From a young age I was taught that the world rewards the kind and the hard working. But growing up I saw that everyone around possessed something that they hid away from others. Most people in society wore intricate marks and hid away their malice behind it.

In my opinion compassion and kindness were only propoganda spread by people to suit their own situations. When needed to they could hide behind a curtain of sympathy and gain their dose of compassion but when needed could be as cold as ice to others.

When I entered high school I saw lots of things, back biting, broken friendships, loss of sanity, well that last one's an extreme case but I believe that in conclusion empathy and kindness do not exist.

They are mere tools that people use to ease their own guilt or maybe that's just what my sociopathic tendencies led me to believe.

To satisfy my need to see real kindness I tried various times but alas I never found it. Thus I turned to the next best thing - Fiction.

Reading brought me comfort , a means of escape and thats what got me into writing. After a couple of trials I stared my own creation - Saga of the ethreal.

I tried to frame a world that could be believable where in cruelty, empathy and in compassion, malice could be found.

The story was based on a modern world, one in which all of a sudden in 1983 cracks broke open in the sky and with that came a torrent of calamities ranging from forced evolution of animalistic lifeforms to the discovery of a force that existed in existential dimensions.

To break it down humans are 3 dimensional creatures and some believe space or time to be the 4th dimension but in that world existed Mana which was residing in the 5th dimension.

Human beings couldn't perceive it due to a membrane and the innate nature of mana but with a long due overdose the mana ran rampant and thus created the godforsaken fissure in the sky.

With the crack, mana broke through the dimensional suppression or in another way human senses broke through the dimensional constraints and now humans gained the ability of sense a new force one that was reality altering.

Indeed in 1983 fantasy was not a prevalent genre but the concept of magic was quite prevalent and thus this day was marked as the Great Awakening.

With the sudden influx of mana humans began what they were good at and started researching the nature of the force.

But at the same time humans found themselves evolving at an alarming rate.

Increased strength, intelligence, life expectancy, vitality, agility and even bizzare abilities like night vision and heat resistance.

But as the principle of casualty states that with good comes evil and thus humans were not allowed to bask in the reverence of the new found energy and were pulled into and intergalactic war among an alliance of many races and a parasitic race.

The start of the war was marked with the great invasion in which an army of monsters invaved the planet and ran rampant until the alliance lended help to the newly awakened humans and helped repel the fould parasites.

But the losses were not cut short as humanity's population was subjected to incoherent slaughter even with the alliance's aid but with the shaky situation of the alliance itself in a last ditch attempt all hope was put into the planted called earth and all races moved to this planet itself marking it the last bastion against the tyranny of the parasites.

The reformed planted was divided into domains and the races tied together by the fight against the parasites started trading with each other and building resources while humans started blooming in mana handling and growing superhuman levels of strength to try and stand together with the other races.

After ever on going skirmishes and battles about 128 years passed by while for some races it was only a small Blur of time humans were able to adapt and thus was built Aegis an institution to create the next generation of heroes to combat the ever growing threat of parasites and this is where my novel begins.

Now while creating this world I was ecstatic and designing the story and arcs brought me joy which slowly turned into bitterness and jealousy at not being able to experience that myself.

Slowly and slowly I started losing intrest but I powered through and finished the novel.

The main story was not very uncommon but still had plenty of cliche tropes in it as a result of laziness but finally finishing the story I was happy.

In my happiness I decided to take a break and go out, as a university student that too of psychology I had plenty of free time and decided to visit the pool but falling into the unmanned deep end of the club pool was not in my plan.

In a slip of my foot I landed head first into the water and panic gripped me. Flailing around brought my already low energy reserves to even lower and I could hear muffeled shouting but in that moment it was hard to not fall into peaceful deep slumber.