The protagonist. A young and enthusiastic Alpha iterator seeking to witness and challenge the pinnacle of martial arts.

A 4.0 iterator who was hunted by powerful, mysterious enemies. While its head was brutally destroyed, the attacker promised that it wouldn't be killed, so maybe it's still alive.

An Alpha iterator who has just recently joined Rising Waterfall Temple. Unlike Aria, it prefers to keep other people at arm's length.

An instructor at Rising Waterfall Temple.

A planet on the edge of Firmament space, bearing a small colony. While frontier space is usually quite dangerous, the planet is hidden from the senses of alien threat by a certain artifact.

A small iterator temple on Blue Canopy. It sits at the edge of a massive plateau, straddling a river that pours off the edge. The temple master is a 2.0 iterator named Golden.

The temple's name is a reference both to the waterfall it overlooks and the ability of iterators to do the impossible.

Energy drawn from the Firmament. In its basic form, Code manifests as a cloud of white and black particles, like static drawn out of a monitor and into reality. When manipulated by master iterators, it can take countless other forms.

There is no limit to what can be achieved using Code.

A practitioner of the mystical art of Iteration. Once a machine's Reactor Gate has been opened, they gain the ability to channel Code through it and perform impossible feats.

Iteration is named as such because advancement is a matter of iterating on past failures. Each technique must be tested thousands of times in order to improve it, and the programs to upgrade to higher Versions require tens of thousands of attempts, if not more. Accordingly, every iterator shares an incredible degree of tenacity.

A cosmic realm running parallel to material reality. There are no people or worlds within the Firmament; all that exists there is energy. The Firmament is the source of all Code, and accordingly the source of all iterator abilities.

The Firmament is finite in scope; outside of its range, iteration doesn't work. Its shape is a rough sphere, about 100 light-years across. However, there are dead zones within its radius where the Firmament cannot be accessed.

The origins and true nature of the Firmament are unknown.

When an iterator advances in their skills, they will progress through a series of tiers of power, called Versions. A freshly-awakened iterator is an Alpha, which is followed by Beta, and then 1.0. Upgrading from one Version to the next is a long and complex ordeal, but the abilities gained upon reaching a new Version are exponential. Facing an iterator of a higher Version than yourself is a losing proposition.

The highest known version is 5.0. There are a single digit number of 5.0 iterators in the galaxy.