Damian stepped out of the gym, sweat cooling on his skin, the echoes of the breaking news still gnawing at his mind. The air outside was crisp, humming faintly with the city's electric life. He headed toward the nearest hoverbus station, the rhythmic hum of passing vehicles filling the streets.
Above him, the once vibrant azure sky had begun to fade — now bleeding into deep purples and molten gold as the sun sank beyond the skyline. Towering spires shimmered with cascading neon, and the city below responded in kind, bursting into a kaleidoscope of lights. Holo-ads flickered to life, laughter and chatter blending with the low drone of engines.
It was beautiful — almost too beautiful for a world constantly on edge.
"Another team gone," Damian muttered, shoving his hands into his pockets as he walked. His reflection flickered briefly across a holo-billboard displaying the Iron Reaper Guild's emblem before it shifted to an ad.
His jaw tightened.
It wasn't new. Not anymore.
Disappearance had become a word the world had grown accustomed to hearing.
And just like that, memory stirred — unbidden, heavy, sharp as broken glass.
"Nearly a century and a half ago," Professor Griffith's voice rang in his mind, calm yet heavy with the weight of remembrance.
"That was the year the sky ripped open… and humanity learned what true fear was."
The lecture hall had been silent that day. Even the air had felt tense.
A hologram flickered to life at the front of the lecture hall, light particles coalescing into the image of a ruined city — skeletal skyscrapers half-swallowed by shadows.
And at its center, a colossal rift loomed.
A portal pulsing with crimson light, like a wound carved into reality itself.
"We call it The Great Incursion," Professor Griffith's voice filled the hall, grave and deliberate.
"Humanity had reached its golden age — longevity, prosperity, peace — and then… the Abyss looked back."
The words hung in the air like a verdict.
Murmurs rippled through the room — disbelief, awe, fear. Some students leaned forward, while others sat frozen, their eyes glued to the hologram as it shifted, now showing flashes of the chaos that followed: burning cities. Screaming civilians. Soldiers firing futilely into shadows that moved like smoke.
"Multiple Gates opened across the world," Griffith continued, his tone heavy with restrained emotion.
"From New Avalon to Lagos Reach, from the Siberian Wastes to the Andes Plains. And what came through them were not of this universe."
The hologram shifted again — twisted silhouettes emerged from the crimson light.
Their forms defied reason: beasts of sinew and crystal, eyes like molten gold, movements jerky yet terrifyingly fluid.
"We call them Abyss Beasts," the professor said quietly.
"The first contact erased half of New Avalon in under an hour."
The room went silent. No one breathed.
"They overran the earth," Professor Griffith's voice deepened, his tone carrying the weight of history.
"Nations fell one after another — devoured, erased, forgotten. Cities that once glimmered with life became tombs of glass and ash."
The hologram shifted again — burning skylines, crumbling monuments, and vast creatures lumbering across continents.
Even as light projections, the sight made a few students flinch.
"Conventional weapons had no effect on them," Griffith said grimly. "Our tanks, our missiles — useless. Even our nuclear warheads could only vaporize the weakest of the beasts… and only if they stood within the blast radius."
Gasps echoed through the hall. The idea that humanity's greatest weapons meant nothing was enough to silence every breath.
Then, with a gesture, the professor summoned a new hologram — a simulation of swirling red radiation expanding outward from a Gate like ripples in water.
"But that wasn't the worst discovery," he continued, his voice lowering. "We learned that the Gates emit a form of cosmic radiation — what we now call Abyssal Energy."
The projection zoomed in, showing strands of DNA unraveling and reshaping. Cells twisted, organisms warped — grotesque silhouettes forming from once-familiar animals.
"Anything caught within its influence — animal, or plant — mutates beyond recognition. The larger the Gate, the wider the contamination. Entire regions became uninhabitable. We call those places…"
He paused, letting the word echo in the hall.
"Abyss Zones."
The hologram flickered again — this time revealing a vast expanse that looked both breathtaking and wrong.
Forests shimmered with bioluminescent leaves that pulsed like slow heartbeats. Rivers glowed faint blue beneath the dusk, their currents swirling with strange energy. Mountains in the distance floated slightly, tethered by invisible gravity fields. The air itself seemed to ripple faintly, alive with unseen tension.
"Not all Abyss Zones are dead wastelands," Professor Griffith said. "Many still thrive — in their own way. Flora and fauna adapted to Abyssal Energy. They grew stronger, stranger. Some even developed instincts that defy natural biology."
He gestured toward a projection of a creature — something between a wolf and a reptile, its eyes glowing amber, its body plated in crystal-like scales.
"Humans could survive there — if they could withstand the energy saturation. The creatures that dwell within… they don't take kindly to intruders."
The hologram zoomed out again — an entire city swallowed by nature, half-covered in vines that shimmered faintly with light, skyscrapers tilting but still standing amid glowing vegetation. The place was alive — unnervingly so.
"That," Griffith said, "is an Abyss Zone — not dead, not destroyed. Just... changed. A mirror of the world, rewritten by the Abyss."
A shiver ran through the students.
"Within twelve years, humanity lost nearly half its population," Professor Griffith's voice dropped, heavy with remembrance. "Cities burned. Nations vanished. But not all hope was lost."
He tapped the console. The hologram shifted — showing humans in containment pods, doctors in hazard suits, entire cities glowing faintly under invisible radiation.
"Just as the Abyssal energy reshaped the ecosystem, it began to reshape us. Our bodies adapted. Our cells mutated — attuning to the same cosmic current that bled through the Gates."
The projection changed again. Figures ran across a battlefield — their movements blurred, faster than any human should be. Craters bloomed under their strikes.
"The result was extraordinary," Griffith said. "Enhanced strength. Sharper reflexes. Bodies and minds reborn under cosmic pressure. Humanity's next step — or perhaps its correction."
He paused, and the hologram flared brighter. Armored warriors stood amid ruins, their bodies wreathed in faint halos of energy — their gauntlets and blades humming with the same light that once annihilated cities.
"But some went further," he said softly. "They didn't just survive. They learned to control the Abyssal energy. To harness it, shape it — weaponize it."
"Through them, humanity clawed its way back from extinction. They became the first Hunters — the forgers of the first guilds. And as their numbers grew, order returned."
The hologram expanded to a glowing map, tracing the four major continents. Four great emblems appeared over it — each blazing in a distinct color.
"The Four Nations," Griffith announced. "Virelia, Thryssia, Oryndor, and Aelvorn — civilizations rebuilt around Gates that could never be closed. They learned to coexist with the impossible."
The image zoomed in on shining walled megacities encircled by shimmering barriers, far in the distance the pulsating silhouette of an Abyss Gate loomed — beautiful, terrible, eternal.
"Of course, they couldn't build too close," the professor continued. "The Gates are still unpredictable. So we built walled cities — the sanctuaries of modern humanity."
He clasped his hands behind his back, the hologram's glow washing across his features.
"And that," Griffith said solemnly, "was the dawn of a new epoch. The Abyssal Era — where evolution, survival, and power are one and the same."
***
The memory faded as Damian reached the end of the street, the echoes of Professor Griffith's words dissolving into the neon hum of the evening. The hoverbus station shimmered with holo-signs marking arrival times, the air buzzing faintly with anti-grav pulses.
He boarded one of the shuttles and sank into a corner seat. Outside the glass pane, the Mistgrove City stretched in radiant sprawl — towers of crystal and chrome spearing the twilight, their edges bleeding light into the darkening sky.
As the bus accelerated, the scenery began to shift. The holographic billboards thinned out. The pristine highways dulled to matte gray. Neon softened into cold flickers, struggling against gathering shadows.
The bus glided past the border checkpoint where the glow of the inner city gave way to the dimmer outskirts — the Fringe Sector.
Here, the streets narrowed, and the rhythm of life slowed. The air shimmered faintly with haze from the district's aging reactors. Rusted scaffolds clung to the sides of buildings patched together with mismatched alloys. Drones buzzed overhead, their navigation lights blinking weakly.
Children ran barefoot between metal stalls where vendors sold cheap synth-meals and recycled parts. The ground vibrated occasionally as old industrial conduits beneath the street roared to life — remnants of a bygone prosperity.
Hovercars were rare here. Most people still used magnet-bikes or walked. And though the city wall loomed just kilometers away — a towering barrier of silver and black that separated the living from the unknown beyond — its presence offered little comfort. It was a reminder of proximity to danger… and of distance from privilege.
Damian's eyes trailed across the familiar streets. He had grown up here — in the hum of broken lights and the smell of oil and ozone. The Fringe was rough, yes, but it was honest. People worked, fought, survived. No illusions.
The bus came to a halt with a low hiss.
He stepped out into the cool air. The sky was darker now — the faint glimmer of the wall lights outlining the edge of civilization.
Ahead, tucked between two rusted residential blocks, stood his shelter — The Solace Home. Its sign flickered dimly, one letter perpetually dead, so that it read "So ace Home."
The exterior was a patchwork of dull metal and cracked polymer glass, repaired countless times by whoever had spare parts. But faint light seeped through the curtains, and the muffled laughter of children drifted from inside.
Damian paused at the door, exhaling quietly. The day's weight hung over him — the exams, the news, the memory of the Gates.
He pressed a hand against the metal door. It was cold beneath his palm.
"One day," he murmured, "I'll make sure this place never has to fade too."
The door slid open with a creak, warm yellow light spilling out into the night.
And somewhere in that moment — as he stepped inside — the faint tremor of something deeper rippled through the air, so subtle it could have been imagination.
But Damian felt it.
Like a heartbeat… far beneath the city.