Humanity called it the Age of Recovery.
Seventy-eight years had passed since the first monsters tore their way into the world. Long enough for cities to be rebuilt atop ruins, for children to grow up without ever hearing the screams that once filled the streets, and for people to believe—truly believe—that the worst was over.
Safe zones spanned continents now. Enormous barriers rose like artificial horizons, powered by technology and guarded by heroes whose bloodlines had grown famous over generations. Schools functioned. Markets thrived. The word apocalypse had been archived, reduced to textbooks and documentaries.
The monsters still existed, of course. But they were "contained."
That was what the broadcasts said.
What the government reports confirmed.
What the people chose to believe.
And for most of my life, I believed it too.
---
I don't remember the day my parents saved the world.
I remember the night they decided it might not be enough.
---
The laboratory was always cold.
Even as a child, I noticed it—the way the air pressed against my skin, sharp and sterile, carrying the faint scent of metal and disinfectant. Machines hummed constantly, their lights blinking in rhythmic patterns that felt almost alive. To me, it had been a place of curiosity. A forbidden playground filled with glass walls and sealed doors.
To my parents, it was a graveyard of failures.
"Run the simulation again."
My father's voice was calm, but his fingers were trembling as he adjusted the display. Lines of data scrolled across the transparent screen, intersecting with three-dimensional projections of creatures that shifted and warped with each recalculation.
"No change," my mother said quietly. "Adaptive response exceeds human growth rate by thirty-seven percent."
My father exhaled slowly. "Then we're still behind."
I sat on a chair near the corner, my legs barely reaching the floor, hugging my knees as I watched them work. I didn't understand the numbers or the words they used, but I understood the weight behind them. The tension. The exhaustion.
They weren't just researchers.
They were afraid.
"Heroes are pushing them back," my mother said, though there was no conviction in her voice. "The council believes we're entering a stable phase."
"They're wrong," my father replied. He gestured, and the projection shifted—monsters that once looked like beasts now stood upright, their forms disturbingly humanoid. "The monsters are learning. Evolving. We're fighting yesterday's enemy with yesterday's victories."
My mother fell silent.
Then she looked at me.
Her expression softened instantly, fear replaced by something warmer. Something sadder.
"We shouldn't be talking about this in front of him," she said.
My father hesitated. Then he shook his head.
"No," he said. "If we're right… he deserves to exist in a world that survives."
That was the first time I heard the word deserves used like that.
---
They began locking the lab after that.
Not just doors—data. Entire research branches vanished behind encryption walls I couldn't even see. When I asked questions, my parents would smile and tell me to go play, or that it was "adult work."
But I noticed the changes.
The longer hours.
The way they checked the perimeter alerts even at home.
The ring my father never took off anymore—a simple band of dark metal, unmarked, worn smooth with age.
And then, one night, the sirens screamed.
---
I was doing homework when the lights flickered.
At first, I thought it was a power issue—those happened sometimes, even inside the safe zone. But then the floor shook, hard enough to knock my pencil off the desk. A distant boom rolled through the air, followed by another. And another.
The sirens came after.
Not the warning alarms used for drills.
These were louder. Deeper. Urgent.
My mother was at my side in an instant. "Shoes. Now."
My father was already moving, pulling a small case from beneath the table. His hands were steady this time.
"Is it a monster?" I asked.
My parents exchanged a look.
"Yes," my father said. "But listen to me carefully."
The house shook again. Somewhere nearby, glass shattered.
"They aren't supposed to be here," my mother said, her voice tight. "The barrier—"
"Failed," my father finished. "Or bypassed."
That was when I understood something was wrong. Deeply wrong.
Monsters didn't appear inside safe zones.
They couldn't.
---
They took me to the hidden room beneath the house—a reinforced chamber I'd only seen once before. My mother knelt in front of me, gripping my shoulders harder than she ever had.
"No matter what you hear," she said, "you do not open this door."
Her eyes were wet, but she didn't cry.
My father knelt too. He removed the ring from his finger and pressed it into my palm. It was warm—almost hot.
"This is yours now," he said. "Whatever happens… you keep it."
"Dad—"
"Listen," he said sharply, then softened. "Live. That's all the proof we need."
The sirens were drowned out by a roar so loud it felt like the air itself was tearing apart.
They stood.
The door closed.
And they didn't come back.
---
I don't remember how long I stayed in that room.
Minutes. Hours. Maybe longer.
When the door was finally torn open, it wasn't by my parents.
Smoke filled the streets. Entire buildings had collapsed, reduced to rubble and fire. Bodies lay scattered beneath the flickering glow of emergency lights. Creatures—dead ones—littered the ground, their forms twisted and wrong, as if reality had rejected them.
Men in black uniforms pulled me from the wreckage.
Others followed, sealing off the area, erecting barriers, erasing evidence. They didn't ask me questions. They didn't explain anything.
They just wrote reports.
My parents' names were listed among the casualties.
Cause of death: Containment breach.
---
I didn't cry at the funeral.
I didn't cry when they took our house apart piece by piece.
I didn't cry when the world moved on.
I cried weeks later, in a quiet apartment that didn't feel like home, when a man with tired eyes and shaking hands knelt in front of me.
"I was their colleague," he said. "Their friend."
He hesitated. "They asked me… if anything happened… to take care of you."
That was how I was adopted.
Not by relatives.
But by someone who knew too much—and still not enough.
---
Years passed.
The world stabilized again. Stronger barriers. Tighter patrols. Official explanations that satisfied everyone but me. I went back to school. I learned to keep my head down. To stay quiet. To disappear into the background.
People called me unlucky.
A survivor.
A child of tragedy.
None of them knew about the ring.
I kept it hidden. Always. Even from the man who raised me.
Until the night he finally handed it back.
"You're old enough now," he said. "Your parents told me to wait."
The moment the metal touched my skin again, my vision blurred.
Pain exploded behind my eyes.
And then—
A translucent blue interface unfolded in front of me, hovering silently in the air.
Words appeared.
> SYSTEM BOOT SEQUENCE DETECTED
LEGACY CONFIRMATION IN PROGRESS
HEIR STATUS: VERIFIED
A calm, unfamiliar voice echoed inside my mind.
> "Welcome back."
I stared at the ring, my heart pounding.
And for the first time since that night—
I felt like my parents were still watching.