The world had already ended.
It just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
What remained of Earth was nothing but a decaying husk—once blue, now blackened. Its veins were cracked highways, its cities graveyards of steel and ash. The oceans boiled strange colors on the horizon, and the sky? A burnt smear of rust and violet that never cleared, no matter how long you stared. Thunder grumbled often, but lightning had forgotten how to strike. Fires came without warning, and rains melted rooftops. Tornadoes twisted through urban jungles like dancers in a slow, inevitable funeral march.
Humanity adapted—just barely.
Every city had become a bunker. Every village a fortress. And still, people died. Every day. To disease. To hunger. To the unknown things that sometimes crawled from the cracks in the Earth. It wasn't the apocalypse in one big explosion. It was quiet. Rotting. One broken breath at a time.
Raven Kael was born into that silence.
He didn't remember a world before the end. Just stories—half-told myths his mother once whispered when she had the energy. Tales of blue skies and schools, of phones and fresh fruit, of music that wasn't just static on the wind. But even those memories had faded.
Now all he had was the present. And the present stank of smoke and sorrow.
Raven stood about six feet tall, all lean limbs and worn-down muscle—more out of necessity than discipline. His storm-gray eyes looked too old for seventeen. Like someone had borrowed a soldier's gaze and shoved it into the body of a boy. His skin, olive-toned and always slightly pale from lack of sun, was marred with small scars from scavenging runs and close calls. He wore a patched-up coat too big for him, a charcoal-gray thing that flapped around his legs like a cape torn from an old comic book. His boots were mismatched—one brown, one black—and both had holes in the soles.
But he didn't complain. He didn't speak much at all.
Because who would listen?
His mother had been the last person who truly knew him. Her name was Elara. She had been a nurse—back when people still believed medicine could fix things. She raised Raven alone after his father died during one of the first "sky tears." They called them natural disasters back then. As if the Earth's bones snapping in half was just a coincidence.
Elara had been soft-spoken. Gentle. Always tired. She made tea from boiled weeds and hummed lullabies from a world she barely remembered. She protected Raven with everything she had—until the Fever took her. A sickness with no cure, no source. It crept through the lungs, chewed on memories, and left behind a hollow shell.
The last time she saw him, she didn't know his name.
And Raven didn't cry. He just sat beside her, held her hand, and listened to the silence stretch.
That was three months ago.
Since then, every day had been the same. He scrounged for food. Bartered scraps for water. Avoided gangs. Slept in corners of buildings he didn't own. Ate when he could. Starved when he couldn't. The days blurred. The nights bit. He hadn't smiled in weeks.
Some days, he forgot what hope tasted like.
The ground trembled beneath his feet.
He stopped walking but didn't look up. Tremors were normal now. The world had been shaking itself apart for years. Cracked sidewalks, fallen billboards, split pavement—all part of the scenery. Raven adjusted the strap of the satchel over his shoulder. Inside was half a loaf of moldy bread, a bent spoon, and a photograph of his mother.
The photograph had water damage. Her face was a blur. But it was all he had.
"Another quake," he muttered. "Big deal."
He continued walking.
It had been a long, gray morning. The clouds hung like bruises. The air smelled like wet metal. Flakes of ash drifted through the wind like black snow, clinging to his coat. Up ahead, smoke rose from a collapsed parking tower. He didn't bother checking for survivors.
There usually weren't any.
Then it came again.
A deeper rumble. A pulse.
Raven paused mid-step. This one felt different—like something massive had moved beneath the surface. Like the Earth had hiccupped. He felt it in his bones.
Then… silence.
Not the usual quiet.
Not even birds. Not even wind.
Just… stillness.
His breath came sharp.
That's when the air split.
Five steps ahead, reality itself ripped open.
Not like a crack in glass.
More like a wound.
The tear shimmered in the air—jagged, black, and alive. It pulsed with something unknowable. Like it wasn't just a hole in space, but in logic itself. Its edges glowed red, as if bleeding into the air, and from within, Raven could see movement—shadows shifting in a space that had no light. No up. No down.
It looked like a passageway. A throat. A door to something that should not be.
And it called to him.
Then the voice came—not heard through ears, but inside his skull. Smooth. Deep. Mechanical.
[Rescue System has landed on your planet Earth–Humanity(Earthling) Recognized]
[Labelling and Recognizing Human]
[Earthling H096 Recognized]
[Gate H100 Activated]
[Access Granted]
Raven's heart hammered.
"What the hell…"
He took a step back. His eyes darted around the broken street. No one. Nothing. The world had paused. Even the air refused to move.
He looked back at the tear.
It had grown wider. Tall enough to walk through. And at its base, glyphs had begun forming—a spiraling pattern of symbols that flickered between red and deep obsidian.
[You have been Chosen out of 90% of humanity]
[Sanctuary Awaits.]
[Would you like to enter?]
A lump formed in his throat.
No one ever talked about this. The cracks. The voices. The system. It was the kind of thing you'd hear in fever dreams or madmen's journals.
But this?
This was real.
He took a shaky breath.
"Chosen for what…?"
There was no answer.
But in that moment—Raven felt it.
Purpose.
Something beyond surviving. Beyond hunger. Beyond grief.
Maybe it was death. Maybe it was madness.
Or maybe…
Fate had other plans.
He stepped forward—
—and the Gate opened.