**Chapter 1: Ruin of the Catastrophe**
Twenty years have passed since the devastation unleashed by the Emperor of Ruin.
The sky breathes a faded crimson, like dying embers left forgotten in the furnace of a collapsing universe. The air hangs heavy with the scent of ancient blood—blood that has aged and fermented across decades until it became the signature perfume of this newborn world. Monsters roam the ruins, yet they were never the true disaster.
In a reality whose laws had shattered, where human civilizations that stood for thousands of years crumbled into tales the dust now whispers, humankind itself emerged as the greatest plague. Fifteen years of internal slaughter, scheming, and vicious infighting turned people into demons far more loathsome and petty than any clawed beast. Suicidal wars, betrayals, greed masquerading behind slogans of "justice" and "law" while throats were slit and bellies opened.
Then—eventually—the chaos settled.
The way dust settles after a storm.
Under the iron rule of a single organization, humanity was united once more.
The unity of prisoners sharing the same cell.
---
In the heart of this hell walked a man with pale blue eyes the color of poisoned lakes and silver hair like the ash left by old fires. His face was a living map of scars; the patchy, neglected beard only another testament to long-abandoned self-care. He wore a black shirt beneath a long scarlet coat that flowed behind him like an open wound. Strapped across his back was an arsenal so varied it resembled a traveling museum of violence.
This was Ethan Crown, a Rank B combatant leading a squad of Rank C operatives. He strode at the front, the ember of his cigarette glowing between his fingers like a dying star.
"Big bro Ethan, why do you keep buying these overpriced cigarettes every single mission?" one of the team members asked.
"What's it to you?" Ethan muttered, smoke curling upward like a soul trying to escape.
Sarah—the wide-eyed twenty-year-old who somehow still hadn't lost her shine—chimed in. "Big brother, they're so expensive! Aren't you wasting money?"
Ethan took a long, deliberate drag, then exhaled slowly. "And what exactly would I do with the money? One wrong move on any job and we're all dead anyway."
A silence fell, heavy as the echo after the last bullet in a firefight. Even the wind, which usually carried the stink of rot, seemed to hold its breath.
He noticed how his words landed on these kids who still believed—however faintly—in the concept of *tomorrow*. Ethan forced a smile that never reached his eyes.
"This mission's different. The payout's fat. We pull it off clean, we might actually get a full week off."
"How many more kills until we break into the top twenty ranks?" Sarah asked, hope flickering across her face.
"We're sitting at rank 23 right now. Six hundred confirmed kills and we're in."
Their expressions brightened with fragile, almost painful optimism. Ethan felt something twist inside his chest—not fear, not joy, just a strange pressure. As though an unseen voice were murmuring directly into his ear canal:
*Keep counting the steps down your personal staircase into hell.*
---
Hours later, after trudging across terrain that looked like the rotting corpse of a continent, they reached the ruins.
Tilted pyramids. Toppled megaliths. A silence thicker than recorded history.
"Drop your gear here. Rest up before the real pain-in-the-ass digging starts," Ethan ordered in a tone that invited no argument.
He left them behind and walked alone toward the largest pyramid. With every step his heartbeat grew louder, more insistent, like an ancient war drum being struck faster and faster.
He stopped just outside the entrance, pulled out another cigarette, lit it. Smoke mingled with the smell of death.
*End of the world. Zombies. Mutated freaks… and humans.* The thought rasped inside his skull. *Why the hell did fate keep me breathing? Is living in this hellhole really kinder than dying?*
He already knew the answer.
He had been dead for a long time.
Dead the instant he watched the old world tear itself apart.
A walking corpse that still fought, still led, still smoked overpriced cigarettes.
And then he felt it.
A colossal surge of energy leaking from deep inside the pyramid—as though the beating heart of the universe had taken up residence there.
Curiosity—or perhaps the particular brand of suicide instinct he had cultivated over two decades—moved his legs before his mind could object.
He entered the main burial chamber.
In the center sat an ornate sarcophagus inlaid with metals that no longer held any value in this broken age.
With trembling fingers, he lifted the lid.
Inside, a skeleton sat upright in a throne-like posture, clutching between its bony hands a jet-black gem—a fragment of starless night made solid.
One touch.
Just one.
A blinding azure light erupted, swallowing everything. Ethan felt his soul ripped free of his body and hurled down a tunnel of molten emerald.
Then he opened his eyes.
He floated in boundless blue emptiness. A perfect daytime sky without sun, without stars—only pure, overwhelming azure in every direction.
And at the exact center of that void stood an immense throne carved from blue shadows and primordial mystery.
Upon that throne sat the apparition.
No—not an apparition.
He felt more *real* than the dying world Ethan had just left behind.
A man whose features had been chiseled by absolute authority, whose eyes burned like quasars in the cosmic dark.
"At last," the voice said.
It did not come from any single point; it was everywhere at once, inside the bones, inside the thoughts.
"I've waited a very long time… heir of ruin."