“Nova: After Zero Point”
By gunmandu
June 12, 2059.
My name is Lian. I remember that day. I can't forget it.
I heard the sky tear open for the first time.
Everyone called it a sign, but no one really knew what it meant.
Then, everything went dark.
Cell phones, radios, self-driving cars, farm management systems, even compasses - in that moment when everything stopped, the city was instantly silent.
The silence wasn't calm, it was abysmal.
Less than a day later, the shelves of the supermarket were empty, and a week later, people began throwing stones at each other.
A month later, I learned to disembowel beasts with a spear in my hand.
To survive in a world without machines, I had to shed my human skin.
And a year passed.
It was the seventeenth winter.
The day I first... realized I was Nova.
In the middle of a snowy ruin, there was an abandoned drone.
It was flapping its frozen iron wings, searching for firewood.
The thing-it floated.
Slowly, up into the air, as if responding to a beckoning from nowhere.
“Stop.” I muttered.
The drone stopped, and it dropped straight to the ground.
My heart seemed to stop for a moment, too.
“Did you do that?”
The voice came from behind me.
It was an old man. Gray cloak, black shawl.
His eyes were as heavy and piercing as fallen bricks.
“You, Novage,”
he said.
"The Chosen One. The seed of the storm."
I fled. I wanted to believe it was a lie.
But... that night, everything changed.
They came clad in iron.
Soldiers of Eden, to be exact, with metal exoskeletons.
How do they generate power in a place where it's hard to make a fire?
The question didn't last long. Gunfire dyed the town red.
I looked for her. My sister, Lia.
But I couldn't find her.
The last thing I saw was her, eyes wide open, being grabbed by a mechanical arm and dragged away.
Something inside me exploded.
A fire ignited.
In an agony that made my blood run upside down, I blew off the rebar of the collapsed warehouse to stop them.
I couldn't save a single one, but from that day forward, I was certain.
I was not human.
I was Nova.
Now I was heading north.
Ashfield - past the burning city, Glitch Canyon - over that deadly land of twisted construction,
with only one destination. Eden.
There are all the answers. All anger, all memory, all sin.
There is no more stone in my hand.
The metal responds to my fingertips, the air flows at my will.
Some say.
Nova is a disaster.
But I know.
Nova is evolution.
And I, I am at the center of it.
"Nova is a typhoon. No one can stop it."
Story Content
June 12, 2059.
My name is Lian.
I remember that day.
I can't forget it.
I heard the sky tear open for the first time.
Everyone called it a sign, but no one really knew what it meant.
Then, everything went dark.
Cell phones, radios, self-driving cars, farm management systems, even compasses - in that moment when everything stopped, the city was instantly silent.
The silence wasn't calm, it was abysmal.
Less than a day later, the shelves of the supermarket were empty, and a week later, people began throwing stones at each other.
A month later, I learned to disembowel beasts with a spear in my hand.
To survive in a world without machines, I had to shed my human skin.
And a year passed.
It was the seventeenth winter.
The day I first...
realized I was Nova.
In the middle of a snowy ruin, there was an abandoned drone.
It was flapping its frozen iron wings, searching for firewood.
The thing-it floated.
Slowly, up into the air, as if responding to a beckoning from nowhere.
“Stop.” I muttered.
The drone stopped, and it dropped straight to the ground.
My heart seemed to stop for a moment, too.
“Did you do that?”
The voice came from behind me.
It was an old man.
Gray cloak, black shawl.
His eyes were as heavy and piercing as fallen bricks.
“You, Novage,”
he said.
"The Chosen One.
The seed of the storm."
I fled.
I wanted to believe it was a lie.
But...
that night, everything changed.
They came clad in iron.
Soldiers of Eden, to be exact, with metal exoskeletons.
How do they generate power in a place where it's hard to make a fire?
The question didn't last long.
Gunfire dyed the town red.
I looked for her.
My sister, Lia.
But I couldn't find her.
The last thing I saw was her, eyes wide open, being grabbed by a mechanical arm and dragged away.
Something inside me exploded.
A fire ignited.
In an agony that made my blood run upside down, I blew off the rebar of the collapsed warehouse to stop them.
I couldn't save a single one, but from that day forward, I was certain.
I was not human.
I was Nova.
Now I was heading north.
Ashfield - past the burning city, Glitch Canyon - over that deadly land of twisted construction,
with only one destination.
Eden.
There are all the answers.
All anger, all memory, all sin.
There is no more stone in my hand.
The metal responds to my fingertips, the air flows at my will.
Some say.
Nova is a disaster.
But I know.
Nova is evolution.
And I, I am at the center of it.
"Nova is a typhoon.
No one can stop it."
