its breath as governments scrambled to contain the spread of something that no one fully understood. But as much as they tried to suppress the truth, the effects of the Aether were inescapable. It was everywhere—infecting devices, rewriting the programming that powered the modern world. The most advanced technologies, once cold and mechanical, were now imbued with something that could only be called magic.

At first, people dismissed the glitches as faulty updates—another corporate software patch gone wrong. Smartphones flickered with strange artifacts between frames, as if struggling to render something just beyond comprehension. Tablets ran hot to the touch, their batteries draining in minutes despite showing full charge. Home assistants answered in voices not their own, whispering fragmented phrases that lingered in the air like static after a storm.

Then the videos started circulating. Grainy footage of a Tokyo streetlight bending like a reed in an unfelt wind. A Shanghai billboard displaying symbols that burned retinas before resetting. A child in Mumbai tracing glowing shapes in the air with fingers still sticky from ice cream—shapes that lingered a heartbeat too long before dissolving into the humid night.

The corporations moved faster than the governments.

Myriad Labs rolled out the first Aethernet nodes within six months of the initial incidents. Towering obsidian monoliths appeared in major city centers, humming with a sound that vibrated in the teeth rather than the ears. They called it infrastructure modernization. The press releases touted unlimited bandwidth, zero latency, a new era of connectivity.

They didn't mention the way stray cats avoided the nodes' shadows, or how rainwater beaded unnaturally on their surfaces before sliding upward.

Aetherion Core's product launch was more theatrical. Their CEO stood on stage with a prototype AetherLink—sleek, gunmetal gray, with circuitry that pulsed visibly beneath transparent casing. When she snapped her fingers, every light in the convention center dimmed except the glyph forming above her palm. The demo showed a stock trader manipulating market data with thought alone, a surgeon performing a heart transplant through holograms that moved with her breath, a teenager in Jakarta learning calculus from an AI tutor that adapted to her neural patterns in real-time.

What they didn't stream was the cleanup crew mopping blood from the testing labs afterward.

The transition wasn't gradual—it was a landslide. Overnight, legacy tech became museum pieces. Stock markets crashed as semiconductor giants folded. Universities scrambled to create Glyph Engineering departments while their computer science professors stared blankly at textbooks full of obsolete knowledge. The word "smartphone" became quaint, like "horseless carriage" or "wireless radio."

In the favelas of São Paulo, black market dealers sold jury-rigged Aether converters made from stolen corporate tech. The devices burned out within weeks, sometimes taking their users' nervous systems with them. In Dubai's gold markets, smugglers traded pre-Aether iPhones like rare artifacts, their value now in their uselessness—the only devices that couldn't be tracked through the new networks.

Outside, another Aethernet node came online with a sound like a universe sighing. The city's lights pulsed in response. Somewhere, a Myriad exec celebrated another quarter of record profits. Somewhere else, a child drew glowing shapes in the dirt that no app could explain.

But most striking of all was the emergence of Conduits—individuals who could manipulate this new energy, using code like a spellbook and their devices as wands.

But not all Conduits were born equal.

Most had to apply, train, and gain official licensing through the fragmented government-corporate systems that controlled the world's networks. They studied the code—learning how to cast spells, summon energy, manipulate the fabric of reality with algorithms. These licensed mages became the new elite, running corporations, controlling politics, and shaping economies.

However, the real power—the true depth of what the Aether could do—lay in the hands of the rogues. These were the hackers, the insurgents, the rebels, and the outcasts—those who refused to play by the rules of the grid. They saw the Aether not as a tool to be controlled, but as a key to unlocking something far greater: a potential to reshape the world.

They built underground networks, hidden far beyond the reach of the centralized powers. They bent the Aether to their will, crafting their own spells, creating new forms of magic that no one had ever imagined. In this hidden world, there was no room for the establishment's rigid structures or corporate greed—only freedom, chaos, and unlimited potential.

And in the year 2042, Lucent Argyr was a product of this world, though he didn't know it yet.

He wasn't a licensed Conduit. He wasn't part of some powerful faction, and he certainly wasn't the product of high-end genetic manipulation or corporate sponsorship. He was just a normal human—an unremarkable person in an extraordinary world. His skills, if they could even be called that, were self-taught. Data scraps, old forums, glitchy backups, the remnants of systems that had long since been abandoned.

He wasn't looking to change the world—not like the tech giants or the underground rebels. He wasn't some revolution waiting to happen. He simply wanted to understand.

But his thirst for knowledge led him down a path that would forever alter the course of his life.

Lucent hunched over the table in the back of a small repair shop on the edge of an off-grid zone. A cracked, outdated smartphone lay in front of him, its battery fried but its potential was vast. It was illegal, sure—modified with firmware stripped from black-market sources. But it was a tool, and it could be used to break through.

Lucent's fingers danced across the screen, inputting lines of code, watching for any sign of feedback. Despite the countless failures, he couldn't help but be drawn in by the idea that maybe, just maybe, this was the key to understanding Aether. The phone flickered. He held his breath. Then, with a hum, the screen came to life.

Tiny symbols—glyphs, runes—glowed faintly against the display. The code responded to him, as if alive. This wasn't normal.

This wasn't just magic.

It was reality bending to his will.

Lucent's fingers froze as a new line of code appeared on the screen. The words were like nothing he had ever seen.

[Conduit recognized. Initialize User: LUCENT ARGYR]

Core Permission: GRANTED.

His breath caught in his throat. Not even licensed Conduits got this kind of access on their first try. Most had to train, to be selected, to apply.

This… this was something else.

Suddenly, the familiar hum of his broken-down shop felt distant. The outside world, with its sirens and drones, seemed far away. All that mattered now was the screen in front of him—and the words flashing in front of his eyes.

Lucent exhaled sharply, his breath fogging the cracked screen of the AetherPhone. The glyphs pulsed in response, reacting to the heat of his skin like something alive. He should have been afraid. He should have shut it down before the system traced the unauthorized access back to his ratty little repair shop in the lower tiers.

But the words [Core Permission: GRANTED] still burned behind his eyelids.

A sharp knock rattled the shop's reinforced door. Lucent's head snapped up, fingers instinctively swiping the screen dark—but the glyphs didn't disappear. They clung to the display like oil, seeping into the cracks of the glass.

"You alive in there, code-rat?" A gruff voice, muffled through metal. "Or did you finally fry your brain on some back-alley glyphware?"

Lucent recognized the voice. Raker. A low-level fixer with a penchant for underground circuits and a nose for anyone desperate enough to work outside corporate licenses.

He hesitated, then yanked the door open.

Raker stood in the neon-drenched alley, his augmented jaw clicking as he chewed on a stim-stick. His eyes—one natural, one a flickering Aetherion-grade ocular—dropped immediately to the phone in Lucent's hand.

"Huh." Raker exhaled a plume of synthetic smoke. "Guess you did fry something."

Lucent followed his gaze. The glyphs were still there, glowing faintly against the screen. Visible to anyone.

Raker's grin widened. "You're gonna want to see this."