In 2089, after the Last World War reduced cities to craters and ash, humanity's final ember flickered above a dead ocean. Seven billion had become seventy million. No armies remained, no winners. Only the starving, the sick, and the silent.
Then It came.
Not a god of scripture, no thunder, no judgment. Just a fracture in reality, a wound that breathed. And from that wound, a voice without a mouth spoke one word into every surviving mind:
"Enough!!"
Magic flooded the earth like rain into parched soil. Those who could touch it found their bodies rewriting themselves. Strength, fire from fingertips, wounds closing in seconds. The world called them the Gifted. Within a decade, the Gifted rebuilt civilization. Governments rose again, now built on the logic of power:
those who have magic rule. Those who don't… serve.
———
Present day
Sector 7, North American Unified Territory.
Troy sat in the back of a classroom with a flickering desk light and an empty mana gauge on the inside of his wrist, the mark every citizen received at birth. His gauge had never moved, not once, not even a flicker. Across the room, a girl his age lifted her textbook with two fingers while drinking coffee, making the mug levitate by her mouth. The teacher didn't blink and neither did anyone else.
Troy pulled his sleeve down and let out a quiet sigh. "Another day of being invisible to everyone who can see through walls." He said quietly to himself.
He didn't know it yet, just how much his life would change forever. When a lesser god with a grudge would crack open his chest and plant something there. Something that didn't belong, a broken, jury-rigged system no one had ever seen before.
And the Gifted would learn that being lesser is a matter of perspective.