They called it the Dying Era.
The world has already ended for humanity. It just hasn't stopped breathing yet.
What remained of Earth was a decaying husk, once blue, now black. Its veins were cracked highways, its cities– graveyard of steel and ash. The ocean changed colour every second, sometimes it even changes into a color yet to be named. The sky was a burnt smear of rust and violet that never cleared.
Thunder rumbled often, more than usual but the truth was that lightning never came. Fires came without warning and rains melted rooftops. Tornadoes twisted through urban jungles like dancers in a slow, inevitable match.
Humanity barely adapted.
People died everyday. To disease. To hunger. To the unknown things that sometimes crawled from the Earth's crack.
This was far worse than an apocalypse. It was a slow death.
Government has tried everything possible but all to no avail.
Raven Halbrecht was born into this silence. He didn't remember a word before the end, only the half-told myths his mother told him when she still had the energy. Tales of blue skies, schools, phones, fresh fruits and music that weren't static. But even those memories has faded.
Now he only had the present, and it stank of nearing death and sorrow.
Raven stood about six feet tall, all lean limbs and worn-down muscle, more from necessity than discipline. His storm-gray eyes looked too old for seventeen, like a soldier's gaze in a boy's body. His olive-toned skin, always pale from lack of sun, was marred with small scars from scavenging runs and close calls.
He wore a patched-up, charcoal-gray coat too big for him, flapping around his legs like a torn cape. His boots were mismatched—one brown, one black—and both had holes in the soles.
He didn't complain or speak much. Who would listen?
His mother, Elara, was the last person who truly knew him. She was a nurse when people still believed medicine could fix things. She raised Raven alone after his father died during one of the first 'sky tears.'
They called them natural disasters back then, as if the Earth's bones snapping in half was just a coincidence.
Elara was soft-spoken, gentle, and always tired. She made tea from boiled weeds and hummed lullabies from a world she barely remembered. She protected Raven with everything she had, until the Fever took her. It was a sickness with no cure or source. It crept through the lungs, chewed on memories, and left behind a hollow shell.
The last time she saw him, she didn't know his name.
Raven didn't cry. He just sat beside her, held her hand, and listened to the silence stretch.
That was three months ago.
Since then, every day had been the same. He scrounged for food, bartered scraps for water, avoided gangs, and slept in random corners of buildings. He ate when he could and starved when he couldn't. The days blurred, the nights bit. He hadn't smiled in weeks.
Some days, he forgot what hope felt like. It was only a matter of time till he forgot how to spell the word.
The ground trembled beneath his feet.
He stopped walking but didn't look up. Tremors were normal now. The world had been shaking apart for years. Cracked sidewalks, fallen billboards, split pavement—all part of the scenery.
Raven adjusted the strap of his satchel. Inside was half a loaf of moldy bread, a bent spoon, and a water-damaged photograph of his mother. Her face was a blur, but it was all he had.
"Another quake," he muttered.
"Big deal." He said sarcastically and hissed. He kept walking.
It had been a long, gray morning. Clouds hung like bruises. The air smelled like wet metal. Flakes of ash drifted through the wind like black snow, clinging to his coat. Ahead, smoke rose from a collapsed parking tower. He didn't bother checking for survivors. There usually weren't any.
Then it came again. A deeper rumble, felt almost like a pulse.
Raven paused mid-step. This one felt different, like something massive had moved beneath the surface, like the Earth had hiccupped. He felt it in his bones. The next thing that came was unusual silence.
Not the usual quiet. Not even birds. Not even wind. Just stillness.
His breath came sharp. That's when the air split.
Five steps ahead, reality ripped open.
Not like a crack in glass, but like a wound.
The tear shimmered in the air—jagged, black, and alive. It pulsed with something unknowable, like it wasn't just a hole in space, but in logic itself. Its edges glowed red, as if bleeding into the air, and from within, Raven saw movement—shadows shifting in a space that had no light, no up, no down.
It looked like a passageway. A throat. A door to something that shouldn't exist.
Then a voice came—not through his ears, but inside his skull. Smooth, deep almost mechanical.
[Rescue System has landed on your planet Earth–Humanity(Earthling) Recognized]
[Labelling and Recognizing Human]
[10.2B Living Things discovered]
[Earthling H096 Recognized]
[Gate H100 Activated]
[Access Granted]
Raven's heart hammered.
"What the hell…"
He took a step back, his eyes darting around the broken street. No one. Nothing. The world had paused. Even the air refused to move.
He looked back at the tear.
It had grown wider, tall enough to walk through. At its base, glyphs began forming—a spiraling pattern of symbols that flickered between red and deep obsidian.
[You have been Chosen out of 90% of humanity]
[Sanctuary Awaits.]
[Would you like to enter?]
A lump formed in his throat.
No one ever talked about this. The cracks. The voices. The system. It was the kind of thing you'd hear in fever dreams or madmen's journals. But this? This was real.
He took a shaky breath.
"Chosen for what…?"
There was no answer.
No answer or not it made no difference to Raven. He finally had a chance to escape this rotten world.
At first he hesitated, not knowing what may be on the other side of the gate was a mystery. It could be anything bad or good.
He didn't even dare to think about the bad things he could find on the other side. He has seen enough 'bad' in this world.
He finally sighed after making a difficult decision.
"Hope it doesn't get more abnormal and weirder..."