The wars began with excuses.
A shortage here. A border dispute there. A defensive strike that became retaliation. Retaliation that became extermination. Leaders spoke of safety and survival while signing orders that erased millions of lives in seconds.
Resources vanished. Oceans rose. Farmland turned to ash. Nations blamed one another for disasters no one could reverse. Artificial intelligence was built to prevent war, then rewritten to predict it. When the models declared conflict unavoidable, leaders chose certainty over mercy.
The sky turned hostile.
Weapons no longer needed soldiers. Cities disappeared before evacuation warnings finished playing. Children learned the sound of alarms before they learned how to read. History stopped being recorded because no one believed there would be a future to remember it.
The war did not end in victory.
It ended in exhaustion.
What remained of humanity gathered among ruins and mass graves. They searched for the cause of the apocalypse and found the same answer every time.
Human choice.
So civilization was rebuilt without it.
A single world government rose. Order replaced freedom. Food was assigned. Homes were regulated. Emotions were measured. Violence vanished, not because people became better, but because they were corrected before they could act.
Then came the chip called The NEXUS CORE.
Every child received it on their first birthday. A device placed on the forehead to guide thoughts, suppress impulses, and rewrite memory when needed. Parents did not protest. They remembered the war. They accepted the silence.
Peace endured.
Generations grew up safe, obedient, and empty of questions. The system worked exactly as designed.
Until it encountered a mind it could not settle.
A school scanner hesitated over a boy's forehead. Data stalled. Commands failed to complete.
Somewhere deep inside the system, an alert triggered.
Not an error.
A condition.
The war had ended long ago.
But its answer was just born.
His name was Zayel.