The quiet rumble of the university bus shook through Nathan Parker's head as he leaned his forehead against the cool window. Outside, fall had turned the Midwest into a mix of yellow and brown. Three hours of sleep wasn't enough, but that had become normal during this last year of his Applied Physics degree.

  "Six hours of gaming, man! Six!" Raj's voice broke Nathan's tired daydream. "But that legendary sword was totally worth it." Raj pushed his glasses up his nose with his finger—something Nathan had seen him do countless times since they became roommates in their first year. "I've never seen such crazy damage stats."

  "Uh-huh," Nathan mumbled, his reflection in the window showing the dark circles under his eyes. He had his mother's olive skin tone and his father's thin build, but the tiredness was all his own doing.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket—probably another text from his mother. She'd been texting more since Dad's heart attack three months ago. She never directly asked Nathan to come home to Chicago more often, but her frequent updates about hospital visits and medicine changes said what she couldn't: *I'm having trouble handling this alone*.

  Guilt ate at him. He should call her tonight. His thesis deadline wasn't a good enough excuse for the growing distance.

  "Earth to Nathan," Raj waved his chewed fingernails in front of Nathan's face. "You're not actually worried about this tour, are you? These places are super safe."

  "I'm not worried," Nathan replied, adjusting his backpack where he'd stuffed his worn copy of Feynman's lectures beside a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich. "Just didn't get much sleep. Still have that thesis deadline coming up."

  What he didn't mention was the email he'd gotten last night from Dr. Hamada at MIT's nuclear engineering program. *Your application shows promise, Mr. Parker, but we're worried about the practical use of your theory model...*

  From the seat in front of them, Sophia turned around, her dark curls bouncing as she moved to face them. The silver atom pendant she always wore caught the light as it swung from her neck.

  "You can worry about that later," she said, giving Nathan a look that suggested she saw more than he liked to share. They'd dated briefly in their second year before deciding they worked better as friends, but that hadn't reduced her ability to read him. "How often do we get to see a real nuclear reactor up close?"

  The smell of her jasmine perfume brought back a memory—their first date at the planetarium, her excitement about cosmic radiation, the way she'd happily explained star energy creation to a group of confused children who had mistaken her for a tour guide.

  Professor Winters stood up at the front of the bus, steadying himself with one hand on the overhead rail. His tweed jacket was very old, but his fame in the field of nuclear physics made his fashion choices unimportant.

  "We're getting close to the facility," he announced with the clear speech of someone who had taught the same material for thirty years. "Remember, everyone—this is a working nuclear plant, not an amusement park. Stay with your groups, follow all safety rules, and don't touch anything unless someone tells you to."

  Nathan sat up straighter as the Helios Nuclear Power Plant came into view. The massive concrete cooling towers rose like monuments against the sky, curved structures with thin wisps of water vapor coming from the tops and fading into the air. In his textbooks, they were just diagrams with labeled parts. In person, they showed both human cleverness and pride—structures built to control forces that could power cities or destroy them.

  As the bus pulled into the visitor parking area, Nathan's phone buzzed again. This time he checked it:

  *Dad's new medicine seems to be working. Blood pressure down. Call when you can. Love you.*

  His thumb hovered over the screen, unsure what to reply. Before he could decide, Raj nudged him toward the exit.

  "Come on, nuclear boy. Your favorite playground awaits."

  Security was tight. In the reception building, they showed IDs, had their bags searched, and passed through metal detectors that beeped loudly at Sophia's atom pendant until she reluctantly took it off. Each student was given a small plastic badge clipped to their shirt pocket.

  "These are dosimeters," explained Dr. Calhoun, the plant's lead engineer. She was younger than Nathan had expected—maybe mid-thirties—with short silver hair that stood out against her dark skin. "They measure radiation exposure. It's just a safety measure—all the areas we're visiting are completely safe."

  Her voice had a slight accent Nathan couldn't place. Caribbean, maybe? Her confidence was clear in the way she led them through the facility—not walking so much as gliding, her movements efficient and exact.

  "Nuclear energy gets a bad reputation," she continued as they moved through the visitor center with its shiny models and hands-on displays. "But the truth is that it's one of our cleanest options. A single uranium fuel pellet contains as much energy as 149 gallons of oil." She held up a small gray cylinder between her gloved fingers. "Nuclear fission is incredibly efficient."

  Nathan found himself drawn to the technical explanations, briefly forgetting his tiredness. This was why he'd chosen this field—the neat equations that described how atoms could be split to release energy, the clean precision of nuclear physics compared to the messy uncertainty of everyday life.

  Growing up, he'd built model reactors instead of model airplanes. While other kids played video games, he'd eagerly read books about Enrico Fermi and the Manhattan Project. His parents—both high school teachers without much science background—had done their best to support his interests, driving him to science museums and saving for years to buy him a decent telescope.

  His father had been especially supportive, working extra shifts to pay for summer science camps. "You're going places I never could, son," he'd said when Nathan received his university acceptance letter. Now his father spent most days in a recliner, the heart attack having taken away both his physical strength and his usual optimism.

  Nathan forced himself back to the present as Dr. Calhoun led them through a series of security checkpoints into the heart of the facility. They toured the control room with its wall of monitors and switches, the massive turbine hall where the low rumble of machinery made the metal walkway vibrate beneath their feet, and various other systems that kept the plant running safely.

  The control room especially fascinated him—operators watching panels of readouts, their faces lit by the glow of screens, hands occasionally turning dials with practiced skill. It reminded him of his childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut, controlling a spacecraft through empty space.

  "The human element is still crucial," Dr. Calhoun explained over the background noise of cooling systems and radios. "AI can monitor and predict, but we need human judgment for the unexpected."

  They were standing on the observation deck overlooking the turbine hall when Nathan noticed something strange. The air seemed to shimmer, like heat waves but with rainbow colors. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered, and for a moment, the constant mechanical hum that had filled his ears was replaced by complete silence.

  Other students noticed it too, their conversations trailing off. Professor Winters frowned, his bushy eyebrows drawing together. "Dr. Calhoun, is that normal?"

  Before the engineer could answer, an automated voice came over the speaker: "Attention. Problem detected. Unknown energy signature detected. All personnel evacuate immediately. This is not a drill."

  Dr. Calhoun's professional calm cracked. Her face went pale as she checked her tablet, fingers tapping the screen with increasing urgency. "This... this shouldn't be possible. These readings don't match any radiation pattern I've ever seen."

  The shimmering in the air grew stronger. Nathan felt a weird tingling on his skin, like static electricity but stronger—a feeling that reminded him of childhood winters in Chicago, touching metal doorknobs after walking across carpeted floors, but much stronger. His hair stood on end, and a metallic taste filled his mouth.

  Then a different voice—deep and mechanical, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere—filled the room:

  "ATTENTION INHABITANTS OF PLANETARY DESIGNATION 3-1-7-8-9. YOUR WORLD HAS BEEN SELECTED FOR SYSTEM INTEGRATION. PREPARING DIMENSIONAL ALIGNMENT. RELEASING MANA SATURATION PROTOCOLS."

  "What the hell?" Raj grabbed Nathan's arm, his fingers digging in painfully. "Is this some kind of joke?" The fear in his friend's voice was something Nathan had never heard before—not during finals week, not during their near-miss car accident last year, not even when Raj's grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer.

  The air was definitely changing, becoming thick and heavy, making it harder to breathe. Nathan's ears popped like he was on an airplane quickly changing height. The taste of metal got stronger until he could feel it coating his teeth.

  "Guys, look at the reactor!" Sophia pointed through the observation window, her hand visibly shaking.

  The reactor housing, normally an plain gray container, was glowing with a bright blue light that reminded Nathan of Cherenkov radiation—the light given off when charged particles move through a medium faster than light can in that same medium. It was the signature blue glow of nuclear reactors in water, but this was far brighter than any textbook had described.

  Alarms were blaring at different pitches, creating a chaotic mix of warning sounds. Workers ran in every direction, their movements increasingly frantic. Through the chaos, Nathan caught glimpses of terror on unfamiliar faces—people who worked with these dangers every day now faced with something beyond their training.

  "It's impossible," Dr. Calhoun muttered, her professional manner completely gone. "The containment should hold against anything. We designed for earthquakes, plane crashes, sabotage..."

  The blue light pulsed brighter. Nathan heard metal groaning and concrete cracking. The whole building shook, sending ceiling tiles crashing to the floor around them. The observation window developed a web of cracks that spread with each passing second.

  "MANA INTEGRATION STARTING. CAUTION: INCOMPATIBILITY DETECTED IN CURRENT TECHNOLOGY."

  In that moment of chaos, Nathan noticed something strange—symbols appearing at the edges of his vision, glowing runes that looked like no language he'd ever studied. They moved with his gaze, as if projected onto his eyes. Acting on instinct, he focused on them, and suddenly a see-through blue screen appeared in front of him, visible only to his eyes:

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  [SYSTEM INTEGRATION INITIATED]

  [SEARCHING FOR COMPATIBLE HOST...]

  [COMPATIBLE HOST FOUND: NATHAN PARKER]

  [INITIATING STATUS REGISTRATION...]

  Time seemed to slow down. Around him, people moved as if through thick syrup—Sophia's mouth open in a silent scream, Raj's eyes wide with terror, Professor Winters reaching out to grab a student who had fallen. The world existed in a bubble of paused action.

  In that stretched moment, Nathan's life flashed before him, not as a highlight reel but as disconnected pieces:

  His tenth birthday, standing in the backyard with his new telescope, his father's hand warm on his shoulder as they gazed at Jupiter's moons.

  His mother's laughter as she tried to understand his explanation of quantum entanglement over Thanksgiving dinner three years ago.

  The disappointed look on Sophia's face when he'd chosen to spend their anniversary night working on a physics problem instead of the dinner he'd promised.

  The stack of unpaid medical bills he'd glimpsed on his parents' kitchen table during his last visit home.

  His own reflection in his apartment bathroom mirror just yesterday, as he'd realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt truly happy or excited about anything.

  "Nathan!" Sophia's scream pierced the time bubble. Nathan looked up to see a wall of blue energy expanding from the reactor, consuming everything in its path. The wave moved with impossible speed, turning matter into particles of light. His friends, professor, the plant workers—all were dissolving into glowing dust that hung suspended in the air before disappearing entirely.

  When the wave hit Nathan, the pain was unimaginable. Every cell in his body seemed to catch fire at once. He felt his physical form literally coming apart, molecules separating, atoms breaking apart. He tried to scream but had no lungs to breathe, no vocal cords to make sound, no mouth to shape the sound.

  But as he began to fade, his mind breaking like light through a prism, the blue screen flashed new messages:

  [FATAL ERROR: HOST DISINTEGRATION DETECTED]

  [SYSTEM FAULT IDENTIFIED: PREMATURE MANA INTEGRATION WITH NUCLEAR REACTOR]

  [COMPENSATION PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]

  [OFFERING REINCARNATION PACKAGE...]

  [PROCESSING SOUL DATA...]

  [INTEGRATING UNIQUE ENVIRONMENT FACTORS...]

  With his last clear thought, Nathan reached toward the screen—not physically, for he had no body left, but with the essential part of himself that remained. In that final moment, he thought not of himself but of his parents, who would now lose their only child. Of Raj, who despite his annoying gaming obsession had been the closest thing to a brother Nathan had ever known. Of Sophia, whose brilliance had always outshone his own.

  *I'm sorry,* he thought as his consciousness expanded and then collapsed.

  Then everything went black.

  In the darkness, one final message appeared:

  [TRANSFERRING SOUL DATA TO NEW REALITY]

  [INTEGRATION COMPLETE]

  [WELCOME, REINCARNATOR]

  Pain. Not the dull ache of existence he had grown used to, but something greater—a throbbing, all-covering agony that strangely felt like being born again.

  Aldrich Emberheart opened his eyes. The simple act took huge effort, as if his eyelids were carrying the weight of planets. His first breath came ragged and desperate, lungs expanding against the metallic smell of ozone and burned flesh.

  Beneath him, the stone floor told a silent story. Cracked and burned in a perfect circle, the granite had changed to obsidian exactly where his body touched it, as if some cosmic magic user had used him as the tool for transformation. The material reflected broken light from the few remaining ritual candles that still flickered along the room's edges.

  Silence pressed against his ears. After sixteen years of captivity, Aldrich had grown familiar with different kinds of silence—the tense quiet before punishment, the empty silence of tiredness after work, the watchful quiet of guards. This silence was different. Complete. Final.

  Not a single survivor remained to see what he had become.

  The ritual chamber spread before him in circles of destruction, each ring telling its own story of death. Nearest to him, the Crimson Talon masters who had conducted the ritual lay twisted in positions that should be impossible. Their ceremonial robes, once red as sunset, hung in brittle pieces that crumbled at the slightest touch. The fabric had become one with their flesh, creating a grotesque mix of cloth and skin that Aldrich found himself studying with detached interest.

  Magus Deveraux, who had driven the ritual knife between Aldrich's ribs not twenty minutes earlier, lay closest to the center. His staff—a masterpiece of rare blackwood inlaid with silver and topped with a crystal worth more than most common people would see in a lifetime—had broken. The crystal itself had melted, pooling into a colorful puddle that caught the light and broke it into rainbow fragments. Deveraux's final expression was one of sudden understanding, the last fleeting moment when understanding and death had met.

  "You have powerful blood, boy," Deveraux had whispered just before beginning the ritual. "Blood that will serve the Talon well."

  The memory flickered through Aldrich's mind without stirring emotion, like watching scenes from a play he'd seen many times before.

  Beyond the inner circle, the pattern of death changed. Initiator Kress—who had almost shown kindness once, sneaking Aldrich an extra piece of bread during the winter festival—sprawled beside another slave boy. Their skin showed clear signs of radiation poisoning: weeping sores, blistered tissue, skin coming away from muscle. Their fingers remained frozen in the complex hand movements of the awakening ritual, a grim display of magical practice interrupted. The runes painted on the other boy's forehead glowed an angry red against skin already turning the gray-blue of early decay.

  Something shifted in Aldrich's chest—not quite pity, but a shadow of recognition. That boy could have been him, would have been him on any other day. The random nature of survival settled over Aldrich like a familiar cloak.

  The pattern of death continued outward. Senior Enforcer Mollen and his guards had died in agony, leaving evidence of their final moments etched into their flesh. One guard's fingernails were packed with skin and blood where he'd clawed at his throat, creating a ragged second mouth beneath his chin. Another had repeatedly crashed his head against the ancient stone wall, leaving a dark pattern that seemed to form faces in the dying light.

  Near the chamber's entrance, three higher-ranking Talon members sat slumped against the wall. Their elaborate protective spells—status symbols as much as magical defenses—had failed badly. Blood had traveled paths of least resistance from ears, noses, and eyes, creating delicate red patterns on their expensive robes. The magical symbols tattooed on their skin, once bright with protective energy, had faded to the color of old ash.

  Aldrich looked down at his own body. His slave clothes—rough-spun flax dyed the mud-brown that marked him as property—hung in burned tatters. Yet his skin remained unmarked beneath. Not even a scar remained where the ritual knife had pierced his chest. Instead, his body hummed with strange energy, as if his veins carried lightning rather than blood.

  The slave collar was gone. For six years, the enchanted metal band had encircled his throat, suppressing not just his magical abilities but the very ability to feel strong emotion. The absence of its weight should have felt freeing. Instead, Aldrich's fingertips traced the unmarked skin where it had once rested, finding only a ghost feeling—the memory of constraint without its physical presence.

  Something fundamental had changed within him, beyond the simple removal of the collar. Where rage, terror, or joy should have flooded him, Aldrich felt only a clinical interest, as if he were watching himself from a great distance.

  "Status," he whispered. The word came unbidden, following an impulse buried deep in his broken memories.

  A blue screen appeared before his eyes, hanging in the air like a see-through window to another reality:

  [Name: Aldrich Emberheart]

  [Age: 16]

  [Titles: Awakened Human, Holder of a Unique Trait, Holder of Unique Skill]

  [Traits: Reincarnator, Atomic Soul Reactor, Emotionally Suppressed]

  [Level: 0]

  [Attributes:

  Strength: 7

  Dexterity: 6

  Constitution: 23

  Mana: 29]

  [Attribute Points: 0]

  [Primary Class: None]

  [Sub-Class: None]

  [Skills: Nuclear Energy Manipulation LV 1]

  The words "Atomic Soul Reactor" pulled at his attention like a loose thread in fabric. When he focused on them, a new window expanded:

  [Atomic Soul Reactor: Your body has been transformed into a living reactor, with every organ and cell working like a carefully controlled nuclear reaction. In a groundbreaking fusion, your soul is now intertwined with nuclear energy, giving you unmatched control over both physical and mystical forces.]

  [Features:

  Nuclear Element Affinity

  Energy Conversion

  Radiation & Soul Immunity

  Self-Sustaining Core

  Nuclear Energy Manipulation (Granted Skill)]

  Other traits followed, unfolding like paper revealing hidden messages:

  [Reincarnator: Trait ensures retention of memory as the holder of trait integrates with the system, grants ability to recall conscious memory from past life and perfect merger of new and old self]

  [Emotionally Suppressed: Due to long exposure to emotional suppression magic your emotional responses are naturally regulated. You experience emotions is suppressed to a higher degree; you do not feel most of your emotions and whatever you feel is dulled to a large extent]

  The descriptions settled into his mind not as new information but as confirmation of something he had always known but never put into words. Fragments of memory came together—equations, lectures, the smell of coffee during late-night study sessions, the weight of textbooks, the feel of a smartphone in his palm. Nathan. He had been Nathan once, a college student studying nuclear physics.

  Now he was both Nathan and Aldrich, neither and both, the boundaries between identities blurring like watercolors bleeding into one another.

  Aldrich's gaze caught on a piece of ceremonial mirror that had somehow survived the destruction. He approached it carefully, stepping around the remains of what had once been people. His reflection stared back, familiar yet changed. The same angular face with high cheekbones that marked him as having partial Aetherblood ancestry. The same dark hair that had earned him extra whippings whenever it grew long enough to cover his ears, hiding the slave brands tattooed there.

  But his eyes—they were different. They glowed with a faint blue light, and when he blinked, particles of light drifted from them like glowing pollen from some otherworldly flower. He leaned closer, fascinated by the change. The blue glow pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, creating an internal constellation that mapped his life force.

  A distant memory surfaced—Cherenkov radiation, the phenomenon of charged particles moving through a medium faster than light could travel through that same medium. The beautiful blue glow of nuclear reactors underwater. The marriage of tremendous power and unexpected beauty.

  Aldrich straightened and surveyed the chamber once more. The walls, ancient stone carved with symbols older than the Crimson Talon organization itself, now bore new scars. Tiny cracks ran through the centuries-old protective enchantments, showing the limits of magic when faced with forces from beyond this world's understanding.

  The irony wasn't lost on him. The Crimson Talon had kept him as a slave precisely because their diviners had sensed potential within him—potential they had intended to harness and bind to their will through the awakening ritual. Instead, they had triggered something far beyond their understanding. They had sought a weapon; they had created their own destruction.

  He closed the status window with a thought and began moving toward the exit. His bare feet made no sound against the stone, as if even his weight upon the world had become something ghostly. He stepped around the bodies with careful precision, not from respect but from a strange sense of order that seemed to have emerged with his transformation.

  The logical part of him—the part that had once been Nathan—understood what had happened on a theoretical level. The System integration that had begun on Earth had somehow fused with his soul, and when exposed to this world's mana during the Awakening ritual, it had activated with devastating results. Laws of physics had collided with laws of magic, creating something unprecedented.

  As he reached the heavy oak door that led out of the ritual chamber, Aldrich paused and looked back. The slave within him felt a muted satisfaction at the death of his captors. The physicist within him felt horror at the destructive power he now embodied. Both emotions registered in his consciousness, acknowledged and cataloged, but neither dominated his thinking.

  The bodies would remain undiscovered for days. This outpost, housed in the ruins of old Ravensworth, operated with minimal contact with the main Crimson Talon base in the slums of the new city. They had brought him here specifically for the ritual, away from prying eyes and competing factions.

  Luck, it seemed, favored the newly awakened.

  Aldrich moved methodically through the outpost, searching the bodies of the dead. Most carried nothing useful—the energy release had destroyed nearly everything in its path. Still, by the time he had completed his search, he had collected 32 gold coins, 98 silver, and 325 bronze—a small fortune by slave standards, enough to survive for months if used carefully.

  He found clothes in a storage room—a guard's uniform too large for his frame. Using a partially melted dagger recovered from one of the bodies, he cut the pants to a manageable length and secured them with a belt that still held a sheathed dagger and several potion vials. The shirt hung on his frame like a sail, but it would work until he could get better clothes.

  As he dressed, Aldrich became aware of hunger—not for food, but for something else. The Atomic Soul Reactor within him sought fuel, some energy source to sustain its processes. He could feel it drawing tiny amounts of mana from the air around him, but it was like trying to fill an ocean with drops of water.

  Standing in the doorway of the outpost, Aldrich gazed at the ruined landscape of old Ravensworth. Crumbling towers and collapsed walls created a jagged outline against the darkening sky. Night was coming, bringing with it new dangers and possibilities.

  The world stretched before him, both strange and familiar. With each breath, memories from two lives filtered through his mind—Nathan's knowledge of science and technology, Aldrich's hard-won understanding of survival and the harsh realities of this world. Between them existed something new, something that belonged only to the person he was becoming.

  "What now?" he asked the empty air, his voice steady despite the huge question.

  No answer came from the ruins, but within him, blue energy pulsed in response. Whatever came next, he would face it as neither slave nor student, but as something entirely new. The thought should have scared him. Instead, he felt only quiet anticipation as he took his first step toward the unknown.