STRANGE DOCTOR'S ASCENSION: He studied death. Then death gave him a power.

Noah Ainsworth believed in science.

Not miracles. Not fate. Not gods hiding behind disasters.

In a world reshaped by the Grand Radiation, where mysterious Holes tear open the earth and release monsters, and where certain humans rise by forming Astra Nodes inside their brains, Noah was only a brilliant researcher: gifted, cynical, and disgraced by a betrayal that stole years of his work.

Then his father died.

Faced with the failure of medicine, Noah broke.

And in the ruins of his laboratory, in the middle of grief and rage, something awakened inside him.

Decomposition.

A power capable of breaking matter apart, severing the invisible bonds that hold the world together, reducing flesh, metal, and stone to dust.

To anyone else, it would be a weapon.

To Noah, it is a question.

If matter can be taken apart, then it can be understood.

If Astra follows laws, then those laws can be uncovered.

And if death took his father, Noah will take death’s secrets in return.

Between Ascendant agencies, forbidden crystals, monsters from the Holes, black-market experiments, and powers willing to enslave anyone with a useful ability, Noah steps onto a dangerous path: turning science into alchemy, grief into strength, and his own humanity into the price of progress.

In this new world, nothing is immutable.

Not even death.