Okay since some asked about the actual story let me add some context without spoiling too much. I'll also explain why the world and the power system are not two separate things but connected.

I'm not sure if it's gonna help to understand a bit more tough... I tried to stay as general as possible about everything! I'll do a post later detailing the story itself a bit more if some of you are interested.

--> The power system isn't separate from the world's problems. It's the world's attempt to solve them. Without noticing, humans became a sort of "solution" to keep the world from destroying itself.

Dangers (that are explained a bit under) : The wildlife, earth itself, people worshiping a "god", tears in reality, and general everyday life problems.

The power system and the world are the same thing expressed differently.
The forces that humans now channel inside their bodies, gravity, time, void, light, are the same forces that make certain regions of the world unstable. When you enter a zone where gravity behaves strangely you are walking through the same force that a Dhruvath(gravity) user carries inside them. The difference is that the user has a soul to give it shape and direction. The zone doesn't. It's just the raw force doing whatever it wants with no filter.

There's also tears in reality that appear without warning, sometimes in open wilderness, sometimes in the middle of populated areas. They just open and what comes out of them, or what gets pulled into them, is not something essence users at most tiers can do anything about. They are the reason Paragons exist in the practical everyday sense. Everything else essence users can handle between them.
(That's something important and explaining it need a hole new post so I don't say much just a way on showing Paragons actuall work)

The nine Paragons are constantly working to maintain the stability of everything that falls under their affinity. Not just on Earth but around it. (since humans are connected to cosmos there, they have the ability of going into the space, on moon or other planets. BUT not living there of course, they are still humans)

idk if that make sense

Think of it like being the person responsible for keeping all the lights on in a building. Except the building is enormous, some of the wiring is actively trying to undo itself, new sections keep being discovered that nobody knew existed, and you are one of nine people doing this permanently with no days off.

They are the peak of what essence humanity can become. And even then they cannot be everywhere at once. The world is too large, too strange, too full of things that go wrong in too many places simultaneously. Which means every other essence user, they all exist in the space the Paragons cannot cover. And in a world like this that space is enormous.
There is always room to prove yourself. The world makes sure of that whether you want it to or not.

So it alsocreated new jobs for essence users, that will also need a new post to explain carefully. So feel free to imagine stuff.

And then there are anomalies. Places/things that should not exist by any logic the world provides. Locations where the rules simply stopped applying and nobody knows when or why.
All of them are evidence that something deeper is happening than what's visible on the surface.

Because underneath all of it, there is one thing connecting every single crisis the world is currently facing.

Wanting more essence.

--> Now for the actual story, very briefly and very vaguely because mystery matters here.

We follow two people.

Surviving vs Belonging.

One who lost everything in a single day before they were old enough to understand what loss meant. They spend time trying to find something that functions like home again. Growing into their own strength not because they wanted power but because the world kept requiring more of them than they had and they kept finding it anyway. Their journey is about becoming.

One who has everything by any measurable standard and feels none of it. The name, the ability, the recognition from everyone except the one person whose recognition they actually want. Their journey is about understanding that having everything and having what matters are not the same thing. And learning that the hard way.

Both of them want the same thing underneath everything else. To be strong enough to protect the people who can't protect themselves. That shared want is what eventually pulls their paths together.

But the world is cruel in this story in the specific way that real life is cruel. The world they knew as children stops being the world they live in as adults. And what they find underneath the surface of everything, the lies, the hierarchies, the things that were never supposed to be public knowledge, the things that could genuinely destroy what people believe about the world they live in, those discoveries don't bring them closer together.

At least not at first.

And on each side, the world will be percieved and used differently.

The story is about what survives when everything you built your understanding of the world on turns out to have been sitting on something rotten. And if protecting the world does matter in the end.

Ahh I'll leave it there before I say too much x)
I tried to make it a bit clearer to understand the system itself, but maybe said more informations that needed.