Prologue

It's been half a decade now that it all happened... where to start, oh, where to start...

My name's Kyllian, and I'm from Eastport, a little town bordering the Saphine river. As of the time of writing, it's been around 180 years since the human race was almost extinguished, and subsequently banished itself to the depths of the Earth as a last ditch effort to continue living on. By doing this, we also ended up discovering underground oasis capable of producing enough oxygen for entire populations...

I say 'we', except there is no such thing as a common human struggle to survive anymore, made evident by the new tribal conflicts that make us barely any different than the barbarians of old who laid waste to the surface of our world. One of these factions calls themselves 'New Rome', which i'll be diving into in a few moments...

There's also been some mutants going around for a few generations now, who's bodies have evolved either physically or mentally. I am thankfully part of the latter, as most of the former just turn out absolutely hideous. I am what many call a 'metathermicist', or just thermist for short. I happen to be born with the power to heat up or cool down things with my mind. However, this power is much deadlier than just heating up your coffee in the morning or making ice cream. I'm also able to make fire combust or summon ice shards out of thin air, and much, much more. There are many different mental mutations, some that are still being discovered and documented. Those possessing any kind of psychic powers have been dubbed 'psionics'.

So, about New Rome, which is also my real home. New Rome is essentially the shining beacon of prosperity in this gloomy underground world, full of actual architectural wonders, huge decorated pillars supporting the enormous cavern in which the city was built inside of. However, there is a catch to all this: New Rome's prosperity isn't safe from prying eyes, as it has seen its fair share of bloody raids and haunting massacres. As time passed, every man and woman in the city would become trained for combat, where the time would come to defend their beloved home.

I was part of those, not as a man but as a child. And more importantly to the military scientists of New Rome, an experiment. I was taken from the streets as an orphan, as they had apparently found me in a crib in a circle of fire and ice, with my cries a lonely howl into the restless neighborhood of white stone. Despite the whole 'kidnapping orphans off the street for military purposes', they treated us with kindness and respect until we were of age to actually fight. "Us", because we were not alone. 8 other orphans were taken as well, who would later become a special operations battalion under the code name of Omega 9. Each of us had their own specialties, strengths and abilities that made us stand out from the average citizen. Those specialties were also experimented upon, as they poked and probed and tested us with every machine in their toolkit. I can still remember how eccentric yet despicable their scientists were... for them, science truly had no limits.

Surprisingly, the military side of it all was much more tolerable. Our squad leader was a veteran named Victoria. She wasn't part of the 9 orphans, and was responsible with our care taking. Despite being harsh when it came to punishments and discipline, she was the closest thing to a mother to us. She was the only person we talked to outside of each other, and taught us how to interact normally with other people.

One day however, a day as normal as ever, they came. The Manticores; a hive-mind race of highly intelligent bug species that had been living under our feet for millenia. They had been there since humanity's rise, downfall and exile. We had always known about them, but never had our two races interacted: we just went our separate ways. But on that fateful day five years ago, the earth trembled and the ceiling of New Rome was torn asunder as giant drilling machines carrying dozens of soldiers fell down upon us. We were helpless, as by the time our armies came, our administration surrendered. Our military's high command, however, thought otherwise and tried to wrestle back control over our city.

That's where we came in. The plan was to plant a bomb in their main tunnel, make it crumble, to then siege the city until their forces gave up. It was a suicide mission considering where that tunnel was and how heavily fortified it was, but we still managed to pull through. That tunnel was our only hope...

And everything was going as planned, unlike what everyone was expecting, until the moment came to detonate the bomb. When we fell back to get out of the radius, one of our squad members, Casey, a rare time manipulator, stayed with the device. He looked back at us, mumbled something, only to vanish inside a portal... with our C4. At this we were mortified: the mission had been going smoothly until whatever had just transpired made it fail miserably.

To add insult to injury, a heavily armed Manticore convoy had arrived earlier than usual, and had spotted us. We had to run, and fast. The tunnel we were in forked in different directions, and we all took different paths... except Victoria. She swore to protect us until the very end as she stayed behind to fend off our incoming pursuants. There was nothing we could do to change her mind. Her life was for her nation anyways; she'd rather die in battle than live in defeat...

What I can only hope now is that the others were able to escape just as I did. The Manticore tunnels were worse than a labyrinth: a spiralling maze of crossroads leading to nowhere and everyhere, often in tunnels the size of a crawl space. I survived a month or two on my own, having to rely on feeding off of dead Manticore miners' rations, or by eating small critters.

One day, I finally popped out the right tunnel, right into where I currently reside in: Eastport, where I've been working at for at least 5 years, working all kinds of miserable jobs in this downtrodden port town: miner, fisher... though the occasional mercenary work pays pretty well.

Now, why am I writing this book in the first place? For starters, to get my mind off things and to tell my story: these low wages barely pay the bills and being an experimental military orphan is, in my opinion, a story worth telling.

However, that's not all... there's been hushed stories all around the docks and the bars lately... a tale from late night crewmates and pub crawlers... a woman with the ability to disappear in clouds of jet black smoke has allegedly been going around town at night robbing people of their belongings. And she's got one fancy bounty on her head.

I reckon I should pay her a visit...