27 April, 2379 A.D
At the Quantum Energy Research Centre (QERC), scientists had finally achieved what humanity had chased for centuries. A new invention, the Quantum Singularity Reactor, was developed as an alternative to fossil fuels, designed to eliminate pollution and sustain civilization indefinitely. It produced energy through the controlled quantum fusion of two parallel dimensions, a process once thought impossible, and it was created under the global government initiative known as Project Eclipse. For the first time in history, it seemed like humanity had found a clean and infinite source of power.
The experiment initially worked, but only for sixty-seven seconds. Within that brief window, the reactor destabilized, and what followed was later recorded as the Eclipse Event. A catastrophic anomaly triggered a Nexus rupture between dimensions, tearing open a rift in reality itself. From that fracture, a portal emerged, and through it came the Nethers—entities formed from corrupted energy and unstable matter, existing beyond known physical laws. They did not arrive like invaders in ships or armies; they simply spilled into existence, as if reality itself had begun to rot.
Conventional weapons proved completely ineffective against them. Guns, missiles, and nuclear arsenals failed to even slow their advance. Cities fell within hours, then entire nations collapsed as the Nethers spread without resistance. What began as isolated destruction quickly escalated into a global extinction event. Within weeks, billions of lives were lost, and the world as humanity knew it ceased to exist, reduced to ruins, wastelands, and silent dead zones where even memory of civilization began to fade.
In the aftermath of the collapse, the remaining governments of the world disintegrated and then reformed into a single unified authority known as The Dominion. Created from desperation and survival instinct, the Dominion’s purpose was absolute: preserve humanity at any cost and find a method to fight against the Nethers. Every remaining scientific resource, every surviving research facility, and every human life that could contribute was absorbed into its system. Freedom became secondary to survival, and survival became the only law.
After decades of failed attempts to replicate, counter, or seal the dimensional breach, the Dominion eventually achieved a breakthrough in the form of Eclipse Cells. These were experimental compounds—pills designed to awaken latent potential embedded within human DNA, rewriting biological limits and granting supernatural abilities to those who were compatible. Individuals who successfully adapted to the Eclipse Cells were known as the Awakened, and they became humanity’s only viable weapon against the Nethers.
However, the process carried a fatal uncertainty. Compatibility could not be guaranteed. If a human body was incompatible with the Eclipse Cells, the result was immediate system failure followed by death. The Dominion classified such individuals as failed subjects, and their bodies were disposed of without record. To the public, the Awakened were symbols of hope, but behind closed doors, they were the result of endless sacrifice, trial, and loss.
Seventy-five years after the Eclipse Event, the world remains a fractured wasteland ruled by remnants of Dominion-controlled strongholds, scattered survivor settlements, and regions completely overtaken by Nether corruption. Civilization no longer exists as it once did, only survival in its most brutal form, where humanity lives under constant threat from both the monsters beyond the rift and the system that claims to protect them.
And in this broken world, among the ruins of what was once civilization, an orphan named Tetsuya Kurogami carries the potential to become something far greater than survival itself, or perhaps something that will decide whether humanity deserves to survive at all.