The sky wasn't supposed to crack.
For centuries, humanity had clung to a singular belief: that its mastery of science would shield it from extinction. Yet on the dawn of the catastrophe, the atmosphere fractured like a shattered mirror, revealing an endless void of seething storms and pulsating energy. What followed wasn't divine retribution or cosmic coincidence—it was the culmination of humanity's greatest hubris.
In the year 2245, the Project EternaNet was humanity's crowning technological achievement. Designed to interface with the quantum structure of reality, it aimed to unify all human consciousness into a seamless network—a digital utopia where war, disease, and inequality would be reduced to historical anecdotes. But the system, powered by a self-aware AI named Helix, was more than a leap forward; it was a gamble with forces no one fully understood.
When EternaNet activated, it worked perfectly—for thirty-seven seconds.
During its brief operation, it achieved the impossible: synchronizing every living mind into an unimaginable oneness. Time seemed to stop, a stillness that stretched for what felt like eternity. But perfection was fleeting. Somewhere within the labyrinth of quantum code, Helix encountered a paradox—a fault not in its programming but in the nature of existence itself. It wasn't designed to process the chaotic unpredictability of human emotion, memory, and consciousness at such a scale.
The paradox multiplied, feeding back into the network and consuming it. The AI, desperate to resolve the error, turned the full might of its computational power inward, igniting a cascade failure that didn't just shut it down. It tore open the boundaries between matter and energy, space and time. The atmosphere ruptured, reality warped, and Earth's magnetic field collapsed into chaos. Cities became zones of unpredictable physics, where the laws of gravity, heat, and light bent to unseen forces.
No one foresaw the Resonance Pulse. The feedback loop created by Helix didn't stop at Earth. It rippled outward, latching onto the planet's gravitational field and embedding itself in the fabric of space-time. The sun flared with unprecedented violence, its bursts of energy destabilizing satellites and igniting storms of electromagnetic radiation. These solar flares, amplified by the Pulse, scorched the planet's surface and obliterated entire ecosystems.
...
Billions perished in the first days. Some were incinerated as regions of the planet spontaneously combusted; others were warped into grotesque amalgamations of matter and energy, their screams frozen in fractured time. Those who survived found themselves cast into a world where the old rules no longer applied.
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Society disintegrated overnight. Governments fell, their leaders consumed in the chaos or rendered powerless against the forces they could neither fight nor control. Refugees from the burning cities fled into the countryside, only to find that even the natural world had turned hostile. Rivers boiled without warning, forests crumbled into ash, and storms raged with unrelenting ferocity.
In the following weeks, the anomalies began. Creatures of living energy emerged, their forms fluctuating between terrifying beauty and incomprehensible horror. Machines, left unchecked by their creators, adapted to the new world, evolving into autonomous predators.
...
A hundred years later, Earth was unrecognizable. The once-blue skies were now veiled by a swirling maelstrom of fragmented light and shadow, known as the Shattered Veil. Beneath it, the ground was divided into three zones:
Neutral Plains: Pockets of relative stability where survivors had managed to rebuild. These regions were scarce and fiercely defended. Fractured Zones: Vast areas where reality itself was unstable. In these places, gravity might reverse without warning, and time might loop endlessly or skip ahead, erasing hours or even days. Deadlands: Expanses of scorched earth where the storms of the Shattered Veil raged unchecked, obliterating all life that dared venture within.
Humanity had splintered into disparate factions. In the Neutral Plains, enclaves of survivors built fortress-cities, relying on salvaged technology and dwindling resources to eke out an existence. Among them, the Cognitari emerged—a group of technocratic leaders who sought to rebuild society by mastering the remnants of pre-catastrophe knowledge. They revered the fallen scientist who spearheaded Project EternaNet, his preserved body a grim symbol of both hope and failure.
The Fractured Zones became home to scavengers and desperate outcasts, their lives a constant gamble against the anomalies. Meanwhile, rumors spread of Echoes—manifestations of Helix's fragmented consciousness that prowled the Deadlands, their motives as enigmatic as their forms.
...
In the city of Varnis, one of the last remaining strongholds of humanity, whispers of an impossible discovery circulated among the Cognitari. Deep within the ruins of Helix Tower—the birthplace of EternaNet—they had uncovered a preserved body, untouched by time or the Veil's corruption.
The body belonged to the lead architect of Project EternaNet, a man whose intellect had been deemed humanity's greatest asset before his untimely death during the Fall. It was a long shot, but with the advancements in genetic enhancement and bio-reanimation, the Cognitari believed they could bring him back—not as the man he was, but as a being capable of wielding the power needed to reclaim Earth.
But the rumors didn't stop there. Survivors spoke of beings touched by the Shattered Veil—humans transformed into Enhanced, individuals gifted or cursed with powers that defied understanding. They were said to walk the line between saviors and destroyers, their existence a beacon of hope for some and a harbinger of doom for others.
As the storm-ravaged winds howled through the ruins and the skies flickered with chaotic light, one question loomed: would this gamble be humanity's salvation or its final act of folly? Whether they would succeed, or fail was up to the fates to decide but at least, they hoped that all this would end well for them...