Kai Reed's last memory on old Earth was the screech of tires and the sickening crunch of metal.
He had been driving home from another soul-crushing day at the office — spreadsheets, deadlines, a boss who screamed about quarterly targets like the world was ending.
The truck had run the red light. Horns blared. Then everything went black.
He woke to pure agony.
The freezing wind sliced across his bare skin like a thousand razor blades. Every breath felt like fire stabbing into his ribs — at least two were shattered.
Blood trickled steadily from a deep gash on his forehead, stinging his eyes and mixing with the dust that coated his tongue. He was completely naked, lying face-down on cracked asphalt that still held the day's heat but now radiated only cold as the red sun dipped lower.
The first thing that hit him wasn't the pain — it was the wrongness of everything around him.
Kai lifted his head, blinking through the blood, and his stomach dropped like he'd been punched.
This wasn't his city. This wasn't any city he'd ever known. Towering skyscrapers — or what was left of them — leaned at impossible angles like broken teeth, their glass facades shattered and frames twisted by some force that looked nothing like an earthquake.
Whole floors had collapsed inward, vines glowing faintly purple snaking through the wreckage like living veins. Overturned cars rusted into skeletons littered the streets. An old school bus lay flipped on its side, claw marks gouged deep into the metal.
The sky itself was wrong — a deep, bloody crimson that made everything look like it was already burning, the sun a swollen, angry red orb sinking too fast toward the horizon.
"What… the actual fuck?" Kai whispered, voice cracking. His heart hammered against his broken ribs, sending fresh spikes of panic through him. Anxiety clawed up his throat.
This isn't real.
I'm dreaming.
Or dead.
Or in a coma.
He tried to remember the drive home, the traffic lights, his apartment with its half-empty fridge. None of it matched.
The air smelled of rot and sulfur. Dust stung his open wounds.
A low growl echoed somewhere in the distance — not loud, but constant. His mind raced: Car crash… hospital? No. This… this is hell. I died and this is what comes after?
A glowing blue screen materialized in front of his face, hovering like a cruel joke from a video game he never asked to play. The letters were crisp, clinical, and utterly indifferent.
[Harem Settlement System Activated!]
[Host: Kai Reed – Level 1]
Strength: 5 | Agility: 6 | Vitality: 7
Warning: Without shelter before tonight's Monster Wave, survival probability = 3%.
Starter Pack Granted: Basic Tent (deployable once), 500 Settlement Points, 1 Bond Slot.
Kai stared at it, blinking through the blood and tears. "This… this has to be a dream. Or hell. Give me clothes! A weapon! Painkillers! Anything, you bastard!" He tried to swipe at the screen like it was a phone, but his hand passed right through it.
The System stayed silent, the words simply pulsing once before fading slightly, as if mocking his weakness. His chest tightened with fresh anxiety. A game? A system? I'm naked in some ruined city with a floating video-game menu? This can't be happening.
He forced himself to roll onto his side. The movement sent fresh waves of nausea through him. His broken ribs ground together; he bit back a scream that came out as a wet gurgle.
Slowly, agonizingly, he pushed up onto his elbows. The world spun. Dust stung his open wounds.
The broken skyscrapers loomed overhead like accusing giants, and that blood-red sun made his skin crawl. Where am I? How did I get here? Did the crash throw me into some parallel universe? Panic rose higher — his breathing came in short, ragged gasps.
He was alone. Naked. Broken. And nothing made sense.
A roar shook the ground twenty meters away. Kai's head snapped up despite the dizziness. There, backed against the crumbling wall of what used to be a convenience store, stood a silver-haired woman in torn military fatigues.
She looked maybe twenty-four, athletic build, eyes sharp with desperation. Her rifle clicked empty as she fired her last bullet at the beast charging her — a three-meter-tall wolf mutant, fur matted with blood and glowing red eyes, jaws dripping saliva that sizzled on the pavement.
"Stay back, you freak!" she shouted, voice cracking but defiant.
The wolf lunged.
Kai didn't think. He was half-dead, naked, and terrified, but something primal kicked in. He crawled forward on hands and knees, every inch a new torture. Glass shards from broken windows cut into his palms. His broken ribs screamed with each movement.
But he reached the rusted metal pipe lying half-buried in the rubble — a piece of rebar from some collapsed building. Gripping it with bloody hands, he rose shakily to his feet.
"Hey! Over here, you ugly piece of shit!" he yelled, voice raw.
The wolf turned. Its massive head swung toward him, nostrils flaring at the scent of fresh blood. It charged.
Kai swung the pipe with everything he had left. The impact jarred his arms, sending shockwaves of pain through his shattered ribs. The pipe bent like cheap aluminum against the beast's thick skull.
The wolf roared and slashed. Claws raked across Kai's chest — four deep, parallel gashes that tore skin and muscle. Blood poured hot and fast. He screamed, a raw animal sound that echoed off the ruins.
The beast reared back for the killing bite. Kai staggered but refused to fall. He jabbed the bent pipe into its eye. The tip sank in with a wet crunch.
The wolf howled in rage, thrashing. Its tail whipped around and slammed into Kai's side, cracking another rib and sending him flying ten feet into a pile of rubble. He landed hard, coughing blood that tasted like iron and death. Vision tunneling, he saw the monster charging again.
"Not… yet…" he growled through gritted teeth. Adrenaline — or maybe the System finally giving a tiny mercy — surged for three desperate seconds. He rolled aside at the last instant, the wolf's jaws snapping shut on empty air.
Kai grabbed a jagged piece of concrete and smashed it into the creature's wounded eye again and again. Bone cracked.
The beast convulsed, legs kicking wildly.
Its final death throes pinned Kai beneath its massive corpse, crushing his already broken body. Ribs ground. Lungs burned. He couldn't breathe.
For a long, terrifying minute he thought this was it. He would die here, suffocated under a monster's corpse on his first day in hell.
Then, with a final heave, he shoved the heavy body off him. Panting, bleeding from a dozen wounds, half-blind from pain and blood loss, Kai lay there gasping. The woman — the silver-haired soldier — stared at him like he was insane. Or a ghost.
She approached slowly, one hand on the empty rifle slung over her shoulder, the other hovering near a hidden knife at her belt. Her eyes flicked over his naked, bleeding form with clear caution — the kind born from seven years of a world where strangers could mean safety or a knife in the back. She stopped three meters away, not close enough to touch yet.
"You're… hurt bad," she said quietly, voice steady but guarded.
"Name's Lila Voss. Ex-Special Forces, back when there still was a military. You just saved my life… and in this world, that means I owe you. Debt is everything now. But don't get any ideas. Men here… we don't trust easy. You could be a raider, a lord's scout, or just another lunatic who lost his mind to the waves."
Kai's vision blurred. The world tilted. The broken skyscrapers seemed to close in, the red sun burning like a warning. Anxiety choked him — She's real. This is real. I'm not dreaming. "Kai… Reed. I don't even know where the hell I am. One minute I'm driving home from work… next… this. The sky… those buildings… what happened?"
Lila's eyes narrowed slightly,
scanning him for any sudden move. She saw the genuine confusion, the panic in his eyes, the way he kept glancing at the crimson sky and ruined skyline like he'd never seen them before. Head injuries were common — bites, falls, System overloads could wipe memories clean. It happened all the time.
She'd seen men wake up in the wastes with no past, no idea they'd lost everything. If this stranger really had memory loss, he was probably harmless… for now. And he had saved her. In a world where one good deed could buy you an ally for the night, she decided to risk it.
She stepped closer — still cautious, knife hand ready — and dropped to one knee a safe distance away. "You look like you took a bad hit to the head… or worse. Memory loss after injuries is pretty common out here. People wake up not knowing their own name sometimes. That's why I'm telling you straight. This is still Earth. But it's Year 7 After the Cataclysm. March 15, 2025 — that's when the System Gods opened the rifts. They called it Project Terra. Billions of monsters poured out. Governments tried nukes, bunkers, everything. All gone in weeks. Ninety-three percent of humanity dead. Seven billion people… wiped out. The ones left? We scrape by in scattered settlements. Men, women, kids — everyone fights now. No more safe cities. No governments. Just lords and survivors."
She tore off her jacket — the only decent piece of clothing she had — and pressed it hard against the worst gashes on his chest, eyes never leaving his face for long, always watching for a twitch that could mean danger. "Monsters roam all day and night. Daytime ones are smaller packs — wolves like this, giant rats, insect swarms. They hunt in the ruins, guard dungeons in the old subways and malls. But at sunset… the real waves hit. The Gods force rifts open every single night. Thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of them. Coordinated. Hungry. That's why we build walls — scrap cars, rubble, monster-bone spikes. Burn repel-herb braziers that smell like death to them. Everyone stands vigil from dusk to dawn. Miss your shift and you're banished. That's how we survive. Barely."
Kai coughed again, spitting more blood. His mind reeled — the red sun, the broken skyscrapers, her words crashing into him like another truck. Anxiety flooded every thought: Seven years? Billions dead? I died in a car crash and woke up in the apocalypse?
"Monsters… they only come at night?"
Lila shook her head grimly, tying the jacket tight around his torso as a makeshift bandage while keeping her body angled so she could spring away if he lunged. "No. They roam all day and night. But the waves are when hell really opens. You look like you really don't remember any of this… so listen close. I'm helping because you saved me. Debt paid. But in this world, trust gets you killed. So stay down, don't try anything stupid, and maybe we both live through tonight."
She helped him sit up. His legs wouldn't hold. They gave out immediately, sending him collapsing back into the dust. Pain exploded anew. Black spots danced in his vision. "I can't… I can't even stand. Some second chance. I was just a normal guy. Office drone. Now I'm naked, broken, and about to be monster food."
Lila's face stayed guarded, but a flicker of something softer crossed it — pity mixed with wariness. "You're not alone yet. I owe you my life. Come on — there's a half-collapsed building two blocks over. We can barricade the door for the night. But we have to move now. The sun's setting. Look."
She pointed, still keeping distance.
On the horizon, thousands of glowing red eyes were appearing — first dozens, then hundreds, then an endless sea. The low growls grew into a chorus. The air thickened with the stench of rot and sulfur. The first Monster Wave was coming, exactly as the System had warned. Night was falling fast under the blood-red sky.
Lila hauled him to his feet again, slinging his arm over her shoulder but keeping her free hand near her knife. His weight nearly toppled them both. Every step was torture — ribs grinding, venom burning through his veins, blood leaving a trail behind them. The ruins blurred past: an old gas station with pumps ripped open like wounds, a school bus flipped on its side with claw marks gouged into the metal, faint screams echoing from somewhere far off where other survivors were already fighting.
Kai's mind raced through flashes of his old life — the boring apartment, the ex who left because he was "going nowhere," the dreams he never chased. All gone. This was reality now. Hell on Earth. And unless something impossible happened in the next forty minutes, he would die here on day one.
The glowing eyes grew closer. The ground trembled with the first heavy footsteps of the horde.
Lila whispered, voice tight but still cautious, "Hold on, Kai. Just a little farther. If we make it inside… maybe we both survive the night. But remember — I'm watching you."
But Kai already felt his consciousness slipping.
The System screen flickered one last time, cold and final.
Survival probability updated: 0.8%.
And Kai Reed — naked, broken, and bleeding out in a ruined world — knew the monsters were coming for them both.