The clouds hung low, as if ready to crash down upon the earth. Heavy, leaden, as though something inside them was dying. There was no storm. Not even a breeze. Only a suffocating, sticky silence.
Adam sat on the bus, returning from university after classes. Exhausted, half-conscious, he stared out the window. His brows furrowed when he noticed the glass trembling—not from the engine, not from the wind. As if reality itself was about to crack.
His body tensed without reason. His hand clenched the railing, as if something was about to rip him from his seat. The hairs on his neck stood on end, and his heart struck once—too hard, too fast. The air smelled of ozone. Like before a storm.
"This isn't normal," he muttered, wiping sweat from the back of his neck.
He looked at the man beside him. The man was staring ahead, eyes wide. He looked like he had just seen death.
Before Adam could speak—everything changed.
There was a sound that wasn't a sound. As if the world itself inhaled.
Then—light. Blinding, unreal, flooding the interior of the bus like a shockwave. Not from outside, not from any lamp—from nowhere. As if everything suddenly began to emit light: metal railings, plastic seats, even the air. Adam froze. Something invisible passed through his mind, cold and alien. And then, without warning, words formed before his eyes—not on a screen, but... in the air, in his mind. Glowing letters, branded into his consciousness.
[Essence Record has been activated on planet Earth. From now on, you may summon your status window at any time.]
A woman's voice tore through the air like a razor. It wasn't a scream of terror—it sounded like someone trying to rip their soul out through their throat. A second voice followed, hoarse and choked, like burning lungs begging for relief. A third one cut off halfway, replaced by a wet sound Adam would never forget. The bus had become a torture chamber, and its passengers—the victims of an invisible executioner.
Adam watched as their bodies lit up—veins glowing like electrified wires. And then... explosion. A human bomb, right beside him.
The red burst seared into his eyes like a camera flash straight to the retina. Fragments of skin, bone, and shredded clothing hung in the air, swirling in a grotesque ballet of death. Warm, sticky blood splashed across his face, running down his cheek and soaking into his shirt, as if trying to bite into him. The taste of iron filled his mouth.
Before he could even flinch, something hit the bus. Massive. Unnatural. The impact roared through the structure like a wave, and then everything tilted to the side. Gravity betrayed him in an instant—his body thrown against a metal railing. The slam against the vehicle's wall knocked the breath from his lungs, and then he rolled across the floor like a ragdoll.
Something tore through his shoulder, like a hot rod jammed into the joint. His back hit a hard surface with such force that he couldn't breathe for a second—as if the air had fled his lungs and refused to return. His knees scraped against the edge of a seat, leaving burning gashes.
The world around him no longer had shape. Everything was tilted, reversed, broken. Seats dangled from the ceiling—which was now the side. One body swayed in its seatbelt like a limp doll. Someone groaned beneath crushed seats, desperately trying to crawl out. The bus was twisted, skewed, deformed—as if a giant hand had crumpled it in its fist.
The stench of spilled fuel, blood, and melted plastic assaulted his nose. Blinking lights from outside sliced through the smoky interior like blades.
Only a ringing in his ears—as if someone had pressed a drill to his head. His pulse thundered in his temples, and his eyes searched for anything familiar, anything logical in this hell.
He saw a woman without a head, her body still upright for a moment before folding in half and collapsing to the floor. Her hand still clutched her purse. A man in a suit—or what remained of him—hung lifelessly, plastered against the window by a mix of blood and viscera. At the back of the bus, through the smoke and steam, something moved unnaturally—as if its joints no longer obeyed human geometry.
His breath came in ragged bursts. His heart pounded. His whole body refused to obey. He trembled. Not from cold. From pure, primal panic that screamed one thing:
Run.
Adam groaned, trying to lift himself from the cramped space between a railing and a shattered seat. Every movement burned his muscles, as if his body had been broken into pieces.
He dragged himself forward on all fours, struggling to free his leg trapped beneath a hanging seat. Metal tore into his calf—he didn't feel it right away, only noticing later that he had left a trail of blood behind.
Climbing across the tilted seats like collapsed stairs, Adam had to weave between twisted metal and human remains. One foot stumbled over something soft and wet. He looked down—fingers. Severed, blackened by smoke and blood. Nearby, wedged between two seats, lay something that had once been a face. Now it was just a red pulp, from which one wide-open eye protruded, as if still trying to comprehend what had happened.
He blinked. Took half a step back, nearly losing his balance. His mind refused to cooperate—he couldn't process this, couldn't piece the scene into something coherent. He felt his consciousness recoiling, protecting itself from madness. But his legs carried him forward.
At last, he reached a shattered window. The glass was cracked, but bent enough to allow passage. Adam pushed himself through the opening, ignoring new tears in his skin and the tugging of strained muscles.
He fell outside, landing on his knees. They scraped against the asphalt, and his arms collapsed under his weight. He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Finally—freedom. He gasped for breath like a man breaking the surface of a frozen lake. The air outside was cold, damp, smelling of ozone and ash.
And the world... the world was unrecognizable.
Reflected in his eyes were burning buildings and vehicles lying on their sides like dead animals. The asphalt was cracked, stained with blood and shards of glass, and through the smoke loomed deformed silhouettes—some crawling, others standing on trembling legs, as if they had just learned how to walk. Human bodies lay scattered across the pavement, some charred, others twisted at impossible angles. One man on the roadside clutched his head, howling like a beast—his arms were unnaturally long, and his skin flaked like old paint.
Adam couldn't comprehend what he was seeing. Everything he knew had been ripped apart in a single instant. Streets that had been alive just that morning were now a zone of death and mutation. The sky above pulsed with a bruised crimson, its light offering no warmth—only dread. This was no longer the same world.
The world before his eyes looked like the apocalypse.
Panicked, he threw himself behind an overturned car, barely stopping his limp body from collapsing face-first onto the asphalt. His breath came in shallow, broken gasps, each one feeling like it could be his last. His palms pressed against the ground—dirty, damp, trembling with the echoes of destruction—and only then did he notice they were shaking. Not from cold. From fear. Raw, primal fear that didn't need words to take hold. He clenched his fingers against the asphalt, as if trying to anchor himself to reality before it vanished beneath him.
And then, another window appeared.
Name: Adam
Level: 1
Race: Human
Age: 21
Class: None
Title: None
HP: 85/100 / Mana: 50/50 / STR: 11 / AGI: 10 / VIT: 12 / INT: 7
Stat Points: 0
"What the fuck is this...?" he muttered.
It was... a character screen? Like in a game? In a world that had just fallen apart?
Another sound cut through the air—a high-pitched, grating screech, like steel being clawed apart. Then a second, deeper one, more animalistic, descending into a raspy gurgle that chilled the blood. The sounds came from different directions, drawing closer—alien, wild, impossible to associate with any known creature. Each one dug into his nerves like reality itself was screaming that something unnatural was approaching.
Adam looked up. Between the flames and the thick smoke, dozens of meters away, shapes moved. At first glance, they looked human—but something was off. Their movements were jerky, unnatural. One dragged its leg like it was paralyzed, another had its head tilted at an absurd angle, its jaw... dangling.
One of the bodies slowly turned in his direction. Its skin was torn, a chunk of cheek missing, exposing teeth and muscle. Its eyes were empty, milky. Its head twisted as if the neck had long since given out. Its mouth opened and released a guttural screech—high, sickly, inhuman.
Then it hit him: they looked exactly like zombies from the movies. Rotting bodies, severed limbs, empty eyes, and that slow, swaying gait—as if someone had recreated the worst nightmare of a B-horror flick.
Only this wasn't a movie. And they saw him.
One of the creatures lifted its head. Its nose was torn off, brownish fluid dripped from its mouth, and in its eyes—a spark. Recognition. Step by step, it began moving toward him. Others followed.
Adam backed away, hitting the wreck of the car behind him. Instinctively, he glanced to the side, searching for a way out.
And then one of them... started running.