It all started a century ago, when the world changed into something it was never meant to be.
At first, silence engulfed everything, as if time itself had stilled. Not a single breath. Not a sound. Not even a whisper.
Then—
A snap.
A jagged fracture tore across the sky, veining outward in blinding streaks of light, shattering like broken glass.
And what followed turned the world to shambles.
Portals bled open from the broken sky, twisting and churning like a dark omen.
From those portals, nightmarish creatures spilled forth. No—more than just nightmarish creatures. They were monsters. Things the world had never seen. Had never been prepared for.
Their forms were twisted integrations of three, sometimes five different species, alien in every sense of the word. And at the center of each torso sat a dark hollow—void and quiet. And whatever had once filled it was gone, replaced by something far worse.
They struck without mercy. Without pause. They spared no one. Humans, animals, everything that breathed. Leveling and massacring everything in their path like mindless psychopaths, leaving nothing behind but chaos, ruin, and death.
They were called...
The Hollowed Beasts.
The world bled into its own blood, swallowed by the smog of death these monsters carried with them.
Humanity? They folded in an instant. Its armies, its technology, its carefully constructed might, all of it crumbled.
Then time passed. Days. Then months. Then a year.
Nations Fell. Cities faded into ruin. Resources dwindled, and what was once basic necessity became treasure. Population fell into rapid decline. Survivors were forced into hiding, fleeing to caves, tunnels, and abandoned underground shelters.
Years turned into decades.
There was nothing but hopelessness. The world had become a hunting ground for these monsters. It became a merciless wasteland where only the clever, the lucky, or the desperate could survive.
But—
From the ashes of a dying world, something unexpected happened.
He rose.
A man forged from grit and defiance. He was a spark of hope in a world consumed by darkness. Humanity had not seen anything like him before.
They called him the Everlight.
He wielded power that rivaled the Hollowed Beasts—no, more like surpassed them entirely. Power so vast he could topple them with ease. He conquered the fallen lands alongside his defiant fellowship, tearing them free from the hell that had swallowed the world whole.
And just like that, the smog of death began to lift. For the first time in years, light touched the barren lands.
But—
Even a hero is mortal.
For all his strength, he was still human. Still bound by the fragility of a body that could only carry so much. When he was gone, the world mourned in a silence deeper than any it had known. Not the silence of fear. Not the silence of dread.
Just grief.
Yet his death was not the end.
It was a beginning.
From the wreckage of his passing, humanity did something it had long forgotten how to do.
It united.
Nations abandoned centuries of division and came together beneath a single governing body, determined above all else to preserve what he had left behind.
They called themselves the Omnis.
They searched. Tirelessly. Scouring what remained of the broken world for any trace of what the Everlight had been. And slowly, the truth began to surface.
He was not alone. There were others like him. Scattered across what remained of the world, ordinary people carrying the same hidden spark the Everlight had carried.
Waiting. Unknowing. To be found.
They named them Astralis.
The Omnis sought them out, studied them, and forged them into something the world desperately needed. Warriors. Protectors. An answer to the darkness that still breathed across the land. To carry the Everlight's mission on their backs until the world finally breathed free.
They called them the Ark Knights.
Since then, these warriors fought with pride in their heart, slowly rebuilding the chaotic world into a living sanctuary.
A century passed.
Humanity slowly began to rebuild itself. They divided the world into zones, a way of determining what could be lived in and what could not.
Green Zone:
It is a safe haven of humanity. Massive colonies rose behind towering walls of reinforced concrete and steel, built to withstand against the horrors of the remaining hollowed beasts.
Grey Zone:
A land of shifting danger, where hollowed beasts still roam. Explorers and expeditionary forces, risk their lives here in exchange for resources and relics of the old world.
Red Zone:
The wasteland of the damned! Infested with Unknown energies, it is a graveyard or a 'dead land' where only monstrous hollowed beast 'still' reign.
Around the world, seven 'major' colonies stood.
Olen.
Daehun.
Eulark.
Zenneth.
Bellsing.
Iderin.
And Irithel.
These seven colonies served as vast sanctuaries for humanity's surviving remnants, as the long, brutal campaign to restore the world to its former order...
RAGED ON!
TBC...