It was a summer's day like usual, people were rushing around wanting to find a place to escape the summer's heat, families were shopping, couples were idling and the day was going like usual.

That was until an army of giant isopods started getting out of the sea and started massacring the people that were on the beach, men, women, and children nobody was spared, all became the food of the giant isopods.

Immediately the police and security forces showed up and found that their guns were useless against these monsters, the army was deployed instantly to deal with the situation and a sigh of calmness escaped from everybody's collected psyche.

But nobody knew the situation the military was actually in, the incident on City M beach was not an isolated incident but just one among the thousands of similar incidents happening all over the world, millions of demon dogs, thousands of flaming lions, hundreds of different types of monsters had begun attacking humans settlements all over the world, it was mass chaos, normal bullets wouldn't work against these monsters, by using hundreds of missiles and their most powerful weapons the military was barely able to clear the beaches of City M.

This was just city M, what about other cities, what about the world, just thinking about this had made the citizens despair, who knew if there were even that many weapons in the world, the generals had given up on the human population and started the doomsday protocol, escort the most powerful and rich people in the bunkers made for nuclear war.

But just as the doomsday protocol (which was just betting that nukes would be able to take out these monsters) was about to be activated humanity discovered its final hope, it started with a teenager in the U.S. but soon people all over the world awakened special powers, some could use fire with their bare hands, control plants, tame monsters, etc, people were awakening with all kinds of abilities, these abilities had finally given humanity a fighting chance in this new war.

The military of all the nations coordinated among themselves along with as many awakened people as they could gather and used the blood of millions to claim back the cities that were lost to the monsters, when the fire of the cataclysm ended, humanity discovered that the world population had been reduced by more than 25%, but all was still not at peace after this, the monsters would still show up from time to time in waves trying to take the cities.

Humanity had managed to escape from the jaws of extinction, and it was all thanks to the awakened, people realized that if they wanted to survive the only hope they had were the awakened, a world-awakened federation was created, it was an independent global body, and its only job was to kill the monsters and to protect humanity from extinction, thus the world entered a new age, an age much more brutal than any age that had ever come before.

During the same time, these events were taking place, another peculiar incident occurred all over the world. Maybe because the impact of this incident was so small that nobody cared about it, 1000 people from all over the world disappeared in a beam of white light.

The grief experienced by the loved ones of disappeared was like drops of water in an ocean; thus, they moved on burying their grief deep in their hearts just like how millions of people who had lost loved ones were doing in the world.

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10 years later the normalization period had begun, it was normal for people to see monsters appear on the outskirts of the city and awakened rushing to kill them, of course, this suppression was not always successful awakened died all the time and monsters got in the city and slaughtered citizens until the awakened federation could dispatch its suppression task force and retake the city, people had learned to move on quickly and thus the population of the humanity perhaps for the first time in history had started shrinking.

A mass migration event perhaps never seen before in history had started happening, more than 90% of the human population had gathered together in 200 massive cities, but these were macro events, and since when have humans been good at paying attention to the macro stuff, so life had started getting to normal and even predictable for some people.

Meanwhile awakened had become celebrities, they did advertisements, appeared in movies, and lived in multi-million mansions, everybody envied their life, and the dream career of kids had changed to becoming an awakened.

But unfortunately, life was not all roses for the awakened either, the federation had divided the awakened into 8 ranks from SS, S, A, B, C, D, E, and unclassified based on their capabilities, while the upper and middle ranks lived lives as the public perceived, C ranks and below lived barely trying to survive, they were used as meat shields for the high rankers, which made them die at an astonishing rate but since there were always people awakening, the new ones took the places of those who died, and thus the vicious status quo of the awakened industry was set.

On July 1, 2030, the awakened federation headquarters in the country S had been engulfed in chaos, a massive energy source had been detected in the forests near the ruin of a small town when the task force reached the source to investigate it found a giant pillar of light in the middle of the forest and a young boy lying on the ground, the task force quickly called reinforcement and set up a perimeter.

Soon the entire force of the branch office of the awakened federation had descended on that location, the first respondent had gotten shocked by this response and asked his superior officer

"Sir is this really necessary, almost all the agents of the branch office must be here"

"Well this is nothing kid, more people are on the way, even hundreds of high-class awakened are being called and all SS ranked awakened have been put on alert, soon even the officers from the foreign branches will start showing up, brace up kid, it looks like this is going to be a long night for us," said the superior officer

The first respondent was thanking the heavens that he had not tried to resolve the situation by himself and called for backup instead.

Soon a military hawk helicopter landed in the field and five important-looking men in military uniform and two people in lab coats walked out and got into the command tent that had been set up.

The people in lab coats started speaking "Generals, the energy signatures we have been gathering from this place have surpassed the energy signature of all the portals that have opened till now combined, the only prediction we can make is that it will be a monster surpassing SS rank, our only hope is that it was a freak energy wave and not an actual monster, otherwise, the best we can hope for is to stall for some time"

"What about the boy we found at the scene," said one of the generals

"From the initial facial scan, we have confirmed that the boy was a resident of the capital city, but his current status in the database is presumed dead, we have taken him into custody and started through investigation, but his energy signatures are normal, barely enough to be considered an awakened," said the man in the lab coat

While this entire situation was taking place, a young man who looked around 21 had flown from the beam of light, and no one had been able to notice him.

He landed near a small pond and saw his reflection

"I look just like I did when I crossed over, not a lot of things shock me at this point, but having my teen look back after 1000 years is creeping the hell out of me" wondered the man

The man looked up and saw the place he was in, the place gave him a familiar feeling, it was like he was both a stranger and a native of this place, he was experiencing an emotion that was unknown to him, after some time he finally recognized this feeling, it was the feeling of coming back home, after 1000 years the exact memories had faded but the feeling had remained somewhere deep in his heart,

"Mother, father, sister, how are you all? how are you doing " thought he

With a rush of emotion, he started following the path made by the fragments of his memories and his instinct and reached his old hometown but all he saw in that place was ruins, not a single leaving creature was to be found,

The guilt he had felt all these years, the sorrow he had felt by being separated from his family, and his powerlessness of not being able to return to earth, unluckily for the monsters in the forest, all the emotions he had experienced had merged into one single emotion rage,

When he was done venting his rage, he calmed down and thought about what he should do, he rushed off to find the nearest human settlement, and started asking people about what had happened to his hometown, his speech pattern sounded off to the people but they thought he was just some foreigner, after asking around for a while, he was finally able to get a sense of what had happened, a monster portal had opened nearby and destroyed the town and most of the people had been killed by the monsters, those who survived had been taken as migrants to city M by the government.

City M was huge before he disappeared, but now that the government had started sending migrants into city M, it had become a gigantic metropolis, finding two or three people in this giant mess was going to be very hard, but at least now he had hope, compared to the hopelessness he had felt in his life till now, he now at least had a path.

He managed to reach City M somehow, but when he finally entered the city, he was genuinely shocked at its current size, city M was one of the largest cities in the world even before but compared to now that was a small town, it had grown to a truly astonishing size, and it had become a medium-sized country in itself.

Now he finally comprehended the difficulty of the tasks that lay ahead of him, he had to search for a needly in this giant field of needles, give them a good life and make sure that they would be safe.

Although he had the experience of 1000 years with him, he had barely spent time in cities, and even now city battles were one of his weaknesses, every time he had fought in a city in the past, he ended up escaping.

Feeling lost he didn't know how but he had somehow ended up on the beach of city M, while once this was the heart of the city, packed with tourists and locals alike, now was the single most dangerous point in City M, the sea had become a popular point of invasion for the monsters and every night a few of them would come crawling out from it.

The property values in the area had been destroyed and were now a part of the slums mostly occupied by poor migrants.

Seeing the ocean had made him very nostalgic, the last time had come and sat he had come and sat here was when he was a fresh graduate who was lost and scared, the only thing he wanted to do was survive, today too he had come here lost and perhaps even a little scared, maybe is beach acted as a lighthouse for the lost who knew.

Just as he was wondering this, he saw a group of giant isopods emerge out of the sea and started attacking a young woman who was tied up, while she was trying to fight with all her might she was barely able to hold on and would probably end up dead in a minute or two.

He started smiling and walking towards the woman, wondering whether the lighthouse of the sea had attracted another lost one to its shore.