The classroom buzzed with the low murmur of a dozen restless students, but Yin Zhou sat still, eyes fixed on the blackboard. The periodic table's colored squares danced in his mind like a well-rehearsed symphony. Chemistry was never just formulas or reactions to him—it was a puzzle, a secret code begging to be cracked.
"Electrons occupy orbitals with quantized energy levels," the teacher droned, pointer tapping rhythmically. "Understanding their behavior is the key to manipulating matter."
Yin's fingers traced invisible patterns on the desk. He was the top student, not by chance but by a hunger no one else understood—an endless craving to understand, to control.
Outside the window, the sky was a muted blue, clouds lazily drifting. Then something caught his eye—a flicker, almost imperceptible. He squinted, brow furrowing.
At first, it was nothing. Just a speck. But it moved unnaturally fast, descending at an angle too deliberate to be a plane or bird.
The classroom faded. His heartbeat hammered in his ears.
The object streaked closer—too close.
"Look!" someone shouted, voices rising in alarm as students turned toward the window.
But it was too late.
A deafening roar shattered the afternoon calm, swallowing the teacher's voice and the murmurs alike. The object slammed into the ground kilometers away—a distant shockwave rippling through the earth.
Glass shattered in a high-pitched scream. Dust and debris filled the air like a suffocating shroud.
Yin's throat tightened. Panic surged through the crowd.
From the smoke and ruin, darkness spilled—not smoke, not ash—but shadows. Shapes twisted and malformed, crawling and slithering like living nightmares.
Demons.
Eyes burning with malevolent hunger, they spread across the city's remains, tearing flesh and bone with feral precision.
The classroom erupted into chaos.
Yin's mind raced, a torrent of fear and cold calculation. This was no accident. No natural disaster—it was the same exact thing the scientists in TVs had warned. But they never said when it will happen—they never even said any percentage of it to actually happen—but now, here they are.
The demons.
The initial shockwave rattled the entire school building, sending dust raining from the ceiling tiles. A distant rumble grew louder—shouts, screams, the pounding of terrified feet.
Windows exploded outward, shards cutting through the stale classroom air. The scent of smoke and burning plastic invaded the room.
Yin's heart heart hammered as he grabbed Ling's arm, one of his friends. "We need to get everyone out. N-Now!" He gasped.
Ling nodded, his usually calm eyes now wide with panic. "H-Help me lead them."
The classroom erupted into chaos. Students scrambled toward the exits, pushing and shoving, desperate to escape the unknown horror outside. In the first floor where the preschoolers are, a girl tripped, crashing to the floor. A boy yelled for his mother.
"Move! Move!" Yin shouted, trying to impose order amid the growing frenzy.
Outside, the sky darkened unnaturally, thickening with swirling black smoke that clawed at the edges of vision like living ink. From the ruined streets emerged the demons—hulking beasts with grotesque limbs and burning red eyes that pierced the gloom.
People screamed, some frozen in terror, others crying out as they were torn apart in moments. The air was thick with the metallic scent of blood and despair.
Yin and Ling fought their way through the stampede, pulling classmates to their feet, guiding them toward the back gate. But the panic was a tidal wave. The crowd surged uncontrollably, pushing and crushing.
A sudden roar split the air as one demon lunged toward the schoolyard. Chaos exploded anew.
Yin grasped Ling's hand tightly, pulling him through the sea of terrified students. "S-Stay close!"
But fate was cruel.
A wave of frantic students surged between them, and suddenly their grip slipped apart.
"Ling!" Yin shouted, turning desperately, but the crowd swallowed him whole.
He clawed forward, but the demons advanced, cutting off escape routes. Students screamed and trampled each other, eyes wide with raw, unfiltered terror.
Yin's vision blurred with sweat and tears. He was alone now, surrounded by chaos and death.
Then suddenly, a dark whisper slithered through his mind, growing louder as the city burned.
"Power. Blood. Survival."
Yin gasped, both hands pressing on his head. The voice didn't just come with a sound, but with pain as though each word is a stab on his skull.
In the middle of chaos, Yin was able to hear Ling's voice from a distance. "HIDE OUT!!"
Yin swallowed, shaking his head. He didn't have time to stay idle.
The crowd swallowed Ling whole, and with a desperate, heart-wrenching cry, Yin tore away, plunging out of his ruined school and into the streets.
The city had turned into a nightmare.
Bodies lay sprawled across the cracked pavement—some twisted in unnatural angles, others lifeless and pale, eyes wide in silent screams. Blood pooled in dark, spreading stains, mingling with shards of broken glass and charred debris.
Yin's breath caught in his throat as he stepped over a fallen man whose chest heaved faintly, eyes fluttering with shock. He had no time to help.
His mind screamed for Ling, but a sharper, fiercer worry clawed at him—Mira.
His little sister, only six years old, left alone with their nanny. Their parents—always away, chasing careers abroad—could do nothing but call with distant voices from another world.
Yin's legs pumped harder, weaving through the rubble-strewn streets. The acrid stench of burning buildings clawed at his nostrils. Sirens wailed in the distance, swallowed quickly by the roar of chaos.
More shadows moved beyond the smoke—demons prowling the wreckage, hunting the weak and broken.
He dared not look back.
Finding Ling could wait.
Mira couldn't—
And then a mechanical sound disrupted Yin's memories and now he finds himself walking inside a building.
Every step toward the podium felt heavier, not because of the burden of duty—but the weight of memory.
Smoke. Screams. A sky torn open.
Even now, ten years later, the images clawed at the corners of Yin's mind uninvited and definitely unrelenting. His body stood in the present, in this cold, steel-lit court of glass and chrome.
But his mind bled and died in the past.
Blood.
Everywhere.
It painted the streets in splashes and smears. Soaked into skin. Turned the air metallic. Sticky.
And through it all—that voice. Whispering, warm, and wrong.
"You were never meant to be like them..."
Yin blinked.
The courtroom's silence snapped back into focus, stark and clinical. Surveillance drones hovered overhead, tracking vitals. Rows of human officers—Commandants, Data Clerks, Strategists—sat above him, each behind shimmering HUD screens. A massive emblem of the Ascension System pulsed on the far wall: a silver helix wrapped in circuitry.
This was one of the Evaluation Halls—where Contestants under the Science System reported for behavior monitoring, mental recalibration, and mission logs.
Yin stood at the center.
At least, that's who they thought he was: Contestant #0000, an anomaly marked for high-performance and low emotional deviation. A perfect soldier of science.
They didn't know the truth.
They didn't know he never passed the selection that one fateful day. That his body had rejected the implant. That he had died on that table ten years ago.
And something else had stood up in his place.
"Contestant #0000," the central Evaluator said without raising her head, her voice filtered through a sleek mask. "Proceed with your routine report. Focus on your patrol data, mana spike readings, and aberration encounters. Irregular behavior will be flagged and reviewed."
Yin's lips twitched.
Routine.
Data.
Patrol.
A façade.
Because in truth, the System they revered—the technological masterpiece humanity clung to like a broken lifeboat—had nothing to do with his survival. Yin wasn't blessed by algorithms or neural enhancements.
He had been chosen by something else.
The Crimson Covenant. A system ruled by archdemons.
A parasitic system older than logic. Crafted not in labs, but in infernal dominions. It had slipped through the cracks when the comet shattered the world, when reality itself split like bone under pressure. It did not select. It consumed. And it made Yin its first vessel.
"Proceed," the Evaluator reminded, tone sharper now.
Yin's hand twitched—subtle. Beneath the skin, a pulse of heat slithered through his veins. The Covenant was listening, watchful that Yin might break because for some reason, even the Covenant itself could never control him which made him a threat to both Science and Covenant System.
Yin looked up at them—these officers of the New World, drowning in order and numbers—and gave them what they wanted.
"Zone Eight was clear. One minor fluctuation in residual mana. No Class-B threats. Two scavengers arrested and sent for neural mapping. No anomalies reported."
His voice was steady. Cold. Machine-perfect.
A lie. Because Zone Eight had bled. A rift had opened. Something crawled out and Yin had fed it to the dark inside him.
He stepped back.
The Evaluators nodded. Data keys clacked. Drones blinked green.
They would never know the truth. Not yet.
Because Yin Zhou—Contestant #0000—was not the weapon they built. He was the monster they let in.