CHAPTER 00
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From the Records of Gonesth.
An account from the first fall.
It all started up above the heavens, when a violent uprising between 'gods' took place.
And earth was among its victims.
At first, silence engulfed everything, as if time itself had stilled. Not a single breath. Not a sound. Not even a whisper.
Then—
A Snap.
A jagged fracture tore across the sky, branching outward like a wound of light, shattering like broken glass.
And what followed turned the world to shambles.
One by one, big and small alike, massive portals emerged from the splintered skies. They twisted and churned like a dark omen, as if judgment itself had arrived.
From those portals, a vague image came into sight.
Unknown. Sinister. Spine crawling.
Then it took shape.
A lone sphere of fire.
No—it wasn't alone. Behind it, there were more, multiplying at a rapid scale, screaming and streaking in a relentless storm.
As these cosmic stones landed, they gave birth to nightmarish creatures. Things the world had never seen. Had never been prepared for.
Their forms were twisted integrations of three, sometimes five different species—alien in every sense of the word.
And at the center of each torso sat a dark hollow.
Void. Eerie. Filled with dead silence
They called them...
The Hollowed beasts.
They struck without mercy. Without pause. They spared no one. Humans, animals, everything that breathed or moved. They were like mindless psychopaths. No. The word 'psychopath' wouldn't describe them. They were just beings who loved chaos, ruin, and death.
Upon their relentless rampage, the world bled. Cries of prayer echoed across the skies.
But none of them were heard.
No salvation. No savior.
Just... hell. Hell created by these monsters that ravaged the world and trapped humanity in the smog of death they carried.
Then time passed.
Days turned to months. Then months to a year.
Humanity? They folded. Their great armies, its technology, its carefully constructed might, all of it crumbled.
Nations began to fall. Cities slowly faded into ruins. Resources started to dwindle, and what was once a basic necessity now became treasure.
Then came the domino effect.
The population fell into rapid decline. Survivors went into hiding, fleeing to caves, mountains, tunnels, and abandoned underground shelters.
Years slowly turned into decades.
There was nothing but hopelessness. Humanity accepted their fate. The world had become a hunting ground for these monsters.
But in all the hopelessness. In all the darkness that consumed the world.
A spark ignited.
From the flames of a dying world, he rose.
A man forged from grit and defiance.
A man born of prophecy.
He held the willpower to rise from the hell these monsters had made of the world.
Humanity had never seen anything like him before.
They called him...
The Everlight.
One thing drove him. No—more than that. It was his dream. Not for his own sake. But for everyone.
A dream of liberty.
Where everyone had the freedom to look at the sky without fear. To laugh without restraint. To farm. To build. To raise their families. To live—to truly live without the shadow of terror hanging over them.
Alongside his defiant fellowship, he sought to conquer and reclaim the fallen lands, tearing them free from the torment that had swallowed the world whole.
And just like that, the smog of death began to lift. For the first time in decades, light touched the barren lands.
But—
Even a hero is mortal.
For all his strength, he was still human. Still bound by the fragility of a body that could only carry so much.
When he was gone, the world mourned in a silence deeper than any it had known. Not the silence of fear. Not the silence of dread.
Just grief.
Yet his death was not the end.
It was the beginning.
From the wreckage of his passing, humanity did something it had long forgotten how to do.
It united.
Nations abandoned centuries of division and came together beneath a single governing body, determined above all else to preserve what he had left behind.
They called themselves the Omnis.
They searched. Tirelessly. Scouring what remained of the broken world for any trace of what the Everlight had been.
And slowly, the truth began to surface.
He was not alone.
There were others like him. Awakened. Scattered across what remained of the world, ordinary people carried the same hidden spark he had carried.
Waiting. Unknowing. To be found.
They named them Astralis.
The Omnis sought them out, studied them, and forged them into something the world desperately needed. Warriors. Protectors. An answer to the darkness that still breathed across the land. To carry the Everlight's mission on their backs until the world finally breathed free.
They called them the Ark Knights.
Since then, these warriors fought with pride in their heart, slowly rebuilding the chaotic world into a living sanctuary.
A century passed.
Civilization once again arose, scattered around the world. But still, the monsters roamed. So they divided the world into zones, determining what could be lived in and what could not.
Green Zone:
It is a safe haven of humanity. Massive colonies rose behind towering walls of reinforced concrete and steel, built to withstand the horrors of the remaining hollowed beasts.
Grey Zone:
A land of shifting danger, where hollowed beasts still roam. Explorers and expeditionary forces risk their lives here in exchange for resources and relics of the old world.
Red Zone:
The wasteland of the damned! Infested with Unknown energies, it is a graveyard or a 'dead land' where only monstrous hollowed beasts 'still' reign.
Around the world, seven 'major' colonies stood.
Olen. Daehun. Eulark. Zenneth. Bellsing. Iderin. And Irithel.
These seven colonies served as vast sanctuaries for humanity's surviving remnants, as the long, brutal campaign to restore the world to its former order... raged on.