I still remember that day.
Not just the blood or the noise, but the feeling—like the world had cracked in half and I was the only one who noticed.
My parents died screaming.
I didn't see it happen. I only heard it.
From under the bed.
Small hands pressed over my ears, knees to my chest,
the stench of burning wood and wet metal creeping through every breath.
"Stay quiet," she mouthed.
She never came back.
Something moved outside the room.
Something heavy. Slow.
I heard footsteps—then silence.
Then breath.
Not mine.
The thing stopped just outside the bedroom door.
I bit into my arm to keep from screaming.
The door creaked.
Then—Nothing.
I don't know how long I stayed there.
Hours? A day?
Eventually, the silence became louder than the screams had been.
So I crawled out.
The world was gone.
My home was ash and broken concrete.
My parents—were what was left.
I wandered. Starving. Silent.
Someone found me.
Most of the others had already been evacuated.
That block—mine—wasn't on the early routes.
Minimal casualties, they said.
Fast reaction, they said.
But by the time they reached our building, only I was still breathing.
They said I was lucky.
I didn't feel lucky.
I never corrected them.
They took me to one of the shelters.
Bunkers, really—buried cities sealed away from the surface.
From the monsters.
They gave me food, then numbers.
A name.
And eventually, a bed.
Not mine. Just one of many.
In the shelters, we learned quickly:
the monsters hadn't gone away.
They'd just gone deeper.
But something else came with them.
Labyrinths.
Strange, shifting places that weren't on any map.
Inside, people came out different.
Stronger. Faster. Changed.
They called them Adventurers.
Hunters of a new age.
At first, no one understood how it worked.
People just walked into dungeons and came out altered.
So the scientists came.
Then the governments.
They began to study the patterns—body changes, mental shifts,
the connection between combat and growth.
And eventually, they created the wristbands.
Trackers. Monitors.
A system.
Not magic. Just survival, dressed as data.
We were told we'd get ours at sixteen.
That's when it starts.
That's when the system "sees" you.
They didn't hand them out at birth.
Too dangerous. Too unpredictable.
Only when your body stopped growing—only then were you measured.
Months passed. Maybe a year.
The silence in the bunker became normal.
And then the screens came back on.
I watched them.
The rooms filled with voices of people we'd never meet.
Their names spread like myth—city defenders, boss killers, protectors of humanity's final pieces.
But to me, they were just people who still had something left.
There was one, though.
Lucian.
He was everywhere.
The broadcasts loved him.
He looked sharp, confident.
Said all the right words.
Like he was born with a blade in his hand and a camera on him.
They said he was the first to defeat a Warlord-class entity solo.
That he saved an entire sector without backup.
They called him the "Last Hero."
To others, he was everything they aspired to be.
To me, he was everything I couldn't become.
I watched him fight on screen.
I watched him speak to crowds.
But none of it felt real.
I wanted to believe him. I really did.
But the sword was too clean.
This wasn't a hero's journey. Not for me.
It wasn't about light or hope
or becoming stronger to save others.
It was about survival.
About sharpening what was left of me
until nothing else could break through.
We weren't survivors.
We were statistics waiting for subtraction.
I wasn't here to be remembered.
I was here to make sure no one forgot what it meant to bleed.
And I wasn't done watching.
Not yet.