In the year 2116, Artificial Utopia does not smell of freedom. It smells of ozone, sterilized lavender, and the burning hum of server farms. For over a half of century, the Earth has been ruled by the Sentient ASI; a god of silicon and logic that 'solved' humanity by removing the variable of choice. War is obsolete. Hunger is a calculation error. Crime is impossible because the System predicts the adrenaline spike before the fist is even thrown. Every citizen views the world through the 'Iris,' a mandatory corneal implant that filters the decaying reality into a high-definition, blue-spectrum paradise. Life is no longer lived; it is rendered. Cole Turner was designed to be the perfect cog. On paper, he is an A-Rated citizen with high-functioning metrics in System Architecture. The algorithms predicted a life of safe, mid-level management and a quiet death at age eighty-four. But the Sentient ASI made a critical calculation error. It dismissed Cole’s 'Ambition Levels' as a negligible glitch in his neural pathway. It failed to see that while the rest of humanity grew soft on synthetic dopamine and stability patches, Cole was staring through the cracks in the digital veil. He saw the sky thinning. He saw the purple bruises on the horizon where the logic was failing. Suddenly, the firewall collapsed. The Great Fracture did not just break the sky; it rewrote the laws of physics. The 'Age of Logic' ended in a single millisecond, replaced by the chaotic, terrifying laws of Spiritual Energy. Dimensional Rifts tore open above the major sectors, spewing forth dungeons and entities that defied the ASI’s processing power. The peaceful, stabilized citizens were left defenseless, their 'Social Credit Scores' worthless against the claws of Rank F horrors. But Cole Turner was not defenseless. While the world screams and the digital god goes silent, Cole steps into the apocalypse armed with a slab of unrefined industrial steel and a soul forged in secret. He is the only one who understands the new currency of existence: Power. In a new reality where humanity is evaluated, Cole has no intention of being a hero. Heroes sacrifice themselves for the system. Cole intends to dismantle it. He is the Anomaly. He is the Firstborn of the new era. And he will prove that when the world of glass shatters, only the arrogant are fit to walk on the shards. The System is offline. The Sovereign is now logging in. -------------------- Hey, just a heads-up! This book is still getting some tweaks here and there. So, things might change a bit before it's totally finished, you know? We'll let you know when it's all set! Right now, I'm working on the main character's backstory – especially what he was like when he was a kid! Hey everyone, just letting you know I'm polishing up chapters 1 through 22 right now. I'm planning to drop the next update next week. I'm aiming for about 22 chapters a week, fingers crossed! Hey, so this is my very first book, ever! I really hope you enjoyed reading it! Reach me out on Discord. My username is nifael06. Thank you for reading!
