# Chapter 1 — Nightmare In Sky City
Sky City, though only a bronze-ranked settlement, had always been lively. Because it sat close to the trenches it drew tourists by day and adventurers by night. Markets hummed; taverns stayed open; the city never quite slept.
But today something was off. The gate that was usually left open was shut tight. Half-transformed humans — hybrids — stood on the walls with grave faces, weapons in hand, staring toward the horizon.
Tens of kilometers away, massive shapes moved. The smallest among them towered over five meters. Beast hordes were common now, but this horde was enormous — far too much for a small city like Sky City.
The hybrids on the city wall brandished their weapons, seriousness carved on all their faces.
Outside the gate stood a bulky man over two meters tall. Crimson flames coated his skin, and claws more than seven inches long extended from his hands and feet. This was the mayor of Sky City — the city's only bronze-ranked hybrid.
In this age of chaos beasts, humans survived by becoming what had once been called sin: hybrids, half human, half beast. If fortune favored you, the beast's violence would not take you. If not, you became an upgraded beast.
Tens of kilometers wasn't far. The beasts crossed it in a few breaths and immediately unleashed their violence.
"Rooaarrrrr…" A panther the size of a van leapt toward the wall. Mid-air the mayor sliced it in half with a single swipe of his claws.
He remembered an old saying: In a fight, the first who moves gains the advantage. Without holding back, he transformed.
His hybrid was a flaming lion. The moment he transforms, the air within hundreds of meters turned scorching. He leapt — a single arc that carried him more than a hundred meters into the air — and fell like a meteor into the middle of the horde.
BOOOOM. The impact rang in every bone.
When he landed, crimson flames burst outward from his body and swallowed the surrounding beasts for hundreds of meters. The flames were strange — not only did they avoid the hybrids, but after they wrapped around the beasts, the creatures screamed, blackened, and then began to melt. Not even the thick-skinned three-horned rhinoceroses could escape. Even the double-winged falcons that could generate air currents from their bodies by simply moving could not hold back the burn. Within a blink, many of the beasts had liquefied into crimson goo on the dry ground.
All the hybrids on the wall watched the mayor's strike in awe and cheered. The sight made blood run hot in their veins.
They transformed in response — azure lions, scarlet-eyed snakes, golden king cobras, and more. Almost at once they leaped down from the city, which rose over a hundred meters, and charged. The weapon-wielding hybrids brandished swords, polearms, and blades, sprinting without hesitation into the now furious beast horde.
The sky above Sky City filled with strange powers: blades of rain, falling icicles, and huge boulders smashed from above.
The first exchange made something clear — hybrids were strong, but still weaker than true chaos beasts. In this opening clash a few hybrids died; the beasts didn't lose any. The beasts fought two hybrids at a time and still held their ground.
If not for the mayor's opening slaughter and the humans' numerical advantage, Sky City would have been finished. Even with numbers on their side, humans could only hold the line two-to-one and barely stay steady.
While the fighting raged, the mayor watched the horde. A horde of this size always had a leader; his job was to find that leader and kill it. That was the only effective way to stop a horde.
Just as the fight reached a tense point — when humans seemed to be gaining ground — something strange happened. The closed city gate turned to dust from the inside, blasted apart by a sound wave like a bird's cry. The pressure was so strong that several hybrids at the front line were shredded.
The change shocked everyone. A single thought rose in almost every mind: Where did this beast come from? It's terrifying.
When the dust settled, a crane-like bird stood where the gate had been. Its feathers were so black they seemed to swallow light. It rose over thirty meters tall; when it spread its wings they nearly reached a hundred meters. It gave off a rotten fishy smell, and the air around it tasted poisonous.
Its presence didn't just panic the hybrids — it intimidated them. Some weaker fighters lost the will to fight and reverted back to human form. The beasts weren't intimidated. If anything, they grew more violent and began reaping the hybrids who'd faltered.
The mayor recovered first. Still in hybrid form he bolted at the crane with all the force he could muster and slammed into it, sending the creature tumbling over a kilometer and making a crater more than a hundred meters wide when it hit the ground.
That brutal display lifted the hybrids' spirits. Seeing the mayor throw the crane so easily reminded them that not all hope was lost.
Adrenaline surged. A gorilla-looking hybrid slashed a praying mantis beast in two, leaped and cleaved a double-winged falcon in midair. Someone on the wall shouted, "The vice-chief of the Marble Guild is here!" — and before the name even left lips, claws cut the fighter in two. In the chaos of battle, distraction was death.
The crane cried out again — chirp, chirp, chirp — and panic rippled through the city. Mothers and grandmothers clutched prayer mats and dropped to their knees. Men with megaphones shouted to draw the beasts' attention; others screamed at the top of their lungs. Outside, hybrids fought for their lives; inside, people prayed.
The odd tactic worked, in a way. In the brief moments since the crane had appeared, more than twenty percent of the horde now lay dead; human casualties were still under half that number.
The mayor grabbed the crane by its talons, lifted its entire body up and tossed it into the air, then launched after it and punched out. His flaming fist didn't meet the bird; a few meters of distance remained. But when he struck, the space between them rippled and a crimson aura leapt from his fist to the crane.
The shockwave was devastating. Crimson fire swept across the battlefield and licked into the city. The mayor stared in disbelief — he had not expected the crane to deflect his strongest blow. He had poured almost everything into that attack hoping to slow the beast, to give others a chance, and now his plan lay in ruins.
Before he could react, the crane shot up with blinding speed. In an instant it rose twenty kilometers, wings flapping so hard that it birthed a tornado nearly a kilometer wide. The wind shredded the air; the smell of fishy poison choked lungs and made stomachs turn.
The mayor's scalp tingled. He yanked a crystal sword from his back, leapt as high as he could, gathered the last of his strength, and slashed.
What came from the sword wasn't a grand beam but a single red line — the width of a thumb but moving with impossible speed. It struck the crane's head in a perfect hit.
Then something no one expected happened: the blade deflected.
The red line spun away and fell toward Sky City.
The mayor watched helplessly as the energy plunged into the tallest building — which happened to be his own. KABOOM. The impact sent a shockwave across more than half of Sky City, a blast spanning almost five square kilometers.
Buildings toppled. Trees were uprooted. Street tiles flew like leaves. Dust billowed, choking the air. The dead were everywhere; children, elders, families crushed under falling stone. Screams braided with the wind. Wails rose as survivors clutched the lost and grieved in the aftermath.
In a single strike, more than half of Sky City was reduced to rubble and deep pits. Properties, livelihoods, lives — all gone. People cried aloud. Women sobbed over lost children and husbands. Men wept openly, watching everything they had built burned to dust.
Some were driven mad by grief. They ran toward the ruined gate, toward the battlefield, toward the beasts.
A man leaped from a half-collapsed building and screamed, "I'm finished, you demonic beasts! You've taken everything! I'll kill you!" He didn't make it two steps before a massive bird swooped down and with an iron beak mutilated him.
With the gate destroyed and so many hybrids dead or wounded, the remaining beasts poured into the ruined city. They trampled people under foot, turning streets into chaotic quakes. Sky City crumbled further under their weight. Survivors tried to drag family members to safety; the unlucky were crushed or became food.
The mayor, back in his human body, stood almost a kilometer away and watched, dumbfounded.
"Who would have thought my city would be destroyed by me?" he panted. His chest heaved. "I raised this from a village to what it is now… and it's destroyed before my eyes. I did my best. I used everything I had. Yet a bird played me, and now my city burns."
Hot tears welled in his eyes. The city he'd once been proud of — a monument to the work he and his dead brother had done — looked like nothing but rubble now.
---
Inside a collapsed building, while the mayor and other hybrids sacrificed everything, a boy crouched among crushed corpses. Apolo Quinn — an average-looking kid of about sixteen — cowered behind rubble and mutilated bodies.
Before the sword strike, he'd been enjoying small comforts with a few new companions. Then chaos had descended. He slid under an iron table as the walls fell, breathing shallow, his legs trembling. The screams and the groans of guards around him died out and a fearful silence took their place.
When the tremors subsided a fraction, he tried to push the table free. It wouldn't budge. He shook and pushed his hands aching, until, by accident, his wobbling leg knocked loose a chunk of rubble and a thin ribbon of sunlight slipped through.
Hope flared. He kept clearing the gap until he could squeeze through. He peeked and saw something he could hardly believe: debris rising into the sky, caught in a black tornado that spun slowly above the ruins. The table shook. He shoved it aside, rolled free, and bolted for the city gate, hoping the hybrids there might save him.
He ran past people half-buried in rubble, past hands reaching and pleading. He was terrified; he ran on, ignoring cries for help.
He hadn't gone far when a chill ran through his body. He turned with great effort and saw, a few meters away, a huge cobra the length of a school bus, hood flared, nearly half its bulk lifted and staring right at him.
When their eyes locked, Apolo froze. His legs would not move.
The scene was like some horror cut: a massive snake slithering toward a trembling boy while chaos raged around them.
Behind him, he didn't notice a jaguar running towards him until it was too late. It exploded forward, colliding with him. He felt as if a train had hit him; his body flew several meters and slammed into something solid. Dazed, he lifted his head and realized the solid object was the iron table he'd hidden beneath.
His legs screamed with pain; his arm felt disconnected, alive only through the ache it sent. He looked up at the black tornado whirling above. A thought slipped across his mind:
"If a bronze-ranked chaos beast is this terrifying, then how powerful are platinum ones?"
The jaguar roared. The snake hissed. The jaguar pounced.
Apolo had been born with a silver spoon: a royal home, comforts, and a life that shielded him from real fear. He had failed to awaken his hybrid bloodline a year ago, and his parents had sent him away with enough wealth to live quietly. He had never felt the kind of raw terror he felt now — the kind that hollowed him out and left him desperate.
As the jaguar's jaws closed, time slowed. His heart started beating wildly. The world seemed to narrow to a point.
Then something inside him snapped — or woke. Excitement and adrenaline surged. His blood felt like it boiled. His vision turned red; his head felt strange, as if something rearranged inside.
He opened his mouth and a sound escaped — not a scream, not a prayer, but a chirp: ancient, birdlike, a sound forgotten by time.
Chirp… chirpppp…
The noise rolled out like thunder. The sound waves rushed outward, then gathered and condensed into a red mist that swept across what remained of Sky City and beyond.
Everything living — chaos beasts and hybrids — froze. Even the massive crane fell from the sky, trembling on the ground and unable to even lift its head.
Apolo's body shook. He lost sense of reason; something reshaped him. His body swelled as blood-red scales and wings erupted. His legs hardened into talons; his arms stretched into wings. In a blink, the trembling boy was gone.
A blood-red phoenix rose in his place. It beat its wings, shook off the dust of the ruined city, and with a thunderous cry dove into the sky and like a meteor began falling down into the heart of the battlefield.