Chapter 1: A Second Chance
Darkness. Cold. Silence.
Kai drifted in the endless void, weightless and numb. His consciousness flickered like a dying flame, struggling to hold on. This is death, he thought. This is what it feels like to be erased.
His last memory clawed at the edges of his mind—a jagged collage of screams, static, and the metallic stench of ruptured oxygen tanks. The crew of the Eclipse had been his family: Captain Veyra, her voice steady even as the hull cracked; Jax, the engineer, laughing through his fear; Lira, the medic, her hands trembling as she sealed her own suit. They'd followed him into the abyss, chasing whispers of alien technology at the galaxy's edge.
And then they'd found it.
A sphere.
Smooth, obsidian-black, and humming with a light that seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat. It floated just beyond the Milky Way's spiral arm, untouched by time or entropy. When Kai reached out to touch it, the void had swallowed their ship whole. He remembered the cold first—the kind that seared lungs and crystallized blood. Then the silence, broken only by Jax's final transmission: "Kai, it's not natural. That thing—it's alive—"
Static.
Now, there was nothing. No pain, no fear. Just… emptiness.
Until—
Gasp.
Air flooded his lungs like liquid fire. Gravity slammed into him, crushing his chest. His fingers clawed at rough, granular soil, and his eyes flew open to a searing blue sky.
Mars.
The realization hit him like a bullet. Crimson dunes stretched to the horizon, their peaks dusted with frost. The air was thin, brittle, laced with the iron tang of oxidized soil. His spacesuit—once a second skin—was gone. Instead, he wore a simple black jumpsuit, the fabric frayed at the seams.
"Impossible," he croaked, voice raw.
He staggered to his feet, legs trembling. The landscape was unmistakable: the jagged silhouette of Olympus Mons piercing the horizon, the skeletal remains of a rover half-buried in rust-colored sand. But this wasn't the Mars he'd left behind. The sky was too blue, the air too still. No storms. No colonies.
No, no, no.
He stumbled toward a reflective surface—a discarded solar panel, its edges warped by time. His reflection stared back: a boy of seventeen, with jet-black hair, golden eyes, and a face untouched by scars.
"This isn't me," he whispered.
The face belonged to a ghost. A version of himself who'd died centuries ago, swallowed by war. He'd been old when he'd last drawn breath—a general with silver-streaked hair and a body carved by a thousand battles. Now, he was young. Reborn.
Reborn.
The word ignited something primal in his chest. He fell to his knees, fingers digging into the soil. The sphere. It did this. It sent me back.
Memories surged—fragmented, chaotic. The year 2030. Elon Musk's broadcast. The discovery of the Divine Core, a blue crystal buried beneath the Acidalia Planitia. When submerged in water, it dissolved into a shimmering serum that rewrote human DNA. Strength. Speed. Telekinesis. Abilities that escalated until cities burned and continents shattered.
Kai had survived it all. Fought in the Resource Wars. Watched Earth's oceans boil under orbital strikes. Led fleets against the Andromeda Syndicate. And for what? To die alone in the dark, light-years from home?
But now—
He laughed, the sound wild and unhinged. The wind carried it across the dunes. 2027. Three years before the Awakening. Three years to rewrite fate.
Crack.
The sound froze him mid-breath. Slowly, he turned.
A figure stood atop a nearby ridge, silhouetted against the sun. Humanoid, but wrong—too tall, limbs jointed like a spider's. Its suit shimmered, shifting colors to mimic the sand. Corporate mercenary? Colonial scavenger?
Kai's muscles tensed. He had no weapons. No allies. But he had something better: knowledge.
The figure raised a gloved hand. A weapon? A scanner?
Before Kai could react, the ground beneath him erupted.
WHOOM.
A geyser of sand and rock blasted upward, throwing him backward. He rolled, coughing, as the figure descended. Its voice crackled through a modulator: "Identify yourself. This sector is under Blackthorn Industries quarantine."
Blackthorn. The name sent a chill through him. In his past life, they'd been the first to weaponize the Divine Core, turning soldiers into living artillery. But they shouldn't be here. Not yet.
Unless…
They already know about the crystal.
The mercenary lunged, a vibroblade humming to life in its hand. Kai dodged, instincts honed by centuries of combat kicking in. He grabbed a rock, swung—
Clang.
The blade sheared through stone like paper. Kai ducked, driving his shoulder into the mercenary's ribs. The suit crumpled under the impact, and he heard a gasp. Human.
"Who sent you?" Kai snarled, pinning the mercenary. "How did you find the—"
The modulator spat static. "Asset… located… extraction imminent."
Boom.
The sky tore open.
A dropship descended, engines screaming, its hull marked with Blackthorn's thorned insignia. Kai cursed, scrambling back as soldiers rappelled down, rifles trained on him.
No. Not like this. I can't die here.
A voice—cold, mechanical—echoed from the ship: "Surrender the artifact, Subject Zero. Or be erased."
Subject Zero. The title punched the air from his lungs. In his past life, he'd been Subject Zero—Blackthorn's first successful Awakener. But that was decades from now. Unless…
They've time-traveled too.
The soldiers advanced. Kai's mind raced. He needed a weapon. A distraction. Anything—
His hand brushed something cold in the sand. A shard of the solar panel. Jagged. Sharp.
He lunged.
The world slowed.
For a heartbeat, he felt it—the faintest spark of energy in his veins. The same power that had once let him fracture mountains. It was dormant, buried deep, but there.
Slam.
The shard pierced the lead soldier's visor. Blood sprayed. Chaos erupted.
Kai ran.
The dunes blurred beneath his feet, the soldiers' shouts fading behind him. He didn't stop until the colony came into view—a cluster of domes and solar farms, their airlocks glinting in the sun. The SpaceX Colony. Sanctuary.
But as he neared, his blood turned to ice.
The airlocks hung open, twisted like tinfoil. Bodies littered the ground, their suits torn. Scavengers? Raiders?
No.
The wounds were too precise. Surgical. A single blade-strike to the throat.
Blackthorn.
He crouched beside a corpse, fingers brushing the ID tag: DR. ELIAS VOSS, GEOLOGIST. The name echoed in his memory. Dr. Moss had led the team that discovered the Divine Core. Now he was dead, three years too early.
The timeline's already changing.
Kai's hands shook. He'd assumed he was alone. That history was his to command. But Blackthorn's presence here, now, meant something else.
They're hunting the crystal. And they know I'm connected to it.
He rifled through Dr. Moss's pack, finding a tablet. The screen flickered—a map of the Acidalia Planitia, marked with a single red dot. Coordinates.
The Divine Core's location.
A voice hissed in his mind, serpentine and familiar: "You cannot outrun fate, Kai."
He whirled. No one. The voice belonged to his past—to the sphere, to the thing that had killed him.
Or saved him.
He pocketed the tablet and stood. The coordinates were a three-day trek northeast. No water. No supplies. A death sentence.
But death had already tried to claim him. He'd walk through hell itself to spit in its face.
As he turned toward the horizon, a shadow passed overhead. Another dropship. Blackthorn.
He ran.