The air in the wastelands always smelled of rust and despair. Kiran Vallis adjusted his respirator as he scanned the horizon, his scavenger's instincts prickling with unease. The sun hung low, painting the twisted remains of Old London in shades of crimson and gold. Shadows stretched long over the ruins, masking dangers that lurked within.
"Keep your eyes peeled, Kiran," he muttered under his breath. His voice, muffled by the mask, still carried a note of urgency.
He'd ventured further than usual today. The scavenging jobs near the sky-city zones had dried up, and the few scraps he'd found weren't enough to trade for water, let alone food. Survival demanded risk.
He ducked under a collapsed archway, the structure half-swallowed by creeping vines that glowed faintly in the dusk—a reminder of the mutated flora that had overtaken the Earth's surface. His boots crunched against broken glass and debris as he entered what had once been a grand hall, now a graveyard of forgotten opulence.
And that was when he saw it.
At the center of the room, amidst the rubble and twisted steel beams, lay a faint shimmer. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat, casting eerie, dancing reflections on the walls. Kiran froze, his instincts warring with his curiosity.
"What the hell is that?" he whispered, gripping the hilt of his rusted machete.
He edged closer, his heartbeat matching the rhythm of the strange light. The object came into view—a crystal, no larger than his fist, resting in the midst of a charred crater. Its surface was covered in intricate, flowing symbols that seemed to shift and ripple as he stared.
Kiran crouched, his free hand hesitating over the crystal. He knew better than to touch things he didn't understand—he'd heard enough stories of scavengers who'd vanished ... or suffered worse fates. But there was something… magnetic about it.
"Could fetch a fortune," he reasoned, his voice shaky. "Maybe even buy a month in the lower tiers of a sky-city."
His fingers brushed the crystal.
The world exploded.
A surge of blinding light erupted from the artifact, throwing Kiran back against a crumbling pillar. He hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of him. As he gasped for breath, a strange sensation coursed through his body—heat and cold, pain and euphoria, all at once.
The light didn't fade. Instead, it grew, spiraling upward in jagged arcs until it tore through the ceiling, into the darkening sky. The fabric of reality seemed to ripple, and then—
A rift appeared.
It hung in the air like a jagged wound, crackling with energy. Beyond it, Kiran glimpsed… something. Shapes and colors that defied comprehension. A landscape of chaos and beauty, teeming with movement. He stared, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing.
Then they came through.
The first creature was like a shadow given form, its edges shimmering with static. It moved with an unnatural grace, its eyes glowing a malevolent red. Behind it followed others—some monstrous, others eerily humanoid, all exuding a sense of wrongness.
Kiran scrambled to his feet, adrenaline drowning out his terror. He clutched his machete, though he knew it was useless against whatever these things were.
The lead creature turned to him, tilting its head as if studying him. Then it smiled—a jagged, impossible grin.
"You shouldn't have done that, mortal," it hissed, its voice like the scrape of metal on stone.
Before Kiran could react, a beam of light shot past him, striking the creature square in the chest. It shrieked, dissolving into a mist of ash.
"Move!"
The voice was sharp, commanding. Kiran spun to see a woman standing in the ruins' entrance, her silhouette framed by the fading sunlight. She wore sleek, battle-worn armor, and a strange weapon crackled with blue energy in her hands.
"Unless you want to be Rift-fodder, get your ass in gear!"
Kiran hesitated for only a moment before running toward her, dodging another creature that lunged from the shadows. The woman fired again, the blast vaporizing the creature mid-air.
As they fled the ruins, the woman glanced at him, her eyes cold and calculating.
"What did you do?" she demanded.
"I—I touched it!" Kiran stammered, clutching his chest as they skidded to a stop in a narrow alley.
"Idiot." She grabbed his arm, pulling him forward. "You've opened a Rift. And now they'll come for you."
"Who's 'they'?" Kiran panted.
She didn't answer. Instead, she pushed him against the wall and pressed a device to his wrist. A jolt of pain shot through him as the device whirred to life, imprinting something onto his skin—a glowing sigil in the shape of an eye.
"What the hell is this?" he shouted, trying to pull away.
"Your only chance," she said grimly. "Welcome to the Rift Wars, rookie. Hope you're ready to die."
And with that, the rift above them widened, swallowing the sky.