Umburals
Umbrals
Dark Fantasy • Sci-Fi Horror • Psychological Thriller
Before the Earth had names—before humans even existed—a war of extinction raged across the stars.
Two ancient alien races clashed: one, cold and calculated, sought to erase all biological life. The other, the Umbra-Kin, were creatures of living armor and essence-bound flesh. They consumed not matter, but life-force—the very core of consciousness. When their world was destroyed, the Umbra-Kin made a final, desperate choice.
They sealed their last offspring into crystalline bio-pods and cast them into space.
Most were lost. Shattered. Consumed by gravity. Forgotten.
Except one.
Shielded by another as it fell through a distant atmosphere, a single egg survived, piercing Earth’s crust in a time before memory. It remained hidden, deep underground, where it grew—dormant, undetected, but very much alive.
It bled radiation into the earth—a living virus of essence. Slowly. Silently. It infected the soil, the air, and eventually, the biology of every living thing. Over centuries, this alien pulse rewrote DNA, weaving into the evolution of early creatures and eventually, humans. No one noticed. But something strange had formed inside them:
A core. A glowing, invisible organ tied to energy, memory, and potential. It slept for generations.
Until it was awakened.
In the modern age, ten miners working deep beneath the earth stumbled upon a tunnel that wasn’t on any map. Inside: a massive, ancient door, pulsing with black veins and humming with forgotten power. When they forced it open, it reacted violently—erupting with black sludge and radiation.
They were thrown into a deeper chamber where they discovered the impossible.
A massive crystalline cocoon, suspended above a pit, leaking black goo and glowing faintly. Inside: the last of the Umbra-Kin. Wounded, dormant—but alive. Its presence reignited the infection already seeded across the planet.
The radiation spread rapidly, invisibly.
First through the air. Then through the blood.
Across Asia and North America, something began to awaken inside people. Some could access their white cores—harnessing strange powers or enhanced bodies. But others… couldn’t control it.
They began to change.
The first transformations were violent—flesh cracking open, bones reforging into weapons, organs replaced by crystal. They screamed. Killed. Lost control.
The world called them Umbrals.
At first, humanity believed them to be mindless monsters. But over time, it became clear: Umbrals were still human.
They remembered.
They thought. Spoke. Felt.
The madness that overtook them during their transformation was only the beginning. It was the pain, the overload, the virus merging with something it had once created.
When that initial surge passed, many regained themselves—only to find they were no longer fully human. They were hybrids of man and weapon, driven by a new, unbearable hunger: the need to feed on core essence to survive.
Many gave in.
Some resisted.
Others... adapted.
Umbrals learned to mimic, to stalk, to strategize. Their intelligence exceeded what it once was. And their numbers grew fast—faster than any military could react.
Entire regions collapsed under their rising population.
In desperation, human survivors began training core-born soldiers—those capable of stabilizing and weaponizing the white core energy within them. These elite fighters stood between the remnants of civilization and total collapse.
But it wasn’t enough.
Cities crumbled. Governments fell. The black ooze spread faster than borders could hold it. People began whispering about the cocoon deep beneath the earth—the Cradle Below—still pulsing with life, still remembering its species’ extinction.
And it wasn’t sleeping anymore.
Now, the world stands on a knife’s edge. The line between monster and man is blurring. Umbrals walk among humans, and humans tap into power that once belonged only to the stars.
A second war is coming. Not in the sky,
