The Year 2109.
Humanity reached heights once thought impossible. Dreams of the past became the realities of the future, holograms that blurred the line between imagination and reality, flying cars that soared above the crumbling ruins of old highways, mech warriors that dwarfed cityscapes, and stood as the ultimate testament to human engineering, and medical advancements that cured diseases once deemed incurable and defied death itself.
Yet for all their achievements and progress, humanity failed to conquer its oldest and most unrelenting enemy "itself".
The fractures between nations deepened and widened until they ruptured, spilling forth a flood of mistrust, greed, and ambition. The East and the West, locked in a decades-long cold war of propaganda, sanctions, and covert skirmishes, finally reached the breaking point. Words failed. Treaties burned. The final choice was made "war".
What started as regional disputes quickly escalated into a conflict that consumed the entire planet. No nation, no corner of the Earth, was spared. The United States, Europe, and their allies formed one bloc; China, Russia, and theirs stood in opposition. Neutrality was a death sentence, those who did not pick a side were crushed under the boots of both.
The war's destruction spread faster than anyone anticipated. Nuclear arsenals, dormant but waiting, were unleashed with cold precision. Missile silos erupted in fiery hells, painting the skies with the mushroom clouds of death. The world's most advanced militaries deployed robotic soldiers, hovering drones armed with laser-guided precision, and mechanized titans that shook the earth with every step. Autonomous war machines hunted survivors like predators stalking prey.
Entire continents became uninhabitable wastelands.
Africa's lush jungles were reduced to toxic deserts as experimental weapons stripped the land of life. The Middle East, already a region of turmoil, became a glassed-over graveyard of radioactive craters. Asia's sprawling cities, once symbols of technological dominance were reduced to rubble. Europe's historic landmarks burned, their ashes swept away by acidic winds. The Americas fared no better, their fertile lands turned into barren, smouldering plains.
But the horror of the war didn't stop with the land. It reached into the hearts of those who fought it.
The frontlines were chaos incarnate. Soldiers, both human and machine, clashed in battles so fierce they often lasted for days without pause. Rivers ran red with blood as corpses piled high, men, women, children, and the elderly, none spared the brutality. Starvation gnawed at the survivors, turning even the most moral into scavengers, thieves, and cannibals.
In the cities, once gleaming towers of glass and steel now stood as tombstones of a lost civilization. Streets were littered with the charred remains of the innocent, their lifeless faces frozen in expressions of terror. The air reeked of death and decay, a stench so pervasive it clung to the skin of anyone who dared to breathe it.
For those who survived, life became an unending nightmare.
Famine spread like wildfire. With supply chains obliterated, entire populations were left to starve. People fought over scraps of food, their sunken eyes betraying the desperation that consumed them. A single loaf of bread became worth more than a life, and families turned on one another in the name of survival.
Disease, too, played its part in the apocalypse. With medical infrastructures in ruins, even the smallest wounds became death sentences. Plagues swept through the remnants of humanity, their victims dying in agony as their bodies betrayed them.
But the greatest plague of all was human greed.
When the bombs stopped falling when the smoke cleared and the war's victors lay dead beside its losers, humanity's curse persisted. The survivors, hardened by years of suffering, didn't rebuild. Instead, they fought over the scraps of a shattered world. Tribes formed from the ashes, each one claiming sovereignty over the ruins they inhabited.
Their banners flew over poisoned rivers, crumbling cities, and barren fields, each proclaiming dominion over the lifeless earth. But no matter the banner, the goal was the same "power".
They fought with brutal efficiency. Spears fashioned from rusted metal pierced flesh with ease. Guns scavenged from the dead and barked their deadly songs in the night. Explosives rigged from scraps tore apart makeshift fortresses, leaving survivors to sift through the rubble for what little could be salvaged.
And the atrocities didn't end there. Captives were treated as tools, forced into slavery, tortured for information, or executed to send a message. Women and children were no exceptions, their cries echoing across the wasteland as a grim reminder of humanity's capacity for cruelty.
This was the world he was born into.
He was young, just another face in the crowd of despair, one of 53 souls bound by blood and struggle. Together, they called themselves a clan. Together, they tried to carve out a fragile existence in this hell. But the world is merciless.
One by one, they fell.
Slain by rivals, consumed by starvation, or swallowed by disease. Fifty-three became one. He stood alone, the sole survivor of a family wiped out by cruelty and chaos. For years, he fought to live, not for vengeance or hope, but because survival was all he had left.
By the age of 23, even that began to fade. The weight of his losses, the endless battles, and the bleakness of the world crushed him. On the brink of surrender, he looked at the wasteland around him and felt only emptiness.
But the world was not done with him yet.
In his darkest moment, a voice called to him, a devil's whisper in the void. "The System" awakened. A mysterious force, both cruel and miraculous, offered him the power to rise. It demanded tasks, tests of strength, cunning, and resolve. In return, it promised him everything: wealth, weapons, armies, and above all, the means to conquer.
And so, he made his choice. He would not die. He would not fade into the endless night. He would seize this broken world with an iron fist. Those who remained would have only two options: "submit and follow, or die".
In a land where survival was a bloodsport and trust a weakness, he would become the one thing the world feared most—a force of domination, a devil forged in the fires of an apocalypse.