November 11, 2037
Dear D̶i̶a̶r̶y̶ Journal,
It all happened so fast.
The year was 2037, an era of major technological advancements where things like artificial intelligence and electric vehicles were nearing their peak. Self-driving cars clogged every highway, their passengers staring dead-eyed into their phones. Smart homes anticipated your every need before you could think it. The AIs could predict stock market crashes, diagnose diseases from a single cough, and write poetry that made grown men weep. Magnificent, really. Revolutionary.
But not even the most advanced AI could've predicted what was to come next.
The day started normal—sickeningly, mundanely normal. November 11th. The sun hung high in the cloudless sky, its luminous rays shining down on a world that had forgotten how to look up. There were hardly any people outside, as most of them were brainwashed into an obsession with their technology. Walk down any street and you'd see them: heads bent, fingers scrolling, utterly disconnected from the reality happening three feet in front of them.
That being said, I guess I'm what you could call an anomaly since I myself do not own any technology.
Well, that's not entirely true. I owned technology. Past tense. Had a phone, a laptop, all the bells and whistles. Then one day I took a hammer to every piece of it. Smashed my phone to glittering fragments. Put my laptop through the disposal. My wife—ex-wife—screamed at me for hours. Called me insane. Unstable. Said I was "spiraling."
Maybe I was.
This abnormality is what led me to acquire a journal... that's right, a journal, not a diary. Diaries are for teenage girls and people who write poetry about their feelings. This is different. This is documentation. Evidence. A record of events for whoever might find this when I'm—well, we'll get to that.
My therapist said it'd be healthy for me to write down my thoughts and experiences ever since I was diagnosed with depression. Dr. Alejandro Lopez. Forty-something, smug smile, perfect teeth that probably cost more than my car. He prescribed this journal like it was medication, scribbling on his little pad with that expensive fountain pen he loved to show off.
"It'll help you process," he'd said, leaning back in his leather chair. "Give structure to your thoughts."
And so here I am.
But if you were to ask me, I'm not depressed at all.
I mean, just because I tried to jump off a bridge and free-fall from a building doesn't mean I want to kill myself. Right?? I was just curious... yeah—yeah, that's right, curious. Scientific inquiry, really. I mean, do you know what it feels like falling to your death from a high-up place? The wind resistance? The acceleration? The way your stomach drops into your throat and time seems to stretch like taffy?
Dr. Lopez:No...
(What I believe he'd say, at least.)
I didn't think so, Dr. Lopez!!
It wasn't because you've been sleeping with my wife!
...
Okay, maybe it was partially because of that. But can you blame me? I came home early one Tuesday—Tuesday, of all days, the most boring day of the week—and there they were. In my bed. My bed. The one I'd spent three months picking out because my back gets sore easily. He had the audacity to look surprised, like I was the one intruding.
"Claymore, I can explain—" he'd started.
I didn't let him finish. Just turned around and walked out. Went to the nearest bridge and climbed over the railing. Would've jumped too, if some jogger hadn't tackled me. Ruined my coat in the process. Do you know how hard it is to get grass stains out of wool?
Well, anyway, that's enough about me. I don't have an overly self-serving ego like some people D̶r̶.̶ ̶G̶a̶y̶p̶e̶z̶.
Actually, you know what? I'll talk about myself as much as I damn well please. It's my journal. My thoughts. My documentation of the end of the world as we knew it.
Like I was saying, the day was like any other—aside from the fact that the sky began cracking open.
I was in the park when it happened. One of the few public spaces not dominated by screens and virtual reality booths. Just trees, grass, and a few scattered individuals who'd managed to maintain some connection to the physical world. I was sitting on a bench, eating a sandwich I'd made myself because my wife had taken the house and I was living in a studio apartment that smelled like old cigarettes, when I heard it.
A sound like the universe splitting at the seams.
I looked up.
The sky—the perfectly clear, cloudless sky—had a crack in it. An actual, visible fracture running across the blue like someone had taken a hammer to a sheet of glass. It spread as I watched, branching out in spiderweb patterns, each new split accompanied by that terrible grinding sound.
People around me didn't notice at first. Too busy with their phones. But then the light came.
From the cracks, a luminous, transparent energy seeped through. It was beautiful in a way that made your eyes hurt, like staring directly into a star. The color was indescribable—not quite white, not quite gold, something that existed in the spaces between colors that human eyes weren't designed to see.
It poured down from the wounded sky like liquid light.
Someone screamed. Then everyone was screaming, but by then it was too late. The energy engulfed the world entirely, washing over every surface, every person, sinking into skin and stone and steel with equal ease. I felt it hit me like a wave of hot water, rushing through my body, igniting every nerve ending.
It burned. God, it burned.
But it also felt... right. Like something that had been missing my entire life had suddenly clicked into place. Like my body had been waiting for this moment, sleeping, and now it was finally waking up.
The wave passed. The burning faded to a warm tingle beneath my skin. I gasped, doubling over on the bench, my sandwich forgotten on the ground.
When I could breathe again, when I could see clearly again, the world had been left forever changed.
The superpowers that were once believed to be fiction suddenly became reality.
It started small. A woman near the fountain noticed her coffee cup floating beside her head. A teenager's phone sparked in his hand, electricity dancing between his fingers. Someone else—a businessman in an expensive suit—took a step forward and suddenly began floating fifty feet into the air.
Then it escalated.
People began to fly, their bodies lifting off the ground like gravity had become optional. Others ran at superhuman speeds, blurring past in streaks of motion. Some discovered they could lift incredibly heavy objects—I watched a scrawny kid no older than sixteen hoist a park bench over his head with one hand. A woman blasted electricity from her hands, accidentally frying a streetlamp in a shower of sparks.
Fire. Ice. Wind. Stone.
Abilities that defied every law of physics, every rule we'd thought governed reality.
Chaos erupted. People screaming, laughing, crying. Some celebrated their new powers. Others cowered in terror from them. A few tried to help, to organize and make sense of what had happened.
Most just... broke.
But not everyone was so lucky as to be afflicted with superpowers.
Others—not including myself, obviously—remained normal. Baseline. Human in the old sense of the word. I watched them realize it, watched the hope drain from their faces as they tried and failed to make anything extraordinary happen. A man repeatedly jumped off the fountain edge, expecting to fly, hitting the concrete each time with increasing desperation.
He never flew.
And as you may know—well, I guess you wouldn't know since you're a journal. I mean, I'm basically like a god to you. I created you, in a sense. Gave you purpose. Without me, you're just bound paper and ink, meaningless scratches waiting for someone to read them.
Sorry, off-topic again.
But as any person might know, it is human nature to not like things that are different.
It started within hours. The powered—those who'd been changed by the light—began looking at the unpowered with a mixture of pity and contempt. I could see it in their eyes, that subtle shift in how they perceived the baseline humans around them. They'd been elevated, ascended to something greater, and the ordinary people were suddenly... lesser.
Inferior.
Obsolete.
They all seemed to have developed some kind of superiority complex; I mean, humans aren't even that cool to begin with. Sure, we built civilizations and conquered the planet and created art and music and literature. But we're also petty, violent, jealous creatures who'll destroy everything we love if it means getting one up on our neighbors.
Give those creatures superpowers and, well...
You can imagine how it went.
So, of course, the new generation of intelligent humanoids had to create a new and much cooler name. Let's call them E̶v̶o̶l̶v̶e̶d̶ ̶H̶u̶m̶a̶n̶s̶ the Awakened.
Yeah, that sounds way cooler than A̶l̶e̶j̶a̶n̶d̶r̶o̶ ̶L̶o̶p̶e̶z̶ humans, doesn't it?
The term spread like wildfire. Within a day, everyone was using it. The Awakened. Those who'd been chosen by the light, blessed with abilities beyond mortal ken. It had a nice ring to it. Made them sound important. Special.
Divine.
Also, w̶e̶ they decided to wipe out most of the human population because... the strong devour the weak... at least that's what they told me... I think.
The culling began on Day 3.
I wasn't there for the official announcement—if there even was one. But suddenly the Awakened were organizing, forming groups, establishing territories. And the baseline humans? They were in the way. Resources to be managed. Threats to be eliminated.
Some of the Awakened tried to resist it. Tried to protect the powerless. Those were the first to die, cut down by their own kind for daring to suggest that having superpowers didn't give you the right to commit genocide.
After that, the resistance crumbled pretty quickly.
I stayed out of it initially. Kept my head down, observed, took notes. Watched as they rounded up the baseline humans in camps. Watched as those camps emptied, their populations decreasing day by day until they were ghost towns.
I didn't intervene.
I couldn't, really. What was I supposed to do?
Besides, I had my own business to attend to.
Hahahaha!!
And I got to kill that bastard Alejandro—that dumbass should've never slept with my wife!!
Hahahahaa!!
It seems I'm the one who got the last laugh.
He begged, you know. When I found him. He was hiding in his office, barricaded behind his desk like furniture could stop what I'd become. The same office where he'd diagnosed me. Where he'd prescribed this journal. Where he'd nodded sympathetically while planning which nights he'd sneak into my house.
"Claymore, please," he'd whimpered. "I'm sorry. We can talk about this. I can help you—"
"Help me?" I'd laughed. The sound echoed strangely in that small room. "You've helped enough, doctor."
I won't describe what happened next. Not because I'm ashamed—quite the opposite. But because some things are better experienced than read about, and you, dear journal, don't have the capacity to truly appreciate the artistry of it.
Let's just say Dr. Lopez won't be sleeping with anyone else's wife.
Don't worry, I made sure to send your little lover with you!
Found her two days later. She was with a group of baseline humans trying to flee the city. Recognized me immediately despite the blood still under my fingernails.
"Claymore?" Her voice cracked. "What did you do?"
I smiled. It felt strange on my face, like my muscles had forgotten the motion. "What I should've done months ago."
She tried to run. They always try to run.
Bet you wish you had superpowers... you damn humans.
I watched the light leave her eyes and felt... nothing. No satisfaction. No guilt. Just a hollow emptiness where emotions used to live. Maybe Dr. Lopez had been right about the depression after all.
Or maybe I'd just evolved beyond caring.
Ahem!
Anyway, the last remaining humans were pushed to some shitty island off the coast. I forget which one—they all blur together after a while. Somewhere remote. Somewhere the Awakened wouldn't have to look at them.
I wonder if they're surviving out there.
Weak, without technology, and all clumped together in overcrowded camps with limited resources and no infrastructure. The Awakened made sure to disable all the tech before shipping them off. Couldn't risk them rebuilding, getting ideas above their station.
Ahh! It must be a nightmare.
Disease. Starvation. Violence over scraps of food and clean water. The strong preying on the weak—funny how that works the same whether you have powers or not. Human nature doesn't change just because the circumstances do.
Well, I know we're doing great.
The Awakened, I mean. We've built a new society, better than the old one. Stronger. More... efficient. No more pretending everyone's equal when they so clearly aren't. No more coddling the weak and holding back the strong.
The world belongs to those with the power to claim it.
Always has, really. We're just being honest about it now.
You know what? This was some good advice, Dr. Lopez. The journal writing. It does help. Helps me organize my thoughts, process the changes, document this new era. Future generations should know how it all began. How humanity ended and the Awakened rose from its ashes.
They should know that when the sky cracked open and poured out impossible power, some of us were ready for it.
Some of us thrived.
My hand's cramping from writing. The sun's setting outside my window—a much nicer window than the studio apartment, I might add. Penthouse view. Took it from some baseline businessman who didn't need it anymore. The whole city's spread out below me, glittering in the dying light. From up here, you can't see the bodies. Can't hear the screaming.
It's almost peaceful.
Tomorrow I'll write more. Document the establishment of the new order, the power structures forming among the Awakened, the abilities manifesting in increasingly bizarre ways. There's so much to record, so much history being made.
But for now, I'm tired. The burning under my skin has faded to a gentle warmth, like coals banked for the night. My power—I haven't written about it yet, have I? Well, that's a story for another entry.
Let's just say Dr. Lopez really should have chosen a different profession.
Therapy doesn't work on everyone.
Until Next,
Claymore Blackcastle