The world was dead.
A thick layer of gray dust blanketed everything, stretching endlessly toward the horizon. The wind whispered through the desolation, stirring up faint clouds of ash that drifted like ghosts in the air.
Ghosts. How fitting.
The world was dead.
And in death, a certain kind of life endured.
A small group of figures moved through the wasteland, their bodies wrapped in tattered cloth, faces obscured by old gas masks. They carried shovels and rusted metal rods, prodding the ground, overturning debris, searching for anything of value.
Scavengers.
Among them walked a young man, sluggish and silent, his grip loose around the rusted crowbar in his hand. Like the rest, he worked efficiently—digging, sifting, occasionally pocketing scraps of metal or half-melted trinkets. Anything that might be worth something to someone.
Then—
"Oh?"
A glint of light caught his eye beneath the swirling dust. He crouched, brushing away layers of filth. He wasn't sure what he expected—something, anything, proof that life had existed before all of this. But as his fingers dug deeper, they met something solid. Brittle.
A skull.
His breath hitched, and without thinking, he pulled his mask down. The air was thick, heavy. The scent of roast filled his nostrils—a smell that, under different circumstances, might have been appetizing. But here, it was wrong. Sickening.
"Adam!"
A sharp voice snapped him back to reality. A gloved hand smacked the back of his head, jolting him forward.
"Boy, what the hell did I tell you 'bout takin' off yo' goddamn mask?!"
The hand belonged to an older man, his scowl visible through the cracked visor of his gas mask. "Don't inhale this shit! We don't even know what kind of diseases we're catchin' out here."
"Hm." Adam exhaled, slipping his mask back on. But his gaze lingered on the skull, half-buried in ash.
This wasteland, this endless sea of gray, was not the remnants of some forest razed by fire. No.
It had once been people.
Thousands—burned, erased, reduced to dust and bone, their remains swept away by the wind.
And to think, just half a day ago, Adam had seen them alive. On live television. Struggling. Afraid.
What are you even thinking about? Work, Adam. Nothing else matters. Wo—
"This is bullshit! We've been here for hours, and all I got are these stupid earrings!"
A loud voice yanked Adam back from his thoughts. One of the other scavengers, an older man—though not as old as the one who had reprimanded him—tossed his shovel down with a frustrated grunt.
"We're wasting our damn time. There's nothing left here but junk."
"Better junk than nothing," another scavenger muttered, slipping a rusted coin into his pocket. He let out a bitter laugh. "Fuck. The real problem is the tax. Why do we have to give up fifty goddamn percent of what we find?"
"I just want something to take home to my family, man." Another voice, weary and resigned. "This is no way to make a living… If only I got summoned to the Game."
"And one day, we'll be standing on top of you—just like the rest of these sorry motherfuckers."
A man ground his boot into a charred skull, crushing it to dust, adding yet another layer to the desert of the dead.
"One moment, you're just enjoying time with your girl, and the next, you're teleported onto the battlefield. Fuck that."
Adam kept his head down as the scavengers talked amongst themselves, their voices grating in his ears. He didn't care to join in. He never did. But they were loud. Too loud. It was impossible to tune them out.
"This last Game was brutal. Did you see the final minutes? A fucking massacre."
"As if it could've ended any other way. The First Soldier was on the Red team. You really thought the Blues had a chance?"
"Damn. That was crazy. When was the last time the First Soldier was summoned? Seven years ago? Ten?"
"I just feel sorry for these people."
One of the scavengers crouched down, scooping up a handful of ash. He let it slip through his fingers, the wind carrying it away as he muttered,
"Forced to fight in a war they didn't ask to be part of."
"Psh. I'd be glad to take their place. If one of the Administrators chose me? I'd be a Hero in what? Three, four Games?"
"Fucking idiot. The fastest recorded rise to Hero was seven Games. You'd be lucky to last two. Hell, you'd probably die in your first."
Laughter erupted from the group.
Then, someone called out, "Hey, Adam! What about you? You wanna join the Game? How many battles do you think you'd need to win?"
Another voice snickered. "Pfft. The schizo can't even stand the sight of blood. You think he'd survive? He's a coward."
"I wasn't asking you, dumbass. Adam!?"
Adam exhaled slowly, closing his eyes as every gaze turned to him. He could feel their anticipation, waiting for some kind of reaction.
After a few seconds, he shook his head.
"No."
A simple answer. But inside, his mind was in turmoil.
You're probably the last person who wants to be part of the Game, aren't you, Adam?
All that pain. That suffering. You've seen it. Lived it. You don't want it.
"See!? Fucking knew it. Schizo's a damn coward. Hey, if any of us get summoned, just stick to me, Adam."
"Don't fucking call it a game."
The voice was sharper this time, carrying weight. It came from someone in the group who hadn't spoken much until now.
"Thousands died here. Millions more in the other Domes. Have some fucking respect."
The scoffer rolled his eyes. "Everyone calls it a game."
The Game.
That's what the world had named it.
It started twenty years ago. The event that changed everything.
No one knew how or why it happened. Only that one day, in the year 2025, humanity was punished.
A hundred asteroids fell to Earth all at once. The world's governments scrambled to stop them, but the rocks were indestructible. Immovable.
The world could only watch as the sky cracked open and death came crashing down.
But it wasn't death that greeted them.
It was a game. The Game.
The asteroids didn't destroy the land. They didn't bring fire or devastation. Instead, they split open like colossal, blooming flowers, enveloping entire cities in translucent domes.
And within those domes, a voice spoke.
The Administrators.
They told the trapped that they had been chosen.
Chosen at random. Fairly. Exactly 60,000 per Dome.
For what? They all asked.
The answer they received was a death sentence.
They were to fight.
To wage war.
To kill.
To destroy the enemy's Crystal..
Blue vs. Red.
No one agreed at first, of course. Most protested.
But those who did—those who refused—burst into flames where they stood. Their screams filled the domes, their bodies reduced to cinders in an instant.
That was enough to change everyone's mind.
And so, they fought. And they killed.
But the domes didn't just contain people. No, there were monsters too. Creatures not of this world—twisted, unimaginable things that tore through flesh as easily as paper.
The world outside tried to intervene. Governments scrambled for solutions, launching missiles, deploying their greatest weapons. One nation even fired a nuclear warhead at the dome within its borders. But the barriers were as indestructible as the asteroids that had birthed them.
The rest of humanity could only watch.
And so, they did.
They watched as their people slaughtered one another inside a bubble they could not touch.
And then, finally, there was a winner.
The victors were rewarded—granted Strength beyond human limits, strength that eventually led to wealth, power, influence.
The losers?
They were reduced to nothing but ash. Their reward was fire, consuming them until nothing remained. A minimum of half—always at least half—of the 60,000 per Dome guaranteed to die.
And then, as if nothing had happened, the domes vanished.
Humanity thought the nightmare was over.
But exactly one month later, new domes appeared. Different locations. Different people.
And this time, it was worse.
Whenever the numbers inside a battlefield weren't enough, the Administrators simply took more. Summoning people at random—plucking them from their homes, their workplaces, their families. One moment, living their lives in peace. The next, thrown into a warzone.
And those who had already fought before? They were chosen again. And again. And again.
A never-ending cycle. A system that decided life and death at random, every month.
The population dwindled. Halved within two decades. And it would continue to decline—month by month, war by war.
A slow, but sure, apocalypse.
Twenty years later, humanity had reshaped itself entirely to survive. Civilization, culture, everything was different.
And today, Adam was standing in the remains of the latest victims of the so-called game.
"How many did I even get?" Adam muttered, but he wasn't talking to anyone at all, "I still have enough food to last for three days, I'll be fine. I'll be fine."
He was talking to himself, crouching down with his crowbar to find something valuable. But like the other scavengers said, everything of value has probably already been grabbed by other scavenger units.
Still, he continued to go through all the ash. But soon, his frustration reached the end of this dark gray desert.
"Damn it!" He slammed his crowbar into the ground before abruptly standing up, stepping back without realizing someone was behind him.
"Hey!"
Adam winced as he instinctively grabbed the other scavenger's arm to steady him. Unfortunately, the man did the same, and instead of regaining their footing, both of them lost balance and tumbled to the ground.
"The fuck!" The scavenger cursed and immediately stood up, "Schizo, can you watch where you're—Holy shit! Are you alright!?"
The anger forming on the scavenger's face instantly faded away as soon as he saw Adam's thigh, the sharp end of a crowbar pierced through right next to the arteries. He could even see a large shard of Adam's bone slightly poking out along with the metal.
"Fuck! Guys, Adam's injured!" The man quickly called for the others.
"What!? Adam!?"
"Yo, hurry up an' grab the med kit! We can't be havin' another injury up in here, or they gon' shut us down fo' real!"
The other scavengers quickly rushed to Adam's aid, the dark gray ash scattering in the air from their gallop. The medic did not waste any time at all and crouched next to Adam.
"Where's he injured!?" The medic asked, and the scavenger quickly pointed at Adam's left thigh.
"The fucking thing's poking out! Are you blind!?"
"In the thighs!? We need to get him to a hospital if—Huh?" Before the medic could open his kit, his words were cut off when Adam suddenly stood up.
"No hospitals!" Adam raised his voice, the sound of his breaths escaping through his mask from how heavy it was, "I'm not… I'm not injured. I'm not. No hospitals, please. No… no hospitals."
The medic clicked his tongue when he saw Adam walk with an injury.
"Sit down, Adam!" He groaned as he pulled Adam back, "You're going to make your injuries… worse?"
His words slowed down, however, as he checked both of Adam's thighs. He tried to find the crowbar that was supposed to be sticking out, but… there was nothing there. No wound, nothing.