ACT I - Awakening

Prologue :

It's the year 546 PB, a slight breeze carrying a scent rust is in the air, almost no light reaches the ruins that were once called apartments. The only spark of guidance that can be found here comes from flickering lights of the projectors and screens. Dust covers the place and no sign of life can be found with an unattentive eye. Even so, this place is the refuge for a specific group of creatures.

They look, sound, feel human, but they were never considered the same by humanity. They are called anomalies by humans because humans think that their existence is a flaw of nature. These creatures have exactly the same features as humans, but they also possess a special trait: the ability to manipulate elements to their liking in a supernatural way. Humans were afraid that some beings were able to wield such power, but a tense form of peace was still maintained between the two species for centuries.

Until one day, in the year 535 PB, during a political reunion between anomalies and humans in the grand capital that was supposed to reinforce peace, one of the leader anomalies has gone mad and destroyed the chambers, killing every person inside with his power before giving death to himself. This tragedy has been spoken all around the world, causing anger and fear.

Over the course of the year, more and more anomalies appeared, causing destruction and killing people in the process. But the event of 535 has driven humanity into a point of no return.

In 536 PB, the war now named: "The Last War" occured and has opposed humanity agaisnt anomalies. People still remember it as the most bloodshed war the world has ever known, counting millions of deaths on the human camp and only thousands on the anomalies's. The war didn't last long, only one year, but that year was enough to cause the biggest destructions causes by humanity. Even though humans had suffered many more loses, they numbered in the millions, while anomalies numbered only in the thousands. So in the end, they were victorius, even if it didn't feel like it.

Since then, humanity had seen a lot of progress in science and technologies which meant that they were able to control the remaining anomalies a lot easier and even instill fear on them. The most advanced group nowadays already existed before the war, but now changed the name to SARCO, The Special Anomaly Research and Control Organisation. This group alone was able to contain most of the anomalies in the world. Nevertheless, some anomalies were able to escape or hide from the humans, most of them hid in what is called the "underground ruins". Hiding in the shadows, fearing the encounter of humans, the anomalies try to survive in a world where they are not dominant anymore. In that underground city, a young man wakes up in the ruins, confused, lost, but not scared.

ACT I

Chapter 1 :

In a dark, dusty room, the walls are dry and cracked, the floor tiles are shattered, small roots and grass seem to be growing from the walls. Some old furniture is lying around in a panicked desorder, a now calmed chaos seem to be present in the room. Through a broken door, a gust of wind flies through the air and encounters the hair of man, a young man sitting unconsious agaisnt the wall. The wind seem to be flowing through his hair, then his ears, then his eyes.

Slowly, he opens one of his eyes, it is too dark to see anything, he takes some time to adapt to the obscurity of the room. He then starts to move carefully, first by twitching his fingers, then his feet, then his legs, he now sees the room fully, he tries to stand up but then puts his hands to his forehead, feeling an enormous headache. He groans but is still able to stand up with effort, he feels heavy, like he was unconsious for a long time. The man looks around now adapted to the darkness, multiple desks and screens are seen broken and covered in dust, files are thrown everywhere on the floor, molded and desordonned in the drawers. It is practicaly impossible to depict what most of them say due to erosion and humidity but they seem to be reports and notes of some research.

The man cocludes that he is in some kind of laboratory or research room due to some machines and coats lying around. He tries to remember how he got here, what is this place, why is everything is in disarray, and even who he is, but nothing comes to mind. The only memories coming to mind are flashes of blurred people, explosions and one clear image of the moon's surface.

Nothing seems to make sense, he can't even remeber his own name but after a moment he notices a paper in his pocket. He opens it. It seems to be a letter, but the message is now impossible to read, the only thing he can make out is "To Artur". While still feeling lost, he finds the name "Artur" seems familiar to him, so he deducts that it is his own.

Artur is a young man who looks to be in his 20's, he is tall, has short black hair, dark blue eyes and a tired look. He woke up wearing a black shirt and dark blue pants. After looking around the room and not noticing anything bring back his memory he decides leaves the places before the dust defeat his lungs. He pushed the door with force and it collapses on the ground, dust flies around and makes Artur sneeze.

He is now in a corridor, some cracks through the wall let light enter the hallway, Artur looks around, the whole building seems to be run down and abandonned, some breeze get through and makes the lost one remeber the cold of the place. Shivers run down over his body, with luck, he notices a coat hanging next to what seems to be lockers. It's an old burgundy coat with some logo on it, the erosion makes it hard to descript but the motive of a large star is noticeable. He takes it and puts it like he it was his for years, there is some sort of attachements that he feels for the coat but the memories are still blur like something prevents them from coming back to surface.

The amnesiac wanders around the building for some time, going through unstable stairs, cracked floors and even crawling around where the debris blocked the path. The place was definetely abandoned and forgotten for years. Finally he finds a destroyed wall which leads outside the building, he can at last see outside where the only light shined before. The landscape was in the same time better than the building but there was still that feeling of ruin Artur is starting to get used to. He was on some sort of high point which made for him possible to observe most of what look liked a forgotten city.

There were multiple blocks of buildings ,which looked as neglected as the one where Artur was trapped not so long ago, in the ground area. Artur was surprised with the lack of sunlight shining at the city, only a few somber rays of light could be seen coming from what looked like clouds. In reality all those clouds are big wawes of dark polluted smoke coming from up top. He looked up as far as he could and saw far away some pillars supporting some huge skyscrappers which this time didn't look neglected at all, even though it was hard to see through the smoke, Artur could see the shining glass windows of the buildings up there.

The city looked buried under the new, more advanced constructions and more importantly the accumulation of smoke which made breathing an unpleasant task, the landscape looked dark with only a few rays of hope here and there. Artur contemplated at this sad yet breathtaking picture for a while, then he started to make his way into the city, looking for a lot of answers for the bigger lot of questions he had.

After carefully descending through the countless stairs and alleys and still not noticing any signs of life, Artur seem to have finally reached the city. It didn't look as chaotic as the laboratory, but it did definitely feel like everyone left in a hurry and at the same time, some old cars can be noticed rusting in the middle of the roads, light poles are either flickering or simply cut in half, roads have cracks and holes in an uneven order.

It almost looked like an abandoned battlefield, Artur felt uneasy and definetly not welcomed by the city, constantly checking behind his shoulders to get off with the feeling of being watched. After wandering around in a somber ambience for what felt like forever, he notices something different, something out of place with the whole chaos he had seen around him. There was a huge tree right in the middle of a crossroad,the size of it was comparable to the buildings next to it, it was covered with beautiful green leaves and a warm ray of light was shining the branches to make it completely stand out from the ruins.

Seeing something that wasn't destroyed or completely dilapitated for the first time brought a glimmer of hope to Artur, he knew that even in a somber place like this, he could find something magnificent. He gazed at the branches flowing left and right, completely hypnotised by the aura of peace that the tree gave off. He didn't want to leave just yet, so rested agaisnt the tree, feeling a slight breeze and sensing a scent of fresh grass. It hypnotised Artur so much that he carefully closed his eyes and felt asleep, completely ignoring the environement around him.

A dream, some other blurred images that he is just able to observe in silence, some scuffed voices, impossible to depict anything except for one person: a white haired person with a serious face, observing him, waiting for him to listen: "Don't forget, you have to remember, you are..."

Artur wakes up with a cold sweat, stressed. He feels a cold object at his neck, a knife. A cold-blooded voice whispers:"Move and you're a goner".

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The following in the next chapter : Fear

Thank you for reading my first ever chapter! Don't hesitate to give advice 👍