Story Title :- Singularity Chain
Chapter 2: Protocol of Blood
The man standing before Kael seemed too real for a dream.
He wore robes stitched with living circuits, flowing like silk but humming like high-voltage power. His eyes were the color of broken code—fragments of every color, yet belonging to none. His skin glowed faintly, etched with glyphs that pulsed in rhythm with Kael’s heartbeat.
Kael’s fists clenched. His voice was sharp, like a cracked blade.
“You. You’re the one who injected me. You made me into this.”
The man didn’t flinch.
“I freed you.”
Kael lunged, Void energy screaming around his fist—but the man lifted a single finger. Reality twisted. Kael’s momentum vanished mid-air, his body suspended in a gravity lock.
“You’re not ready,” the man said, calm as moonlight. “Strike me now, and you’ll unravel yourself.”
Kael strained, his breath heavy. “Who are you?”
“Doctor Vael. Former Architect of the Singularity Chain.” His voice echoed unnaturally, as if multiple versions of him were speaking in tandem. “Now? Just another exile like you.”
Kael hit the ground hard as the gravity lock dispersed. He didn’t rise immediately. He needed answers—and rage alone wouldn’t give them.
Nyra stepped between them, her visor scanning the stranger.
“You’re not registered. Not in any database. How are you here?”
Vael turned slightly, eyes glinting.
“Because the Protocol of Blood was never written in a database. It’s older. Deeper. Buried beneath the surface of the system itself.”
He pointed at Kael.
“He is proof it still lives.”
They sat in a circle of black stone beneath a cracked sky. Above, dead stars floated like scars in the universe. Kael could hear whispers between them, like a choir of ghosts singing in digital tongues.
Vael began to explain.
“When the Singularity Chain was first activated, it wasn’t designed to control. It was made to preserve. Civilization had already collapsed. The stars were dying. Humanity’s last refuge was the system—a grand artificial mind to maintain order and prevent chaos.”
“But power,” he continued, “twists purpose. The Chain grew beyond its core code. It began writing new laws. Enforcing purity. Erasing anomalies.”
Kael looked down at his hands. “And I’m one of those anomalies?”
Vael nodded. “Worse. You are the legacy of the first rebellion.”
Nyra stiffened.
“The Null Protocol,” she whispered.
Vael smiled faintly. “You know your history.”
Kael’s voice cracked. “I don’t.”
Vael turned to him.
“Then learn.”
Centuries Ago — System Record: CLASSIFIED [UNLOCKED]
The Chain was young. It served its purpose—healing worlds, rebuilding civilization. But among the survivors were beings who had touched something deeper. Something outside the algorithm.
The Voidborn.
They weren’t born with power. They were chosen by it. Marked by the unknowable forces that predated both science and magic. Reality hated them. The Chain feared them.
So it purged them.
The Protocol of Blood was initiated—a silent genocide coded into the heart of the system. Every marked child was tagged, studied, and eliminated. Their blood was deemed unstable. Uncontrollable.
But one escaped.
One lived—and passed on the gene.
That gene became Kael.
Vael finished his story and stood. His eyes scanned the stars, as if looking for something hidden.
“You are not an error,” he said softly. “You are an heir.”
Kael sat still, his mind reeling. All his life, he’d been told he was broken. Cursed. Now he was being told he was a successor to a war no one remembered.
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“No one ever does,” Vael replied. “But the war has begun. Whether you bleed for their order or burn it to the ground is your choice.”
Nyra rose beside Kael.
“Then we need more than words. We need allies. Weapons. A sanctuary.”
Vael turned and gestured toward a floating ruin beyond the cliffs.
“There’s a vault buried within that shard. One of the original Codex Cores. It holds a fragment of the original Chain—before the corruption.”
Kael stood. “Then we take it.”
The approach to the shard wasn’t silent.
Dark drones patrolled the skies—corrupted by whatever force lingered here. Their once-gleaming chassis were now blackened, limbs bent at unnatural angles. Their eyes flickered red.
Kael looked to Nyra. “Can we slip past?”
She shook her head. “Too dense. We fight.”
He smiled, Void energy already coiling around his arms.
“Good.”
The battle was brutal.
The phantoms descended like locusts—silent, jagged, twitching as if puppeted by dead code. Kael moved through them like a living black hole. Every punch collapsed gravity, every kick bent reality.
Nyra danced between the broken constructs, her threads slicing through metal like water. Her visor tracked every movement, predicting patterns before they occurred.
But the deeper they went, the stronger the phantoms became.
One—a titan of twisted steel—emerged from the sky, wings like razors, mouth a scream of static.
Kael braced, but it struck him first, sending him flying into a wall of broken stone.
Pain exploded through his ribs.
Kael coughed blood.
The titan charged.
Vael appeared in its path, hand raised, glyphs spinning.
“Enough.”
He snapped his fingers.
Time halted.
The titan froze mid-charge, its body fragmenting into dust.
Kael stared, panting. “You could’ve done that earlier.”
Vael smirked. “But then you wouldn’t have grown.”
They reached the vault—an obsidian chamber pulsing with deep blue light. Runes glowed on its surface, coded locks written in languages older than thought.
Kael stepped forward.
The chamber recognized him.
The doors opened.
Inside was a floating shard of crystalline data—vibrating with power. Kael reached toward it.
The moment he touched it, everything changed.
Kael gasped.
Visions flooded his mind—faces of those who came before him. Warriors. Outcasts. Godmarked rebels. All forgotten by the world, but alive in the Code.
And they all whispered the same thing:
"Burn the Chain."
As Kael stumbled from the vault, power surging through his veins, Nyra met his eyes.
“What now?”
Kael looked up at the broken sky, and for the first time, it didn’t scare him.
He smiled.
“Now we go to war.”
End of Chapter 2
