The physiological and genetic effects of mana exposure on an unawakened species remain poorly understood. Historical records from the Day of Awakening indicate that a small subset of the human population—approximately five percent—exhibited adverse reactions when exposed to heightened ambient mana, resulting in transformation into what have been termed "abominations."

  The prevailing hypothesis has been that these individuals possessed an inherent genetic defect, predisposing them to a maladaptive response to mana, which in turn triggered rapid and uncontrolled mutations. However, this explanation is insufficient, as it fails to account for key observations—most notably, the apparent lack of stochasticity in the resulting transformations. Rather than exhibiting random, chaotic mutations, these individuals undergo structural changes that appear to follow a discernible pattern, producing morphologically stable entities rather than disorganized masses of tumorous growths and deformities.

  I propose that rather than a pathological genetic failure, these transformations represent an unintended consequence of an individual possessing a high affinity for a specific mana concept. When exposed to raw, unprocessed mana of that concept—and without system intervention, as it was still undergoing initialization—such individuals lack the necessary physiological adaptations to regulate the abrupt mana infusion. This results in a forced bloodline awakening. However, in the absence of a sufficiently pure bloodline, the transformation proceeds in an unstable and incomplete manner, continuing until a point of equilibrium is achieved between the body’s biological processes and the introduced mana.

  — Extract from a lecture by Dr Elliot Barnes, Doctor of Applied Mana and System Theory, delivered in September 2042.

  Chapter One

  Day of awakening - 21:32

  The first thing I felt was the headache, like a pressure pressing down on my skull almost guaranteeing that it would turn into a full-blown migraine. Looking across the van from where I sat wrapped up in multiple duvets. It had been three months since I had started my adventure with van-lifing and while I had made some progress with fitting out my van it was a long way off looking like some of the ones I had seen on Instagram.

  Mostly I had been focused on the Van itself, giving it an extreme level of deep clean, requiring me to disassemble large parts of the Van including fully removing the chairs and dash, going over the chassis with a fine tooth comb, removing any rush and welding in reinforcement strips as required and giving the van a full going over until I was confident that I would get at least five years of no issues life out of the vehicle and that I could fix and service anything mechanically wrong that wouldn’t need a profession shop to do.

  Once I was happy with the physical state the van was in, I had turned to the interior. up until that point I had been sleeping in a sleeping bag on a borrowed camping bed and so the first upgrade to the van had been to install a raised sleeping area to which I could put a proper queen size mattress and while the realistic, logical part of my brain had said that a single would have been fine and it would have freed up space for other things, a less rational deluded part of my mind has insisted that we might be able to one day convince a girl to spend the night in the van and while as ridiculous as the idea of any girl taking one look at the interior of the van containing nothing but a mattress on a raised wooden shelf surrounded by power tools and duct tap and not sprinting away was, we still outvoted the logical part of the brain two to one.

  But other than that, you might have thought that little work had been done to the interior, but this was mostly because I had spent my time putting up internal framing and running the electrical wires. I was planning to spend this month’s pay check on the insulation I would need and then I would be able to clad the interior and make it look more like a home and less like a workman’s van that a homeless man was sleeping in despite how accurate that might of been.

  And so now with autumn in its final days, combined with the lack of installed insulation, the currently dissembled diesel heater that I was modifying before installing and the fact that my paraffin heater would kill me with carbon monoxide if I turned it on without the door being open, letting the cold in and defeating its purpose, I was left with the remaining option available to students the world over and stole all my parents spare duvets, quilts and blankets and now sat in a cocoon of warm where I could watch pirated movie and TV box sets that I had downloaded onto an old laptop. And while it was not the greatest of setups, It didn’t really bother me and if I ever started to feel down and just had to remember that I was saving one thousand fucking pounds a month that would have been spent on rent alone, I just had to put up with this for five years, five more years and I would have saved over sixty thousand pounds if everything went right, and I had plans for that money, boy did I have plans.

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  But before all my grand plans, I first I had to solve my more immediate problem, do I suffer through the headache but staying warm and in bed or do I venture out of my quilt cocoon and into the harsh coldness of my van in search of pain killers. Be in pain or be cold, one of humanity's eternal battles was resolved when the lights in the van went out and I swore.

  “The fucking breaker tripped again.”

  Reaching for my phone to use as a flashlight, I swore once again, as I realised my phone battery had also died.

  “Oh, for God’s sake phone, is it too much to ask that you hold a charge for more than four hours, I know that you are going on seven years old now, but I have only had you of those years so I feel I am owed a little effort on your part. I would throw you away if it wasn’t for the fact that new phones cost money and you were free.”

  The inanimate piece of plastic and aluminium refused to respond so I tossed it to the side and made a terrible decision and got out of bed. The van was freezing, not literally freezing, it was still a couple of degrees above zero this late at night despite being so close the winter. And I made general shivering motions as a felt my way across the van to where my camping stove was setup where I knew I would at least find some matches while trying to trip over or worse get splinters from the rough loose wooden panels I was temporarily using as flooring. I failed tripping over the same one I always did, but managed to catch myself and successfully made it over to the camping stove and better than matches, I found a lighter.

  Light flared into the van, leaving light spots in my eyes, as I had held the lighter to close to my face as I focused on getting it to light. Finding and struggling into my coat and shoes made difficult due to the combination of shivering from the cold while also trying not to set my coat alight from the lighter I was holding in my off hand to see. In the end I gave up on the lighter, putting it into my pocket and just tied my shoes laces by feel and then open the van door and stepped out into... darkness?

  Looking around as it was almost as dark out here as it had been in the van, confused I look up to where I knew a pair of streetlights that should have been illuminated the road next to the yard that I was semi-officially As-long-as-noone-asked parked up at. But illuminating, they were not.

  “Huh, must be later than I thought”

  I knew that the streetlights turned off at eleven, but I hadn’t realised that it had gotten that late. Annoyed, I pull my lighter back out and with what little light it provided on this apparently moonless night I made my way over to where I had plugged my van in for power. The land I was parked up on was once the site of a smallish warehouse that had been torn down to make way for something else, but the project got cancelled after the tear down and the only source of active power on the whole yard was at the power junction box near the entrance to the yard.

  I was pretty sure that the junction box was actually owned by the electric company and the single power socket within was meant as a service socket or for testing or something and it was only capable of supplying just enough power to power some cheap LED strips for that I used for light and to power my laptop as long as I didn’t push it to do much more than watch videos, anymore and it would trip the breaker.

  Apparently that second Fast and the Furious movie had been too exciting for it.

  Frowning I looked down at the padlocked electrical cabinet that containing the junction box. Luckily the hinge side had rusted though and so it now just opened the other way, I had even added a little latch to keep it closed to protect it from the weather, so the electrical company should be thanking me really.

  Reaching in I flicked the breaker back into the on position, but it just flicked right back, switching the breaker switch back and forth without and success, I looked back up at the unpowered streetlights and then to the pitch-black houses around me.

  “Or maybe there is a fucking blackout going on, you known what fuck it, let just go to bed, got nothing else really planned for tonight.”

  ““Help, someone help!”

  A feminine cry for help pierced the nights air, starting me.

  “Oh, what the fuck now?”