No one remembers the city's name anymore. Time eroded it, like wind gnawing stone—an erasure born not from years, but from the singular moment when the sky itself was torn open.
It started with the storm.
Lightning split the heavens in half. Not the kind that flickered then faded, but a ceaseless vein of burning white that lingered like a wound in the clouds. Thunder rumbled like the roar of titans. Then the air warped. The clouds churned into violet spirals.
And the Rift appeared.
A vertical scar across reality, jagged and deep. Its edges shimmered with iridescent hues as if the laws of the world buckled around its presence. For a second, no one moved. The world held its breath. Then, they came through.
Beasts.
Impossible things. Limbs in the wrong places. Skins of glistening metal or molten stone. Mouths that opened in silence but carried hunger loud enough to drown out screams. They fell on the city like a plague. Chaos bloomed in seconds.
Sirens wailed. Concrete cracked. Glass shattered under claw and heat and force. People ran. Most didn't make it. Those who tried to fight died first. Guns barely scratched the monsters. Their hides deflected bullets like raindrops.
Soreil was seventeen when the sky tore open.
He remembered the rooftop—the sharp bite of wind at his back as he stared upward, watching the Rift open like a divine eye. He didn't know what it was. No one did. But something inside him moved. A weightless tremor in the chest. Not fear. Something older. Hungrier.
He remembered running. He remembered screaming. He remembered the sound of buildings crumbling under the weight of a beast larger than the subway station it had crushed.
He remembered his mother turning to push him out of the way.
And he remembered her being too slow.
The beast that killed her wasn't even one of the stronger ones. It was quick, though. Thin, with claws that shimmered like glass and eyes full of static. It moved like a reflection through broken mirrors.
It didn't roar. It simply struck.
And then she was gone.
It wasn't noble. It wasn't cinematic. It wasn't fair.
Soreil had fled, limping and broken, blood drying on his skin and panic crawling like insects beneath his flesh. He spent hours in the shadows of the dead city, hiding beneath twisted steel and reeking alleyways, watching from the corners of his eyes as the beasts prowled.
The city died in under a day. And no help came.
---
He survived on still-warm bread from shattered bakeries. On water siphoned from broken sinks. For days, maybe weeks, Soreil lived like a ghost—avoiding light, avoiding movement. The beasts didn't patrol like animals. They hunted.
And when they saw you—really saw you—their bodies changed.
It was like something in their minds snapped. Eyes burned with bloodlust. Muscles swelled. Claws extended. Reason vanished, replaced by raw, frenzied rage. It wasn't just instinct—it was hatred.
That's when humanity truly realized: the moment a beast noticed you, it would never stop until you were gone.
But then came the first Elemental Beast.
Unlike the others, it wasn't monstrous in form. It was beautiful. A serpent of living lightning, coiling through the dead skyline like a river of wrath. It glowed with power, and wherever it passed, other beasts fled.
Soreil saw it once, from a high-rise window. It didn't notice him. But the building it slithered through melted in seconds. And when it died—days later, slain by something unseen—people found what remained.
Its heart.
Or rather, the crystal that pulsed in place of one. A radiant thing, veined with gold and blue, humming with heat. A group of survivors touched it—and survived the touch.
And something changed.
One of them, an older man missing an arm, lifted the crystal.
And his arm returned.
Made not of flesh—but lightning.
From that day forward, humanity realized: Elemental Beasts were different. Rarer. Smarter. More powerful. But if you killed one—and lived—their core gave more than just power.
They gave abilities.
Not all who claimed them survived. Some burned from within. Others vanished into air, consumed by the element they tried to harness. But the ones who endured became something new.
Transcenders.
Soreil would never forget the first time he saw one fight. A girl—maybe nineteen—stood on a car rooftop as dozens of regular beasts closed in. They moved like demons. But she—she moved like wind.
She didn't have a weapon.
She was the weapon.
And when she lifted her hand, fire burst from her skin. Pure flame, alive and screaming. It consumed the beasts like dry grass.
She collapsed afterward.
Her friends carried her away. But something inside Soreil ignited then.
Not hope.
Resolve.
He would become one of them.
He would hunt an Elemental Beast.
He would take its core.
And he would never be helpless again.
---
He started small. Traps. Lures. Study. Every beast had a pattern, even the rabid ones. Soreil began mapping the city, sketching crude diagrams from a scavenged notebook. He timed patrols. Measured movements.
He hunted scraps from fallen Transcenders' bodies. Weapons half-melted, armor cracked. He learned their gear, tried to fix what he could. He trained in silence, swinging broken pipes, replicating strikes he saw survivors use.
But most of all, he studied lightning.
It called to him.
Every time the sky split with storm, he felt it in his bones. Like something waiting. Wanting.
When the day came, he was ready.
He lured a lesser elemental—a coyote-shaped beast trailing sparks from its fur—into a trap of wires and soaked metal. He barely survived. It ripped his side open, fractured his collarbone, burned his skin.
But he won.
And at its heart, beneath bone and static, the crystal pulsed.
He reached for it.
Pain.
Agony like nothing else. Like being shattered from within. His vision burned white. His mind unraveled. Every nerve screamed.
Then—
Silence.
And power.
The wound on his side sealed. His broken collarbone snapped into place. His fingers curled with purpose. And lightning whispered at his fingertips.
He had changed.
And in the ruin of that street, standing atop the body of his first elemental kill, Soreil whispered to himself:
"This is just the beginning."