They called it an earthquake.
A once-in-a-century tremor that "shook the crust under the Atlantic."
A lie so thin it peeled within a week.
Every screen across the planet—phones, living-room TVs, street billboards—played the same montage on loop, a highlight reel of a world slipping its old skin.
Los Angeles burning in orange streaks where a pyrokinetic teenager cried.
Beijing smothered in a violet storm that never existed on any weather chart.
Berlin streets streaked with unnatural frost, bodies frozen mid-run.
A world cracking open.
A world waking up.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
Scientists finally admitted what everyone already knew:
The "earthquake" wasn't from below.
It came from inside every living thing.
Every nation had their own names for it:
The Awakening
Day Zero
The Paragon Trigger
The Shift
The Pulse
But the truth whispered behind closed doors was far stranger:
> Humanity didn't evolve.
It rebooted.
The Pulse was a global ignition.
A dormant layer in the human genome flickered to life like an ancient emergency protocol.
Not just humans—
Mammals. Birds. Even insects.
Something beneath evolution woke up hungry.
THE UNITED STATES
America did what America always does:
It tried to control the uncontrollable.
Black-site facilities like Circuit 12, Redline Base, and The Cold Vault sprang up across the country.
Congress formed special task forces.
The National Guard was deployed in every major .
And still—
Meta gangs outnumbered military forces 3 to 1.
Chicago fell first.
Vegas turned into a neon battlefield.
Detroit discovered a meta who could melt steel with her voice.
CHINA
Day 1: Martial law.
Day 2: Curfew.
Day 3: A new division—The Heavenly Response Unit.
Unlike America's confusion, China moved like a machine. Cities were quarantined, metas tagged, families given mandatory bracelets that detected anomalous energy signatures.
Still—
In the rural west, mountains cracked open.
Villages reported dragon-like silhouettes in the clouds.
The government called it "mass hysteria."
Villagers called it "awakening."
JAPAN
While the world bled—
Japan watched the first public meta on live television.
A trembling middle-schooler in Shinjuku who shielded an entire bus from collapsing concrete by manifesting translucent guardian spirits.
The country didn't panic—they bowed.
Mothers left offerings at his doorstep.
Shrines were built in his name.
Metas in Japan became urban protectors instead of threats.
One clean anomaly in a filthy global pattern.
INDIA
Mumbai erupted within hours.
Meta teleporters stole an entire bank vault in daylight.
A man with toxin-emitting skin shut down half the local railway.
And in Assam—
A herd of awakened elephants stampeded through villages with glowing red tusks, leaving trails of charred earth behind.
The government labeled them "eco-hazards."
Locals labeled them "gods returning."
RUSSIA
Russia did not fear the awakened.
Russia tried to recruit them.
For thirty-six hours, it worked.
Then Subject M-07 froze an entire armored battalion at -70°C, temperature plummeting so fast the tanks shattered like glass.
Nobody approached him again.
Reports now say he walks the Siberian tundra alone, the air around him turning to diamond dust with every breath.
EUROPE
Europe fractured.
France tried diplomacy.
Italy collapsed within two weeks.
England shut down Heathrow after forty winged metas took flight in a coordinated formation—no one knew who they were or what they wanted.
Airport radars recorded them as "unidentified biological aircraft."
Meanwhile Wild Life
Cities panicked about humans.
They should have feared the forests.
North America:
Wolves howled in eerie unison; researchers suspect hive-mind communication.
Bears developed density mutation—gunshots ricocheted off their skin.
New York sewers reported alligators with iron-like armor plates.
Africa:
Lions regenerating from fatal wounds.
Hippos entering berserker-like rages capable of flipping trucks.
A giraffe firing hardened bone shards from its vertebrae.
Australia:
Already a problem. Now a warning to the world.
Humans weren't at the top anymore.
They had company.