**Chapter 1: Genesis Protocol**
The wind outside howled like something primal. It wasn't the weather—Dr. Rhane Wu knew better. The jungle didn't breathe like that unless something inside it had changed. The air was too still. The silence too practiced. As if the forest itself was holding its breath.
His lab—half-buried beneath the ash-choked soil of Mount Banahaw—flickered with dying light. Rows of Codex tanks pulsed in soft blues and sickly greens, each one containing a different nightmare wrapped in embryonic silence. Claws twitched in fluid. Eyeless skulls opened and closed useless jaws. Fins rippled against glass.
He stood alone, a man at the edge of humanity's legacy, staring at what he had done.
"This wasn't supposed to happen," Rhane whispered, voice cracked and dry. His hands trembled against the terminal, still smeared with the blood of the technician who had tried to shut down the protocol. A necessary sacrifice. Maybe.
No. Not maybe. Necessary.
He turned, coat fluttering as the alarms began again—low and rhythmic, like a war drum underwater. One of the Codex tanks—no, not just any—**Tank 0**—shook.
He didn't look directly at it. Not yet.
He had time. One more breath. One more override.
He typed the final sequence.
**GENESIS PROTOCOL: INITIATE.**
Lights dimmed. Power rerouted. Codex Prime bled into the mainframe, spreading like veins of bioluminescent fire through the walls.
A voice echoed through the chamber, layered in tones both mechanical and maternal.
> "Warning. Unauthorized activation of deep Codex strata. Warden Class Entity may respond."
He paused at that. Not out of fear—but memory.
Outside, the world trembled.
Far below the mountain, where saltwater met stone and root, a great shadow stirred. Its dorsal spine breached the waves like jagged mountains. Something ancient—**older than Rhane, older than Codex itself**—opened its eyes.
> JIRUUN had awakened.
Rhane exhaled sharply. "So it begins."
The lab lights flickered again. Several tanks hissed open on their own. One—just one—remained sealed.
**Tank 0.**
Rhane didn't activate it.
He simply placed his hand on the glass.
Inside, whatever was growing there shifted—barely. A ripple of muscle, a flicker of instinct. It wasn't ready. Not yet.
"Your time will come," Rhane whispered. "But not today."
He turned to the center of the chamber and activated the deep Codex beacon—an ancient satellite relay lost to modern history. His voice would be archived, scattered, and encoded across dormant Codex nodes around the planet.
---
**\[Encrypted Codex Log 001 - Voice of Rhane Wu]**
\*"If you're hearing this, then the Prime Interface has accepted you. I don't know if that makes you a savior… or just the next fool in line."
"My name is Rhane Wu. Geneticist. Descendant of Dr. Henry Wu—yes, *that* Wu. The one who brought dinosaurs back from extinction. The one who opened the door and walked away from the fire he lit. I didn't walk away. I walked in. And now… I burn with it."
"You're holding our last sin. ARKHIVE. It will evolve with you, whisper to you, lie to you. But sometimes it tells the truth. So ask it about me, about JIRUUN, about what we buried and what we woke. Ask it what price we paid to become gods."
"And if you still choose to walk this path... then I hope you're stronger than I was."
"Because the world you're about to enter—it doesn't need another creator. It needs something worse."
*End Transmission.*
---
Outside, the sky had turned a violent shade of orange. The jungle cracked like wet bones. Somewhere, far too close, the surface of a lake split apart like torn skin.
**JIRUUN rose.**
Not in rage. Not in fear.
In judgment.
---
In a ruined barrio on the island's edge, a boy with a limp and a rusted knife looked toward Mount Banahaw as the wind changed. His name was not yet important.
But soon, the world would call him Kael.
And nothing would ever be the same again.