Saigon, October 2050.
To Raizen Valefor, the city sprawled below was a ghostly stranger, stripped of the tender memories his mother once wove. No longer did the rich scent of late-night phở linger in the air, nor did the humble cries of vendors echo under the glow of oil lamps. Perched atop Thiên Long Tower—the unyielding emblem of a tech empire that gripped the globe—Raizen cast his gaze over a frigid maze of steel and glass, stretching endlessly beneath a sky choked with ash. Artificial rain, a hollow symphony conducted by AI, fell in relentless sheets, catching the spectral neon flicker of flying cars that darted like wayward stars.
The world had crumbled. The elite cloistered themselves in lavish floating villas, barricaded by magnetic shields and tireless drones. Below, in suffocating tech slums, the working masses jostled for scraps—faulty AI factory castoffs, haggled over in dank black-market alleys. The shrill screech of plasma engines smothered all traces of life, while the scorched-metal stench from colossal robot recycling plants erased any remnant of the Saigon his mother knew. Resources were bled dry, tech wars razed continents, climate shifts throttled existence, and plagues raged beyond control. Nations were fading echoes before the rise of juggernauts like Thiên Long.
Thiên Long was no mere corporation—it was a global colossus, its tendrils strangling economies, militaries, and technologies, dwarfing any government still clinging to relevance. From plasma weapons feeding endless border wars to AI systems dictating weather and crops for half the planet, Thiên Long sculpted the world of 2050. Yet even a titan could not slumber soundly. Resources dwindled, new foes rose from the ruins, and the smoldering resentment of the downtrodden threatened to torch the order they'd painstakingly forged. Thiên Long craved a definitive answer, a masterstroke to cement its eternal reign: to reach back through time and rewrite history to their design.
Project Asvaria, cloaked in the lofty pretense of "studying time to learn from humanity's errors," was the embodiment of that reckless ambition—a scheme to bend history itself to secure absolute dominion.
Raizen Valefor, twenty-six, stood silent in a sealed boardroom on the tower's highest floor, his gaze sharp as a blade slicing through the anxious faces of power around him. His black suit clung to a honed, muscular frame, his short black hair framing a presence more warrior than technocrat. As Director of Strategic Technology Division 3, he wasn't the room's mightiest figure, but with a mind honed for strategy, an innate knack for political maneuvering, and combat prowess forged in military fires, Raizen was a rising star—Thiên Long's hidden trump card.
He was a child of the "Eternal Seed" project—a ruthless clandestine program that scoured the world for prodigious youths, forging them into geniuses to serve Thiên Long's will. His generation, tempered in the shadows of labs and brutal training grounds, was a constellation of brilliance. Closest to him were Kael Iscariot (25), a technical savant and boyhood friend; Seiryu Alvis (24), a prodigy doctor with unshaking hands and a heart of frost; and Veyra Asterius (26), a master of minds and words, capable of twisting fates with a cryptic smile. Others included Leon Magnus (27), a glacial weapons tactician; Anya Petrova (25), a sorceress of data and cyberwar; Roric Stone (28), a geologist gifted at unearthing resources; and Elara Vance (24), an enigma of genetic and biological mastery. In their youth, they'd scaled heights mortals scarcely dared dream, but at the cost of stolen childhoods, sleepless nights under crushing pressure, and unseen scars that wove their fates into a reluctant family, bound not by blood but by shared torment.
Before them, on the glass table, a holographic dossier burned with haunting red text: Project Asvaria – Manipulating Time to Reshape Human History.
Kael Iscariot shattered the oppressive silence, springing to his feet. Tall and wiry, his eyes blazed with zeal behind steel-rimmed glasses as he summoned a hologram of a monstrous metal construct, its spiraling red energy veins throbbing with life.
"Raizen, you remember our dream, don't you?" Kael's voice was warm, a faint smile flickering—the ghost of the boy who'd scribbled mad blueprints with Raizen on crumpled paper in the dead of night. "Asvaria's the key, Raizen. It'll carry us through time, to the roots of this collapse. Imagine it—if we grasp why it all fell apart, we can mend it! Today's the first test, and I need you there with me, like always."
Raizen's fingers tightened around the worn silver pendant at his neck—Kael's gift, etched with Eternal, a sacred oath sworn by two children caged in Thiên Long's merciless crucible. He could still see Kael's frail back shielding him from older tormentors, hear his idealistic vow: "Technology's meant to protect people like your mom, Raizen." But as he stared at the crimson spirals pulsing in the hologram, a chilling whisper—not Kael's—slithered through his mind: The chosen one will shatter the wheel of fate… He flinched, shaking it off. Asvaria… it harbored a peril beyond reckoning. Even Veyra, who thrived in chaos, would tread warily before wagering on unraveling time itself. He fought to quell the gnawing dread.
"Test?" Raizen surged to his feet, his voice trembling with alarm he couldn't mask despite his effort to stay composed. "You mean 'study' by meddling with history itself? Kael, the world's dying out there—resources gone, wars spreading, people suffering—and Thiên Long's sinking billions into this mad gamble? This isn't research; it's hubris, defying fate itself! What the hell are you thinking?"
The room's air grew taut, like a bowstring on the verge of snapping. Seiryu Alvis, petite with long black hair bound tightly, sat opposite, clutching her stylus until her knuckles blanched. Her usual icy facade wavered, her deep eyes darting to Raizen with a flicker of tangled emotions—anger, worry, a feeling she'd never dared name. Raizen recalled her silently tending his wounds after blood-soaked training, her terse order: "Don't die." He remembered her standing in the rain outside the lab, silently offering a bottle of water, no words needed.
Kael stepped closer, resting a hand on Raizen's shoulder, his voice brimming with sincerity. "Raizen, I know you're scared. Truth be told, I'm not sure it'll work flawlessly either. But Thiên Long needs this—not to feed some insane ambition, but to find a way out, a spark of hope for this dying world. Like when you wrecked my energy project—I didn't hold it against you, but this is different. I need you there, watching with me, making sure it stays right, not twisted for someone else's gain." His grip tightened, his eyes pleading. "I can't lose you."
Raizen shoved Kael's hand away, his fear hardening into disillusionment. "I trust you, Kael, you know that! But this is lunacy! It's unlike anything we've ever touched! You're toying with fire, something no one truly understands! What if it fails?" He turned to Seiryu, his voice rough with desperation. "And you, Seiryu? You're really okay with this?"
Seiryu lifted her gaze, her fathomless black eyes meeting his for a fleeting second before dropping, her voice a whisper of ice. "I don't care what it is. If you want to die for it, I won't stop you." Yet her hand clenched the stylus so fiercely her nails nearly pierced her skin—a rare betrayal of the dread she fought to hide.
"I don't want to hurt anyone," Raizen said, his tone steely again as he faced Kael, resolute. "If you're dead-set on testing that machine, find someone else. I won't play this lethal game."
Kael shook his head, sorrow flashing in his eyes before giving way to a mix of resolve and resignation. "Raizen, I'm not trying to push you to your death. This is a direct order from Valen Kabe—he left me no choice. I just want you there with me, so we can keep it in check, stop it from falling entirely into someone like Valen's hands. If you don't step up, he'll drag the whole team into something even deadlier—and I really can't lose you." He glanced at Seiryu, seeking an ally, but she stayed silent, her gaze fixed downward, evading them.
Valen Kabe. The name sent a shiver racing down Raizen's spine. The master of Thiên Long's dark sciences, whom Kael once slurred, in a drunken haze, as "a demon cloaked as a scientist." Raizen had always sensed a wrongness in him, a veiled madness lurking beneath his suave exterior.
Before Raizen could gather his thoughts, the boardroom doors slammed open. A squad of guards in jet-black combat armor, wielding heavy electromagnetic rifles, stormed in, their faces devoid of feeling.
Kael recoiled. "Hold on! What's happening?"
One guard barked, his voice flat as a machine. "Orders from Lord Valen Kabe. Escort Raizen Valefor to the central laboratory now. The test begins."
"Kael! What are they doing to me?!" Raizen roared, thrashing futilely as two guards seized him, their mechanical arms clamping like iron jaws.
Seiryu shot to her feet, her doctor's instincts flaring as she gripped her medical kit, her icy stare faltering with rare panic. "Don't touch him!"
"Raizen! Wait! I didn't know they'd do this! I'll stop them! Hold on!" Kael bellowed, lunging forward only to be hurled to the floor by the guards.
Raizen was dragged brutally through gleaming metal corridors, then shoved into a fortified elevator plunging deep into the tower's forbidden depths.
A colossal laboratory loomed, awash in an unearthly pale green glow. At its heart stood the Asvaria machine, a hulking metal titan asleep yet ominous—a tangle of conduits, energy tubes, and pulsing red circuits quivering faintly, as if alive. Engineers in sterile white suits hustled about, finalizing preparations. Beyond a massive bulletproof glass wall, Kael and Seiryu shoved through the throng, pounding frantically on the transparent barrier.
Strapped to a frigid metal chair at the machine's core, Raizen felt wires snap onto his wrists and temples. "Kael! Seiryu! Save me! Shut this thing down!" he roared, his voice cracking with terror and rage.
"Release him now! That's my order! This wasn't my idea!" Kael screamed, hammering the glass uselessly.
"Don't do this to him! Please!" Seiryu cried beside him, her small fists slamming the barrier, her voice shattering with helpless anguish. But a stony-faced engineer yanked Kael back, deaf to his pleas.
The machine surged awake. Its red spirals whirled faster, a low hum swelling to a crushing roar, flooding the lab with unseen pressure. Then, abruptly, defying all protocols, a piercing shriek ripped from Asvaria's core. A cataclysmic explosion followed, quaking the tower's foundations. A blinding white light—not the anticipated green or red, but a pure, ghastly white—burst from the machine's heart, surging at unthinkable speed, engulfing all in its path. The bulletproof glass before Raizen dissolved into glassy dust. Metal walls fractured, debris scattering like leaves in a gale. Screams pierced the air—not just from Kael and Seiryu charging toward him through the shattered barrier, but from dozens of engineers, scientists, and black-armored guards, some fleeing, others swallowed on the spot by the relentless white tide.
Amid the blinding chaos, a metallic, alien voice—belonging to no one he knew—thundered from all directions, or perhaps from the depths of his own mind: "The chosen one will shatter the wheel of fate. You are the dawn of destruction—and I will lead you to the beginning anew."
"Who?! What?!" Raizen's eyes widened in horror, grappling to comprehend the unfolding nightmare, but it was too late. A pain beyond words crashed over him, as if every cell were torn asunder and remade a million times in a heartbeat. He felt himself unravel into countless specks of light, drawn by a monstrous force into the eye of the white maelstrom. His final scream melded with the cacophony of blasts, collapsing steel, and desperate cries… Kael and Seiryu's anguished calls dwindled to faint echoes, lost in the spacetime vortex that devoured him, casting him into a boundless journey—destination unknown, uncertain if Veyra, Leon, Anya, or anyone else in that damned lab had been swept along in this apocalyptic disaster.