The sky broke open on that night.
A blinding streak of fire tore across the heavens, turning night into a furnace. The ground trembled, waves rose high in the seas, and animals shrieked in panic long before the meteor hit. When it finally struck, the earth screamed. The impact tore a scar across the land, reducing forests to ash, mountains to rubble, and cities to dust.
But the meteor did not stay whole. It shattered into many massive boulders, each no larger than a five-story building, yet heavy enough to carve valleys into the soil where they landed. They glowed faintly, as though each piece carried a heart of molten starlight. People would later call them the Cluster.
From the ruins of that day, life began to twist.
Trees grew thorns as long as blades, flowers dripped poison, and the animals — once prey and predator in balance — became nightmares. Wolves grew bone armor, serpents sprouted wings, birds carried fire in their beaks. Humanity, fragile and unprepared, was slaughtered. Within months, more than half the population was gone.
The government tried to resist. The military bombarded the monsters with artillery and fire, but for every beast slain, more emerged. Food became scarce, cities crumbled, and entire nations were on the brink of collapse.
It was desperation that led to discovery.
Starving survivors, cornered with no hope of rescue, turned to the only source of food left: the flesh of the mutated beasts. Many who ate it died screaming, their bodies torn apart by unstable mutations. But a few survived — changed. They became faster, stronger, able to fight back against the monsters. These people were called Superhumans.
For the first time since the fall, humanity had a weapon.
With superhumans at the front, a fragile line of defense was carved out. Land far from the Cluster was reclaimed, where the monsters were weaker. Camps rose up across these zones, havens for the remnants of civilization. But even in survival, division grew.
The strongest superhumans placed themselves at the centre of these camps, where the defenses were thickest. The weaker ones were forced to live and fight at the frontlines, closer to the horrors. And those weaker still — ordinary humans with no power — were driven to the borders, used as bait to delay monster attacks.
It was there, at the borders of human survival, that betrayal and cruelty festered.
But the real battle raged around the Cluster.
The government, desperate to understand the meteors, sent the strongest superhumans to capture and hold the glowing boulders. The monsters around them were stronger, larger, more vicious, as though drawn to the energy. Superhumans fell by the dozens. The fight seemed hopeless.
And then it happened.
In the chaos, with death pressing in on every side, some superhumans felt something within themselves awaken. The meteors whispered to them — alien knowledge pouring into their minds. Cosmic techniques. The ability to sense, control, and shape the cosmic radiation flowing through their bodies.
Those who mastered it became something more. Espers.
For the first time, mankind saw true power. Espers unleashed storms of energy, shattered monsters with thought alone, and carved through the battlefield like gods among men. With their strength, the Cluster was finally secured.
But with that victory came a new hierarchy.
Superhumans were powerful but short-lived — their bodies burned out after fifteen years. Espers, however, lived longer, their mastery of cosmic energy stretching their lives beyond thirty years. They claimed leadership over the camps, placing themselves at the top of the chain. Superhumans filled the middle. And ordinary humans? They were disposable, shoved into the border camps to serve as shields and fodder.
It was in one such border camp, a fragile outpost called Isoprism, that a woman named Mahima lived. She was heavily pregnant, clinging to the hope that her child might see a better world, even as monsters prowled beyond the flimsy barricades.
But hope was fragile.
For whispered in every camp was a legend of a beast greater than any other — a nightmare that no one had survived. The Black Dragon.
And one day, it came to Isoprism…