CHAPTER ONE — THE FIVE TOMES
A thousand years have passed since the dawn of the New Era—the Era of Evolution.
The era before it, known simply as the Era of Technology, had lasted nearly four thousand years. During that time, humanity pushed its inventions so far that impossibility became a joke. Teleportation gates linked continents. Cellular reprogramming cured entire genetic lines. Quantum forges built cities overnight. The skies stayed clear thanks to perpetual atmospheric cleansing.
If it could be imagined, someone else has already built it.
And then came the Tomes.
Five colossal stone slabs—each nearly half a mile long—descended from the sky without warning. Every Tome bore a single symbol on its surface, one that shifted pattern depending on who looked at it. No two people saw the same mark.
Scientists tried to understand the Tomes. Governments threw every resource they had at them to no avail.
But for the first time in a while, technology proved inadequate. Every scan, every probe, every analysis came back empty. The Tomes simply were an enigma.
Still, the more they failed, the more invested they became. To them, the Tomes became an exciting puzzle to crack, a way to push for the next big breakthrough in science.
only, a year later, the world was forced to pay the price for that arrogance.
A quake erupted from the five impact sites and rolled across the entire planet in waves. Land and sea convulsed as one. Mountains came crumbling. Volcanoes roared to life. The very climate twisted and churned violently.
The catastrophe lasted barely three hours—but in those hours, billions were killed. Humans and animals alike. It was tragedy the likes of which the world has never seen before. Not even the heavily infamous third world war came close.
Humanity mourned. People despaired. But with the level of technological advancement, rebuilding was all too easy—though the lives lost could never be restored.
And then the satellites revealed the impossible:
Earth… had expanded.
And not merely by a few inches. Or a few miles. But by scale—more than a dozen times its original.
Landmasses stretched into unfamiliar shapes. Oceans widened into vast, alien chasms. Entire regions that once sat side-by-side were now separated by thousands of kilometers of newborn terrain. Humanity had survived the quake, but the planet they woke up to was no longer the same.
And then came the most important change of all.
Essence.
An invisible tide washed over the swollen planet—a force later named Life essence. It seeped into the soil, the seas, the very air. People felt it before they understood it: the atmosphere grew richer, purer even. Bodies became lighter, and stronger. Scans showed slight increases in life expectancy.
At first, it was a blessing.
Until everything else began changing too.
It started with the animals. House cats grew to the size of dogs. Dogs developed the bite strength of crocodiles. Birds flew faster, longer, harder. Out In the wilds, creatures grew larger, stronger, and more bizarre by the day.
Then nature itself distorted. Trees mutated at random, sprouting arms and faces, some capable of uprooting themselves to move about freely. Stones gained life. The very air coalesced and gave birth to wandering elementals.
Yes, humanity did have the technological prowess to handle these early shifts… but not for long. Every sunrise brought new changes, the dog sized cat of yesterday had grown a few inches taller overnight.
It became painfully clear:
The world wasn't just evolving—
it was doing so at a pace that left humans behind.
Panic surged again. The still recovering society threatened to collapse completely when a miracle happened.
A researcher stationed near the northern Tome reported a breakthrough. While gazing at the shifting symbol, his mind had fallen into a state he couldn't quite explain. Knowledge poured into his mind—how to wield life energy, refine it, to evolve beyond his limits.
He became the first evolved human.
The dam broke. More people came. Few ever succeeded in triggering that mysterious state, gaining techniques of their own. Some shared them. Some hoarded them. Still, the techniques spread. Paths formed. And humanity rose once more, stepping into a new age.
The era of Evolution.
——————
A thousand years has passed since then, and the world had long grown accustomed to its new nature. Empires rose around the five Tomes. Cities thrived on essence-powered technologies. Monstrous beasts roamed the vast wilderness that now covered most of the expanded Earth. Strength had become the only true currency.
The path of evolution became the single most important pursuit of mankind. Talent determined status. Strength determined rights. The weak weren't just mocked—they were treated as lessers and exploited.
One could say that at humanities greatest height, it had somehow, reverted back to its lowest.
——————
Somewhere in the eastern territories, in a city-state under the Arkan Empire…
A seventeen-year-old boy frowned as his eyes fluttered open.
Bright sunlight poured through what looked like a seamless transparent wall—a futuristic window that stretched from ceiling to floor.
Max groaned, raised a hand to block the light, and rolled over until the glare was behind him.
He sat up… and froze.
He was in a room, but none of it felt familiar.
Half the objects around him were unrecognizable. The ones he did recognize were no more than twisted, futuristic echoes of things he once knew.
"Huh? Is that neon colored chair hovering or am I that exhausted?"
Every direction he turned, bizarre, unrecognizable contraptions stared back at him—strange alloys, glowing surfaces, devices that hummed with energy. For a moment he wondered if he'd wandered into a sci-fi convention display.
'Wait. The comic-con!'
As if the word had hit a hidden switch, memories slammed into him. of people, of places, of a new and unknown world that for some reason, bore the moniker of 'earth'.
He clutched his head as the foreign memories hammered at his skull like iron fists. His breath turned shallow. His vision flickered. He tried to stand, stumbled, barely caught himself on a digitalized wall panel that flashed under his touch.
"Ahh!…"
The pain spiked and his body trembled severely, his heart pounded erratically, synapses working overtime to accurately process all the information drilling into his skull.
Between the pain and the trembling, a few scenes flashed into his mind, more vivid than the rest.
Bright lights.
A purple-haired beauty.
Three boys grinning with malice.
A glowing orb held by trembling hands.
Then darkness.
And silence.
Max's eyes flew open.
He staggered backward in shock, dread and a mixture of something else, stopping only when his back hit the bed frame.
He turned around, stiffly, only now discovering that the bed too was as bizarre as the rest of the things inside his room.
Its structure was that of an elegant crescent of metallic black hovering a foot above the ground. Rings of soft blue light pulsed beneath it like calm waves. Every few seconds, the bed gave a deep, rhythmic thump—almost like a heartbeat.
It should have terrified him.
But instead… it only served to calm him down. His pulse slowed. His breathing steadied.
He dragged his gaze around the room again. The walls were matte black with faint veins of light running through them. A projection on the wall showed a logo of some sorts. A holographic desk glowed in one corner. Even the floor shimmered faintly, revealing currents of pale energy flowing beneath it like rivers of light.
Whatever his eyes landed on, had its name appear in his mind as naturally as breathing. A feeling, faint but undeniable, tugged at him. Of familiarity. Of belonging.
Shakily, he moved towards the transparent wall—which he now knew was called an aura-glass wall. On it, his reflection stood gazing back at him, its eyes mirroring his stunned gaze.
A lean frame, about 179cm. A head full of dark hair, a pair of deep blue eyes and a pretty handsome face—chiseled jaws and all that.
Max subconsciously raised a hand to his cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin. Pinching it hard just to confirm he wasn't dreaming…
Beyond his reflection, a city stretched out into the horizon. Hover-cars streaked across glowing lanes suspended in midair. Towering buildings glittered with shifting advertisements. Service bots zipped between structures at high speeds. Below people busied about. Some in armors, others carrying weapons that gleamed in the morning sun.
Max stared at the world outside, the bustling city, the futuristic buildings… combining that with the memories in his head, Only one conclusion formed—a simple, absurd, yet undeniable one:
"I… transmigrated?"