{The Sky That Cracked}
Year 2090, Blue Star
It started,weird.
No warning, no fire from the heavens, no prophet screaming about the end. Just a crack. In the sky.
Dr. Elena Vasquez was neck-deep in data at the Geneva Observatory when everything—literally everything—started going off. Sirens. Monitors. Gravity sensors. Shit she didn't even know could beep, beeped.
And then she looked up.
A line—thin, sharp—just split the sky like someone took a glass cutter to the atmosphere. It didn't roar or rumble. It just... spread. Like a web of fractures across a windshield. Except it was the freaking sky.
And from that impossible crack... came the Tower.
Didn't fall. Didn't rise. Just was. One second, it wasn't there. The next? A black monolith that stretched so high it disappeared into cloud and sunlight.
It wasn't just big. It felt wrong.
The whole thing shimmered with symbols that looked alien but familiar, glowing faintly like some kind of heartbeat. And the sound it made wasn't a sound exactly—but your bones heard it. Your blood felt it. The kind of pressure that made you realize: oh. We are so small.
{When the World Burned}
Mass panic.
Governments freaked. Religions split. Scientists threw guesses like darts.
> "Divine punishment," some said.
"Aliens," others claimed.
Turns out, everyone was wrong.
Three days after the Tower appeared, the first rift opened.
Captain Maria Santos was stationed near the anomaly zone. One minute it was just normal terrain—and the next, reality folded inward like crumpled paper. A tear in space, fifty meters from her boots. Like a window had opened into a place that should not exist.
And then... they came through.
Beings that hurt to look at. Massive, twisted things that didn't obey gravity or anatomy. Some were all shadows and bone. Some shimmered like lightning made of teeth. The kind of monsters you'd see in a nightmare if your brain was trying to kill you.
"Open fire!" she screamed.
Nothing worked. Nothing.
Bullets ricocheted off their skin like spitballs. Explosives went off with no visible damage. One of the creatures opened its mouth and screamed—
—and the world broke.
Windows exploded. Eardrums ruptured. Two soldiers dropped dead just from the sound.
They charged. And then... Blue Star burned.
Evacuation zones? Useless. Fifty kilometers became five hundred. Cities turned to ash. Humanity learned real fast that it wasn't the top of the food chain anymore.
{The Desperate Volunteers}
Borders were sealed. Safe zones fortified. Prototypes that had no business seeing daylight were rolled onto the field.
And still, nothing worked.
But humans? We're stubborn bastards.
Volunteers started showing up. Soldiers, engineers, madmen. They called themselves the First Wave.
They didn't come back.
So they sent the Second Wave. Heavier gear. More backup. More hope.
Still nothing.
The Third Wave reached the Tower's gate... and just vanished. Gone like they were never born.
People stopped looking at the Tower like a miracle or a threat. Now it was just... despair, frozen in place.
{When Hope Walked Out}
Then, one day—four months and seven days after it all began—they walked out.
Seven figures. No big announcement. No escort. They just appeared at the Tower's front gate and kept walking.
The air bent around them. The ground held still under their steps, like even reality didn't wanna mess with them.
The one in front didn't look like a hero. Average height. Silver hair. Old hoodie. But when he met your eyes?
You knew. This guy was different.
The world called them different things. The First Returners. The Towerborn. But in the end, history gave them a name that stuck:
> The Seven Sovereigns.
And leading them?
Ryu Han-Seok.
{The Blade That Cut Reality}
Han-Seok didn't build armies. He didn't preach.
He just... cut.
A rift opened near a refugee zone. Chaos again. Screams, panic, death.
Han-Seok walked in alone.
The military warned him off. Didn't matter. He walked through the empty streets like he was taking a stroll, not heading toward a hole in space leaking monsters.
He pulled out a sword. Plain steel. Looked like something you'd buy from a back alley shop.
Then he swung it once.
And reality split.
No, really. The air cracked. The rift didn't explode—it ceased to exist. Monsters caught in the arc weren't even killed. They were... erased. Like someone deleted them from the universe.
He didn't say a word. Just sheathed the blade and walked off.
People started believing again after that.
{The New World Order}
Han-Seok wasn't just a savior. He was a builder.
He taught others how to climb. How to tap into the Tower's power without dying in ten seconds.
> "We're not your heroes," he said during the first world summit.
"We're your proof. You can survive. You can grow. The Tower's not our enemy—it's our second chance. But it won't give anything for free."
And that... changed everything.
People started coming. In waves. From every corner of Blue Star. All with the same goal:
To climb.
They called themselves Climbers.
{The Four Pillars}
The old world collapsed. Something new rose in its place.
The Eastern Alliance
Zen cities. Misty islands. Blade monks and martial arts mixed with Tower power. Capital: Kairo City — a place where light bridges float above endless gardens.
The Northern Dominion
Snow, steel, and blood. Beast tamers. Berserkers. Tower energy raw and primal. Capital: Novagrad — a city that never sleeps, surrounded by arenas and mana storms.
The Western Union
Thinkers. Tinkerers. Genius cowards who build gods out of tech. Capital: New Geneva — floating platforms, simulation domes, and labs that could blow up the moon if they wanted.
The Southern Coalition
Mercs. Assassins. Jungle kings and desert ghosts. Capital: Port Solene — a city stitched from survival and flame.
Above them all?
The Sky Federation
Neutral. Floating city. Connected to all. Home of laws, records, and a single unspoken rule: Don't mess with the Tower.
{The Age of Climb}
Fifty years later, the Tower still stands. Still humming. Still daring people to reach its top.
And now? We're ready.
Climbers flood its gates every day. Some chasing glory. Some chasing answers. Some just trying to escape whatever hell they left behind.
The monsters still come. The rifts still tear.
But we're not helpless anymore.
And deep in the Sky Federation's archives, there's a note, handwritten, stuck between two files:
> "Fifty years since the sky cracked.
Fifty years since we stopped falling.
We're still climbing.
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An Original Series by Celestial Raven