Apocalypse Baby

Alex floated in a void of black.

It was cold. Infinite.

There was no floor. No ceiling. No body. Just his thoughts drifting like ash in the wind.

But then—

BADUMP!

The sound of a heartbeat echoed.

BADUMP!

It came again, louder this time. Sharper. Real.

Then, a crack split the void.

A sliver of white light sliced through the dark like a blade. Before Alex could even gasp, the world surged back.

He inhaled sharply—and the air hit like fire in his lungs. The burn made him cough violently.

His eyes snapped open.

Pain greeted him instantly. Not the searing, skin-melting agony from before—this was different. Colder. Deeper. Like molten steel cooling inside his bones.

He lay flat on the chamber floor, steam rising in thin wisps from his skin, still scorched.

Alex clenched his fist. And that's when he felt it.

Power.

Not just humming beneath the surface—

But roaring.

Surging.

Wild and alive, like a storm trapped in his veins.

His body felt… off. Too heavy and too light at once. Every limb tingled with raw, unspent force.

His gamble had paid off.

It had worked.

He hadn't died.

He had survived.

And in doing so, he had become something else

A breath escaped his lips—low, sharp, almost reverent.

Alex sat up slowly. His body moved smoother than it ever had before, every motion carrying the pressure of something barely restrained. Like his muscles were coiled with stored lightning.

He raised his right arm and flexed his fingers.

And froze.

His breath caught.

There, along his forearm, were lines

Faint at first—like ink buried beneath the skin—but glowing. They shimmered in dim white, pulsing softly, jagged and curved like biomechanical veins.

They branched out from his wrist to his bicep, crawling upward like living calligraphy.

"What the hell…" Alex whispered.

He stumbled to his feet, his balance still adjusting, and staggered to the mirror embedded in the chamber's far wall.

What he saw made him stop cold.

His face… wasn't the same.

Still him—but altered. Sharper jawline. Refined bone structure. His eyes glowed faintly, not with a color, but with a strange, shifting prism hue that flickered as he moved.

And then he saw the rest.

The lines weren't limited to his arms.

They were everywhere.

Down his neck. Across his chest. Wrapping around his sides like a secondary skin. A trail of them ran up behind his ears and curved toward his forehead, where a jagged protrusion of bone jutted forward—like the beginning of a horn.

His fingers instinctively reached for it.

It felt warm. Solid.

Real.

"I look like…" he whispered, staring at the ghost in the mirror. "What the hell did I become?"

There was no answer.

Only the quiet hum of the chamber—and the steady thrum of his heartbeat, loud in his ears.

He stepped back, trying to breathe through the invisible weight now pressing against his chest.

He had survived something no one was supposed to survive. He had consumed energy designed to be taken in drop by drop—and swallowed it whole.

And this… was the price.

He had mutated.

"System," he called out.

Even his voice sounded different.

Deeper. More resonant. A subtle growl under the words.

He blinked, expecting the familiar blue interface to flicker into view.

Instead—

Ding!

[System Status: Upgrading…]

[Estimated Completion Time: Unknown]

Alex stared at the screen, numb.

Again.

This was the second time.

The first had been after he survived the initial trial—when he forced his core to evolve beyond its limit.

Now, again. And for the same reason.

He was pushing past what should've been possible. Again, the system couldn't keep up.

He wasn't just leveling faster than the framework allowed.

He was outgrowing it.

He exhaled slowly, grounding himself.

The mutation worried him, yes. But overall?

It was fine.

He was adapting—like he had to. If that meant changing his body, then so be it.

Still, his hand trembled slightly as he looked at himself again.

The horn.

The glowing veins.

The shifting eyes.

The monster he might have become had been only a breath away.

And he had stopped just short of the edge.

Barely.

Before he could spiral deeper into that thought, a pulse tugged at his awareness.

It was familiar. Connected.

His eyes widened.

His clone.

He turned toward the version of himself still meditating across the chamber.

What he saw made his stomach drop.

The clone—the one he had tasked with absorbing EMI—looked identical to him now. Steam rose from its body. The same glowing lines marked its skin. The same horn crowned its head.

The same evolution.

He shut his eyes and reached inward to check on the others.

The clones he left back in the tutorial…

Same thing.

They had all changed.

Alex's pulse spiked.

With this, his clones were now powerful enough to handle any remaining threat in the tutorial. Their previous limits—gone. They could end encounters in one move.

It made him dangerous in ways the others wouldn't expect.

In ways even Oracle wouldn't expect.

As that realization settled in, a voice echoed through the chamber.

"Announcement: Final round of the Legacy Trial begins in *one minute. All remaining contestants, prepare for transfer."

One minute?

How long had he been out?

His eyes returned to the meditating clone. Its work was done—it had absorbed all it could.

It was time to release it.

Alex clenched his fist—and the clone dispersed into vapor. The moment it did, a rush of energy surged into him, crashing through his senses in a wave of condensed EMI.

His body shuddered at the feedback.

But oddly… it didn't hurt.

In fact, it felt natural.

His new form absorbed it smoothly, as if it had been designed to.

"Okay," Alex muttered, rolling his shoulders. "That's… good. I can work with this."

The chamber around him began to hum.

Lines of white light crawled across the floor, forming a glowing circle beneath his feet. The air pressure dropped. The metallic scent of ozone returned, sharp in his nostrils.

Time was up.

He turned to the mirror one last time.

The face staring back was his—but not quite. The eyes were colder. More focused. Not lost. Just... recalibrated.

He didn't regret what he had done.

Because now—

He was no longer walking the system's path.

He was breaking it.

Becoming some

thing the system itself might not be able to contain.