The descent into the prison block was a jagged, terrifying nightmare.
Grey Veyr guards boxed Lucen in.
They forced him down a narrow walkway suspended over a bubbling magma trench.
Lucen forced a casual tone over his hammering heart.
“So, is this the VIP wing, or general population?” The guards offered nothing but the rhythmic clack of their crystalline limbs.
He scanned the subterranean layout.
A terrifying maze of dark basalt.
Iron cages hung from thick chains anchored into the cavern walls.
They held battered Veyr.
Their cores flickered dimly.
Thick, dark metal belts wrapped around the prisoners’ necks.
The collars pulsed with a sickly energy, visibly suppressing their natural blue light.
His stomach churned.
“Nice jewelry.” He glanced at his silent escorts.
“Do I get one of those collars, or is that a locals-only accessory?” A frantic rattling erupted from a nearby cage.
An ancient, heavily scarred Veyr threw its body against the iron bars.
Its limbs flailed in chaotic, erratic jerks.
Its core burned a frantic, unstable blue.
The voice shoved jagged directly into Lucen’s skull.
“Soft-meat!” The old Veyr vibrated.
“It shouldn’t be here!
It carries the deep fire!
It holds that which should not exist in the living!
Abomination!” The guards struck the cage.
The blow forced the crazy old Veyr backward into the shadows.
They dragged Lucen forward until they reached a heavy metal door.
Without a word, they shoved him inside.
The iron slammed shut with a deafening clang.
The stone cell offered nothing but silence.
Lucen sat with his back pressed against the cold, uneven wall.
He drew his knees toward his chest.
His chin rested on his crossed arms.
No window.
No clock.
No voices.
Nothing but raw, porous rock and heavy emptiness.
He stared at the blank wall for what felt like hours.
Time was hard to measure when your entire universe consisted of four walls and a dirt floor.
He let out a slow sigh and scanned the shadowy corners.
He drummed his fingers against his knee.
“Why does nothingness like me so much?” His words bounced off the damp rock and died.
“Yeah.
Thought so.” He leaned his head back and let his eyes slip shut.
The strange rock-spiders, the Veyr, had treated his wounds.
They kept him alive.
Then they locked him in a box.
A literal cage.
He placed his hand flat against the rock.
“No windows.
No vents.” He knocked his knuckles against the stone.
Solid.
“Five-star accommodations.” He moved to the heavy metal door and pressed his ear against the cold iron.
Total silence.
He stared into the empty room.
“So what’s the grand plan, guys?
Interrogation?
Dissection?
Are you going to eat me, or did you just forget you put me in here?” He kicked a loose pebble across the dirt.
It bounced off the wall with a dull clack.
“Honestly, I’m fine with being ignored.” He returned to the wall.
“Out of sight, out of mind.
That works perfectly.” He stared at the locked door.
“Right up until I starve to death.” For the first time since waking up on Orrak, a faceless alien wasn’t watching his every move.
The silence was absolute.
And in that silence, his thoughts grew significantly louder.
Kai.
Grandpa.
Raina.
Are they alive?
What happened after the Mawlords attacked the shelter?
Do they know I’m not dead?
His fingernails dug into his palms.
“I hope they’re okay.” A bitter smile touched his mouth.
“Oh, my luck.
I finally upgrade from a pair of wet noodles to actual working legs, and the universe immediately locks me in a ten-by-ten rock box.” Getting back to Earth was the only goal that mattered.
Finding a way across the universe?
Easier said than done.
A heavy pressure settled in his chest.
He was used to isolation in Grandpa’s basement, but at least there he could hear footsteps upstairs.
Here, there was only dead space.
His world wasn’t a staircase away anymore.
It was in another galaxy.
He squeezed his eyes shut tight.
He fought the lump in his throat.
“Kai…” A mechanical voice answered immediately.
“Yes?” Lucen’s eyes snapped open.
Every muscle in his body locked tight.
The voice hadn’t echoed off the stone walls.
It hadn’t come from outside the door.
It came from somewhere deep inside his own head.
He slowly dragged a hand down his face.
“…Oh.
Right.
And there’s this now.” The voice remained silent.
He looked up at the ceiling and let out a long breath.
“Am I officially going insane?
Is that what’s happening?” “….” “That’s super encouraging.” He pushed himself up slightly.
He leaned his weight against the wall and narrowed his eyes.
“Actually…who are you?” Silence.
“More specifically, ‘what are you?'” No answer.
Lucen waited.
The silence stretched on, thick and heavy.
He was just starting to wonder if the toxic air had finally melted his brain when his vision suddenly blurred.
The stone walls dissolved into smoke.
The heavy gravity of Orrak vanished.
His body became completely weightless.
For a split second, there was only pitch black.
Then, light.
He opened his eyes.
The tiny cell was gone.
He was standing somewhere he had seen before.
The Workshop.
Everything looked drastically different this time.
He slowly turned in a circle.
The enormous, impossible chamber stretched endlessly around him.
Large sections of machinery floated uselessly in the dark void.
Fragments of metallic structures hung in the dead air like the ribs of a destroyed beast.
But he could see more of it now.
He inspected his footing.
He wasn’t standing on a stone floor.
He stood on a massive, glowing circular platform.
Faint, pulsing lines covered the surface.
At first, they looked like cracks in glass.
Then he realized they were branches.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
They stretched outward, reaching deep into the dark void like a sprawling root system.
Some were thread-thin.
Others were thick as ancient tree trunks.
All of them hummed with a soft, white light.
“What is this…” He looked toward the center.
The realization hit him like a physical blow.
This was inside him.
The thought wasn’t a guess.
It was an absolute certainty.
His Origin Energy.
His body.
The strange glowing roots.
All of it connected right here.
This was the architecture of his own soul.
He examined his hands.
Origin Energy flowed through his veins like cool water.
Something was vastly different.
Using this energy back on Earth felt like pushing shattered glass through his blood vessels.
An agonizing struggle.
Here?
No pain.
No pressure.
No resistance at all.
The energy moved naturally, like flexing a muscle he didn’t know he had.
He raised his right hand and concentrated.
A brilliant thread of white Origin Energy formed between his fingers.
He moved his hand.
The thread followed perfectly.
Twisting his wrist, the energy bent to his will without a second thought.
“Interesting.” He pushed more energy into the thread.
It thickened instantly, glowing brighter.
He willed it to thin out, and it shrank to the width of a hair.
With a quick thought, he shaped the light into a small, glowing sphere.
It hovered obediently an inch above his palm.
A grin spread across his face.
“So I can actually control it here.” He closed his fist.
The sphere popped like a soap bubble.
Instantly, the Workshop flickered to life.
One of the broken structures lit up.
Lucen whipped his head around.
A pale glow spread through the massive chamber.
The central workbench illuminated.
Dust shifted in mid-air.
For a brief second, a section of the shattered wall began reconstructing itself.
Stone knitted into stone with flawless precision.
He stared in absolute awe.
“No matter how many times I see this…” He shook his head.
“…it’s still amazing.” The mechanical voice answered.
“I am Bio-Net.” The smile vanished.
He spun around, searching the empty platform.
Nobody was there.
“You’re Bio-Net?” “Correct.” He stared into the darkness, tracking the directionless sound.
“So you’re the voice inside my head.
The translator.” “Correct.” “Well, that’s…
surprisingly straightforward.” He raised an eyebrow.
“Do you have a personality, or are you just a walking dictionary?” “Negative.
Personality matrix not installed.” “Right.
Of course not.” He walked toward the central workbench.
The closer he got, the clearer the strange machinery became.
It wasn’t ordinary technology.
It looked organic.
Biological.
Metallic structures grew seamlessly out of glowing crystalline components.
Thin, vein-like strands ran between massive gears.
The entire setup looked like a forge designed by gods.
He traced a finger over a glowing rune carved into the stone.
“Do you come from here?” “Yes.” He looked up at the floating ruins and crossed his arms.
“What exactly is this place?” “The Origin Workshop.” “That is a peculiar name.” He pointed at a massive, floating gear suspended in the void.
“What does it actually do?” “Creation.
Modification.
Integration.
Reconstruction.” His eyes narrowed.
He looked down at his own hands, then back at the workbench.
“So…
I can build things here?” “Accurate.” “What kind of things?” “Systems.” The voice replied smoothly.
“Biological modifications.
Energy pathways.
Weapons.
Defensive structures.
Cognitive assistance algorithms.
Resonance interfaces.” He processed the information.
“So this is basically a custom upgrade station for my own body.” “Correct.” A genuine smile spread across his face.
“That is incredibly convenient.
Every cloud has a silver lining, even getting abducted by a Rift.” He walked around the massive stone table.
He examined the intricate carvings.
“Who built you?” “The First One.” He stopped walking.
“The First One?” “Affirmative.” “Who is the First One?” Silence.
He tapped his foot against the platform.
Nothing.
Then, a faint blue text box flickered directly in his vision.
**[ERROR.
DATA CORRUPTED OR UNAVAILABLE.]** Lucen smirked.
“Yeah.
I didn’t expect that to be easy.” He leaned against the edge of the workbench and tapped the stone.
“Did the First One make this world too?” “Yes.” “And the Workshop?” “Also yes.” “Why?” Silence.
The glowing branches of the Origin Workshop hummed softly beneath his feet.
Lucen stared at the central workbench.
The memory of the attack back on Earth still burned in his mind.
The phantom feeling of the cold steel shoved into his core made his reconstructed muscles twitch.
He folded his arms.
“Let’s stop dodging the question.” He stared at the empty space above the desk.
“Why do I have this?
I spent my whole life coughing up blood in a damp basement.
Then a finger-sized runic dagger shoves into my chest, and suddenly I have a cosmic upgrade station in my head.
Why me?” “Because you are the vassal of the white spark.
The dagger acted as the final catalyst.A seeker.” Lucen frowned.
“The what?” “It was designed with a single, absolute directive,” Bio-Net stated.
“To locate the true vassal and force a connection.
It was meant to make the bridge by acting as a vacuum, latching onto your core to gorge on your essence and consume your energy.
Instead, your white spark consumed it.” “It forced the connection open,” Bio-Net stated.
“It bridged your physical shell to the architecture of your soul.” Lucen let out a dry, humorless laugh.
“My physical shell couldn’t withstand a stiff breeze.
Every time I used my power, my veins turned black.
My body literally broke down.” “Correct.
Your world refers to this primitive forced evolution as the Helios disease.” Lucen froze.
The Federation’s secret project.
The exact reason ARC operatives hunted Helios patients down like animals.
“What do you call it?” “The Consuming Crucible,” Bio-Net stated flatly.
“It is a flawed, artificial ignition.
It forces the mortal shell to consume itself to generate Origin Energy.
It hollows out the host.” Lucen stared at his bare hands.
The jagged pieces finally clicked into place.
The years trapped in Grandpa’s damp basement.
Coughing up blood.
His muscles wasting away to dead weight.
His own body had been eating itself alive.
“It was hollowing me out,” Lucen whispered.
“Making room.” “Affirmative.
The Origin Workshop requires an absolute vacuum to anchor itself.
Your physical degradation created that space.
When the dagger pierced your core, the vacuum sealed.
Combined with the white spark, your biology became the perfect, empty architecture.” “So the Bio-Net…
this entire Workshop…” “It is the countermeasure.
You are the only known vassal capable of anchoring the white spark.
This system was designed to rebuild your consumed shell.
To turn the vacuum into a fortress.” Lucen let out a slow, ragged breath.
He looked up at the broken, floating machinery of his own soul.
He wasn’t just a fragile kid anymore.
He was the most dangerous piece of real estate in the universe.
“Did you control my body back on Earth?
When I killed the Mawqueen?” “Negative.” Lucen froze.
The answer had been instant.
No hesitation.
No processing lag.
The color drained from his face.
“Then who did?” Bio-Net didn’t answer immediately.
Instead of the smooth, instantaneous replies from before, a heavy, mechanical silence fell over the Workshop.
The soft white light pulsing through the branches beneath his feet suddenly flickered, shifting into a sickly, unstable yellow.
A blue text box ripped across his vision.
[Processing query…] The massive gears floating above the central workbench groaned.
They ground against each other, throwing off sparks as if the system was physically struggling to pull a corrupted file.
“Bio-Net?” Lucen took a cautious step back.
“What’s happening?” [Scanning host integration logs…
Temporal timestamp: Earth, Sector 135.] [Analyzing…] The yellow light stuttered, strobing rapidly across the dark void.
The temperature in the chamber plummeted, turning Lucen’s breath into white mist.
[Alert: Unregistered Anomaly detected.] [During initial Host Synchronization, a foreign energy signature breached the Origin pathway.] [Identity: Unknown.] [Origin: Unknown.] Lucen stared at the floating text, his heart hammering against his ribs.
“Unknown?
You’re literally built into my soul.
How can you not know what was inside me?” The glowing branches flared, glitching violently between yellow and harsh red like a short-circuiting motherboard, before finally snapping back to a dim white.
“Data is absent,” the mechanical voice finally stated.
The audio sounded slightly warped, clipping at the edges with static.
“The anomaly hijacked the initial integration sequence.
It bypassed all security protocols during my installation into your neural architecture.
I possess a blind spot regarding that exact timeframe.” Lucen rubbed his chest right over his heart, feeling a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck.
“So…
you didn’t block the memory to protect me,” he muttered, piecing the terrifying reality together.
“You genuinely have no idea what that thing was.” “Affirmative.
The entity exists outside my current database parameters.” A final blue window pulsed aggressively in the air between them.
[Fatal Error: Identity resolution failed.] The Workshop slowly stabilized.
The floating debris settled, and the lights returned to their calm, steady hum.
But the cold dread in Lucen’s stomach didn’t fade.
His Origin Energy pulsed harder.
It felt like his chest was being torn open from the inside.
If Bio-Net was a god-tier alien upgrade system, and even it treated the possession as a complete system failure…
He really was carrying a monster.