Chapter 1— The day everything changed
Rain had turned the sky into a gray wound. Swirls of smoke rose between collapsed roofs like black fingers trying to grab the night. Kaido ran without knowing why anymore—only because running was what his sister had ordered. Survival had become an automatic command, like mechanical breathing.
He was twelve. His legs were skinny, his heart a box pounding so hard his temples buzzed. Behind him, the screams—no longer human. Doors shattered, silhouettes tore free from reason and lunged at anything that moved. Red eyes, crumpled jaws, skin stretched like a drum. The Corrupted.
His sister pulled him by the hand. She was barely sixteen, but her features were already carved by exhaustion from another era. Her hands shook, but her grip was iron. With every alley crossed, her voice cut through the night like a blade.
"Kaido! Don't look back! Run! Now!"
He wanted to scream he wouldn't leave without her, that they'd escape together, find a corner, a roof, a shelter where the world was still what it used to be. But a howl ripped the night to their left—a house exploding like a dead star—and something shoved his sister into the narrow path leading to the mountain trail.
She pushed him so hard he lost balance. He stumbled, felt the ground open under his shoes. Behind him, the shapes clattered, backed by groans that were nothing but mechanisms. His sister screamed once—a single syllable lost between the stones.
"Survive! Swear you'll live!"
Her fingers tightened on his, then flung him like a flicker of light into the dark. Kaido watched her hand slip away, the door behind him slamming on forms no longer human. He ran. The trail spat him out higher, on the ridge overlooking the village. He ran until exhaustion, until his knees buckled, until breath became sharp pain.
Then he turned—because he couldn't help it. A figure stood in the village center. His sister. She held someone motionless before her, a moment frozen like a statue. Kaido forgot to breathe. The sound of a body hitting the ground drowned everything. When silence returned, it was only the wind. His sister didn't move.
He screamed. A sound from the gut, no longer even sound—just a wound clawing at the dirt with his fingers. He rushed forward, but a scratch had already reached him—a burning mark under his arm—and he knew, with icy certainty, that a Corrupted's bite changed everything. Fear tried to swallow his thoughts, but something stranger rose: heat, as if his cells sensed the enemy and contracted.
The cut closed. Not like fairy-tale magic, but a slow stitch of his own body refusing betrayal. He felt the wound tighten, the heat spread and ease the pain. The world around him was still horrifying, but a tiny, violent glow slipped into his chest.
He ran again. He swore. Not just to the promise demanded, but a vow like a prayer: he'd come back. He'd come back for her. Save her life, put her safe. He'd keep hope for both.
Six years passed like seasons of stone. The boy who fled a darkened village became a young man with broader shoulders. Childhood lingered in his eyes, but a thick, sharp silence had settled there. The world hadn't healed; it had learned to hide its rot. Ruined cities turned to camps, camps to citadels, and the man called Yurei spoke to crowds of a cure, a future. Screens showed his bright face like a promise. No one yet knew how much that promise was a cage.
Kaido was far from his village now. Roku—the man who'd taken him in, taught his hands to grip a blade, share bread, survive without losing conscience—was gone, his shadow living only in the worn jacket Kaido kept close. The jacket bore scars of a past, a world Kaido refused to abandon.
He stood on the roof of a collapsed building, eight floors of cracked concrete under his feet. Below, the city hummed with voices, trades, small lives trying to stitch civilization back together. Kaido watched the horizon like a wound whose depth he couldn't gauge.
His hands closed on the jacket, as if pressure could revive a memory. He remembered the fire, the scream, then silence. He remembered the sensation—not fear, no—but the awakening. His cells refusing to die. It had changed him. Made him… dangerous?
No: useful. A weapon, for those who knew why to wield it.
A sound: kids laughing in the alley, a bike bell, a vendor calling. Normalcy was a fragile illusion, but it existed. Kaido smiled—joyless—and thought: If I can stop one small hand from cl.points like mine did that day, then all this blood will mean something.
He didn't fully control his power yet.
His ability—what he called Cell Genesis in his head, because he hated grand words—was dry, precise science: densify, order, compress flesh and muscle fibers where needed, force regeneration to spread for a specific act. He'd learned the hardest limits: nothing was instant, every tweak cost something. For every second gained, he paid a piece of himself.
A helicopter passed overhead, black against the sky. Kaido watched without emotion. News always spoke of hope: riots, deals, charities that never went far enough. The man called Yurei promised to be the savior. His name echoed like a litany.
He climbed down from the roof. The city had needs, the night too. He'd made promises to a ghost of a little girl holding a red ribbon in an imaginary hand. He'd keep them.
Before leaving, he set the jacket on the ledge. A ritual gesture. A tribute. A way to say he was no longer a child clinging to shadows. He left it there, then jumped—not to flee, but to dive into the life he'd chosen to defend.
The rain that night tasted less bitter. But the world hadn't changed. And neither had he.
The neon flickered above the door, an old blue tube buzzing like a weary insect.
Inside, the smell of cold grease and worn metal. A few twisted chairs, a grimy counter, a stove half-dead. The place was no sanctuary, but in this world, that was already something.
Kaido walked in without a word. He pulled off his soaked hood, let a few drops fall on the cracked floor, and sat.
The old man behind the counter—gray beard, sunken eyes, arms still solid—looked up. He held a bottle of cheap whiskey, but his gaze was sharper than most survivors'.
"What'll it be, kid?"
"Nothing strong. Just something to feel like it's still warm."
The man nodded. He filled a cup with black tea and set it in front of him. The liquid barely steamed. Kaido took the cup, felt the heat against his palms.
For a moment, silence weighed heavy. Then the old man sighed, as if talking had become a reflex against loneliness.
"Fuck… seven years. Seven years since everything went to shit."
He glanced at the window: outside, rain drew liquid bars on the glass.
"We thought it was just another disease. A flu, some passing crap. Then the first cases mutated. No fever, no slow agony—just… an explosion of flesh and screams."
He took a swig of whiskey.
"The Genesis virus… that's what they called it. A name that almost sounded pretty. Ironic, huh? A word that means 'beginning' to announce the end."
Kaido didn't answer. His eyes stayed fixed on the tea's surface, where an artificial light trembled.
The man went on:
"The Corrupted—that's what came first. Thousands, everywhere. Beasts that didn't think anymore, didn't feel anything but hunger."
He tapped the table with his finger.
"Then came the Awakened. The ones who survived the infection. Miracles, they said. But you know what?"
He smiled, bitter.
"Miracles in this world always come with a price. Those people… they turned into living weapons. Broken gods."
He waved a hand toward the street.
"And now? Look. Walls everywhere, forbidden zones, checkpoints. The Awakened are treated like monsters or tools. The Corrupted still swarm the dead lands. And the Unchanged—they die slowly, not understanding why they were 'spared.'"
He fell silent for a moment. His gaze lingered on Kaido, as if searching for an answer in his calm face.
"You think one day we'll know what really happened? Who started all this? Why some survived and others didn't?"
His voice dropped lower.
"You think there's still someone out there who knows… the truth?"
Kaido finally looked up. His eyes held that strange glow—neither anger nor fear, just cold clarity.
He answered in a calm voice:
"Yes. Someone knows."
"Yeah? And you think he'll ever tell the truth?"
"… When he has to."
A heavy silence fell again. The old man scratched his beard, shrugged.
"Hm. Well. Long as I'm still breathing, I keep pouring drinks. That's all an old man can do, right?"
Kaido stood, set a few coins on the counter.
"Keep it up, then. The living need you more than the dead."
"And you?"
Kaido pulled his hood back on.
"I made a promise."
He stepped out.
Outside, the rain had stopped, replaced by thick fog that swallowed the streetlights. The world seemed suspended, between end and restart.
Kaido walked without hurry, steps steady, gaze straight.
Under his jacket sleeve, a faint pulse ran across his skin—his cells reacting to the world's tension like a living organism, survival instinct turned conscious.
He thought of his sister.
The screams.
The promise.
"As long as someone still believes… there's a reason to live."
The wind blew.
The world kept rotting, slowly.
But somewhere in that rot, a spark stayed lit.
End of Chapter 1.