The dream was a suffocating, blurred echo of a reality he couldn’t grasp.
Ambo stood in the dead, grey center of a dark wasteland, completely surrounded by dozens of Gen Z entities.
The bone-white, distorted figures shifted and twitched in the ash-stained shadows, their smooth faces violently stretching open to reveal cavernous maws lined with razor-sharp black teeth.
But they did not lunge.
The flood of immortal monsters merely stood in a suffocating perimeter, guarding his position as if he were a sacred relic.
Ambo couldn’t remember if this was a fractured memory of his past or a nightmare born of exhaustion, but before he could stretch his hand toward the fog, a pitch-black void completely shrouded the dream, dragging him back to consciousness.
CRASH!
Ambo’s eyes flew open as the heavy iron door of the medical wing was kicked open so loudly the stone frame groaned.
His vision was a blurred, dazed mess from his intense stamina depletion, but he could instantly make out the dark silhouette of a boy walking fast toward him.
It was Kai.
The quiet, ghost-like younger brother who usually acted like a silent tail to Leeroy was completely transformed by an unholy, quiet rage.
He had heard the news of his brother’s brutal defeat in the Pit.
But instead of running to the opposite cot where Leeroy lay heavily wrapped in blood-stained medical bandages, Kai marched straight toward Ambo.
Without uttering a single syllable, his long bangs completely covering his eyes and his jaw locked, Kai suddenly lifted his boot and attempted to violently stomp Ambo’s skull directly into the mattress.
Despite the absolute lack of physical energy in his limbs, Ambo’s primal survival reflexes flared.
He threw his torso to the side, rolling off the mattress a fraction of a second before Kai’s heel connected.
BOOM!
The iron-framed medical bed was instantly smashed completely broken, the metal buckling into twisted scrap as a jagged web of cracks violently emerged across the concrete floor.
Never did anyone in the Kampilan guild know that this silent, detached boy who walked behind his arrogant brother without saying anything was this staggeringly, terrifyingly strong.
Kai didn’t pause.
Seeing Ambo dodge, he simply burst his raw Astral energy wide open.
A blinding, roaring aura erupted from his physical biology, turning into a brilliant blue fire that engulfed his lower legs.
It wasn’t a complex Segonda element; it was just a raw, unfiltered Premera Astral signature so immensely dense and intense that the pure pressure forced the color to shift into a radiant blue flame.
Instead of flowing gracefully upward like normal aura, the energy radiated outward like a violent, destructive fire.
Every single step Kai took as he walked forward caused the solid concrete of the floor to buckle and shatter, deep cracks trailing his boots.
Before Ambo could even scramble to his knees, Kai pivoted and delivered a thunderous kick straight into the rookie’s ribs.
The sheer physical impact made Ambo fly violently across the room, crashing through the glass window of the guild and tumbling out into the open sky.
Ambo’s vision blackened for a split second from the blunt trauma.
He began to wake up as he hit the dirt of the outer training court, coughing up blood.
But as he tried to push himself up, Kai was already there, dropping from the sky like a meteor.
Kai delivered a second, bone-crushing kick straight to Ambo’s face.
BOOM!!!
The impact created a massive, visible shockwave of raw kinetic pressure that radiated through the entire guild fortress, making the stone foundations vibrate violently.
The sheer force sent Ambo flying again, hurtling helplessly out into the open air.
Meanwhile, high above the chaos, inside the locked and reinforced command center, a completely different kind of storm was brewing.
Xan stood by her desk, her dark hair messy and her jaw tight with an unfamiliar edge of deep anxiety.
“What the hell was that thing, Zaiden?” Xan demanded, her voice tight with paranoia as she paced the floor.
“I thought it was just the boy losing control, but the physical movements, the combat skills, the sheer battlefield experience…
it was completely ancient.
And that aura…
the menace he outburst in the open was so suffocating it was making the nearby scouts feel dizzy, suffering from nausea and feeling like they were about to collapse on their knees.
It felt as if that entity has lived long enough to generate that kind of historic pressure.” Zaiden stood quietly by the stone pillar, his arms folded neatly across his tailored suit vest, his bunny face mask casting a long shadow.
“I know Leeroy was only a Premera user,” Xan continued, her fingers tightening into fists.
“But I will not be arguing if you compare his raw Astral manifestation to anyone else in the lower ranks.
The materialization of his defensive armor is so genius it can be considered second only to mine.
He is the very description of an unbreakable defense if you leave me out of the choices.
But for that black thing to make not just a dent, not just a small crack, but to completely break down Leeroy’s defenses in a split second…
that thing is an absolute anomaly.” Before Zaiden could offer his technical analysis, a thunderous, echoing BANG rattled the windows of the office, followed instantly by a violent, grounding shock of vibration that made the desk lanterns flicker.
Xan and Zaiden exchanged a single, sharp look.
Instantly, they unbolted the door and began to run outside the office, tracing the destructive shockwaves back to the courtyard.
Out in the open dead zones of the inner courtyard, the slaughter continued.
Kai was a blur of blue fire, his steps causing continuous vibrations and deep cracks across the battlefield as he relentlessly kicked Ambo higher and higher into the open sky.
Ambo was completely helpless, his stamina broken as the blue-haired boy drove him up into the clouds through brute physical force.
When they were high enough, Kai twisted mid-air, positioned himself directly on top of the rookie, and stomped down onto Ambo’s chest with all his might.
The velocity of their descent was so impossibly rapid that the friction against the atmosphere caught them both on fire.
They became a falling meteor of blue and red sparks, hurtling toward the earth at a speed that would completely pulverize Ambo’s body upon impact.
As the ground rushed up to meet them and they were about to hit the solid earth, Zaiden stepped into the courtyard below.
His unique half-white, half-black hair caught the wind, and without drawing a weapon, he activated his mysterious, reality-distorting ability.
The technique seized the mind of his target, forcing Kai’s consciousness to warp, making the entire event feel like an impossible dream.
BZZT.
Kai blinked.
The roaring wind, the friction of the fire, and the high-velocity fall vanished in a microsecond.
Suddenly, he found himself standing completely still outside in the middle of the courtyard.
His boots had just made contact with the dirt, the dust swirling around his ankles from the exact moment he had jumped out of the shattered medical wing window to pursue his target.
Ambo was lying a few feet away on the cracked ground, coughing and slowly standing up with great difficulty.
It was as if time itself had been forcefully reverted back to the exact second he had landed the ground outside the guild.
What happened?
Kai thought, his mind fracturing under a wave of absolute confusion.
We were supposed to be out in the sky already…
falling at a high velocity and about to hit the ground.
Why am I standing here on the grass?
Overthinking a lot and utterly dazed, his cold posture shattered as sweat began to pour profusely down his face.
Seeing the blue-haired boy freeze in the open from the mental illusion, Xan caught up to Zaiden’s position and grabbed the opportunity.
She thrust her hands forward, channeling her immense energy to trigger her unique Segonda ability.
The space warped as she permanently imprisoned Kai inside a dense, glowing elemental barrier, locking him away before his blue flames could flare again.
The crisis was stopped.
The Kampilan leaders brought both boys back into the depths of the headquarters.
Ambo, completely unconscious from the raw physical trauma, was placed into a new bed inside a heavily fortified, isolated sector of the guild.
Meanwhile, Kai was stripped of his boots and placed directly into the guild prison for the meantime, left in the dark cells for him to calm down and process the distorted reality.
Inside her office, Xan stared out at the broken courtyard, her jaw tight.
The secret test had unleashed a chain reaction she couldn’t control.
The amnesiac boy didn’t just carry a weird Segonda fluid—he carried a key that was starting to wake up the deadliest elements of the surface.
The prologue of their survival had just ended in fire, and the true war for the dead soil was about to begin.
[END OF PROLOGUE ARC: SOVEREIGN OF THE FIRST ASH] 🔥 COMING NEXT IN VOLUME 2: THE DEAD ZONE INFILTRATION 🔥 The quiet life within the stone walls of the Kampilan Guild is officially dead.
As the illegal distribution of Walibu’s unpolished booster drug threatens to turn every low-level surface thug into an unstoppable elemental warlord, Xan issues an absolute decree: The vanguard squad is deploying past the perimeter.
Ambo, Zaiden, and Jahek must venture deep into the lawless, toxic ruins of the forgotten metropolitan dead zones to locate and dismantle the secret chemical labs before the surface burns.
But out there in the unprotected wild, where Xan’s fortress barrier cannot shield them, a shadow is waiting.
Infuriated by the humiliation and imprisonment of his younger siblings, a true living legend descends from the clouds of Neo Terra—Axl Jenkins, the Zenith of Rings, member of the Celestial Order.
Armed with a terrifying, tier-shattering ring manipulation ability, he isn’t coming to negotiate.
He is coming to hunt.
Trapped in a crumbling ruin between ruthless rebel drug rings and the absolute, concrete-shattering wrath of a Zenith, Ambo must learn to control the local biological frequency of the goo sizzling beneath his skin.
Because as the dark void of his memory begins to fracture, a terrifying question emerges from the depth of his bone marrow: Who—or what—is actually living inside his body?
👉 Add to your Library and unlock the first page of the Surface War next week!
📖 THE ROADMAP AHEAD: UPCOMING VOLUMES 📖 Discover the full, dark timeline of the Surface War as Ambo uncovers the terrifying entity slumbering inside his blood: 📍 Volume 2: The Dead Zone Infiltration ↳ Focus: The first field deployment, Walibu drug rings, and the terrifying descent of the Celestial Order, Axl Jenkins – The Zenith of Rings.
📍 Volume 3: Biome of the Fallen ↳ Focus: The massive animal-human hybrid migration crisis and the brutal colonial dictatorship of The Alpha.
📍 Volume 4: Whispers of the Encanto ↳ Focus: Going undercover to hunt Generation 2—the evolved, human-disguised monsters walking undetected among society.
📍 Volume 5: The Breach of Tartarus ↳ Focus: Walibu’s catastrophic maximum-security prison break and a lethal clash against Kilat, the Zenith of Lightning.
📍 Volume 6: The White Smiles ↳ Focus: A shocking, high-tier betrayal fractures the inner circles as the D’minion parasites claim their hosts.
Witness the absolute sub-zero lockdown of Yzach “The Frost Wolf”, the Zenith of Blizzard.
📍 Volume 7: Sovereigns in the Ash (Grand Finale) ↳ Focus: The apocalyptic four-way war between Neo Terran machines, Walibu rebels, the Encanto, and The White Smiles.
To contain the armageddon, the final gods take the field: Maddox “The World Shaker”, the Zenith of Tremor, and their supreme leader, Seraphim “The White Princess” Sulayman, the Zenith of Order.