Chapter 1: The Comet's Gift

Chapter 1: The Comet's Gift

The air on Observatory Hill was electric, a rare fusion of collegiate revelry and genuine astronomical wonder. Kaelen Vance, perched precariously on the copper-plated roof of the physics building, felt it thrumming in his bones. Below, the lawn was a sea of students, their faces upturned and illuminated by phone screens, but up here, there was only the vast, ink-black canvas of the night sky.

“You’re going to break your neck, Kael,” Maya’s voice crackled through his cheap earbuds from the safety of the ground. “Just for a slightly better view of a dirty snowball.”

Kael grinned, adjusting his position on the cold metal. “It’s Halley’s Comet, May. It’s not just a snowball; it’s a once-in-a-lifetime dirty snowball. Besides, the view from the top is always better. Failure to get the best seat is not an option.”

That was his personal creed. Whether it was acing a physics exam or finding the best vantage point for a cosmic event, the thought of settling for second best sent a familiar, unpleasant squirm through his gut. It was a low-level hum of anxiety he’d learned to live with, a constant push to be better, to do more.

He could see the comet now, a smudge of ethereal white against the darkness, its tail a magnificent, ghostly plume. A collective gasp rose from the crowd below as it reached its zenith, a silent king reigning over the star-dusted court of the night.

Kael leaned forward, mesmerized. For a moment, he wasn't a 19-year-old college student with looming midterms; he was just a speck of dust witnessing a celestial dance billions of years in the making.

Then, something impossible happened.

A sliver of light, impossibly blue and sharp as a needle, detached from the comet's brilliant head. It wasn't a meteor; it didn't burn or streak. It simply fell, cutting a silent, direct path through the atmosphere. Straight towards him.

Time seemed to warp. The murmur of the crowd faded into a dull roar. The blue light intensified, swallowing the stars, the moon, everything. Kael’s thrill-seeking grin froze on his face, replaced by a surge of pure, primal awe that was rapidly turning to dread. He tried to move, to scramble back, but his body was locked in place.

The last thing he saw was a blinding, silent explosion of azure light. The world dissolved into white noise, and then, nothing.

---

Kael awoke with a gasp, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He was in his own bed, the familiar poster of a vintage motorcycle on the wall opposite him. Morning sunlight streamed through the dusty blinds of his dorm room, illuminating dancing dust motes.

A dream? It had to be. He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. A splitting headache pulsed behind his eyes. He must have passed out on the roof and his friends carried him back. Embarrassing, but better than the alternative.

He rubbed his temples, trying to clear the fog from his brain. That’s when he saw it.

Floating about two feet in front of his face was a box of translucent blue light, containing crisp, white text.

[Phobos System Activated] [Host Synchronization: 100%] [Welcome, User Kaelen Vance]

He blinked. The box remained. He squeezed his eyes shut and then snapped them open. Still there.

“Okay, Kael. You’re officially losing it,” he muttered, his voice raspy. He swiped a hand through the blue box. His fingers passed through it as if it were smoke, causing the light to shimmer slightly.

A brain tumor. That was the only logical explanation. The stress of midterms, not enough sleep... it had finally broken something in his head. The thought sent a jolt of cold, sharp fear through him. Not the vague anxiety of failing a class, but the terrifying, concrete possibility of a medical catastrophe.

He stumbled to his feet, trying to ignore the persistent afterimage of the blue screen that followed his gaze. He needed coffee. He needed to walk. He needed to prove to himself that this was just a hallucination.

He threw on a hoodie and jeans, his movements clumsy. The blue box hovered relentlessly in the corner of his vision, its text unchanging. He splashed cold water on his face in the grimy dorm bathroom, but the reflection in the mirror showed only his own pale, worried face—and the faint, ghostly blue text hovering beside it.

Out on the campus grounds, the world felt blessedly normal. Students hurried to class, bikes whizzed past, and the scent of freshly cut grass filled the air. Kael took a deep breath, trying to anchor himself in reality. The system screen was still there, but maybe, just maybe, if he ignored it hard enough, it would go away.

Distracted, his mind racing with panicked self-diagnoses, he stepped off the curb at the main campus intersection.

The world erupted in a deafening blast of a truck's air horn.

Kael’s head snapped to the left. A massive, eighteen-wheeler was bearing down on him, its chrome grille a terrifying grin of impending death. There was no time to think, no time to move. His entire world narrowed to that single, unstoppable point of impact.

This was it. He was going to die. Not in some blaze of glory, but as a stupid smear on the asphalt because he was distracted by his own insanity. He would fail to even cross a street.

Fear, absolute and suffocating, seized him. His heart stopped. His breath hitched. It was a terror so pure and potent it felt like his soul was being ripped from his body.

And in that split-second of frozen horror, the blue box in his vision flashed, turning a brilliant, violent crimson.

[CRITICAL FEAR INPUT DETECTED] [Atychiphobia Resonance Amplified] [Terror Points Acquired: 150]

The rush of information was like a jolt of adrenaline directly to his brain. Without conscious thought, his body reacted. His legs, which had been locked in paralysis, suddenly coiled and launched him backward. He stumbled, falling hard onto the curb he had just left.

The truck roared past, its wake a hurricane of wind that tore at his clothes and whipped his hair across his face. The screech of its tires as the driver finally slammed on the brakes was a sound he would never forget.

Kael lay on the pavement, chest heaving, every muscle trembling. He wasn't dead. He was alive. The concrete was real. The smell of diesel fumes was real.

And the screen in his vision was real.

Terror Points?

He pushed himself into a sitting position, his mind slowly piecing it together. The comet. The light. The screen. The truck. The fear… it had triggered a response. This wasn't a tumor. This was something else entirely. Something impossible. The system didn’t just exist; it fed on his fear.

As the realization settled in, a new kind of chill, one that had nothing to do with the near-death experience, washed over him. The ambient noise of the campus—the shouting driver, the concerned gasps of onlookers—began to fade, as if a thick blanket of cotton was being lowered over the world.

A shadow fell over him. Then another. He looked up.

Standing around him in a loose semi-circle were three figures. They wore deep, charcoal-grey robes with high collars that obscured their faces in shadow. They hadn’t been there a second ago. They moved with a silent, synchronized grace that was deeply unsettling, their presence sucking the warmth from the morning air. Pedestrians flowed around them, their gazes sliding off the robed figures as if they were simply not there.

One of them stepped forward. A voice, genderless and unnervingly calm, emerged from the depths of the cowl. It wasn't loud, but it cut through the haze in Kael’s mind with absolute clarity.

“Kaelen Vance.” It wasn't a question. “The comet has chosen. The Phobos System has awakened within you.”

Kael’s blood ran cold. They knew his name. They knew about the system.

“Who… who are you?” he managed to stammer, his voice weak.

The central figure tilted its shadowed head. “We are the Wardens of Aethelgard. You have been dormant, but the celestial alignment has forced your potential to the surface. It is time for your true Awakening.”

The figure extended a gloved hand. It wasn't an invitation; it was a command. Kael felt an invisible pressure pressing down on him, rooting him to the spot. There was no escape. His brief, normal life as a college student felt a million miles away, a fading photograph from another existence.

His fear of failure had always driven him. Now, faced with these impossible figures and the talk of an 'Awakening', a new, far greater fear was dawning: the fear of what would happen if he was dragged into their world… and couldn't survive.