[[This Is Mesnt To Explain The Current World And How The Rifts Happened, As Well As Give Further Detail Of The World's Current State. Hope This Helps!]]
…..
The year was 2017, a time when humanity believed itself to be standing on the threshold of its greatest era. Technology surged forward, global communication had never been faster, and despite the lingering shadows of politics and war, the average man and woman felt the future was theirs to claim.
But all of that was a dream too fragile to survive what came next.
They called it the Catalyst Event.
No one knows who first coined the name. Some said it was a scientist from CERN who had watched in disbelief as space itself warped and bled in front of their eyes. Others claimed it came from journalists scrambling to label the phenomenon when the first footage spread across the internet. Whatever the origin, the title stuck. The day reality broke—August 3rd, 2017—was henceforth remembered as the moment the age of man ended and the age of mana began.
…..
At exactly 3:17 PM GMT, a tear opened in the skies above New Delhi, India. At first, it looked like a storm cloud—a dark spiral twisting in on itself. But it wasn't water vapor or lightning. It was something more impossible: a jagged wound in space. The air shimmered, gravity twisted, and the sound of the world itself groaned like the earth was giving birth to something it was never meant to carry.
From that wound, the first Rift was born.
And from the Rift came the first Raiders.
Monsters—if they could be called that—poured into the streets of New Delhi. Some resembled creatures from mythology: towering, tusked ogres with skin like cracked stone; wolf-like beasts with glowing eyes; serpentine horrors that slithered and hissed through the panicked crowds. Others were simply alien—things that defied classification, their bodies shifting as though their very existence was unstable in our world.
The Indian army responded within minutes, but what they discovered was the second horror of the Catalyst Event: modern weaponry was useless. Bullets slowed or bent when striking the creatures. Tanks shells detonated, only to have the monsters crawl out of the fire unscathed. Even bombs, dropped from the sky, produced craters filled with smoke and ash—but when the haze cleared, the beasts still stood.
New Delhi burned that day. Entire blocks were swallowed in blood and chaos. Yet even as the Indian government scrambled to respond, the phenomenon spread.
Within hours, other Rifts opened across the globe:
One in São Paulo, Brazil, unleashing swarms of insect-like horrors that darkened the skies.
One in Berlin, Germany, from which armored giants marched as though stepping out of ancient legend.
One in Johannesburg, South Africa, birthing serpents so massive their coils wrapped around buildings.
And one in New York City, where winged predators perched atop skyscrapers and screamed with voices that shattered glass.
In a single day, humanity learned how small it truly was.
The United Nations called for emergency summits, but governments were powerless. Armies failed. Police failed. Civilization trembled as cities fell under siege.
It seemed like the end of the world.
But then, something else happened.
Amid the despair, ordinary people began to… change. Survivors of Rift encounters told stories of impossible feats—men conjuring flames from their bare hands, women lifting cars with strength that defied logic, children bending shadows as though they were clay. At first, these were dismissed as hysteria, but soon there were too many accounts, too many witnesses.
Scientists discovered the phenomenon they later named Mana—an energy seeping from the Rifts, altering reality itself. When exposed, some humans began to Awaken, unlocking supernatural abilities.
The world watched in awe and terror as the first Rangers—as they would later be called—rose to fight back. A man in Tokyo turned his blood into blades, cutting down beasts that had slaughtered police. A woman in Cairo commanded sandstorms that buried monsters alive. A teenager in Los Angeles ran faster than bullets, carrying civilians out of collapsing buildings.
For the first time since the Catalyst Event began, humanity had hope.
…..
The following year of 2018,was one of pure chaos.
Governments scrambled to organize Awakened individuals. Some nations treated them as saviors, recruiting them into newly formed Ranger divisions. Others treated them as weapons, forcing them into militarized units. Not all Rangers were heroic; many abused their gifts, using their powers for personal gain in a world now fractured.
And the Rifts did not stop appearing. Every week, more tore open across the globe. Some closed after days. Others remained indefinitely, vomiting Raiders into the world until entire regions became uninhabitable.
The First Rift War lasted through 2018 into early 2019. The death toll was catastrophic: nearly 300 million lives lost worldwide. Cities turned to ruins. Borders collapsed. But amidst the destruction, humanity learned to adapt.
Rangers became formalized, classified by Rank depending on their abilities.
The first Guilds formed—private organizations where Rangers banded together for survival and profit.
The study of Mana became the most important scientific pursuit in human history.
And something else happened, something even stranger: not all who came through the Rifts were enemies.
In 2019, a Rift above the ruins of Rome spat out a group not of monsters, but of people—humanoids with elongated ears, bearing weapons of silver and crystal. They were Elves, and they were not hostile. Their world, they explained, had been consumed by a Rift far larger than Earth's, and they fled here for refuge.
Later, others arrived:
Dwarves, who brought with them metallurgies Earth had never dreamed of.
Beastkin, animal-featured races, some nomadic, some eager to trade.
Even factions of Demons, who claimed to oppose the monstrous Raiders and sought sanctuary.
It was chaos at first, but slowly, humanity realized the truth: the Rifts were not one-way doors. They were bridges.
Entire civilizations had collapsed under the same phenomenon, and refugees now sought Earth as their last haven.
Not all humans accepted them. Wars broke out, not just against Raiders but against outsiders. Prejudice ran rampant. But as the years passed, integration began.
…..
By 2025, it was not uncommon to see elves walking city streets, dwarves working in engineering firms, or beastkin enrolling in universities.
The world was irrevocably changed—not just by monsters, but by neighbors from beyond the stars.
Eight years later, the world is scarred but standing.
Vast swaths of land remain dead zones, overrun by Rifts that never closed.
Ranger Guilds are now as influential as governments, with the strongest rivaling nations in power.
Technology has leapt forward, accelerated by dwarven craft and elven mana-theory. Cities are brighter, stranger, and more alive than ever.
And society is a delicate balance: humans, elves, dwarves, beastkin, and others living side by side, not always peacefully, but together.
But still—the Rifts remain. Raiders still spill into the world. And whispers say that something even greater looms beyond the horizon, a force that binds the Rifts together, a purpose behind the chaos.
This is the world that Marcel Hugo was born into.