"I'm Apex."
"Once the hero they cheered for. Once the symbol of hope. Now… I'm nothing."
"This is my story."
The city throbbed around him—lights flashing like heartbeat, music hammering through the streets, laughter and voices rising like a tide. Alive, vibrant… and utterly indifferent to him.
"My world has two kinds of people," he said, voice low, darkly amused. "And no, it's not just good or evil. We call them The Gifted and The Nats."
"The Gifted."
Born with abilities that defy reason—flight, super speed, bending reality, controlling elements. Some vanish, some read minds, some manipulate machines with thought. Dangerous. Unpredictable. Godlike.
"The Nats."
Ordinary humans, powerless in a world gone mad. Some survive. Most get crushed. Survival is all they can hope for.
"You might wonder if my world was always like this," Apex said, a bitter laugh escaping him. "It wasn't. Fiction stayed fiction. Powers were stories, not reality… until the Aether Break."
He let the words hang. "The event that shattered reality, made the impossible real. Some awoke with powers. Some were left powerless. Chaos swallowed us whole."
At first, panic ruled. Powers used recklessly. Society teetered on collapse. Death was everywhere, and no one knew who to trust.
"But we adapted. Some survived. Mastered their gifts. Built organizations to protect the weak… or themselves. Learned the rules of a world that had no rules."
A shadow moved in the alleys behind him. A whisper of danger, unseen yet unavoidable, like the world itself was waiting—watching—for the moment to strike.
He exhaled, heavy with memory. "This is the world I live in now. Where the extraordinary is ordinary, and nothing is safe. The impossible… is real. And it's merciless."