"In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers."
The world was not always broken.
There was a time—fifty years past—when humanity believed itself invincible, wrapped in the illusion that progress was limitless, resources endless, and survival guaranteed. Nations rose and fell, markets expanded like living shark which kept growing, and mankind drained the Earth with the appetite of a starving titan.
But every feast must have its reckoning. ''end''
This era became known as *The Fracture Age*—the age where the balance of power shattered like thin glass. Some nations clung to their dying resources like dragons guarding their final treasure. Others starved behind broken borders. Alliances collapsed. The weak were crushed beneath the boots of the desperate.
It became, as one general famously wrote in his last journal:
> "The world has forgotten diplomacy. Now, only the fittest write history." — General Armand Voss
In the chaos, leaders searched for salvation.
They found something else.
The Void Gate
Scientists—pushed by desperation and funded by the last scraps of global budgets—began researching impossible ideas. Quantum rifts. Dimensional tears. Space-folding channels.
All attempts to find more resources.
And inevitably…
They succeeded.
Or so they thought.
They created a device that sliced open reality like a surgeon parting skin—the *Void Gate*. A shimmering wound in space, vibrating with colors the human eye could barely perceive. The first time it opened, the world held its breath.
That day became a holiday at first. A celebration.
Then a warning.
Now a tragedy which can not be described by words
Ten years ago, the first expedition team of twelve people entered the gate.
Only *one* returned.
The who is luck enough survive.
He stumbled out after eighty-nine hours. His body was nearly torn in half. His skin looked scorched, as if he had walked through the core of a dying sun. His voice cracked like broken glass when he spoke.
"There are other worlds…" he rasped, blood dripping between his teeth. "…endless resources. Rivers of metal. Forests of crystal. Skies of energy storms…"
Hope sparked—
—and then extinguished in the same breath.
"…but also civilizations. Watchful. Ancient. Stronger than us. And they saw us. They followed us through the breach… because we opened the Gate wrong… because we did not know how to control the void."
The man died minutes later.
His last words were:
> "Close it… or arm yourself… because war is coming."
Humanity centerless all there resources to protect itself from the danger they had seen in that dead person eyes.
But nothing could prepare them for what emerged next.
The alien civilization that attacked had no name humanity recognized. No diplomats, no warnings—only weapons that bent the sky into spirals and burned cities in seconds.
They poured out of the Void like locusts escaping a furnace. Their technology eclipsed humanity's strongest arsenals. Within twelve hours, seven cities around the world were obliterated.
It was humanity's darkest sunrise.
Old rivalries died instantly. Nations that hated each other for decades suddenly fought side by side. Generals quoted from the past as they prepared to make a final stand:
> "In war, you win or lose, live or die—and the difference is just an eyelash." — Douglas Arthur
And humanity lost that eyelash.
Millions died.
Entire cultures vanished in smoke.
Finally—cornered and desperate—humanity did what it swore never to do again.
They unleashed nuclear fire.
The alien armada—despite their advanced shields—could not withstand the combined wrath of fifty warheads detonating directly within the Void Gate's threshold.
The invasion ended.
But the cost…
The cost remains written into Earth's soil.
*Thirty percent of the planet became uninhabitable.*
Nuclear winter clouds scarred the skies for two years.
Billions suffered.
Civilization collapsed into one third of what it once was.
But from the ashes, humanity claimed their reward:
*Alien starship technology.*
The remnants of the defeated invaders gave humanity the key to rebuild…the key to the stars…the key to power.
New weapons.
New engines.
New dreams.
But also…
New orphans.
In a half-collapsed housing district of the Eurasian Frontier Zone—an area once called Tob—two children lived in the ruins.
One was *seven years old*.
The other—his sister—barely *five*.
Their names were:
*Aero Kael*
and
*Lina Kael*
Their parents had died ten years ago during the First Catastrophic Breach, when the alien invasion burned across the frontier like a living flame. Their home had been one of the first consumed in the initial strikes.
But fate spared Aero and Lina.
Or cursed them to survive.
The sky above their settlement was always gray, always humming with radiation storms drifting from the *Dead Belt*, a wasteland glowing faintly at night—one of the many nuclear scars burned into Earth's crust.
Aero remembered nothing of his parents except flashes—his mother's arms wrapped around him during the evacuation, his father pushing them into a shelter, the roar of collapsing metal, the taste of ash.
Everything else was gone.
Sometimes, Aero wondered if forgetting was a gift.