Volume 4—Chapter 103: The Catalyst
The secret world of espers has always existed beneath recorded history, shaping events while remaining unseen.
The first Catalyst occurred in 1815, at the Battle of Waterloo.
Napoleon Bonaparte did not merely survive that battle. He won it.
Under the crushing pressure of the battlefield, Napoleon awakened as the first known esper. Commands carried unnatural weight, morale surged beyond reason, and the chaos of war aligned as if the world itself had chosen a side. What appeared, to ordinary soldiers, as genius strategy and miraculous timing was in truth the uncontrolled manifestation of a newly awakened power.
His victory was absolute.
The Seventh Coalition did not just lose a war that day. It lost control of history.
Napoleon’s awakening marked the birth of the Esper era, though the world would not know it by that name. Those closest to power realised the danger immediately. An emperor who has power beyond human understanding, a living singularity. To preserve stability, the truth of that day was sealed. Official records praised tactics and discipline, while eyewitness accounts of impossible phenomena were erased, dismissed, or buried.
Napoleon himself understood the risk.
In the years that followed, he ordered the creation of secret circles of scholars, soldiers, and scientists tasked with studying awakenings like his own. From this foundation emerged the first doctrine of concealment. Espers were not to be feared by the masses, nor worshipped. They were to be hidden, controlled, and guided, for the sake of the world.
For over a century, awakenings were rare and carefully managed.
Then came the second Catalyst in 1918.
The Great War was not merely a clash of nations, but the first deliberate attempt to weaponise espers. Inspired by fragmented records from the Napoleonic era, governments sought to reproduce awakening through extreme conditions. Battlefields became laboratories. Soldiers were pushed past human limits in hopes of creating living weapons capable of ending the war in an instant.
Many failed.
Some succeeded.
Those who awakened possessed power on a scale never seen before. Entire regiments vanished without artillery. Landscapes were twisted beyond recognition. Reality itself showed signs of strain. To the public, these events were explained away as experimental weapons, catastrophic miscalculations, or natural disasters.
In truth, the war nearly tore the world apart.
It ended not because one side achieved victory, but because the continued use of espers threatened global collapse. The aftermath gave rise to international shadow accords, expanding upon the doctrines first established under Napoleon. Secrecy became absolute.
History remembers the Great War as a tragedy of human ambition.
Within the Esper world, it is remembered as a warning.
Humanity had proven it could turn evolution into a weapon. If the truth were ever revealed, another Catalyst would be inevitable.
And the next one might not end with the world still intact.
That fear still lingers among the higher-ups of the Esper Association to this day.
What truly haunts them is not the existence of espers themselves, but the memory of the Second Catalyst and what it revealed. Human ambition had pushed awakening beyond its natural threshold, and the world paid the price.
In 1925, the Great War did not merely end. It ruptured reality.
For the first time in recorded history, the fabric separating worlds fractured. These were not metaphors, nor exaggerations crafted after the fact. Reality itself broke under the accumulated strain of awakened minds, mass death, and experimental escalation.
Dimensional breaches appeared without warning.
From them emerged beings that did not belong to this world. Creatures shaped by unfamiliar laws, hostile not by intention but by nature. Cities were devastated in incidents that were erased from public records, rewritten as industrial accidents, chemical weapon failures, or unexplained fires.
The war nearly ended humanity twice.
Once, by its own hands, through the reckless weaponisation of espers.
And again, through invasion by forces that should never have been aware of this world’s existence.
It was then that the Association understood a horrifying truth. Awakening was not an isolated phenomenon. It resonated outward. When pushed too far, too fast, it destabilised the boundaries of reality itself.
Espers were not just weapons. They were anchors, or fractures, depending on how they were used.
The Second Catalyst forced an absolute shift in doctrine. No nation could be trusted with unchecked power. No ideology justified risking another collapse. The Esper Association was restructured not as a research body, but as a containment system. Surveillance, suppression, and selective intervention became its core principles.
Yet even after all of that, the Association still managed to enforce the secrecy of the esper world from the masses.
Their strength did not lie in overwhelming force alone, but in control. Control over information, over narratives, over what the public was allowed to see and remember. Incidents were buried beneath layers of misinformation.
More importantly, the Association learned to act quickly.
Dimensional cracks were identified, isolated, and neutralised before they could escalate into full-scale catastrophes. Response teams were deployed within minutes, sometimes seconds, sealing breaches and erasing evidence before panic could spread. Those who witnessed too much were redirected, detained, or quietly silenced through nonlethal means.
This constant intervention is what preserves the illusion of normalcy.
The world continues to believe it is whole, stable, and familiar, unaware that its safety rests on a fragile balance maintained behind the scenes. Every unreported quake, every unexplained blackout, every “freak accident” is a thread pulled tight to keep the truth from unravelling.
The Association does not claim to protect humanity out of benevolence.
They protect the truth itself.
Because once the masses learn how close reality is to breaking, secrecy will no longer be enforceable, and control might be lost forever.
And this day is the very day the Esper Association has feared above all others.
As Irana looks around her, the world is no longer holding together. A dimensional crack opens, then another, then another, tearing through the air like wounds that refuse to close. From within them, creatures spill out, shapes that do not belong to this reality, their presence alone warping the space around them.
This is not an isolated incident.
It is not limited to Tsukuru Academy, nor even Tsukuru City. Across the world, the same phenomenon unfolds. On the opposite side of the globe, in Belgium, near Waterloo, the ground fractures and the sky trembles in the same unnatural way.
There, two men stand side by side amidst the chaos.
The Overseer and the President of the Esper Association. Miyazaki Takeru and Michael Henrickson.
Michael watches the horizon, where faint distortions ripple through the air. “You’re certain all of this is because your daughter is awakening her power?”
Takeru does not answer immediately. He only hums quietly, his eyes fixed on the cracks forming in the distance.
Michael exhales, then lets out a short laugh. “Well, this is it then. The secrecy of Esper's existence might not survive this.”
“You think that is the worst part?” Takeru says calmly.
Michael glances at him. “What else could be worse than that?”
Takeru finally turns to face him. “The world might end.”
Michael snorts. “I nearly died earlier to a girl dressed like a witch, and even then I’m not that pessimistic.”
“You say that,” Takeru replies, his voice low, “because you don’t know what I know.”
He has seen it. Not through reports or secondhand accounts, but with his own eyes. The awakening of his twin daughter. The impossible spectacle that unfolded in the sky that day. It is an image burned into his memory, one he knows he will never forget.
After a long pause, he speaks again.
“This is the fourth catalyst after all.”
Michael stiffens. “Fourth? Isn’t this supposed to be the third?”
Takeru does not answer right away.
Instead, he looks toward the fractured sky, as if counting the end of something long delayed
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