The moment Noah's hand touched the core, his mind fractured.
He didn't feel pain—he felt existence being rewritten.
Images.
Screams.
Languages he'd never heard surged into his thoughts like boiling rivers. Memories not his own. Deaths. Births. Entire bloodlines compressed into seconds.
[Initiating Binding Sequence…]
[WARNING: Causality Drift Surging — +3400%]
[Caution: Host Identity at Risk]
His vision split. He saw himself standing there. Saw himself as a child. As an old man. As something… not human.
What the hell is happening?! Noah's own thoughts barely held form.
Then a voice—not the System—cut through the noise.
It was deeper than sound. Ancient. Like the forest was speaking through cracked lungs.
"You are not chosen. Yet you reach."
Noah growled. "I make my own fate."
"Then break."
And break he did.
His body convulsed violently. Blood burst from his nose, his eyes, his ears. His right arm withered, bones cracking, skin graying.
[System Intervention: Emergency Override Engaged]
[Pain Suppression MAXED – Adaptation Threshold Reached]
[Trait Manifested: Paradox Engine – Bends probability slightly in user's favor during critical life-threatening moments.]
[Core Bond: 8%... 17%... 39%...]
Noah screamed as his mind teetered on the edge of annihilation.
But he didn't let go.
He refused.
Not because he thought he could win—but because letting go would mean returning to what he was before.
Weak.
Powerless.
Forgettable.
[Core Bond: 74%... 96%...]
Then came silence.
Utter, crushing silence.
The core pulsed once—and disintegrated.
Its light poured into Noah's chest.
He collapsed.
Somewhere above, Mira screamed his name again.
She had climbed halfway down the edge of the collapse, vines wrapped around her arms for balance. The light from the core's destruction had blinded her briefly.
When she finally reached the bottom and saw him lying there, body twitching, eyes open but wrong—she knelt beside him.
"Noah…?"
He blinked.
Something about him had changed.
His veins shimmered with strands of silver and black, fading slowly under his skin. His pupils were ringed with faint violet glow. He wasn't in pain. He wasn't even breathing hard.
But he was no longer the same boy.
[System Rebooting… Standby.]
[You have absorbed a Proto-Origin Core Fragment.]
[New Trait Gained: Temporal Residue – Chance to relive 0.5–1.5 seconds during high-stress moments (Cooldown: 3 days)]
[Causality Drift stabilized.]
[Hidden Mechanism Unlocked: Origin Path Initiated.]
Noah sat up, slowly.
Mira stared. "...You're insane."
He looked at his hands, then at her.
"No. I'm just tired of waiting for permission to matter."
A long silence stretched between them.
Mira eventually helped him stand. "That core… it wasn't meant for you. It's older than this land."
"Good," Noah said. "Then it won't be missed."
By the time they emerged from the pit, the forest had gone quiet. As if aware that something deep within it had shifted forever.
Noah looked back once, at the hole now sealed by vines and roots curling unnaturally fast over the entrance.
He said nothing.
But the System did.
[You have taken your first step beyond fate.]
[From this point on, nothing will unfold as written.]
[Prepare.]