Just like the silence before dawn.This darkness was suffocating—thick, heavy, as if the world had been swallowed whole.
David felt a little disoriented and his vision slightly blurry. Gradually, David's eyelids started to flutter open and his vision soon returned.
David gasping, he jolted upright, lungs aching as they greedily drank in the cool night air.
His body trembled with the sudden surge of life, as if death had just passed him by again.
His body felt heavy and his body was slightly sore. As he lifted himself off the ground,he touched his head gently to see if he had been injured.
"Why does my head hurt so much?" He thought, bewildered and unable to make sense of what just happened to him.
Thoughts flooded David's mind qs he try to recall what had happened but his brain couldnt keep out.
Time had slipped away like sand through his fingers and he didn't know how long he'd been out. Minutes, hours, maybe longer.
All he knew was pain. A dull throbbing in his skull. An ache in his chest. And yet, beneath the pain… something else.
An inner strength, A strength from within.
Suddenly, a sound pierced the dark. A soft hum—low, rhythmic like the distant beat of war drums echoing in his mind. Then came the voice again. Cold. Robotic. But somehow… familiar.
The world around him was a ghost town. Ash blanketed the ground like snow. Fires crackled faintly in the distance
A section of the city he once called home now stood as nothing more than smoldering ruins. Buildings collapsed. Vehicles overturned. Bodies… scattered.
He coughed violently and wiped blood from his lips, his fingers trembling.
What the hell happened…? He said to himself.
Then it came back in fragments—running, the creature, the slash, the light bursting from his chest. And the kill.
David then got a glimpse of what had happened earlier on and started to recall the last event that occured between him and the xeradian creature.
He looked around him and saw the dead creature. He then stared at the lifeless corpse of the Xeradian creature, its bio-metallic body sprawled across the ground.
The creature's armor was cracked and broken, revealing a mass of dark, pulsing organs beneath.
Its face, once an intense scorl was now frozen in a permanent snarl, its eyes were dull and lifeless.
He looked down at his hands. They were still glowing faintly—pale blue lines tracing his veins like molten circuitry.
His chest, once torn open, was now smooth and scarless. Even his bruises were gone.
"No way..." he muttered, voice hoarse.
"Did That… actually happened?"
As if answering his question, a transparent screen blinked into existence in front of him.
The words written on it weren't in any language he had seen before, nevertheless for some reasons he felt like he understood it.
[System Online]
[Status: Stable]
[Level 1 - Youngling Hunter]
[XP: 50/100]
A chill ran through him. This wasn't a hallucination. Whatever was inside him, it was all real.
The screen flickered again.
[Health: 100%]
[Energy Core: 62%]
[Warning: Neural fatigue detected. Rest advised.]
He blinked at the last line. Rest? Now? He laughed dryly.
"Easy for you to say, voice-in-my-head. We're in the middle of a warzone." I dont even know where i am.
His stomach growled suddenly, breaking the tension.
Of course, he thought, rubbing his belly. He hadn't eaten in… well, he couldn't remember.
He looked around, trying to spot his emergency kit, the one he'd dropped earlier while running before he got attacked by a xeradian creature.
His eyes locked on the edge of a red strap peeking out from a collapsed wall.
He forced himself to his feet. The world tilted. For a second, everything spun—but he gritted his teeth and pushed forward. Crawling over broken slabs of concrete and twisted metal, he yanked the kit free and opened it.
Inside were some protein bars, a thermal water bottle, a compact med scanner, and a few nanite packs—basic, but precious.
He devoured a bar in two bites and drank the water greedily, sighing as the liquid cooled his burning throat.
He sat up, his eyes scanning the ruins of what was once a city. The buildings were reduced to rubble, their steel beams twisted and tangled like skeletal fingers.
The streets were empty, devoid of any sign of life. No humans, no animals, just an endless expanse of destruction.
The realization hit him like a sledgehammer: he was alone. Completely, utterly alone. The weight of that realization crushed him, and for a moment, he couldn't breathe.
He stumbled to his feet, his eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of hope. But there was nothing. Just smoke, ash, and the eerie silence of a dead world.
He took a step forward, his foot crunching on the gravel. The sound seemed loud in the stillness, a reminder that he was still alive, still moving in a world that had been ravaged beyond recognition.
As he walked, the silence seemed to swallow him whole. He was a ghost haunting the ruins of a civilization that had been wiped out.
The thought sent a shiver down his spine, and he quickened his pace, driven by a desperate need to find something, anything, that would prove he wasn't alone in this desolate new world.
As he chewed, he looked around again—really looked. This wasn't just destruction. It was eradication. No signs of survivors. Not even birds. Just smoke and the distant howls of death.
His heart clenched.
His pulse quickened. He fumbled for the communicator at his hip and switched it on, praying for a signal.
"This is David Reyes, Sector 9. Is anyone out there? Please, anyone… respond!"
Static.
He switched channels and tried again.
"I repeat—Sector 9, David Reyes, requesting immediate evac or allied response.
Still nothing.
He lowered the device slowly. It was like screaming into a void.
A lump formed in his throat. The edge of panic crept in again, slithering into his chest like ice.
"Don't break," he whispered. "Not now."
He stood, more slowly this time. The blue glow in his veins had dimmed. He still didn't understand what this "system" was—why him, why now.
But it had saved him. Given him strength. And maybe—just maybe, it was his one chance to survive.