As I lay there in the rubble, panting and aching, fragments of my life before the catastrophe began to surface.
I should probably introduce myself. My name is John Lee. If you had asked anyone who knew me before all of this—teachers, classmates, anyone—they'd have told you I was just another face in the crowd. A quiet, 17-year-old high school student who didn't stand out in any way. The kind of kid you'd barely notice as you passed by. A week ago, I would have laughed if someone had told me I'd be running for my life from monstrous creatures. Or worse, I would have ignored them entirely.
I wasn't the social type. Parties, cliques, school drama... none of that ever appealed to me. I was the kid who spent lunch breaks in the library, lost in the pages of dusty, old books.
History fascinated me, especially the great wars and the minds behind them. While other kids watched movies or played video games, I buried myself in Sun Tzu's The Art of War. I devoured books on Roman battle formations, Ottoman war strategies, and the lives of generals like Napoleon and Timur. Attila the Hun, known as the 'Scourge of God,' and Genghis Khan, who forged the largest empire the world has ever known, became my heroes—not for their cruelty, but for their unparalleled vision, discipline, and cunning.
My fascination with strategy wasn't just a hobby; it was an escape.
My parents divorced when I was ten. I never understood their arguments back then, but they were constant. One day, my father packed his bags and left. He tried to stay in touch at first—occasional calls, awkward visits—but over time, those stopped. It was just me and my mom after that.
Mom worked long hours to keep us afloat. She loved me, I knew that much, but her exhaustion showed in everything she did. She had little energy left for me, and I didn't blame her. I learned to fend for myself, to be alone. Books became my sanctuary.
The lives of the great strategists I read about inspired me. Their brilliance, their ability to turn impossible odds into victory, gave me a sense of purpose, even if only in my imagination. I'd spend hours studying the way Napoleon organized his armies or how Timur used feigned retreats to outwit his enemies. I didn't care if people called me weird or boring. My books were my friends, my mentors, my escape.
But it wasn't just their strategies that fascinated me—it was their resilience. All of them, in one way or another, had faced crushing defeats and impossible odds. Yet, they endured. They adapted. They overcame.
Perhaps I clung to those stories because, deep down, I wanted to believe I could do the same.
That's who I was—a lonely teenager with no friends, no social life, and no real ambitions beyond the pages of history books. I wasn't strong. I wasn't brave. I wasn't even particularly smart.
And yet, here I was, lying in the ruins of my town, the faint glow of dawn spilling over the horizon. I'd survived the unthinkable, but only just.
My mind drifted back to the passage from one of those old books: 'A commander's strength lies not in his numbers but in his ability to adapt, to turn weakness into advantage.'
I clenched my fists, dirt and ash caking my fingers. My spiritual root had awakened, but it was nothing more than a seed—a faint glimmer of potential. If I wanted to survive, if I wanted to protect what little I had left, I would have to learn to adapt. I would have to cultivate.
In a twisted way, the monsters had given me a battlefield. And for the first time in my life, I wasn't just a bystander reading about someone else's war.
This time, the war was mine.