At precisely 3:17 a.m. GMT on a seemingly uneventful Tuesday morning, something ancient stirred. Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, where pressure crushed steel and light dared not tread, the Mariana Trench became the origin point of a phenomenon that would alter existence as humanity knew it. From a fracture in the bedrock—older than any tectonic shift recorded by science—an immense pulse of energy erupted. It wasn't fire, nor was it seismic. It was... something else. Something forgotten.
The pulse shot upwards, passing through miles of crushing seawater like a spear of intangible light, invisible to the naked eye but profound enough to be detected by every satellite, deep-sea monitor, and geomagnetic sensor in orbit or on Earth. The energy signature did not match anything known—neither solar flare nor tectonic activity, neither aurora nor weaponry. It was something older, purer. The initial reaction from the scientific community was confusion; instruments read spikes in gravitational variance, magnetic polarity inversion, and unexplained oscillations in time-space alignment. All of this emanated from the ocean's deepest point—the Challenger Deep.
Yet what the scientists saw in data, others felt in their bones.
Far across the planet, in the frozen stillness of the upper Himalayas, a circle of monks meditated in synchrony, their chants echoing through the thin, icy air. They did not need satellites to understand the change; their hearts, aligned with the pulse of the world, beat out of rhythm. The youngest among them, barely sixteen, collapsed with a gasp, eyes wide and tear-filled. "She stirs," he whispered, as the elder monk cradled his trembling form. No further explanation was needed. All of them, from the eldest sage to the greenest novice, felt it: the Earth was waking.
In the dense, pulsing green of the Amazon jungle, isolated from modern civilisation, an elder shaman stood from his ceremonial seat of woven roots and stone. He placed his palm against the bark of an ancient kapok tree and listened. Not with ears, but with spirit. The sap of the tree ran hot. The birds grew silent. The river's babble ceased. It was as if the very jungle held its breath. "The world speaks again," he murmured in awe, "and her voice is power."
In cities of steel and light, where glass towers scraped the clouds and millions went about their lives with faces glued to screens, the change was subtler but no less real. Birds flew erratically in the sky. Dogs barked without reason. Sensitive children awoke screaming, unable to describe the terror clawing at the edges of their minds. A feeling, just beneath awareness, crawled through the collective psyche of humanity. Something massive and ancient had moved, and the world would never be the same.
The Pulse—capitalised in the minds of those who studied it—didn't simply echo through stone or flesh. It reverberated through mana.
Unknown to modern science but long chronicled in ancient scripts, mana had always been part of the world, existing as the lifeblood of creation. Hidden, subtle, only manipulable by those gifted or cursed enough to perceive it. The Pulse didn't create mana—it revealed it. Across the globe, lines of power, once dormant, flared into being. In Iceland, ancient runes glowed on stones that hadn't been touched in centuries. In Egypt, the Nile shimmered with a strange golden hue under the moonlight. And in Tokyo, a child drew a glowing circle on her bedroom wall without realising her chalk had turned into raw energy.
But deeper still, beneath this awakening, something else stirred. Earth's Will—the very consciousness of the planet itself.
It had slumbered for millions of years, content to watch its children rise and fall. But now, with the breach of the veil that separated Earth from the mana-saturated multiverse beyond, the Will opened one eye. Not in panic, but in purpose. The Earth was not simply reacting to the mana influx—it was preparing.
The intrusion came from deep space—from a rift in the fabric of the Milky Way that linked Earth's plane to the outer multiverse. For eons, this stream of power had been sealed, hidden in the galactic dark. But that seal was weakening, pulled open by unnatural hands.
Humans, long dormant in potential, began to change.
Across the globe, people experienced strange awakenings. They were no longer bound by mere biology or physics. Instead, many discovered they had affinities—elemental alignments tied to the newly active ley lines. Some awoke with the ability to command flame, others to walk upon water, bend wind, or shape earth. These individuals became known as Awakeners, and as days passed, they began to identify with their unique element or power.
Yet not all Awakeners controlled elements. A rarer, more chaotic awakening occurred in a few—a direct bestowment of supernatural gifts by the Earth's Will itself. These individuals didn't draw mana from the world—they were anchored to it, possessed of strange, divine abilities that defied classification: immunity to magic, perfect memory recall, projection of truth, or manipulation of emotion. They became known as Bearers, and they were feared and revered.
Over the next two years, Earth shifted violently. New nations rose under awakened leaders. Old powers collapsed. War broke out between elementally divided factions. And just as Earth teetered on collapse, the worst began.