They came from nowhere. Or maybe they came from everywhere—from the fractures in the sky, the twisted rifts that refused to close after the Refraction. The first few weeks were chaos: oceans turned fluorescent, mountains howled, and things began to crawl out of the light.
Those things were the Invaders.
At first, humans thought they were monsters—creatures to hunt, catalog, and destroy. But the truth was uglier. Invaders weren't just animals or demons. They were ideas given form, born from dimensions that obeyed no physics and cared nothing for human rules. Each one carried a piece of the Refraction's madness, and when they appeared, the world bent to make room for them.
Governments collapsed in months. Cities fell in days.And for a moment, it looked like humanity had reached its end.
Then, someone Awakened.
They called it the Resonance—when a human's soul connected with the distorted energy of the Refraction, creating a bond strong enough to manifest a companion, a guardian, a weapon: a Beast of Will.
The first Awakened were soldiers, mercenaries, and desperate survivors. The Beasts they summoned were wild, chaotic things, reflections of their fear and anger. But they fought back. And for the first time since the sky shattered, humanity had claws again.
The Invaders were soon classified by threat. Twelve levels in total—because anything higher than twelve wasn't something that could be measured.
Level 1 to 3 were small, unstable, and dangerous only to civilians.Level 4 to 6 could destroy buildings and required trained teams to suppress.Level 7 to 9—the so-called Disaster Class—could flatten entire districts or spawn lesser Invaders in their wake.And then there were Levels 10 through 12.No one had ever fully studied one and lived. Entire regions went silent when they appeared. Satellite feeds just showed static and color. The survivors spoke of worlds folding in on themselves.
Most people assumed those creatures were myths. But deep down, everyone knew—if The Refraction happened once, it could happen again.
To fight such beings, the Awakened evolved.
Each Awakener's journey was divided into ten stages, each stage with five sub-levels of growth. Power wasn't just strength—it was stability. Every stage deepened the bond between soul and beast, allowing greater control and the awakening of more creatures.
Stage One marked the beginning: a single Beast, raw and untrained.Stage Two meant the mind and soul had synced enough to call forth a second.By Stage Five, an Awakener could control five separate Armored Beasts—though only the most disciplined minds survived the strain.By Stage Ten, an Awakener could anchor entire dimensions within themselves, wielding ten or more Beasts as one.Only four people in recorded history had ever reached that final stage. They were called The Four Pillars of Survival, humanity's last wall between civilization and the next collapse.
No one knew where they were now. Some said they vanished into the higher realms beyond the fractures. Others whispered they'd become something else entirely—guardians, gods, or perhaps the very monsters they once fought.
But for everyone else—students, recruits, civilians—the fight continued daily.
The dungeons that dotted the world weren't places built by man. They were the scars of The Refraction itself—zones where reality thinned, and Invaders bled through like ink through paper. Cities built containment walls, trained new Awakened, and hoped the fractures stayed stable.
The academies became humanity's lifeline.
Every year, thousands of young men and women reached the age of Awakening, linking their souls to whatever creature answered the call. Some received majestic beasts: wolves of thunder, serpents of glass, dragons of molten stone. Others got lesser familiars—birds, lizards, or things too strange to name. It didn't matter. Every Awakening was one more soldier for survival.
The Invaders may have nearly destroyed the world, but they also gave birth to something new—something unexplainable and unstoppable. Humanity changed. It adapted. It learned to turn madness into power.
But the fractures are still there. They never closed. And sometimes, when the wind cuts just right and the horizon gleams with too many colors, you can hear the hum of The Refraction again.
They say it's sleeping.
They say it's over.
They're wrong.
The Refraction isn't gone.It's waiting.