The world ended in silence.
Not the fiery cataclysm the old texts had prophesied. No war of gods. No reckoning. No final, desperate struggle.
One moment, the System reigned. The next, it simply… stopped.
[Error: System connection lost.]
The message had appeared in everyone's vision at once, a phantom whisper from a god that had turned its back on its creations. Level-ups, skills, stat boosts—gone. Equipment infused with System blessings became dead weight. Dungeons collapsed in on themselves. Those who relied too much on their powers perished overnight, reduced to fragile, mortal things.
Civilization fractured. The strong preyed on the weak. The privileged clung to what little authority remained. The world burned, but not from divine wrath—just ordinary, human desperation.
And in the shadows of this ruined age, a man ran for his life.
—
Gasping, Aden ducked behind a crumbling wall, pressing his back against the rough stone. His heart hammered in his chest, lungs burning as he struggled to keep his breath quiet. The night was thick with the scent of smoke and blood.
He risked a glance over the edge. Four figures moved through the rubble, their cloaks ragged but their weapons gleaming under the pale moonlight. Hunters. System loyalists. The kind that didn't take kindly to thieves and deserters.
Aden clenched his teeth. He wasn't some great warrior, wasn't some last hero of a dying age. He was just a survivor.
And survivors knew when to run.
Silently, he slipped deeper into the ruins, his body moving on instinct—ducking, weaving, avoiding loose debris that might give him away. The city of Kaelor had once been a shining beacon of System-blessed civilization. Now it was just another corpse, its bones scavenged by those desperate enough to take from the dead.
He had come here for one reason.
A lead.
Something ancient. Something hidden before the collapse.
Aden had spent the last six months surviving, scrounging, keeping his head down. But he had learned something valuable in that time: the System had not disappeared entirely.
It had left remnants.
Artifacts. Techniques. Secrets buried beneath centuries of blind faith.
And if he could find them… he might just have a chance.
A chance to carve out something for himself.
A chance to survive in a world that wanted him dead.
The sound of boots crunching against stone yanked him out of his thoughts. Too close. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his knife. He had to keep moving.
But as he turned the corner, he found himself staring at a temple entrance.
A temple that shouldn't exist.
The architecture was wrong—older than anything else in the ruins, untouched by time or destruction. Its massive doors were slightly ajar, a whisper of dark space beckoning him inside.
Aden hesitated.
What the hell is this place?
Then he heard it.
A faint sound, barely more than a whisper in the back of his mind.
A voice.
Calling him in.
And before he could stop himself, he stepped forward.
Into the unknown.