The air outside was colder than he remembered.
Damian zipped his coat up to his throat, fingers brushing the worn fabric of a life he no longer belonged to. Snow hadn't fallen yet, but the sky was heavy—clouds swollen with whatever hell was about to come down.
His boots crunched softly against the pavement as he walked toward the edge of town. The streets of Arbat were calm. Too calm. The kind of silence that should feel peaceful but didn't. He could already see the cracks beneath it how people paused near their windows, how every car that passed was slower than it should've been.
Everyone felt it. But chose to stay ignorant. Fucking idiots!
The system message that hit every human hours ago most people probably thought it was a prank. A glitch. Some sick joke from Russia.
He wished it were.
Damian pulled the collar higher and lowered his hood. His breath fogged the air in front of him. Every step forward pulled at a knot behind his ribs. His heartbeat didn't feel like his own. It hadn't since he woke up in that room.
Like her throat hadn't been crushed in the future he died in.
The memory came back sharp. The sound his Sister windpipe made. How her blood felt on his hands when he tried to stop it, knowing he was already too late.
But she was alive this morning. Making breakfast. Humming some stupid song while she buttered toast.
The regression worked.
Sort of.
He clenched his jaw and kept walking.
He had maybe five days before Moscow fell.
Not collapsed. Maybe erased forever.
No military intervention saved it. No bomb, no divine intervention. The gate swallowed it whole street by street, building by building until the only sound left was static. And screaming.
He remembered that. He remembered all of it.
The worst part? No one came to help. Not because they didn't want to. But because they couldn't.
Russia's pride made them hesitate. The world thought it was just another Russian experiment gone wrong. Everyone laughed at it at first until the broadcasts went silent.
Too late. Way too late.
Damian crossed the bridge out of town, feet dragging a little. His muscles still weren't fully recovered. The side effects of regression weren't visible on the surface, but they were there. His stamina felt jagged. Even the system hadn't fully stabilized in him yet—whatever this new version of it was.
The screen still haunted him.
Main Global Quest has begun. Warning: Failure to complete quests will result in world penalties.
***
[Level: 0]
STR +0 | DEX +0 | INT +0
[User: Damian Voss]
[Passive ability: Void]
[Ability: Shadow Step]
[New Quest: First Flame Ignition]
[Location: Gate in Moscow]
[Penalty: System Delay for all others]
[Reward: ???]
[Time limit: 155 Hours]
***
Quest has been assigned to: Damian Voss. (Others may attempt this objective. Outcome affects entire world.)
If humans were to not awaken then they would stand no chance against the demons.
One hundred fifty-five hours. About six and a half days to save everyone who'd never know he tried.
Lucky him..
Damian was still unaware of the fact that the system had only activated for him. Why him? Why not some military genius or world leader? Did the system know that he regressed?.
There was something else about it that didn't sit right. The layout. The phrasing. Like it was watching him just as much as he was reading it.
He stopped at a small convenience store on the outskirts. Nothing flashy. Just old shelves, humming fridges, a bored man behind the counter scrolling through his cracked phone.
Perfect.
Damian didn't speak. He went straight to the back, grabbed two energy bars, a pack of canned coffee, and then paused.
A rack of masks. Dusty. Maybe left over from the pandemic years ago. Most were flimsy paper ones.
But near the bottom, folded up and ignored, was a black tactical mask—rubber filter panels, angular vents, thick straps. Not exactly inconspicuous. But it would do.
He picked it up.
He didn't want to be seen in Moscow. Not like this. If this worked—if he actually turned the tide he couldn't afford attention. Not yet.
People wouldn't understand how he knew where to go. What to do. They'd start asking questions.
And the second they did?
They'd either fear him... ...or kill him.
He set the mask on the counter. The clerk didn't even look up until Damian dropped a few crumpled bills in front of him.
"You know these don't do much, right?" the man muttered in Czech, still half-scrolling.
"I'm not wearing it for the air," Damian replied.
The man looked up finally, eyebrows furrowing slightly. Something in Damian's voice made him pause. Made him really look at the guy buying tactical gear at eleven PM.
Damian met his eyes just long enough to let the silence answer the rest.
No more questions.
He left without another word.
***
Two hours later, he sat on the train.
Head down. Hoodie up. Bag at his feet. The mask tucked inside it. He could feel the weight of it like a brick.
The train car wasn't full, but it wasn't empty either. A couple of students sharing earbuds. A woman with a suitcase checking her watch. A guy in a business coat nervously checking his phone every few seconds.
The news was starting to catch on.
Still no official announcement. Still no global panic.
But the whispers were there. Phrases like "Moscow," "military lockdown," "false alert," were passing between lips like cigarette smoke. Everyone had heard something. Nobody wanted to be the first to say they believed it.
Damian sat still, arms crossed.
He remembered this train. The same one he took 15 years ago when things were still normal. When his biggest worry was whether he'd left the stove on. Before the world found out that monsters didn't crawl out of myths.
They clawed through gates.
The worst part was knowing how pointless most resistance would be.
In the original timeline, the Russian military deployed within 48 hours. Tanks rolling through Red Square. Jets screaming overhead. Full lockdown.
None of it mattered.
The creatures weren't physical in the way people expected. They weren't just monsters—they were distortions. Reality bending in places it wasn't supposed to. You didn't just shoot them. You had to understand them. Break them from the inside.
And to do that, you needed one thing.
A System.
The same system that was apparently his alone. Great. No pressure.
Damian exhaled slowly, eyes closed. The weight of everything pressed down at once.
He had one shot to stop this.
Not save the world. Not be a hero.
Just... delay the end.
Give the world time to figure out what the hell was happening.
His phone buzzed.
A text from his Sister.
"You alive?" Out of the blue.
Fuck.
If he screwed this up, she'd die again. Everyone would. And this time, there might not be another chance to fix it.
Fate of the earth was in his hands.
The train shuddered slightly as it picked up speed. Outside the window, small towns blurred past lights in windows, people going about their lives, completely unaware that their continued existence depended on one dead man with trust issues and a tactical mask.
No pressure at all.
When the train pulled into the station, it was nightfall. The platform lights flickered overhead, casting everything in sickly yellow. The city skyline ahead still looked normal—lit windows, cars moving like nothing was wrong.
But the sky above Moscow told a different story.
It wasn't night. Not really.
There was a tear. A vertical rip hovering miles above the city—barely visible, but wrong. Like a scar bleeding purple light. Anyone who looked long enough would see it.
Most chose not to.
Smart people.
He pulled the mask from his bag.
The rubber was cold against his face as he strapped it on. It clung tight, filtered his breath into soft hisses. He adjusted the straps, pulled up his hood, and looked into the reflection of a station window.
No more Damian Voss.
Just The Ghost with no identity.
Time to hunt some of this filthy shit.
Gate appeared.