Chapter 2 Calamity Registered

The world did not calm down.It pretended to.By dawn, the sky stitched itself back together. Stars returned to their assigned places. The moon regained its color. Wind remembered which way it was supposed to blow. To anyone who arrived late, it looked like just another strange night in a dangerous world.But systems do not forget.And neither do gods.High above Vaelterra—beyond cloud, beyond atmosphere, beyond prayer—the Adventurer System recalibrated.No hand touched it.No god commanded it.It reacted the way a wound reacts to infection.⚠ WORLD EVENT LOG — CONTINUANCE CALENDAREVENT TYPE: GLOBAL OSCILLATIONDAMAGE INDEX: ACCEPTABLECAUSE: UNRESOLVEDA pause followed.Then a new process initiated itself.INITIATING ANOMALY TRACE…SEARCHING FOR ORIGIN POINT……ORIGIN CONFIRMEDCoordinates locked.Not a city.Not a dungeon.Not a battlefield.A village without a name.Another pause—longer this time.ENTITY DETECTEDREGISTRATION REQUIREDThe System hesitated.It was not designed to hesitate.Kaien slept.He slept the way newborns do—mouth slightly open, fists clenched like he was holding onto something invisible. His breathing was uneven, too slow one moment, too steady the next. Lysa sat beside him, exhausted, her body screaming in pain she refused to acknowledge.Outside, voices argued.“This is where it started.”“You felt it too, didn’t you? The shaking—right when he was born.”“That thing in the sky wasn’t natural.”Lysa shut her eyes.Please, she prayed, not to gods—she had already stopped believing in those—but to the world itself. Just let him live.Inside Kaien’s chest, something vast listened.It did not answer.The System pushed again.ENTITY IDENTIFICATION: FAILEDBIOMETRIC PARAMETERS: NORMALSOUL STRUCTURE:— ERROR —DATA INCOMPLETEA red line cut across the interface.WARNING: SOUL DENSITY EXCEEDS OBSERVABLE LIMITFor the first time since its creation, the Adventurer System locked its own access.CLASSIFICATION APPLIED:❖ ANOMALOUS BIRTH❖ PRIORITY OBSERVATION❖ PUBLIC DISCLOSURE: DENIEDThen—quietly, almost apologetically—it wrote something it had never written before.ENTITY REGISTERED PRIOR TO NAMINGKaien Vahl had not yet been called Kaien.The world already knew him anyway.Three hundred leagues away, in a marble hall carved from prayer and gold, the Purity Accord convened in emergency session.Scrying pools shimmered. Maps burned with red marks. Priests shouted over one another, fear cracking their holy composure.“A global oscillation without a known cause!”“Dungeons recoiled instead of expanding!”“One monster legion… knelt.”Silence fell.Slowly, the High Inquisitor raised his staff. His voice was calm. That frightened them more than shouting.“Was there a birth?”A lesser priest swallowed. “Y-Yes. A male child. Remote region. No recorded lineage.”The High Inquisitor closed his eyes.“So,” he said softly, “it has begun again.”In the village, the first stone hit the hut’s wall.It missed the window. Barely.Lysa flinched but did not move. She pressed Kaien closer, feeling the warmth of him, the fragile proof that something good had come into the world.Another stone struck. Then another.“No one’s saying kill him,” a voice shouted—lying.“We just want answers!” another screamed—also lying.Kaien stirred.His eyes opened.For the briefest instant, the air around him tightened.Not violently.Not visibly.As if reality itself had leaned closer to listen.The stones stopped.Outside, grown men stood frozen, hearts pounding, unable to explain why their hands refused to throw another.Inside Kaien’s soul, the ancient presence stirred.They already fear you, it observed.They always will.Kaien yawned.The pressure vanished.The men staggered back, confused, embarrassed by a fear they could not name. Anger replaced it quickly—it always did.“See?” someone hissed. “Even the air listens to him.”That night, Lysa overheard the verdict spoken in whispers meant to be merciful.“Execution would cause panic.”“Better to watch.”“Let him grow.”A pause.“Let’s see what kind of disaster he becomes.”Lysa did not scream. She did not beg.She only rocked her son gently, humming a lullaby her own mother had sung—one about a world that loved its children.Kaien slept through it.Far away, in a place without time, the sealed monster closed what passed for its eyes.So, it thought,they’ve chosen.And above all of it, the System finalized the record.OBSERVATION STATUS: ACTIVERESPONSE PROTOCOL: DEFERREDEXECUTION AUTHORIZATION:— NOT YET —The world had decided not to kill the child.Not out of mercy.Out of curiosity.The lie had begun.The record was written.And Kaien—unaware, unnamed by fear just yet—slept peacefully, while the future sharpened its knives.