December 15, 2040, started just like any other winter day. I remember grabbing my morning coffee and watching people hurry to work through the snow-covered streets.
During lunch a strange event took place, a flash of green light lit up the sky.
It was just a single streak of a bright green beam, so faint that I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But then I saw the faces of others on the street, their heads tilted skyward, stopping their conversations mid-sentence.
In the sky, was a beautiful shimmer of emerald green that looked like a falling star caught in slow motion.
After a few minutes, more lights joined it, painting the sky in waves of glowing green. At first, it was breathtaking. People stopped in the streets to take pictures, pointing up at the light show with amazed smiles.
But then the lights grew stronger. What started as gentle streams turned into huge, blinding thick mist that flooded everything in an eerie green glow.
By nightfall, you couldn't escape it, the unnatural light seeped through every window and every crack, making the darkness impossible to find.
In Tokyo, sirens screamed through neon-lit streets as people stared at the sky in horror. The same scene took place all across the globe, from New York to Beijing, everyone watched the strange lights spread over their heads.
Then the strangest things began to happen.
A businessman in Tokyo started floating, electricity crackling around him as he screamed for help. Nearby, a teenage girl's panicked scream shattered windows and flipped cars with invisible force. In a hospital, a doctor's touch accidentally aged their patient by decades in mere seconds.
More people changed by the hour. Some could tear metal with their thoughts, others killed with just a look. The military tried to help, but what good are tanks against someone who can reshape reality?
For two days, the green light poured from the sky. Power grids failed and phone lines went dead. The world we knew crumbled as ordinary people became something more, or something worse.
When the light finally faded, nothing was the same. A quarter of Earth's population had powers they couldn't control. Families split apart, countries collapsed and wars erupted between the powered and non-powered, redrawing the world map in blood and fire.
From that moment on, humanity had changed forever.
Years later, on the red plains of Mars, a brown-haired man faced something that shouldn't exist in this world.
He stood in the ruins of the Mars colony, surrounded by bodies. Before him floated a creature that his emerald-green eyes hurt to look at. Sometimes it looked human, sometimes it was just shapes, and other times flesh that made his eyes burn and his stomach turn.
The man's hands shook as he fought to control the shadows moving under his skin. He'd chased this thing across space, following a trail of destruction. Now, facing it, he understood why it was classified beyond SSS-Class.
This wasn't just another person with powers. This was something god-like. Something that had been waiting.
"You're different from the others," the creature spoke directly into his mind in a deep, rough voice. "Your darkness is stronger."
The shadows beneath the man's skin spread out in response, beginning to cover the entire ground for as far as the eye could see. The same power that had changed Earth forty-five years ago now threatened to explode from him due to his anger.
"The light chose poorly," the creature said. "But the shadows chose well."
The man let his darkness flow freely, darkening the area around them. "The light didn't choose us," he said. "You sent it."
The creature shifted, its eyes glowing that same ominous dark green. "Now you understand why."
Above them, the Martian sky tore open, revealing horrors beyond imagination. The real invasion was beginning.
As darkness erupted from his body, turning Mars's day to night, the man prepared for a fight that would decide the fate of every world the green light had touched.