Josh's eyes flickered as broken holograms glitched in and out of view—ghosts of a world already dying. He lay on the frozen ground, barely breathing, blood pooling beneath him, the scent of ash thick in his lungs. Around him, the village burned. Houses collapsed into themselves. Fire rained from the sky like judgment. Men in black cloaks tore through the streets with blades and spells, leaving nothing behind but screams.
His last memory?
Laughter.
A warm meal with his family.
And then—apocalypse.
The smell of ash thickened the air, choking what little breath he had left. With blood in his mouth and fire in his lungs, Josh whispered his final words—"I hate this world."
And then… he died.
But death did not claim him.
A voice, soft and cold as the void, whispered into what remained of his soul:
"You don't get to hate a world you don't understand."
The fires still burned. The sky split open.
And through the ruins, as if mocking life itself—
it began to snow.Darkness. Absolute. Infinite.
Josh opened his eyes—yet saw nothing. He tried to move, but his arms wouldn't respond. His legs… gone. Panic welled up, but there was no body to scream from. No heart to race. No voice to cry out.
Slowly, it hit him.
He had no form.
He was just... light. A faint pulse drifting alone in a void without beginning or end.
Then, a voice spoke—cold and deep, like it had waited since the birth of time itself.
"Do you want to make sure this never happens again?"
Josh didn't answer. Couldn't.
"Do you want to make the world a better place?"
The questions echoed, not in his ears—but through the very core of what remained of him
"Where... where am I?" Josh asked, his voice trembling—not from cold, but from fear.
No answer. Just silence. Endless, suffocating.
He paused, light flickering with his thoughts.
"I—I only wish this never happened," he whispered. "I just wanted to live… a peaceful life."
Finally, the voice returned. Colder now. Closer.
"There is no such thing as a peaceful life."
The void seemed to pulse, and then the voice spoke again—layered, ancient, echoing with both mercy and malice:
"You will be the savior. And you will be the destroyer.
You will be
their final hope… and their deepest despair."
"The choice… was never yours. It never was."
From the heart of the void, a single purple mole of light reached out—crawling, pulsing—until it latched onto Josh's formless soul.
And then—
Thunder.
Back on Earth, the skies screamed as lightning split the heavens above Elvara.
Then came the snow.
Not white. Not clean.
Black.
It rained down slowly, silently, like the breath of the apocalypse itself.
In the center of the village, Josh's body—lifeless just seconds before—began to rise.
A deep purple light surged around him, spinning, humming, cracking reality at its edges.
The men in black cloaks, still standing among the ruins, turned toward him—awestruck, then afraid.
One raised a blade.
Another chanted.
But they were too late.
In the blink of an eye, the purple light exploded outward—a shockwave of raw, chaotic energy, silent but infinite.
And just like that…
Everything was erased.
The buildings.
The snow.
The cloaked men.
Even the ash.
All of it—gone.
And in the center of that empty, scorched crater…
lay a boy.
Naked. Unconscious. Alive.
And it had only just begun.