Tyrol, Western Austria – Deep within the Alps, Outskirts of Innsbruck
Carved into the unforgiving heart of the Tyrolean Alps lies a secret—one that doesn't appear on any map or satellite scan. Nestled in the outermost fringe of Innsbruck, veiled beneath ice, stone, and silence, operates a clandestine branch of Nexus-9—an illegal organization infamous for its grotesque human experimentation. Awakened or not, all who fall into their hands are treated as subjects, not people.
The laboratory itself is a technological marvel and moral blight, drilled deep into alpine rock using a fusion of advanced engineering and geokinetic awakened labor. Officially, it doesn't exist. Unofficially, whispers suggest the ruling awakened family of Innsbruck is not just aware of Nexus-9's presence, but in quiet collusion with it.
A man crouched low behind a snow-swept ridge, cloaked in white camouflage and framed by frostbitten oaks and jagged stone. A balaclava obscured his face, and a katana hung at his hip like a quiet promise. He was tall—6'4"—with the build of a predator honed by discipline, not brute force. Twenty-six years old, he had the calm stillness of someone who had seen far too much and lived to master it.
A few hundred meters ahead, embedded in the cliffside, was a reinforced steel door—the only visible entrance to the Nexus-9 lab. Two guards stood watch: One has a lean build with red hair while the other has the build of a body builder with black hair. Both are awakened, armed, and flanked by a thermal imaging camera sweeping its field of vision in slow arcs.
The man tapped his phone:
"I'm going in."
Seconds later, a reply:
"Go ahead."
He stood, snow crunching softly underfoot, and began his approach.
Inside the security control room, alarms blinked to life. The thermal camera caught a humanoid heat signature moving directly toward the entrance.
"Unknown individual approaching," an operator said. "Possible hostile."
The guards received the alert. One muttered, "We'll handle it."
Tourists and hikers had occasionally strayed too close before. Early on, this branch of Nexus-9 had responded by abducting and interrogating them. But after almost exposing the site to Vienna's top Awakener families, the protocol changed. Now, trespassers were watched, then misled or redirected. But this wasn't a tourist. This man walked like he belonged in the shadows.
The guards tensed as the figure came into view.
"Stop right there!" barked the red-haired guard. "You're trespassing on a classified Austrian military site. Turn back immediately!"
The man didn't stop.
They saw the scabbard. Their eyes met in grim recognition.
"Possible awakened," the black-haired guard whispered into his comm.
Upon hearing it, the operators at the control room looked at their superior behind them who was watching all of this unfold in their security footage. He was notified when the thermal imaging caught wind of the man.
The superior officer leaned forward, eyes narrowing.
"Terminate him."
One guard slammed his palms into the ground. Aether surged through the soil in a visible ripple, aiming to immobilize the intruder. The second raised his hands, conjuring a rolling blaze of awakened fire and hurling it to incinerate the man as soon as he was frozen in place.
The attacks converged.
Just before impact, the man vanished.
The red-haired guard blinked—then heard a dull thud. He looked down.
His partner's severed head rolled past his boots.
Before he could react, he felt a sudden, slicing pressure across his neck. There was no time to scream. Only the sound of blood spluttering in the snow.
——————
Inside the dimly lit control room, the atmosphere had shifted from routine surveillance to breathless silence. All eyes were glued to the security monitors as the feed replayed the scene on loop: their front-line guards—Dmitriy and Felix—had engaged the unknown intruder.
Dmitriy, the one with the bulky build used his geokinesis, he had struck the ground with both palms, sending a ripple of earthbound aether toward the target to immobilize him.
Felix, his fiery red hair unmistakable even in infrared, followed up instantly—launching a rollimg blaze of awakened fire, strong enough to melt armored vehicles.
For a moment, everyone expected to see blood, fire, and a body reduced to ash.
Instead, the man vanished.
On screen, in the next instant, Dmitriy's head hit the snow, bouncing once before coming to a halt. Felix turned in horror, barely had time to process what he saw—
—and then his head was gone too. Two bodies crumpled. Blood painted the snow crimson.
The control room fell into stunned silence.
"…What the hell just happened…" one of the operators whispered.
Joseph, the branch head of Nexus-9 in Austria, stood frozen for a second. Then rage overtook him. His fist slammed down on the alarm button, the sound echoing through the room like a detonation.
Red lights flared. Sirens began to wail inside the laboratory.
He snatched the mic off its cradle and spoke into the facility-wide broadcast system, voice cold and clipped:
"We have an intruder inside the perimeter. This is not a drill. Lethal force authorized. All available security personnel, intercept and eliminate."
Behind him, Kwame, one of the operators, kept his eyes locked on the screen. He squinted as the intruder—still calm, completely unfazed—shifted his stance.
"He's preparing something," Kwame muttered.
On screen, the man adjusted his footing, then drew his katana in a single fluid motion.
He slashed.
The blade didn't just cut—it unraveled. The reinforced steel door, designed to withstand high-level awakened bombardment, sheared clean through as if it had never existed.
And then… the mountain shook.
The entire control room rattled violently. Warning lights flickered. Dust spilled from ceiling vents, and chunks of rock cracked loose from the reinforced walls, crashing to the floor.
Joseph staggered, grabbing onto the console. "Impossible…" he breathed.
On the monitor, the intruder stepped through the ruined steel door like a shadow passing into the light.
Kwame leaned closer, his voice barely above a whisper. "It's Null. He's the one who attacked the Nexus-9 branch in Brazil several months ago."
Joseph snapped out of his daze. "Security team, move! Kill him! Don't let him reach the inner sectors!"
The broadcast crackled and repeated his command throughout the sprawling underground facility.
Null walked with quiet certainty through the cold, clinical halls of the Nexus-9 facility. His destination: the Inner Sectors, where the organization's darkest experiments were housed—where monsters were made and innocence dismantled.
He had hunted them before.
His campaign had started in Brazil, tipped off by an anonymous source from within the World Awakeners' Association. The destruction of the Nexus-9 branch there had sent shockwaves through the global awakened community. The world had woken up to the realization that one of the most dangerous criminal syndicates—an organization whispered of in the same breath as Frame—had been attacked and razed to the ground.
And no one took credit.
Because claiming responsibility meant declaring war on Nexus-9.
Even the WAA, for all its reach and influence, avoided direct confrontation with Nexus-9 unless absolutely necessary. But footage survived—leaked, grainy, yet unmistakable.
A single intruder.
Wearing a high-tech balaclava that scrambled biometric data and blocked awakened sensing. His power? Unknown. But the footage showed a figure gliding through Nexus-9's elite like a ghost with a blade. Aether attacks meant to incinerate or crush him never connected. They simply... ceased. Nullified.
And so, the whispers gave him a name:
"Null."
The man who renders cause meaningless.
The man whose presence kills certainty.
One theory floated through the community with surprising traction: that he wielded flyrokinesis—It allows the user to manipulate and create a force field or barrier. Sometimes referred as Barrier Manipulation.
The theory traced back to the Eresby Family, a prestigious lineage known its flyrokinesis.
But the Eresby family denied any association. Openly or otherwise, they wanted no part in drawing Nexus-9's wrath.
As Null moved deeper into the facility, he heard them—footsteps echoing through the sterile corridor. His enhanced perception picked up a voice:
"Watch out for his flyrokinesis. Don't let him bait you."
He smirked behind his balaclava.
They still had no idea what they were dealing with.
Fifteen awakened agents appeared in the wide chamber ahead—clearly chosen for coordinated interception. Null recognized the pattern. He'd seen it before in Brazil: a mixed squad, trained to suppress and neutralize high-level threats. Their combined strength could take down a top 100-ranked awakened.
They didn't speak. No commands. No warnings.
They attacked.
Aether attacks surged toward him, a combination of both pyrokinesis, and geokinesis. Simultaneously, physical-type awakeners charged in, aiming to flank and overwhelm him.
Null moved like liquid inevitability. Dodging pyroblasts with sharp angles and narrow slides. Parrying strikes with his katana in one hand, turning bodies into shields, redirecting force without wasting movement.
After minutes of high-speed exchange, the team's leader snarled, "Formation B!"
Ten remained.
They broke into a precise battle formation: six psychic-type awakeners spread out in a ring around Null, while four physical-types surged again, forcing him into constant motion. Every parried strike came with a follow-up aether blast. The formation was surgical—designed to suppress mobility and wear him down.
They thought they had him.
They didn't.
Null pivoted. A blur. In an instant, he struck down one of the psychic users. Then another. Then another—clean, merciless cuts through reinforced aether armor.
Panic rippled.
The four melee fighters tried to close ranks and intercept, but Null was faster. Not in speed alone—in consequence. To chase him meant to fall into place, exactly where he needed them to be.
Only one psychic user remained.
The others closed in protectively, shielding him. That one hadn't attacked yet. Null took mental note. Unknown variable.
He vanished.
And reappeared in front of the last psychic agent.
Just as his blade rose to strike—
Toxic fumes burst from the floor, blanketing the chamber in dense green vapor. The final psychic was a toxikinesis user. The other agents scattered back, avoiding the kill zone. Only the psychic remained, watching the gas churn and envelop Null's silhouette.
"It's done," he muttered with sweat dripping down from his forehead.
A moment passed.
Then, without warning—
A clean horizontal slash erupted from within the miasma, cutting the toxikinetic in half.
The fog dissipated in slow curls.
Null stood unscathed, a glint of reality-warping stillness in his blade's wake.
No cough. No burn.
The gas hadn't touched him.
The others turned to run. They didn't get far.
In a blur of black and silver, they fell one by one—cut down by a man the world still couldn't explain.
With the last body crumpled in silence, Null turned and walked deeper into the belly of the beast.
Toward the Inner Sectors.
Toward the ones who believed they could act without consequence.
Towards everyone who are in collusion with Nexus-9.
He was here to teach them the truth.
Causality always has a reckoning.