Part One: Dr. Elias Nephrem – The Man Before the Madness
The world had never heard of Dr. Elias Nephrem before he vanished. Those who did know him—government officials, corporate executives, leading scientists—spoke his name in hushed voices, as though even acknowledging his existence might summon him from the abyss. He had once been a celebrated geneticist, a pioneer in the fields of biological augmentation, neuro-engineering, and mana integration, but his work had always teetered on the edge of ethical destruction.
His genius was undeniable. His ambition, unstoppable.
Born into an obscenely wealthy family, Elias was raised in an environment of calculated perfection. His parents were strategic in their affections, ensuring that every moment of his upbringing was tailored toward intellectual dominance. While other children played, Elias dissected the complexities of human DNA. By thirteen, he was a prodigy. By eighteen, he had already rewritten textbooks on gene therapy. By twenty-five, he had developed the Arcane Nexus, the first successful artificial mana organ capable of grafting into human biology.
That was when the world turned against him.
The government called his work dangerous. Corporations saw him as a liability. His research was seized, defunded, and locked away under a mountain of classified restrictions. He had been too fast, too bold. The world was not ready for the future he wanted to create. So, Elias vanished.
For ten years, he worked in the shadows, funneling stolen technology and resources into an underground operation that the world dismissed as an urban legend. Scientists who disappeared without a trace, entire labs wiped from existence, whispered rumors of a growing subterranean empire—a place where science and magic intertwined, untethered by laws or morality.
They were right.
Somewhere beneath the Earth, he built the impossible.