No one still remembered the days of old, back then, when the world still had some shred of light.
Not truly.
The memories from back then have long become blurry and chaotic.
History claimed there had once been laws, both moral ones, natural ones, and even divine ones.
Back then, rules also existed.
Rules about life, family, what was sacred and what was forbidden.
But in the present age, such old rules have long since lost all meaning.
The world no longer ran on such rules, but on hunger, on the thirst for power, and on pure, unadulterated survival.
This was a universe where a mother could devour her own child, bones and all, feasting on its flesh, if the hunger and madness was terrifying enough.
Where love was a liability, mercy a disease, and weakness a death sentence.
A place governed by a single, brutal truth
"Only the strong truly deserve to live"
And even then, strength, was never enough.
Long before the collapse, the universe's corruption and blackening, something had torn reality open.
No one knew what the entity was.
Not the gods.
The higher beings.
Nor even the creatures that dwelled beyond dimensions.
All known by man through words of mouth was them feeling "A terrifying presence"
The stories say that "The presence" was just a traveller. It, moved through layers of existences far above mortal comprehension. But this time, an accident occurred.
The Man's universe could not comprehend the very presence of such an entity. Unable to contain its incomprehensible existence, the fabric of reality was violently torn open, creating a vast hole through the universe.
The "hole" as man called it, wasn't just a tear, nor crack, but a Wound.
For a fraction of a second, the universe was exposed to something it was never meant to touch.
And from that wound, Ink poured out.
The Inkforce was not an energy substance.
It was not just matter, nor was it pure energy as man understood it to be.
The Inkforce was a corrosive intruder, a foreign principle that distorted reality itself just to serve it's own purpose.
Although not conscious, nor did it burn, freeze or explode,
But, it rewrote everything touched by it.
Space,
Time,
Flesh,
Thought,
Law.
Everything began to rot from the inside, as if existence itself was being erased and replaced with something entirely wrong and unbalanced. An incomprehensible invader.
Some weaker planets dissolved into black wastelands, forever losing their spark.
Stars collapsed into ink-stained structures, losing their lights.
Dimensions twisted, overlapped and bleed into each other.
But even then, the universe still did its best to fight back against the invader.
It repaired the hole by drawing on its own lifeforce.
The "wound" was finally closed, and "The presence" vanished.
But it was already too late. The damage was already done.
The invader stayed.
Then, it spread.
Engulfing everything as the resilient sparks struggled to survive.
The brightest and most resilient spark encountered and remembered by the inkforce was named "The Earth".
It struggled, and survived, giving man a ray of hope in such a universe scheduled for destruction.
Although the spark tried it's best, it was still partially corrupted. Afterall, what does such a little spark have in comparison to an incomprehensible invader?
The skies turned permanently gloomy, as if stained by gray invisible oil.
Cities corroded into skeletal ruins, their metal frames warped like melted bones.
Oceans thickened into black sludges of water, where nothing but "The corrupted" swam.
Forests became graveyards of distorted trees, their branches pulsing and twitching like veins.
And Man…
Well....
Man also survived. Surprised right?
They were just forced to adapt to the change just like their nature, or corrupted along with the long forsaken universe.
The incomprehensible invader known by man as "Ink force" could not be absorbed, controlled or purified.
But some people, just by accident,
Or sheer will,
Or simply, the sheer refusal to collapse, resisted it.
Those who resisted such devastating corrosion without being erased were in turn rewarded by the incomprehensible invader.
Just little gifts for man to play with.
Mutations of existence itself.
Genes rewritten for better adaptation and evolution.
Some positive,
Others negative.
But such gifts of course, were not always equal.
To the invader, there was no understanding of the concept of a "system".
Not Levels, nor ranks.
The word "Equal" doesn't apply nor even register to it.
Two of "Man" could endure thesame type of corruption, one might get a heaven-defying gift, but the other could just get a meager one for a change.
The difference wasn't really hard to understand. It just depends on how much of the invader you were able to take in and successfully resist.
The more of the invader the body and soul takes in, then successfully resist, the more violent and persistent the invader gifted them after leaving. It was some kind of sick and twisted test to it. Afterall, it couldn't just give them those little gifts for free now, or could it?
Some experienced little changes after the invader left.
While others became walking disasters.
And some…..just a few of them, became monsters still pretending to be "Man".
Society collapsed under a year, followed by the Governments, and then religion.
Nations dissolved into hunting grounds.
The strong built territories from corpses.
While the weak became the resources.
The cities of old turned into arenas where power and bloodshed were the only currency found acceptable by man.
Everything changed drastically.
Animals evolving into distorted predators, bodies reshaped by the invader into more terrifying and grotesque forms.
Some possessing multiple shifting eyes, organs, and some, even intelligence that should not possibly exist..
This was no longer a world, but a battlefield spanning numerous dimension.
Because above the ruined planet, far beyond human perception, some spectators emerged and watched.
Not gods nor demons.
But "entities" even older than concepts like life and death itself.
Dimensional entities,
Multidimensional intelligences,
Universal predators,
Even multiversal observers.
Some were just drawn here by their curiosity towards the invader, while others came just to hunt for its source.
Some simply saw this universe as an experiment gone wrong and on the verge of destruction, so they came looking for some entertainment to relieve their boredom.
Since then, "Man" has become part of something far bigger than themselves. But they just didn't know it yet.
The invader continued its mission, seeking to corrupt and consume everything at a slow, steady but relentless pace, distorting everything it touched.
Matter,
Energy,
Space,
Time.
Entire timelines began to diverge unnaturally.
Parallel realities overlapped like broken mirrors.
Universes bleeding into others, thereby creating zones where multiple incomprehensible laws of physics existed all at once.
Man's universe was no longer clean.
It was polluted.
A corrupted layer of reality, and a cosmic infection.
And at the center of this dying world, among ruins, monsters and twisted survivors….
A being was conceived by a mixture of various uncertain coincidences.
Something that escaped even the notice of the invader, man and the universe observers.
A being not special, chosen, nor blessed.
Just "alive", in a universe where being alive was already a miracle. And where surviving the invader meant only one thing:
"The stronger the will and stubborn nature of the man, the more terrifying of a monster he will become after getting touched by the inkforce"