It was a little past six in the morning, and the gym was already humming.
For Kairys, today was leg day, which he hated the most.
The weight sled creaked, metal grinding as he pushed through his third rep. In the End played through his earbuds, low and steady, the kind of music that hit just right when the world was still waking up.
He exhaled and pressed again.
Four.
The gym was half-busy, but not unbearable. A few lifters were grunting too loud. One guy was powerlifting like he had an audience of gods, and a girl nearby was filming a set that looked more tripod than workout.
Over by the cable stations, a group of college freshmen were trying to out-bicep each other while sneaking glances at the mirror. That species existed in every gym. Evolution just hadn't caught up yet.
Five.
Kai's legs burned… not painfully, just the kind of burn that said, you've got three more sets in you if you don't act soft.
Six.
He wasn't doing this for aesthetics. Rosa had drilled that into him early, the way only a karate champ could. 'If your body can't take a hit, it won't matter how pretty it looks when it hits the floor.'
Kai hadn't exactly been the disciplined type growing up, and neither had his brother, Kassian. But Rosa kept dragging them into morning workouts, strength drills, runs they hated.
Somewhere along the line, it stopped feeling like punishment and started feeling like something he owed himself.
Seven.
The sled came down as he took a deep breath, then pressed.
Eight.
"Kai. Kaaai!"
A feminine voice called out, though Kai didn't hear a thing, not with his earbuds in and In the End still playing.
A moment later, a shadow fell across him.
Kai raised an eyebrow, locked the weight plates in place, and paused the music. He pulled one earbud out and looked up.
"What's up, Mia?"
Mia Santori, nineteen, the same age as Kai, was a classmate from college.
The gym sat midway between campus and their rented house, so running into familiar faces wasn't unusual.
She and Kelly, another girl from their class, shared the top floor of the same house Kai and Kassian were renting. Kai and Kass had the ground floor.
They were friendly enough, occasional Netflix nights and passive-aggressive wars over the washing machine, but nothing deeper than that. The girls had only moved in two months ago, after all.
Kelly, of course, wasn't at the gym. She didn't believe in "voluntary sweating," as she called it. More of a BTS fangirl than a barbell enthusiast. Cardio, in her book, meant dancing in front of her mirror at 2 a.m.
Mia hesitated, then sighed like it physically hurt her to say it. "Well… Alice asked if you were free tonight."
Kai glanced past her toward a cluster of girls near the dumbbell rack. One with a red ponytail was mid-set, all focused breath and biceps. Another brunette, hair tied back, was very subtly glancing his way.
The moment his gaze met hers, she snapped back toward her friend like nothing happened.
He raised an eyebrow at Mia. "What for?"
"She wanted to know if you'd be interested in a blind date. With a few of her friends," Mia said, shrugging like she wasn't fully sold on the idea herself. "Some of our guys from class will be there too. Group thing."
Kai blinked slowly. If Alice was behind it, odds were she already had the pairings decided. Probably wasn't that blind.
"That's not a blind date," he said. "If I already know who's gonna be there, that's just… pre-scheduled suffering."
Mia snorted. "It's called socializing."
He exhaled, still reclined against the leg press. The towel slid off his shoulder as he glanced up at her.
"I'll probably hit the dojo after classes. Check in on the kids."
She looked at him flatly. "Your face is wasted on you, Kai."
He smirked.
Medium-length black hair framed a fair, clean face… no stubble, no traces of sleep deprivation yet. But it was his eyes people always noticed first.
A pale, piercing gray… like moonlight on steel.
He was one of the rare few born with gray irises; the shade came from extremely low melanin and densely packed stromal collagen that caused Mie scattering, diffusing all wavelengths of light almost evenly.
No wonder people stared.
Not that he cared.
As they were talking about the date, something strange happened.
A flash… like a meteor tearing open daylight.
The sky, still smeared with dawn, rippled with aurora-like streaks. Colors bled across the horizon, too vivid, too wrong.
For a moment, it felt like the world was being scanned. Not just the gym, not just the city… the entire planet.
A low, seismic hum rolled through the ground.
"What the hell—?"
"Aaaah!"
CLANG— a dumbbell hit the floor.
Panic exploded instantly.
Kai jolted as the tremor hit, his legs slipping. He slid awkwardly off the leg press, body twisting as momentum carried him backward.
He reached out to catch himself, missed, and crashed into Mia's legs, sending them both sprawling.
At that exact moment, his left earbud kicked in, maybe from the jolt, crackling to life with a familiar tune.
'I tried so hard and got so far. But in the end, it doesn't even matter.'
Still mid-fall, Kai's head turned toward the floor-to-ceiling glass panels. His gray eyes widened.
In slow motion, he watched the sky outside. Colors shimmered like an aurora, comet-like streaks of light weaving through the early dawn.
It didn't look beautiful.
It looked like a warning.
Like the herald of the End.
"Kyaa—!"
Mia fell, landing hard on top of him. The air rushed out of Kai's lungs in a grunt.
Above them, the gym lights flickered, like something ancient had just blinked.
And then… silence.
The colors vanished, and the lights returned to normal. Like it had never happened at all.
Mia nearly smacked her head on the leg press but caught herself at the last second.
"Ow…" she muttered.
A muffled voice groaned beneath her.
"Can you get your heavy ass off me?"
A vein twitched on Mia's forehead. "Fuck you, bastard."
She deliberately sat harder on his chest before finally pushing herself up.
Around them, the regulars, office workers, and college kids were all looking around, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
"Was that an earthquake?" someone asked.
"Holy shit!" a girl cried. "My iPhone 16 Pro Max… I just bought it! It got scratched!"
"Fuck your iPhone," someone else snapped. "I almost died doing a double plate press."
Kai slowly pushed himself up, brushing off dust and embarrassment. He spotted his right earbud on the floor, picked it up, then turned toward the glass panels.
The sky outside looked normal again. Too normal.
He stopped the music and slipped both earbuds neatly into their charging case before stepping closer to the windows.
The gym sat on the third floor of a high-tech complex. Below them were the calmer floors… yoga studios, massage therapy rooms, maybe a dance class or two. Kai never cared enough to check.
Outside, chaos had already taken over. People had rushed out of their homes and buildings, probably convinced it was an earthquake.
A few minor accidents dotted the street, though nothing seemed too serious.
Then, without warning, Kai's vision dimmed.
And he wasn't the only one.
All across Earth, the same thing happened.
A single voice drifted through their minds, cold but not mechanical…
Impersonal, yet older than language itself.
It felt like the universe itself had spoken.
— ✦ —
[ 'Omnix Codex' stirs… ]
[ Observing the Mortal Plane… ]
[ Perceiving your world, its shadows, its light, and its echoes of the past. ]
[ Feeling the lifeblood of every soul… ]
[ Recognizing the soul: 'Kairys Ashveil' ]
[ Classification: Candidate. ]
— ✦ —
Kai stared at the runic panel that flickered into his mind.
It wasn't like seeing with his eyes. More like closing them, plunging into darkness, letting imagination paint the world. The panel hovered there, projected onto that mental canvas, clear and crisp.
Through the glass walls ahead, the outside world remained visible. Everyone had frozen in place. Like time itself had paused.
So… it wasn't just me.
Omnix Codex?
Mortal Plane?
Candidate?
Before he could process any of it, more messages followed.
— ✦ —
[ Welcome to Phase I – Ludus Supervivendi. ]
[ Will you enter the trial? ]
[ Yes / No ]
[ Countdown – 01 : 00 : 00 ]
[ Your silence will be taken as refusal. Automatic rejection will follow. ]
— ✦ —
After reading everything the so-called Omnix Codex projected into his mind, Kai had only one reaction:
"What the actual fuck?!..."