7,700 years ago, the world called Edius was no different from ours.

Cities thrived. People worked, loved, fought, and dreamed. History moved slowly, day after day, like a quiet river flowing toward the future.

There were no gods walking the streets.

No magic in the air.

No monsters lurking in the dark.

Just an ordinary world, full of ordinary people, building ordinary lives.

Then, on a single night... everything changed.

It was New Year’s Eve.

Celebrations filled the world. Fireworks burst above crowded streets, music echoed through cities, and families gathered together to welcome another year.

In a small apartment, a young couple held their newborn daughter for the first time.

In a hospital, an old man sat beside his wife’s bed, holding her hand quietly.

On a dark ocean, a fishing boat rocked in the night, its lone sailor humming an old song he had learned from his grandfather.

In space, a satellite drifted silently along its quiet orbit.

A perfect, ordinary night.

And then—

At the exact same moment, across the entire planet—

Everything stopped.

Cars froze in the middle of roads.

Planes halted mid-flight, suspended in the sky like painted illustrations.

Ships stopped in the middle of oceans, neither rising nor falling with the waves.

People stopped walking, talking, laughing.

Even the air seemed to stop moving.

Even time itself seemed to lose interest in moving forward.

A glass falling from a child’s hand hung halfway between the table and the floor.

A firework froze mid-burst above a thousand watching faces.

A heartbeat skipped, paused, then continued—but slowly. Far too slowly.

A blink began and forgot how to finish.

Yet their minds remained awake.

That was the worst part. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Millions—then billions—of humans suddenly realized something horrifying.

They could think.

They could see.

They could feel their own heartbeats slow inside frozen chests.

But they could not move a single muscle.

Mothers tried to reach for their children and could not.

Soldiers tried to lift their weapons and could not.

The dying tried to take one last breath and could not.

Then a voice echoed inside every living mind.

Cold.

Emotionless.

Ancient.

It was spoken in a language no one had ever heard before... yet everyone understood it perfectly.

A child barely old enough to speak understood it.

A scientist with three doctorates understood it.

A man dying on an operating table understood it.

Even the comatose patients in their hospital beds understood it.

The voice did not need translation.

It bypassed translation entirely.

And every mind that received it understood, without being told, that the speaker was not asking permission to be heard.

"Plane located."

A brief silence followed.

Just long enough for billions of minds to think the same single, desperate question—

What?

"Connection beginning."

Panic spread instantly.

People wanted to scream. To run. To pray. To call out one last time to anyone they loved.

But their bodies remained completely frozen, as if time itself had been paused.

Some of them would later report blood in their ears, in their eyes, on their pillows.

Their minds had screamed so hard that something inside them tore.

Yet not a single sound had left a single mouth.

"Connection established."

The earth trembled faintly beneath every city, every continent, every ocean.

Not violent.

Not destructive.

Just... acknowledged. As if a door had opened somewhere far away. A door that had not been opened in a very long time.

"Scanning plane..."

The longest seconds in human history.

"Lifeforms detected."

"Classification: Tier 0 Lifeforms."

"Insufficient qualification to participate in the Transcendence War."

Across the planet, billions of minds raced.

Tier 0?

What war?

"However..."

The single word hung in every consciousness like a held breath.

"Collective lifeform potential detected: Superior-Level Talent Potential."

"Plane eligible for Emergence Trials."

"All lifeforms will now choose."

"Option One — Participate in the Emergence Trials."

"Option Two — Become a Resource Plane for the Transcendence."

Suddenly, every human felt something strange appear inside their mind.

A glowing panel.

Two options floating in the dark.

Like a multiple-choice question on a school exam.

Except this exam would not decide a grade.

It would decide the fate of every man, woman, and child on the entire planet.

Information began to flow directly into their minds. Not as sentences. Not as paragraphs. Pure understanding, poured straight into the soul like water into an empty vessel.

And what they learned terrified them.

— • —

Resource Plane.

The first option.

If they chose it, their world would never be forced to fight. Their planet would be spared the wars of the Transcendence. It would remain protected from direct destruction.

No army would ever invade. No catastrophe would ever fall from the sky.

But the protection came with a horrifying price.

Their world would become a subordinate plane.

Or more bluntly—

A slave plane.

Other participating worlds could buy anything from Edius: metals, plants, animals, cities, and even human beings above a certain age.

No refusal. No appeal.

Those taken would be branded with a Divine Obedience Mark. Their bodies would obey. Their souls would remain aware. Their love, hatred, fear, and memories would survive — but none of it would matter.

All payment would go to the entity that had created the system.

The Transcendence.

No one understood what the Transcendence truly was.

Only this much was clear:

It owned the rules.

And worlds that refused to climb would become fuel for worlds that did.

— • —

Emergence Trials.

The second option offered something different.

These trials were not for every plane. They were reserved only for worlds with extraordinary potential — worlds the Transcendence had judged capable of climbing the cosmic ladder rather than simply feeding it.

If chosen, the Transcendence would invest a portion of its own World Origin Energy into the planet itself.

This would expand the world’s size.

Increase its energy density.

Awaken hidden Talents within its lifeforms.

Evolution would begin.

But the gift came with a terrifying condition.

In 7,750 years, the planet must produce at least one Tier-5 Lifeform.

The trials would not come immediately. They would arrive in the final stretch before judgment — five catastrophes, each separated by fifty years.

The first would come in Year 7,550.

The second in Year 7,600.

The third in Year 7,650.

The fourth in Year 7,700.

The fifth in Year 7,750.

Fail even one, and Edius would be erased.

The Transcendence would devour the planet entirely.

"Time remaining."

Inside every mind, a timer appeared.

30:00

29:59

The countdown had begun.

Thirty minutes to decide the fate of an entire civilization.

No one could move. No one could speak.

Yet billions of thoughts raced wildly across the planet.

Fear. Hope. Desperation.

And underneath all of them, something colder. A quiet certainty older than thought.

And then—

Without anyone knowing exactly why—

Most people made the same choice.

Not because they were brave.

Not because they understood the cost.

Because something deep inside them, something older than civilization, refused to be a slave.

The timer reached its end.

00:00

"Time over."

"Majority choice detected."

"Option selected: Emergence Trials."

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the sky exploded with countless colors.

Lights of gold, crimson, emerald, and violet poured down from the heavens like an endless storm.

Slow.

Patient.

Everywhere at once.

The earth shook. Mountains trembled. Oceans roared.

Yet strangely — no one was harmed.

Buildings did not collapse. Cities did not fall.

The light simply flowed into every living thing.

Humans. Animals. Plants. The very soil of the planet itself.

Time passed. Minutes. Hours. Days. No one knew. Inside the light, time did not behave the way it had behaved before.

And inside that not-quite-time, something deep within every living thing began to change.

Quietly.

Patiently.

The way the dawn changes things by simply arriving.

Then suddenly — the light vanished.

Silence returned to the world.

The voice spoke one final time.

"Planetary transformation complete."

"Talent awakening initiated."

"Knowledge of evolutionary pathways granted."

And then — the voice disappeared. Forever, as far as any of them would ever know.

At that same moment, the invisible force binding every human vanished.

Bodies moved again.

Every breath came rushing back at once. Every paused heartbeat picked up where it had stopped.

The falling glass shattered against the floor.

The firework completed its bloom.

The fishing boat in the dark ocean rocked once, twice, then stilled — its sailor staring at the stars without remembering when he had last looked at them.

People gasped. Cried. Screamed. Fell to their knees on streets that had become subtly, fundamentally different from the streets they had been standing on an hour before.

The world had changed.

It looked the same. The streets, the houses, the stars overhead.

But the air carried something it had not carried before.

The light fell on things differently.

Even the silence sounded fuller — as if the universe had been holding its breath until this moment, and was now beginning to breathe again.

And deep within every living being...

something had awakened.