Earth: Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Year 2072 AD/CE

A young man in his early twenties was running for his life down an asphalt road, or more accurately, what was left of one. A crumpled green and white metal sign laying upon the ruined road at one of the intersections read 'Peachtree Blvd', but the young man did not have the wherewithal to notice such details due to the massive jaws of death that were salivating and chomping dangerously close to his backside. Those jaws belonged to a frenzied Dire Wolf that was at Alpha level...

"Dammit! If I die because of this, I will haunt those two traitors until the day they die!" He screamed as he tried to escape from the oversized wolf while running through the ruined metropolis. World War III had seen most major hubs and metropolises destroyed around Christmas of the year 2050, while The Invasion (nicknamed by most as World War IV) came only 3 years after. The Invasion brought with it a worldwide system, introducing new existential laws to Earth in the form of computer game like prompts and windows that would appear upon certain conditions being fulfilled.

"Inventory!" The young man shouted, a dark blue translucent screen appearing in front of him as he ran for his life. The screen was divided into several squares, half of which had icons and items displayed. He quickly scanned through them while also paying attention to the uneven road. He clicked on one of the icons, causing a small explosive device to appear in his hand. It was shoddy work at best, having been handmade for emergencies like this one. Just pulling the device out of his inventory was dangerous due to how unstable of an explosive it was, but he was going to die anyways at this rate, he may as well try the final resort he had. The device began to glow red before he even set the fuse alight. "Dammit!" He cursed at his luck, or lack thereof, before throwing it behind him without looking before diving through a small, busted window on a brick building that was immediately next to the road.

His dive threw him into a wall on the other side of the window, as the room had been small and his momentum was quite high. As such his body crashed through the deteriorating wall and into the next room. He lay still, partially due to being dazed from his landing, and partially out of fear.

Silence.

He listened intently and heightened his senses as the gypsum dust slowly settled around him. There had been no explosion yet, and he did not see the Dire Wolf looming over him... something was wrong... his eyes roamed the darkness of the room quietly, passing over the hole in the wall he had made with his entrance.

An inexplicable sense of fear washed over him, his stomach twisting into a knot as his mind raced to try and figure out what his sixth sense was trying to warn him about...

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The Alpha level Dire Wolf... they never gave up on prey. Never... Unless...

His eyes widened as he realized what kind of blunder he had made. He immediately moved, dashing to the hole in the wall and diving back out of the window he had entered through. A searing pain lanced through his ankle as he passed through the window, an intense pain radiating from his foot as he landed on his belly, his arms and face scraping across the asphalt for a short while before coming to a halt.

He did not have time to hesitate or give the pain any thought if he wanted to survive though... he had to move. On his hands and knees, he scurried away from the building as quickly as he could. He could tell from the way his leg felt that he had likely lost his foot already as he jumped out the window, but he could not let shock take hold just yet. He was nowhere near safe. The Dire Wolf was nowhere to be seen, but that no longer surprised him. He needed to put as much distance between himself and the building he had just vacated at the cost of his own foot.

There was only one known monstrosity to cause Dire Wolves to instantly give up on prey and run in the opposite direction... Abyss Spiders.

Abyss Spiders favored darkness, especially inside of buildings. They did not lay out webbing the same way that regular spider monsters would, making it impossible to tell if you had entered an Abyss Spider Lair without specialized equipment or skills. The Abyss Spiders would not usually leave their lairs, however if their prey was within fifty yards from any entrance of their lair, they were known to brave the sunlight to capture their prey and drag it back inside. He did not know if he would be able to clear the distance, or if they would even chase him... but he had to try minimizing the chance of the Abyss Spiders chasing him if he wanted any hope of surviving.

His sight was fading quickly though, and he realized he would not be able to keep moving unless he stopped the hemorrhaging first. He paused and accessed his inventory once more, retrieving a tourniquet and a flare gun. He first fired the flare to call for help, and promptly ejected the empty flare shell before placing the flare gun back into his inventory when he heard a small metal 'clink' a few feet away in the direction the flare shell had ejected. As he suddenly started to hear a ticking noise, he turned to look, only to despair as he realized his luck had finally run out completely.

The flare casing had bounced onto the improvised explosive he had thrown at the dire wolf previously, which had not exploded properly despite the way it had started glowing previously... and now the timer was ticking down.

"I suppose this is the end..." he muttered as he looked down at his severed ankle, which looked to be necrotic already from poison as well. "Seems I was done for either way..." he said, before grabbing a piece of rebar that was nearby and using the last of his strength to try and scribble a note on the asphalt, hoping it would survive the blast. The note consisted of an arrow to the lair he had somewhat escaped, and only the uneven letters 'ABYS--' before trailing off to the side as the explosion engulfed the young man.

As the explosion reached its peak, a deep voice rumbled through existence where the young man had been, speaking in the ancient words of power, "Let there be death..."