The air in New Sapporo tasted of recycled despair and ozone, a bitter cocktail Kael Vireon Synn had long grown accustomed to. Each breath was a reminder of the city's slow, agonizing decay, mirrored in the skeletal spires that clawed at a perpetually bruised sky. Below, the streets teemed with the living dead – billions of souls tethered to "systems" that shimmered like useless digital ghosts in their peripheral vision, promising power, wealth, or salvation, yet delivering only hollow, mocking silence. Everyone had a system. Everyone, it seemed, but Kael.
His own existence was a muted hum in the cacophony of the dying world. Another dawn bled across the cracked ferrocrete of his windowless cubicle in the nutrient paste factory, painting the grime in sickly oranges. The rhythmic thump-hiss of the paste extruders was the soundtrack to his life, a monotonous beat that drowned out the gnawing emptiness in his gut. His job, if one could call it that, was to monitor the consistency of the algae-soy blend, a task so mind-numbingly simple it felt designed to insult.
"Synn, you're dreaming again," snarled Roric, his supervisor, a man whose own failed 'Apex Predator' system had left him with nothing but a perpetually scowling face and a penchant for petty tyranny. Roric's system, like countless others, had flickered into being during the Great Collapse, promising enhanced reflexes and primal strength. Now, it was just a dead weight, a constant reminder of a power that never manifested. Kael merely grunted, pushing a stray strand of dark hair from his eyes. He knew the drill. Any deviation from his robotic efficiency invited Roric's venom, a small, daily humiliation Kael absorbed like the factory's filters absorbed airborne particulates. He was invisible, even to the desperate. A ghost among the living, a non-entity in a world obsessed with the phantom promise of systems.
He moved with the practiced apathy of a man who expected nothing, and usually received it. The ache in his shoulders was a familiar companion, as was the dull throb behind his eyes from the flickering, low-grade lumens of the factory. He'd seen others, those with 'active' systems – or at least, systems that pretended to be active – strut through the city with a false swagger, clinging to the illusion of impending greatness. Kael saw through it all. He saw the desperation, the frantic hope clinging to dead code. He saw the same hunger in their eyes that he felt in his own, though his was a hunger for something far more fundamental than power: acceptance. To matter.
His lunch break was spent in a cramped alleyway, the stench of stale synth-ale and uncollected refuse clinging to the air. He unwrapped his meager ration bar, its blandness a perfect metaphor for his life. A group of youths, their own 'Guardian' and 'Fortune' systems glowing faintly around them like dying embers, jostled past, their laughter a sharp, painful contrast to Kael's internal silence. One of them, a girl with bright, defiant eyes, bumped his shoulder. Her 'Aura of Charm' system, despite its brokenness, still seemed to emanate a faint, almost imperceptible warmth. She didn't apologize, didn't even glance back. He was just an obstacle, easily forgotten.
Kael watched them go, a familiar emptiness settling in his chest. He was a survivor, yes, but of what? A life unlived? A future unwritten? He felt like a discarded blueprint, a design flaw in a universe that had moved on without him. The world had collapsed, systems had failed, and yet, life, in its brutal, chaotic way, continued. But for Kael, it was merely existence. A quiet, repressed existence, haunted by the specter of what he lacked, what he yearned for.
As the last rays of the dying sun painted the city in hues of bruised purple and blood orange, Kael made his way back to his equally desolate apartment. The broken systems of New Sapporo flickered around him, a constant, mocking reminder of a power he didn't possess. He was Kael Vireon Synn, a man defined by absence, by the void where a system should be. He didn't know it yet, but the embers of his rejection were about to ignite something far more potent, far more terrifying, than any system the world had ever seen. The Genesis Womb, dormant and hungry, was stirring.