July 3, 2000 — Seoul, South Korea
The morning began like any other.
The sky was a flawless blue, unmarred by a single cloud. Heat shimmered above sunlit asphalt. Car horns echoed through the streets. Food vendors clattered open their stalls, the smell of sizzling meat and sweet soy rising into the air. Somewhere, a radio played the latest pop song. Children chased each other past rusted bicycles and fluttering laundry.
It was just another summer day.
Ordinary.
Unremarkable.
Until the towers appeared.
They didn't descend from the heavens.
They didn't erupt from the ground.
They simply existed—impossibly tall, obsidian-black monoliths that scraped the clouds. Smooth and seamless, as if carved from the void itself. One stood in every major country: South Korea. The United States. Japan. China. Russia. Brazil. The Philippines. India. The United Kingdom.
Even Antarctica.
There were no sounds. No tremors. No heavenly warnings.
Just silence.
Then... hysteria.
People screamed. News anchors stammered. Satellites glitched. Scientists stared at their monitors, unable to explain what their data refused to process.
And then came the vanishings.
Within twenty-four hours, millions of people disappeared.
Mothers in the middle of bedtime stories. Fathers mid-phone call. Children reaching for toys. Entire streets turned silent. Calls rang endlessly into the void. Meals sat uneaten. Toothbrushes dripped beside empty sinks.
The world didn't weep at first.
It panicked.
For the first time in modern history, the Earth seemed to pause—and then shift.
Wars stopped. Grudges dissolved. Flags lowered. Governments collapsed into each other, forming one desperate alliance. Languages were cast aside for action.
A global task force was created.
Soldiers. Scientists. Explorers. They entered the towers.
What they found defied every law of reality.
The towers were not buildings. They were alive.
Walls that pulsed like flesh. Floors that twitched underfoot. Heat radiated from within, and the air thrummed with a low, whispering hum—words that made no sense and yet felt ancient, as if spoken by something watching from behind the veil.
Some said the towers breathed.
Others said they hungered.
The first monster appeared two days later.
Sergeant Jacobs, a U.S. special forces commander, encountered it deep inside the New York tower. A colossal insectoid beast. Gleaming black carapace. Six bladed limbs. Crimson eyes like burning coals.
Bullets bounced off.
It killed two men in seconds.
Only a grenade to the chest slowed it down.
The leaked footage went viral.
And then the world truly saw.
Later that night, Dr. Hana Choi of Seoul appeared on a global broadcast, her voice trembling, eyes rimmed red:
> "These entities… they're not random. They adapt. They coordinate. Like an immune response. These towers are not architecture. They're organic. They're not places—they're part of a larger being. A living system. We need to evacuate. We must prepare."
Moments later, a second transmission aired.
General Carter of the United States, eyes steeled beneath his cap, spoke with grave certainty:
> "This is not a drill. This is not localized. All nations will enact global emergency protocols. Civilians must seek shelter. Military forces will mobilize. We face an unknown threat. And we must survive."
And so, the world changed.
Lines on maps were erased. Borders forgotten. Humanity became one species standing on the edge of extinction.
---
July 5, 2000 — Sector 9, Seoul
In the middle of the chaos, a little boy clutched his mother's hand.
His name was Rover.
He was five years old.
He wore a red dinosaur backpack. His small fingers gripped a plastic robot toy, the paint chipped from years of love. Sweat dripped down his cheeks. His legs ached from waiting.
All around them, families stood in line outside a concrete shelter, pressed shoulder to shoulder in silence. Some cried. Some muttered prayers. Others just stared, as if already hollowed out.
> "Mama," Rover whispered, tugging her hand, "why is everyone so scared?"
His mother didn't answer.
Her eyes were fixed on the line of soldiers at the entrance. Her grip was trembling.
> "Mama, it's hot…"
> "I know, baby," she murmured, her voice raw. "Just a little longer."
Then Rover looked up.
Squinting into the sunlight, he raised his hand to shield his eyes.
> "Mama… what's that in the sky?"
Before she could turn, a scream shattered the stillness.
> "SOMETHING'S COMING!"
The crowd surged.
A shadow rolled over the street like a stormcloud. The sun vanished. Heads tilted upward. Mouths dropped open.
And then it came.
A shrieking cry tore through the air as something massive dove from the clouds.
A wyvern.
Wings like torn leather sails. Blood-red scales that shimmered like molten iron. Eyes that glowed like hellfire. Its horns spiraled like daggers, and its tail thrashed with armored spikes.
It crashed into the street.
Pavement split. Cars flipped. Windows exploded.
Soldiers opened fire. Bullets ricocheted uselessly. The beast let out a deafening roar, a sound born from ancient nightmares.
It lunged.
A man vanished between its jaws. Another was crushed beneath its claw. Smoke and dust filled the air. A woman screamed for her child.
People ran. People tripped. People died.
Rover stood frozen, his hand slipping from his mother's trembling grasp.
His toy fell to the pavement with a hollow clack.
He looked up, eyes wide.
> "That's… a wyvern," he whispered. "From my book…"
But this wasn't a story.
This wasn't a dream.
This was real.
And it was only the beginning.