From afar, the city of Helix stood tall like a painting of the future—too perfect to be real. Located on the continent of MU, a man-made landmass floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the city seemed to rise from the sea to the sky. Thin clouds drifted slowly between the gleaming skyscrapers, their glass walls arrogantly reflecting the morning sunlight.
Helix was not just a city—it was a symbol of eternal technology, luxury, and absolute control. The upper zone, home to the chosen ones, the elite, the heirs of the new world, was always bright, always warm, always orderly. The sun seemed reluctant to set here. Even the sky bowed to them.
But when the gaze dropped lower, those elegant structures began to cast shadows. The lower you looked, the dimmer the light became. The sounds turned harsher, more real. And there, in the depths, lay the lower zone—the unacknowledged heart of Helix. Dark, narrow, and cramped. Winding streets like a maze of steel and concrete. Smoke from old generators and makeshift kitchens rose into the air, never truly reaching the sky.
People moved quickly, heads down, always on alert. They were the remnants of the old world—those who didn't meet the genetic selection algorithm, who didn't qualify under the standards of usefulness, yet weren't entirely discarded either. They were simply buried... beneath the feet of those in power.
The lower zone was not just a place—it was a wound deliberately hidden. It was forbidden for those living above. An unwritten rule, enforced more strictly than any law. The lower zone was off-limits not because it was dangerous, but because it disrupted the illusion. The illusion that Helix was perfection.
The lower zone wasn't just a residence, but an exile. This was where refugees from all over the world ended up—those who couldn't afford the city's sky-high taxes, let alone a tiny apartment in the upper zone. Their backgrounds didn't matter: war victims, migrant workers, even ex-scientists from defeated nations.
Every day was a struggle. Black markets popped up in the cracks of crumbling buildings, selling expired food, stolen machine parts, and illegal items you'd never find in the city's official catalog. Discrimination wasn't just an attitude—it was policy, wrapped in statistics and algorithms. Upper-zone citizens didn't just hate them. They erased their existence.
Deep in neglected corridors, in underground rooms no longer logged by the central system, there was a hidden base—a place where the Anti-Solaris organization devised their plans. They weren't mere rebels. They were former city system engineers, ex-military, survivors, and those who had seen Helix through the veil of illusion.
In the gloom of the lower zone, rumors never died. Whispers passed from mouth to mouth, like tiny flames flickering in the darkness. They said someone was down there… someone unlike any ordinary human. A being rumored to be the strongest ever to live beneath Helix. They said his body was no longer fully human. He had once been part of a secret experiment—a black project known only by one name: MANTARA.
According to the tales, he was one of the few test subjects who survived. In the procedure, his blood had been injected with ichor—a forbidden synthetic substance developed from the ruins of Helix's pre-war biological technology. In ancient myth, ichor was the blood of the gods. But in the real world, it was a liquid of death—offering immense power, at the cost of madness or total cellular collapse.
No name. No face. To some in the lower zone, the story was nothing more than a bedtime fable—a modern fairytale to help them forget reality. But to others, especially those in Anti-Solaris, that figure was more than just a rumor. He was a symbol.
---
Once, there was a girl. To her, the world seemed so simple—to grow up, to be beautiful, to be enough—so that man, the only one who made her heart race, would no longer see her as a child, but as a woman.
She grew up with that dream. She waited for the day she'd be mature enough to be seen, worthy enough to be loved. And when at last his eyes truly looked at her—not as the little girl who always followed behind, but as a woman—she thought it had all been worth it.
She gave him everything. On the night she believed was the peak of love, she gave up what she had guarded for so long. Not out of pressure, not out of force, but out of trust. She wanted to belong to him completely. And she believed, by giving her body, she had shown the most honest kind of love.
But honesty is rarely the currency of grown-up games. And like an old clock that stops ticking, that day came—when she saw him walking with another woman, laughing.
Her heart broke. Growing up, it turned out, wasn't just about beauty and recognition. It was about wounds that couldn't heal, loss that couldn't be undone, and silence that could never be fully explained. From that day, something inside her changed. She no longer looked in the mirror with the same eyes. Her virginity was gone, but more than that—her trust had been ripped apart.
---
In a small living room, a little girl ran with excitement, holding a piece of paper in her hand. On it was a perfect score—100—with a red stamp and the words "Excellent!" from her teacher. Her face beamed, her smile wide, her eyes shining with hope. She ran to her father, who sat at a table, busy reviewing digital files on a glass screen.
"Daddy, look! I got a perfect score!" she shouted, holding out the paper with tiny hands trembling from excitement.
Her father glanced briefly. His gaze was blank. Just a few seconds, then he returned to the screen. No smile. No gentle pat on the head. Just one cold sentence slipped from his lips, slicing through her glowing enthusiasm.
"That doesn't matter. Train your body. You need to register for Valkyrie training soon."
The girl lowered her head, her lips trembling—not from fear, but from the disappointment piling into invisible wounds. She didn't want to be a Valkyrie because she was ordered to. She wanted to be recognized—for her choices, her efforts. But her father never truly saw her for who she was.
Since her mother's death, all that remained of their family was shadows. Her father had lost his wife—everyone knew that. But what few understood was how that loss slowly changed the way he looked at his daughter. She was no longer a growing child with dreams and desires. She had become a projection. A hope. A replacement.
She tried her hardest. Cut the long hair she loved. Held back tears when her knees bled. Locked herself in the training room for days to earn perfect scores. Even when rumors spread about her cold demeanor, her fierce ambition, she didn't care. She was willing to ruin her own reputation. Willing to be called validation-hungry. Willing to let herself break—if only the world, anyone, would acknowledge that she was enough.
But in that silence, a new resolve began to form. No longer just to please her father, nor to love someone who never returned it. But to reclaim control of herself. Even if she had to become a Valkyrie, she would become one that could not be controlled. Not by her father. Not by anyone.
---
The towering buildings stood tall—but not a single one remained whole. Broken glass hung from window frames, steel beams bent like snapped bones, and debris littered the ground as far as the eye could see. Dust danced in the air, carrying the scent of rust, embers, and a past that never ended.
In the midst of the destruction, a man stood still, staring blankly at the ruins. As if the shattered world around him was merely a reflection of himself—one that had collapsed far earlier. He had once been a little boy, not knowing where to run when disaster struck.
In the chaos, he got separated. He searched, screamed, cried… but no one turned around. No hand reached out to pull him back. Only the sound of explosions, cracking earth, and finally… silence.
When he found out his parents were alive, they had already built a new life—with his younger brother, who survived, who was smart, talented, and quick to adapt. Every achievement of his brother was flaunted, praised, shared with everyone—as if to cover the failure they never acknowledged. Me. Myself.
No one mentioned his name. No one asked about him. He had been buried without a funeral. From that moment, his face seemed erased—not physically, but in the eyes of the world. He became a silhouette in the background, a voiceless shadow. To him, the world was a stage too unbalanced—where the perfect were celebrated, and the lost were discarded without remorse.
He didn't hate his brother. He didn't hate his parents. What he hated was the hope he once held. The hope to be embraced, to be forgiven, to be seen as enough. Now, all that remained was a man without a face. A man who looked at the world with wounds that would never heal. A world that only knew how to worship the successful… and forget those who failed to survive.