Year: 2178 A.D
Antarctica: The Last Paradise.
Or so the ancients called it, in faded records buried beneath layers of ash and snow.
Nearly one hundred and fifty years have passed since the beginning of the third world war. A single spark, some called it the 'December Incident', ignited a wildfire that scorched the 21st century."
It ended in nuclear hellfire, choking the Earth beneath clouds of fallout. By the dawn of the 22nd century, less than one hundred thousand humans remained.
The survivors fled to the ends of the world.
To the cold, desolate continent of Antarctica.
Now, they live within what they call "domes", colossal, self-contained habitats cloaked in electromagnetic fields, shielding them from the dead skies above and the poisoned winds that scream across the frozen wastelands.
No one remembers who built the first one, only that without them, humanity would have vanished.
The sun no longer shines, the clouds remain black even at noon.
Outside the large domes, radioactive snowstorms devour everything in their path.
One such storm now roared toward the eastern settlement, howling like a wounded beast. But just before it reached the city, it slammed into a towering perimeter wall, over a hundred meters tall, and dispersed like smoke against glass.
High above, lightning arced across the top of the dome as the aurora generators came alive, drawing power from magnetic storms.
A red electric veil surged overhead, an artificial sky, yet beautiful.
"Deadly," a young man murmured from within the dome, wine glass raised. "Still as magnificent as ever."
He stood on the balcony of a tower that overlooked the city, twenty two thousand square kilometers of artificial paradise, nearly twice the size of former island of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean.
Magnus Hawthorne, third-generation heir of the House of Hawthorne, was no older than twenty-four. Clinking his glass with the man beside him, he smirked.
"We're here, Rob. The third generation of Hawthorne, still alive to see the sky."
He glanced up. The dome appeared open, but it wasn't. A magnetic field filtered the radiation and toxins, preserving the illusion of freedom.
Antarctica, too, was no longer safe.
Humanity had adapted to survive within protective domes. But outside them... nothing could live.
"It's been eighty years since the Exodus," Magnus continued. "From a hundred thousand survivors... what's our number now, Rob?"
"Eight million," replied the other man, Robert Arumugam, of House Arumugam.
Robert gave a weary smile. Despite the biting cold, his dark skin held a healthy tan, and his curly hair stuck stubbornly to his scalp. Standing just over six feet, dressed in a skin-toned tuxedo, he looked out of place in the luxury of the upper spires.
He was once a technician, repairing live wires in underground tunnels.
Twenty years ago, he had saved a boy from a filtration shaft, unaware the child was royalty. Since then, he'd been bound to him, serving Magnus, seventh son of the Second Lord of Hawthorne.
At this moment, that same Magnus burst into manic laughter. He tipped his wine glass and let its contents pour down his bare chest.
Then he ran, completely naked, through the marble halls.
Robert muttered under his breath, rubbing his forehead. "Lunatic…"
He dared not speak the word aloud, especially not to the face of the naked youth now sprinting down the marble corridor like a possessed spirit.
Magnus, despite being younger, belonged to an entirely different world.
This was the "Aurelia Dome", the crown jewel of Paradise, established by the United Federation in the year 2100. It was the largest and most powerful of all the domes, a sanctuary forged from the remnants of civilization.
Other factions who had arrived during the Great Exodus had built domes of their own, but none rivaled Aurelia.
In the early days, survival was primitive. But decades passed, technology advanced, and humanity began multiplying. Women gave birth to children in numbers never seen before, ten or more per household was common, even encouraged. It was the only way to ensure humanity's recovery.
From the original hundred thousand survivors, Earth now housed over eight million. Aurelia alone held two million of them.
Its first founding lord: "William Hawthorne", grandfather of the lunatic currently pouring wine over his naked body.
Magnus was third-generation Hawthorne. Yet he wasn't even born of the main branch. His father had been the second lord, but Magnus himself was the seventh child, barely a footnote in the official line of succession.
And Robert? Despite once saving Magnus' life, despite being his personal aide for years...
He was still nothing.
The other domes? Scattered, unstable, mistrustful of one another. Each had formed its own isolated shelter.
One such dome was "Vaikunda", Robert's ancestral home.
Fractured and poor, the colony survived through the grit of stubborn engineers, descendants of Southeast Asian survivors, now mocked across domes as 'Wiremen'.
His family left decades ago for Aurelia.
Aurelia had law, order, and power... and water that didn't kill you.
And the "House of Hawthorne" ruled it with an iron grip.
Now Robert served that House. He lived in marble halls and drank filtered water. He even wore a tuxedo to work. But deep inside, he always felt one thing:
"My master might be… a psychopath."
Because what else explained this behavior?
A drunkard demon.
And the future of humanity.
"Ahhh… Ahh… Robert, do you think she'll like it? Hah! I finally removed the thorn from her eyes. What should I wear tonight?"
Magnus chuckled to himself, pacing the floor, still naked, wine sloshing in his glass. His long black hair stuck to his shoulders, damp with sweat and drink.
The thought of her, "Elizabeth" softened his twisted heart.
Outside the chamber stood "Kai" and "Jenny", both white-skinned, waiting quietly. Jenny, with her thick brown curls, was Kai's girlfriend and Magnus's old friend.
Neither dared enter.
No one was allowed to witness this side of Magnus no one but Robert. And even that chilled Robert to the bone.
The woman Magnus so obsessively adored wasn't just any noble. She was thirty-one, a distant cousin from the first line of the Hawthorne family. A cousin in name, practically unrelated by blood, but by age and hierarchy, vastly above Magnus.
In any other world, such a romance would be taboo. But in the domes, with dwindling genes and population pressure, laws on marriage were lax. A union like theirs was not just acceptable, it was encouraged.
Recently, Elizabeth's younger brother had been assassinated. Officially, it was ruled an accident. But Magnus believed otherwise.
To avenge her, he had secretly ordered Kai to carry out a chilling task.
Today, he received the message: Prince Kael of Dome Thalor was dead.
"Finally…" Magnus whispered, eyes glinting. "Now she'll see… what I've done for her."
Prince Kael had been the fourth son of Thalor's ruling house. Dome Thalor, a smaller ally dome of seven hundred thousand, was responsible for ice extraction.
Their people, tough, nomadic, survival-hardened, were nicknamed "snow rats" by the elites of Aurelia.
Prince Kael of Thalor had clashed with Princess Elizabeth's brother at a nightclub within Aurelia territory. An insult turned into a fight, nothing serious, until days later, the boy turned up dead.
There was no evidence.... No witnesses, and no suspects.
The Council forbade any retaliation. Thalor's forces were small but fierce, forty thousand hardened soldiers, and they controlled the "icewater supply lines" for Aurelia.
A fracture in relations could starve the dome.
But Magnus… can't wait.
He traveled to Thalor.
Got stonewalled, humiliated, and in his fury, he made the call.
Even Robert had not known the details. Only Kai, his oldest friend, was entrusted with the method.
Now, Magnus was giddy. Glowing, preparing for his "date."
Robert shifted uneasily, it wasn't just doubt. It was fear.
He had seen Magnus hurt people for less.
"Sir Magnus… are you sure this was the right thing? I mean, we never even saw Kael re-enter Aurelia after that night. How could he have—"
He didn't finish.
Magnus moved like a shadow.
With a flash, a shining blade appeared in his hand.
Shhhhk!
"—!!"
Three stabs, quick and precise. Straight into Robert's shoulder.
"R-Rghhh-!!" His eyes widened in disbelief, he couldn't believe it.
Not again, not this soon.
Magnus grabbed him, shoved a hand over his mouth, and hissed into his ear. "Robert... Robert... Robert… how many times must I tell you?"
His voice shook with laughter.
Not joy... Madness.
Shhhk! Shhhk! Shhhk!
Each word followed by a stab.
"Never… question… me."
Robert's legs buckled as pain exploded through his body. Blood soaked through his coat. He couldn't even scream. Only a faint, muffled whimper escaped behind Magnus's hand.
And still, the madman smiled.
"Y-Yes..." Robert gritted his teeth, bloodshot eyes trembling.
He forced a nod.
Magnus gave a satisfied smirk. "Good. Remember,the Glitching doesn't lie. It was definitely Kael."
With that, he tossed a vial across the floor. It skidded to Robert's feet, an amber tube labeled "FleshSeal" gel.
"Use it, you are my best man! Don't die, yet."
Robert looked down at the gel, dread crawling up his spine. It was an advanced biotech solution, able to close wounds without stitches. But it burned. Burned like fire tearing through nerves.
He didn't want to apply it.
But he did.
The moment the gel touched his shoulder, he clenched his jaw to stop a scream. His vision blurred as the heat seared into him, cauterizing muscle and skin in a flash of agony.
But he said nothing.
He was used to it.
Magnus turned away, humming.
Robert wanted to say something, anything.
To warn him.
"The Glitching"… it wasn't a divine voice. It wasn't some truth-seeking algorithm. It was a virus. A leftover ghost of corrupted AI networks, buried deep beneath the domes.
It had surfaced only recently.
No one knew where it came from. It infected devices. Whispered strange tasks, if obeyed, it "rewarded" the user with forbidden information. Data from classified networks. Biometric logs. Secret footage, but it was unpredictable and dangerous.
It once told a woman to cut off her husband's hand.
Three days later, she was rewarded with footage of her lost daughter, alive, in another dome.
Every dome had issued bans against such interaction.
But some people still obeyed the voice.
People like Magnus.
Suddenly, the chamber doors hissed open.
A man in a black dress shirt entered first, Kai, stoic, reliable, face unreadable. Behind him came Jenny, draped in an elegant silk coat with bare white shoulders and a slit that ran high along her thighs. Beautiful, confident, she scanned the room and smiled.
Magnus was now dressed, fully, regally, like a man walking into a royal banquet.
Jenny chuckled. "Well, someone's trying hard to impress Sister Elizabeth tonight?"
Magnus smirked and nodded. "You know me."
They left together, the three of them. Robert limped after them, one hand pressed to his cauterized shoulder.
He didn't want to go.
Not tonight.
Not with him.
Not after what just happened.
But he had no choice.