I wasn't even born when the apocalypse arrived. If I had been, I'd be in my seventies by now.
Everything I know comes from the historical accounts, the fragmented records, and the whispers of survivors—assuming any of it hasn't been dressed up with embellishments or outright lies. According to them, it all began in the year people feared the world's computers would fail: Y2K.
The event was later called Black December. But contrary to the rumors at the time, the end didn't come from a software glitch, some global technological collapse, nuclear wars, or an AI uprising.
Oh no. That would have been merciful in comparison.
Instead, the sky itself was torn open. A rift—a vast, glaring wound in reality—spread like a demonic eye, unblinking, hateful, gazing down upon the world. From that impossible fissure, a gray, choking fog bled into the atmosphere. It was no ordinary mist: it gnawed at the land, corroded the air, unraveled minds, and seeded nightmares into the waking world. This was no natural disaster. It was the first breath of a malignant dimension pressing against ours.
Though it has carried many names, this phenomenon came to be known as The Hollow ever since. With the fog came monsters, shapes twisted in ways no sane mind could endure. With the fogs spread anomalous horrors of twisted, grotesque entities—collectively called the Hollowspawn, the direct spawn of the Hollow, birthed from negative abstract concepts—fear, grief, envy, shame, hunger, even loneliness itself. Each Hollowspawn reflects the shape of the concept it embodies, some appearing grotesque and alien, others deceptively human-like but radiating a wrongness that unsettles the soul. They are endlessly hostile, feeding on emotions and life force to sustain their fragile existences. Some whisper that the Hollowspawn are failed attempts at "recycling" broken realities—conscious fragments of despair given monstrous form.
But the creatures weren't the only curse it carried.
Within that miasma hid a pathogen. A silent plague. Its toll was swift and merciless: half the global male population gone in mere weeks. The details remain buried in classified files, but the rumors persist—men found lifeless in their beds, struck down by sudden cardiac arrest, or reduced to husks after bleeding from every orifice.
Only those with natural resistance—or perhaps some cruel accident of immunity—survived. "Fortunate," some would call them. Others might say the opposite.
At the same time, the fog's plague did not spare women entirely. But where it claimed the lives of men, it altered the flesh of women instead. Roughly eighty percent of the surviving female population underwent something no science could fully explain.
Their bodies became conduits for a new kind of force. A current of living power, invisible yet tangible, that would later be called Mana.
It was a miracle wrapped in a curse.
This Mana gave rise to abilities never before seen on Earth. Some women awoke with enhanced strength or heightened senses, their bodies sharper, faster, tougher than steel. Others learned to bend fire, lightning, or ice at their fingertips. A few could twist their flesh into monstrous forms, walk between shadows, or wield strange psychic dominion over mind and matter. Each mutation was unique, as if itself had written upon their souls.
For a fleeting moment, humanity believed this gift could turn the tide. Armed with supernatural power, women rose against the horrors seeping from the rift. They became hunters, defenders, warriors blessed with impossible strength.
But hope was brief.
For every monster slain, ten more clawed their way from the fog. For every bastion defended, another city was swallowed. Mana was not enough. Civilization tottered on the brink of collapse, its proud towers crumbling into dust, its armies shattered. Humanity faced not survival, but extinction.
And then…
She appeared.
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The world was saved—if "salvation" could ever truly describe what followed—by a figure who remains as much myth as reality. She is remembered only as...
...the Radiant Empress.
The truth of her origins is veiled in mystery. No record agrees on what is their origin, with some records disagree on the details. Some claim she emerged from the Hollow itself, radiant and terrible. Others swear she was an ordinary girl, one of the afflicted, who simply awakened to a power beyond comprehension. The truth is lost, buried beneath reverence, fear, and myth.
As for what she truly looked like? Some claimed she was impossibly tall—three times the height of a man—with the bearing of a goddess and the beauty of a dream that shattered the heart. Others swore she was shrouded in living light, too radiant to gaze upon, her form obscured by brilliance, her presence bending mortals to awe and silence.
Yet all accounts agree on this: she possessed power beyond anything the Hollow could muster. With a mere gesture, she dispersed the fog. With a word, she drove back the nightmares. Where she stood, reality itself seemed to realign, and for the first time since Black December, humanity could breathe.
But even the Radiant Empress knew she could not fight alone forever.
From her own flesh, her own will, she crafted nine daughters—the Matriarchs. Each one bore a fragment of her essence, embodying aspects of her power, her temperament, her beauty, her fury. Different in form, in spirit, in gift, yet united as living extensions of their mother. The Matriarchs became humanity's wardens, demi-goddesses walking among mortals, each ruling and safeguarding the scattered remnants of civilization.
Yet the Matriarchs understood a harsher truth: to preserve humanity, they would need more than miracles. They would need soldiers.
Thus was born the Ordo Bellatrix.
Young girls, chosen for their resilience and faith, were brought into the Apotheosis Program—a brutal, sacred crucible that remade flesh and spirit alike. Infused with genetic templates derived from the Matriarchs, honed by unrelenting training, reinforced with chemical and cybernetic augmentation, they were reforged into something beyond human.
The Bellatrix.
They became the sword and shield of the Empress and her daughters, sworn warrior-nuns clad in divine allure and martial might. Towering seven feet tall, their bodies were sculpted into a paradox of beauty and lethality—slender yet muscular, graceful yet unyielding, their every movement charged with predatory precision. Their endurance shattered mortal limits, their reflexes danced on the edge of precognition, and their wounds closed with unnatural speed.
But the Radiant Empress, in her infinite mercy—or perhaps inscrutable design—did not stop at the Matriarchs and Bellatrix, knowing that they could not stand alone forever by their won. Humanity itself needed a path to rise from helplessness, so the benevolent Radiant Empress bestowed upon humanity her last and greatest gift:
The Edenfruit.
A strange artifact, neither wholly crystal nor wholly flesh, it resembled an apple sculpted from living light. When consumed, it rewrote the very essence of a woman, weaving her soul into resonance with Mana itself. Those chosen by the Edenfruit did not merely gain strength—they awakened into something beyond mortal limits.
These women came to be known as the Sororitas.
Unlike the Valkyries—whose might was carved through discipline, blood, and genetic craft—the Sororitas were miracles of individuality. Each underwent an awakening, a metamorphosis in phases. At first, a flicker: their eyes, their voices, their weapons marked with subtle signs of their essence. But as their souls blazed into fullness, they transformed completely, adorned in luminous garb and armed with symbolic weapons, radiant embodiments of their innermost selves.
Their powers were as diverse as the women who bore them. Some commanded flame and steel, others the chill of winter or the keening of storms. Some became voices of pure song, weaving sound into weapons. Others tread stranger domains—memory, time, elegance, even sorrow itself. No two Sororitas shared the same gift, for each was bound not to a template, but to her own scars, ideals, and desires.
Together, they became humanity's vanguard, magical saints who fought at the side of the Valkyries, beneath the gaze of the Matriarchs, and under the blessing of the Radiant Empress herself.
And so it was that the long nightmare gave way to a fragile dawn.
Humanity was not destroyed, nor entirely saved. But it was transformed—reborn beneath the shadow of divinity and the light of impossible power.
This was the beginning of a new epoch.
The Radiant Era.
=====
By the year 2075, the nightmare of the Hollow had not vanished. The fog still lingered, a suffocating reminder of the wound in reality, and the horrors born from it still prowled the wild ruins of the old world. But humanity endured—sheltered within nine colossal fortress-metropolises known as the Radiant Cities.
Each Radiant City was a world unto itself: a multi-layered, self-sustaining ark of civilization, shielded by the divine power of one of the Matriarchs. Their presence alone held back the fog, their will saturating the air like invisible wards. These nine daughters of the Radiant Empress ruled as sovereign guardians, their thrones carved from the ashes of the fallen world. Around them, the unyielding Valkhyr Order marched, their towering figures both the shield and the sword of their divine mothers.
Overseeing all was the Bloom Dominion, a vast theocratic empire, guided by the governing body formed in the Radiant Empress's name. Through it, the Matriarchs ruled their cities, Valkyries enforced divine law, and Sororitas safeguarded the world against the Hollow. The Dominion was matriarchy incarnate: powerful, enigmatic, and eternal, embodying both humanity's salvation and its chains.
But the Cities had another miracle at their heart: the Edentree.
A tree unlike any known to Earth, its form was grown and sculpted from an unknown "organic" crystalline matter that shimmered as though woven from light and stone. The Edentree served a dual purpose. First, its aura pushed back the Hollow's fog, acting as a wellspring of sanctified air that shielded the metropolis. Second, it bore the Edenfruit—the sacred crystal-apples that awakened Sororitas—and from its veins flowed Edensap, a rejuvenating essence capable of healing wounds and extending vitality.
Where the Edentrees came from remains a mystery. Some believe the Radiant Empress brought them from beyond the rift, others that she birthed them with her own hand, planting them as anchors of salvation. Whatever their origin, their importance was beyond measure. A single Edentree was worth more than all the treasures of the old world combined.
Because of this, they are guarded with near-fanatical devotion by the Bloom Dominion, an order sworn to tend, protect, and regulate the Edentrees. To touch one without sanction is to invite execution; to threaten one is to invoke war. For without these crystalline titans, even the might of the Matriarchs could not forever shield humanity from the Hollow.
And so, beneath the watchful gaze of the Matriarchs, within the sanctuaries of the Edentrees, and under the eternal silence of the absent Empress—humanity persists. Not free, not safe… but alive.
Nine Matriarchs. Nine Radiant Cities. Nine humanity's final havens.
The whereabouts of the Radiant Empress herself remain shrouded in mystery. Some claim she had withdrawn to the Moon, where she watches over the Earth from afar, ensuring the Hollow does not consume it whole. Others whisper that she transcended mortal existence, slumbering until the world once again calls for her light. Whatever the truth, her absence is a silence felt by all.
Yet even as humanity survived, the nature of society was transformed.
Since Black December, the balance between men and women had shifted irrevocably. Mana, Edenfruit, Sororitas—all of these divine gifts flowed only through women. They became the warriors, the rulers, the protectors, and the architects of the new age. Power itself had become feminine.
Men, in cruel fate, bore no such gifts, remained mundane. Their mortality was compounded by scarcity; the Hollow's plague had left the ratio of men to women at a staggering 1:49. Within this new world, men became both exalted and diminished—treasured as rare, yet stripped of authority. Some were elevated to cult-like status, idolized as symbols of purity or rarity. Others lived as curiosities, ornaments in the courts of powerful women. And yet, beneath the reverence lay patronization. With no mystical abilities, no Edenfruit awakening, no place in the legions of Valkyries or Sororitas, men became spectators to a world reshaped by women's hands.
Social norms and roles of the old world reshaped themselves around this inversion.
Women filled the thrones, commanded the militaries, and controlled the economies. They fought and bled for the survival of mankind while also shaping its culture in their own image. Men, by contrast, became the minority—sometimes passive, sometimes proud, sometimes embittered relics struggling to define themselves in a matriarchal age.
Gender norms and morals themselves warped and flipped. assertiveness, boldness, even predatory, became more or less a feminine traits. Meanwhile, depending on temperament, men were seen as the delicate ones—adapted with humility, resisted with arrogance, or detached themselves entirely. Some men accepted these roles quietly, even comfortably. Others resisted, retreating into arrogance or detachment, clinging to fading notions of relevance.
This was the world of the Radiant Era—
promised stability, prosperity, and protection.
But it also carried chains.
Chains woven of reverence, duty, and blood.
But little do they know...
Something about to change the course of history yet again.
Not by the will of the Goddess-Empress nor the horrors from the fog and beyond, but from something else entirely.
Something from within Mega Ark-City 01.
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<<<[ Ch 01: Radiant Era - END ]>>>