The Sundering was the single most prominent event in the history of mankind. Its roots lay in the emergence of the first superhuman, a girl by the name of Chinyere Nwachukwu, fifteen years old. She lived in a village in Nigeria, a place of dust and low stone walls, and in October of 2025, she gained the ability to breathe underwater after nearly drowning in a pond where the reeds grew thick. A miracle in her lungs. A curse in the eyes of others. She died a week later, bound and burned alive under a heap of gasoline-soaked tyres set alight by the same neighbours who once called her family.
When they were asked, the villagers said they feared her witchcraft, though the word had no shape. Just a hollow in their mouths, carved by ignorance and terror. They killed her to save themselves, or so they thought. And so it began. As if the act itself was an omen, a ripple that spread beyond the small village, beyond the edges of the world they knew. The ones who came after were met with the same fate, a brief adoration that curdled quickly into fear, their powers unsettling the quiet lives of men, toppling structures of power as easily as wind scatters ash.
The killings began. Extremists, preachers with fire in their throats, governments with no face but many hands. They hunted the paranormals, slaughtered them before they could take root. They murdered them like weeds. They murdered them like gods.
Then came Scorn.
There is no record of his true name, no trace of the life he lived before. Only stories. A blue-eyed man with a voice that carried like the wind across fields, like the ocean pulling ships into the deep. He was the first to survive the hunts, the first to fight back. And in time, others gathered to him, and he spoke to them of their strength, of the place they held in the world. Not as the cursed, not as the hunted, but as the rightful rulers. The Sundering began with him, with the look in his eyes and the words on his tongue. It was the splitting of the world, and it burned like a wound that would never close.
The rebellions spread like wildfire. Paranormals rose up across the earth, and the humans, the ones who had held their hands to the torch, now found themselves on the pyre. The governments, crippled and blind, could not stem the tide. The cities fell. The countryside fell. The world fell.
By the year 2070, humanity had already been scoured by four near-extinction events. They fought each other with fire and steel, with bombs that tore the sky open and poisoned the earth beneath it. The air grew thick with smoke and radiation, and in the darkness of the nuclear winter, the climate shifted, and the earth began to turn against those who remained. Wars bred monsters. Creatures shaped by hands of man, by machines that no longer obeyed their makers. The land was no longer theirs. The oceans swelled with things greater than man. The orbits above were blotted out by a superintelligent hive mind. There would be no escape to the stars. Not for humanity. Not anymore.
In the wreckage of this world, the remnants of humanity did what remnants do. They clung to life. A ceasefire was reached, a truce forged out of necessity, and from the ashes of the old world rose the Megalopolis of Almandine, six cities bound together by six supermassive monorails. Bridgewater, Penrose, Zaryansk, Ryōshinkoku, Lagos, Jazirat al-Nur. Six names. Six cities clinging to a future they barely believed in.
It was October, 2145. I sat in the cabin of Roadman, my eyes tracking the crowd below, a mass of bodies moving through the entertainment zone like ants across dirt. The casino loomed ahead—SynthWave—its neon sign flickering in the dusk, a beacon. The place I was told to go.
“If I’m not back in an hour, call Chief Anderson,” I said. “Tell him what’s happened.”
“Got ya, boss,” Roadman replied.
I stepped out of the vehicle, fists deep in my pockets, the night air cool on my face. My expression didn’t change. Inside, the casino was a riot of sound—machines clattering, lights flashing, the scent of ozone hanging heavy in the air. Rows of sleek, chrome-plated slot machines lined the walls, their screens alive with cascading symbols and flashing lights that mesmerized the ill and the foolish alike. At the centre of the lobby, a vast expanse of green baize beckoned. Beyond it, a bar and dance floor.
At the end of the hall, a clerk waited, her face a mask of boredom.
“I’m here to see someone. Told to ask about the ‘Truck Park.’”
“Mr. Newman?” she asked, her voice flat. I nodded, and she waved me toward a lone elevator in the back. “Fifty-third floor.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The ride up was silent, the elevator humming beneath my feet. When the doors opened, I stepped into another lobby. Another clerk. This one smiled too wide. I didn’t sit when she asked. Instead, I went to the window and stared out at the city that stretched below. Minutes passed before the door finally opened.
Two Corpos emerged. They took my gun. My phone. I didn’t resist. I followed them into the room beyond, large and dim, filled with faces I didn’t bother to remember. The closest one was a big guy. Unarmed. Probably a supe, mercenary. Then there was another, part machine, part man, a shotgun resting lazily across his lap. Neither of them held my interest.
The one who did lounged in the centre of the room. Nikos Greendale. A name I knew too well. Husband to Goldilocks, one of the district’s most beloved heroines. And the man my wife had betrayed me for.
He smiled, all charm and arrogance. “We finally meet.”
I didn’t smile back. My eyes slid past him to the far wall, where my sister, Evelyn, lay slumped, drugged, her face bruised.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“She was sedated,” the man beside Nikos replied, his tone as lifeless as his eyes. “Standard procedure.”
I nodded, taking it in. Letting the silence stretch between us. Then I turned back to Nikos. “What do you want?”
He leaned forward, his smile thinning into something more dangerous. “You know what I want, Mr. Newman. Drop the divorce. Let things go back to how they were.”
I stared at him, cold, unmoving. “Why does my marriage concern you?”
Nikos didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. I saw the truth unravel in his silence, piecing itself together in the gaps between his words.
“It’s Chloe, isn’t it?” I said, watching as his jaw tightened. “You’re afraid. If I file for divorce, if there’s an investigation into my claims of her fraudulent parenthood, they’ll find out. A simple cross-reference with public records would reveal it, wouldn’t it. The girl isn’t mine. She’s yours.”
I watched the realization settle into his face, the panic he tried to hide. He thought he could control this. He thought wrong.
I shook my head, disgust crawling up my spine. “All of this. To hide from the truth?”
Then I turned to Amelia. My wife. My betrayer. “You ruined everything,” I said, my voice thick with disappointment. “For this?”
That was the last thing I said before I moved. My hand lashed out, and the bodyguard nearest me flew backward, crashing through the bathroom door. The other one, the cyborg, was on his feet before his colleague was fully out of the room, shotgun already levelled. But I was faster. I felt my eyes burn, claws pushing through from beneath my fingernails.
My hand closed around his throat. His skin gave way, claws sinking deep into the soft meat. I could smell the adrenaline in his sweat. The fear. The terror. The cyborg managed one word.
“Wait—”
I crushed his skull with my fist, a wet crack echoing in the room.
Tossing aside the body, I turned back to Evelyn. She would be fine
Then I heard footsteps behind me. The click of guns. I dropped low, pulling Evelyn’s limp body under mine as the bullets rained.
Pain blossomed across my back, white-hot.
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Adea moved quick toward the door, his voice cut through the chaos. "Get the fuck behind me." The words not an offer but a command. His employer and his paramour stumbled into step, fear thick around them, sticking like sweat. Adea threw out his arm and the shimmer of the forcefield rose surrounded them. Men in dark blue uniforms poured into the hallway, guns drawn, the smell of cordite already thick in the air.
"Supe’s down," Adea barked, his voice flat. "Bruiser type."
Behind him, Nikos spat at the woman behind him, his face red with rage and terror. "Why didn’t you tell me your husband was a fucking supe?" His voice cracked, the calm gone, mask stripped away. "Now everything’s fucked! Fucked, you hear me? You stupid bitch!"
The woman trembled at his side, pale as ash. Her voice a whisper. "I didn’t know. He never told me."
Nikos’s hands shook. "Fuck! Adea!"
"Yeah, boss?" Adea didn’t stop moving, leading them toward the elevator at the end of the hall.
"Are you sure he’s dead?"
Adea let out a grunt, more annoyance than anything. "I dumped a full mag of seven-six-twos in his torso, boss. If that didn’t do it, nothing will. Shame about Rupert, though. That bastard still owed me some money."
Nikos’s breath was loud in the silence that followed, but it was the woman’s voice that came next, small and uncertain. "Are you sure he is dead?"
Adea’s patience cracked. He growled. "I said yes." He could feel the sweat on his palms, his mind trying to stay ahead of the situation. The doors to the elevator slid shut behind them, a soft hiss.
"...Then why do I still hear gunshots?"
Adea froze. He could hear it too.
Distant, muted. Gunfire. Faint screams. Then, abruptly…
Silence.