The world broke and no one noticed.

At first, it was just whispers—rumors of sickness, a new strain of flu, some unremarkable infection, nothing to fear. No one cared. We were too busy, too distracted by our own hunger for power, comfort, and indulgence.

I remember that first taste of the end, though. It was subtle, like the bitter sting of a blade just before it cuts. No one saw it coming.

The city was already decaying. Not because of the virus—but because the people who ruled it, the ones who thought they were untouchable, had eaten away at its heart. They didn't understand what real hunger felt like. They thought they could control everything, even life itself.

They were wrong.

The virus came from the cracks we didn't even know existed. It didn't just infect the body—it infected the mind, too. By the time it started showing its true face, it was already too late. We were all infected.

I never believed in fate. Fate was for those who didn't know how to fight. But there's something else, something that whispers in your ear in the dark—a hunger beyond human. That's what the virus was. A hunger. A hunger for death.

They tried to escape it, tried to lock down the city, cut the infected off from the uninfected. But what good is a wall when the infection is already inside your bones? The city burned, but the hunger only grew stronger.

I know because I saw it. I watched the change, felt it creep into my own skin. The infected were mindless, but they weren't the real monsters. The real monsters were the ones still breathing, the ones who used the chaos as a backdrop for their games of power.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There's a story here—a story of how I came to be who I am.

My story starts long before the virus, in the streets where the forgotten lived. Before the chaos, before the monsters, there was a boy. And that boy was me.