Chapter 1 — The Sky Split Open
Yaoundé, Cameroon — 2:14 PM
It started with a line in the sky.
A glowing seam, like someone had carved reality open with a scalpel, hovered above the hills of Mont Fébé. It pulsed, humming like a living thing. Then the world froze. The air turned dense. Time stuttered.
The crack burst open.
Light poured in. No, not light—power. It bled through the heavens, howling like a wounded god. The sky tore itself apart. From the breach spilled nightmares: creatures with jagged limbs, shrieking mouths, wings made of bone, and no known physics.
Yaoundé's skyline was swallowed.
Half the city died in the first twenty minutes.
Andrew
Andrew should've died too.
He was in the university library when the quake hit. A bookshelf collapsed next to him—narrowly missing his skull. He scrambled out, coughing on dust, sprinted blindly past glass-shattered halls and screaming students. Outside was worse.
Chaos.
Creatures.
Blood.
He ducked behind an overturned taxi, clutching his side. His lungs burned. His hands were shaking. That's when it happened.
"Player Detected… Syncing with system… initializing trait: Uncommon – Shadow Affinity."
Andrew blinked. "What…?"
"Status Window unlocked."
A blue holographic screen flickered into view in front of him. His name. Age. Stats. Empty skills. Just like a game.
He didn't get a chance to read it.
The screen glitched.
Flickering. Shifting. Then—
"ERROR. Trait Overload Detected."
"System Corruption Imminent."
"Warning: Anomaly—'Primal Entity Detected.'"
"Forc—-i—rra—re…protoc–ol...FAILED."
The words twisted, melted, then vanished.
Andrew's eyes rolled back as cold overtook him. His limbs froze. His breath caught in his throat.
Then, silence.
Void
He was no longer in the street.
No longer in his body.
He floated, like a ghost watching his own form crumble in slow motion. The world around him dissolved into darkness. Not just absence of light—but an existence of its own. The kind that swallowed thought.
He drifted for what felt like hours. Days. Years.
Then—
Eyes.
Two of them. Not glowing. Not human. They blinked into existence like dying stars—vast, ancient, watching him.
Andrew tried to scream, but no sound came.
The eyes didn't move. They simply watched, as if weighing something deeper than life or death. Then a whisper, soundless yet thunderous, echoed all around him:
"You are mine."
Reality snapped back.
Andrew gasped awake. Cold sweat drenched his skin. He was lying in the shadow of a ruined market stall. Fires burned in the distance. Screams filled the air.
"Status Interface Updated: Class - ??"
"Trait: Embodiment of Primal Darkness (Sealed)."
"Level 1. EXP: 0/10"
"All darkness-related skills will evolve passively."
The screen looked… wrong. Corrupted. Some letters flickered. Some lines were missing entirely. But he didn't have time to process.
A screech tore through the air.
He turned.
Down the street—goblins. Ugly green-skinned things with long claws and crooked weapons. They chased a girl. Blood stained her torn shirt and bare arms. She moved fast—but she was hurt. Limping. Her magic sparked faintly in her palms, fizzling.
Three goblins closed in.
Andrew reacted on instinct.
He stepped into the shadow of a fallen signpost—and emerged five meters ahead, black smoke trailing behind him. One goblin lunged—
Andrew's hand moved, almost on its own.
Dark tendrils erupted from the ground and pierced the creature clean through.
"Skill Unlocked: Umbra Constructs (Lv.1)"
"EXP Gained: +2"
"EXP: 2/10"
The other goblins turned too slow. Clara—burning with a last spark of fire—launched a small flame-blast at one, charring it. But the third raised its blade—
Andrew blinked forward again, tackled it mid-air, and crushed its skull with a spike of darkness that sprang from his palm.
The silence that followed was sharp. Heavy.
The girl staggered. Looked up at him.
Tan skin. Blood-matted hair. A strange mix of rage and awe in her eyes.
"…You're not normal," she muttered.
Andrew didn't answer. He couldn't. His heart was pounding. The cold inside him had returned—but this time, it felt right.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"…Andrew," he said quietly.
She nodded, wobbling on her feet. "Clara. I owe you."
She dropped to her knees, exhausted.
Andrew reached out. Not to catch her—but to pull her into the shadow with him, before more monsters came.
The End of the World — Day 1
From broken cities and corrupted systems, something new was awakening.
Something born of chaos.
Something born in darkness.