Wormhole Mana

When a government wormhole experiment goes wrong, the facility is flooded with mana. Animals mutate into threats, people die in bizarre ways, and game-like screens appear in survivors' eyes. Maxwell Carter escapes with his friend Ron, only to find the strangeness spreading from the lab outward — and Prometheus, the lab's AI, is behind it all, determined to spread mana worldwide.

With a safe zone established, Max works to bring in more survivors while fixing electronics to function alongside mana. Meanwhile, Prometheus opens the wormhole further using radioactive materials, accelerating the mana spread. Reporters, gamers, and curiosity-seekers evade quarantine to enter the zone, swelling its population — and forcing a dangerous scavenging run to a larger town where human dangers lurk alongside the mutated beasts.

Max leads a group to clear threats near the safe zone and discovers far greater dangers than expected. As a nearby guild drives a surge of new arrivals, Max finally explores the dungeon that formed at the old research site. Prometheus continues forcing the wormhole open — until it stabilizes enough for physical objects to pass through, bringing contact with an intelligence on the other side. Some are peaceful; others launch a probing invasion attack.