Darkness.
It wasn't the kind that came with sleep. It was heavier—like drowning in oil, like being smothered under centuries of ash. There was no light. No time. Only the slow, suffocating weight of being.
Then, a flicker.
[System Reboot Initialized...]
[Vital Signs: Stabilizing...]
[Cognitive Link Established]
[User: Unregistered. Provisional Designation: ARIX]
The darkness cracked.
Arix gasped as air surged into his lungs. Cold. Dry. His back arched against metal, nerves firing like they were waking from years of silence. Lights bloomed overhead—dim, flickering, red. Emergency lighting.
His body felt wrong.
Not injured. Just… foreign.
He sat up slowly. Every movement was stiff, like his muscles had been poured into the wrong shape. He looked down at his hands—longer fingers, paler skin, faint scars he didn't remember earning.
[Neural Lag Detected. Adjusting Synaptic Feedback...]
He flinched as a pulse of warmth surged through his skull. A cascade of fragmented memories surfaced—faces without names, screams without mouths, battles without context. They vanished just as quickly.
His breathing steadied.
He was in a cryo-pod. Mostly intact. The chamber around him, less so. Exposed wires sparked overhead. Frost coated the inside of the glass. Other pods lined the wall—most shattered, some long empty. One still held a body slumped against the glass, unmoving.
[System Notice: Localized Facility Collapse Detected. Exit Immediately.]
No map. No instructions.
Just a direction.
And a name: Arix.
He stumbled from the pod, knees buckling as he caught himself on a nearby terminal. Static danced across its surface. He tapped it.
[User Recognized: Tier 0 Access Granted]
[Initializing Interface...]
A map flashed for a second—jagged, incomplete. Then a directional ping marked a point in the distance: Sector 17 – Surface Access Elevator.
"Great," Arix muttered, voice rough.
The floor creaked under his weight. One step at a time, he moved. A pipe overhead burst, spraying coolant in a wide arc. He ducked, slipping through a gap in the ruined bulkhead.
The next corridor was worse—collapsed in two places, strewn with shattered tech and the charred remains of… something. He didn't look too closely.
As he climbed over a fallen support beam, a shadow moved across the far wall.
He froze.
A figure.
Humanoid. Broad-shouldered. It turned the corner with heavy steps—metal boots crunching glass. Its head was masked, visor glowing a deep crimson. A rifle was slung across its back.
It hadn't seen him.
[Proximity Alert: Hostile Signature Detected]
[Initiating Emergency Combat Protocols... Tier 0 Access – Limitations Active]
[Skill Unlocked: Improvised Combat Lv.1]
His fingers closed around a jagged length of piping.
It was crude.
But it would have to do.
The figure stopped, scanning the hall. Arix held his breath. Then—with surprising silence for something that size—it moved on, vanishing into the dark.
He didn't relax.
Not for a long time.
It took hours to find the elevator.
By the time he reached it, his muscles ached and his thoughts buzzed with warnings, pings, and glitchy data feeds he barely understood. But the elevator worked. Somehow.
He stepped inside.
[Destination: Surface Confirmed]
[Reminder: User Level – Insufficient for Open World Navigation]
[Override Accepted – Administrative Bypass Detected]
The elevator shook violently as it began to rise.
Arix braced himself against the wall.
[Welcome to the System Grid.]
[Calibration Pending. Quest Generation: Initializing...]
And somewhere, deep in his bones, the Vaults began to whisper.
He just didn't know it yet.