The world after the Purge

The aftermath of the beings' departure plunged Earth into absolute chaos. In the span of a single night, the world had changed forever. Only those between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five had survived the apocalyptic purge—an arbitrary age window that left behind a generation too young to have led and too old to forget what they lost. Families were shattered, cities silenced, and the world fell eerily quiet in the absence of those who once filled it.

What remained was a fragile, grieving generation, scattered and broken, forced to inherit a dying world they had no hand in shaping. Emotions ran wild—grief for parents, siblings, and friends lost to the light. Rage boiled in others, a desperate need to assign blame for the inexplicable genocide. Confusion haunted them all, thick as the ash still falling from the skies. And amidst it all, some felt something far more dangerous—a quiet thrill, a pulse of excitement. The beings hadn't just taken; they had left behind promises. Of power. Of change. Of evolution.

What if it was true? What if humanity could become something more?

The answers began to surface just days after the beings vanished.

The first monsters appeared under the cover of darkness.

They were called Zombies—twisted, reanimated corpses risen by the overwhelming concentration of death energy left behind in the wake of global loss. These weren't the shuffling, slow beasts of fiction. No, these were far worse. These were familiar faces—mothers, fathers, brothers, friends. The very people whose deaths they were still mourning, now risen as grotesque echoes of who they once were.

Driven by nothing but primal instinct, these zombies existed only to survive, to feed, and to multiply. Though they lacked true intelligence, they retained the full strength of the humans they had once been. They moved with jerking, animalistic precision, eyes vacant and mouths stained red. And in close quarters, they were terrifyingly lethal.

Most survivors fought them off with makeshift weapons—metal pipes, sharpened rods, anything with a handle and weight. But the real horror wasn't in the fighting. It was in the hesitation. When a survivor saw the face of someone they had once loved, their body locked, their grip faltered, their heart broke. In those critical seconds, they were bitten. And when they died, they didn't rise as ordinary zombies.

They became something far worse.

Zombie Controllers.

These aberrations were born from deaths steeped in emotional conflict. The death energy that reanimated them didn't just return them to life—it shattered them first. It stripped away all their memories, all their humanity, and rebuilt them from the bones outward. They emerged leaner, faster, more powerful, their bodies enhanced by the very mana that had drenched the earth. With jet black hair and pitch-black eyes, they moved like predators, not monsters. Intelligent, cold, calculating. They organized. They stalked. They planned.

And they killed.

Humanity was unprepared for them. But they weren't defenseless. Because they were changing, too.

Weeks after what survivors came to call The Dark Beginning—the night the purge swept across the globe—those who remained began to feel something new in the air. A pulse. A rhythm. Like the heartbeat of the Earth itself. An energy that moved invisibly, yet undeniably, all around them. The younger you were, the easier it was to sense.

They named it mana, a name choose because of it familiarity with it media counterpart.

This energy defied every known law of science. It couldn't be measured, but it could be absorbed. It didn't interact with the physical world unless manipulated, but within the body, it was transformative. Absorbing it created intense internal heat, accelerating cellular repair, enhancing physical performance, and sharpening the senses. Muscles grew denser, nerves fired faster, and instincts became sharper. It was evolution—on fast forward.

With guns and ammunition scarce and no factories to produce more, humanity adapted. They went backward to move forward—abandoning modern warfare in favor of axes, spears, machetes. Ancient tools that, when wielded by mana-enhanced survivors, became weapons of legend.

And from this new warrior age, one name began to rise above all others.

Mark Gale.

Seventeen years old. African-American. Tall, lean, hardened. His skin was dark and scarred in places, a testament to countless close encounters with death. His hair black and unruly, his eyes an unnatural shade of electric blue—lit from within by the mana he had consumed. What set him apart wasn't just his power. It was his persistence.

When the invaders had arrived, humanity had launched a desperate counterattack. Nuclear bombs were detonated hoping to annihilate whatever alien presence had orchestrated the purge.

Mark's city had been unlucky. Close enough for the radiation to affect them but far enough from other civilization that the journey there will take weeks. Everyone else in the fallout zone perished within hours—poisoned, blistered, gone some lasting longer than other but Mark didn't die.

He survived.

By absorbing massive amounts of mana and expelling it outward in a continuous field around his body, he created a wave of pure energy that repelled radiation particles. The process was brutal. Inefficient. Agonizing. But it worked. Every day, he worked on the efficiency of this process. Every day, his body adapted. And after eight weeks of burning mana like fuel, of vomiting blood, looking for shelters, searching for food and collapsing from exhaustion...

He walked out of the ashes.

Not as a survivor—but as something else entirely.

He was proof that evolution wasn't coming. It had arrived.

And as Mark returned to the scattered pockets of civilization, people began to look to him not just as a warrior—but as a symbol. A beacon of hope. Living proof that humanity wasn't on the verge of extinction. It was entering its next phase.

The beings hadn't ended the human race.

They had awakened it.

And one day they will pay.

---

Somewhere far away, in a dark, silent room beyond the ruined Earth…

Luke awoke.

His eyes fluttered open to a low, mechanical hum and utter darkness. His body was sore. His mind clouded. When he tried to remember what happened, a splitting pain shot through his head like a knife. He clutched his temples and sat up, waiting for the wave of nausea to pass.

When it did, he realized he wasn't alone.

Around him were rows upon rows of beds, each occupied by other teenagers—boys and girls his age, their faces pale and still. Some twitched in their sleep, as if trapped in nightmares. The room was so vast that even when Luke stood on his bed, he couldn't see its end. Just more shadows, more beds, more silence.

Then he saw her.

A girl sitting up at the far end, awake, her arms wrapped around her knees.

He approached her quietly. "Hello," he said gently.

She flinched, startled. "What… you're awake?" Her voice was confused, scared. "No one wakes up this early."

"I was going to ask the same thing," Luke said. "Do you know where we are? Or where my family is?"

At his words, her expression crumbled. Tears welled in her eyes, and she quickly covered her mouth to muffle a sob. Luke, panicked and unsure, tried to comfort her.

"It's okay," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I just—what happened? Where are we?"

She sniffled and shook her head. "They'll tell you tomorrow," she whispered. "Just go back. Please."

"Why won't you tell me?" Luke asked, desperate now. "What's going on?"

But she wouldn't say more. Just whispered again, "Go."

Frustrated and afraid, Luke returned to his bed. The girl had already laid back down, disappearing into the dark like a shadow.

As Luke sat alone, he tried to cling to his last memory.

His sister. She had been sick. They'd tried to take her to the hospital, but everything was shut down. So they cared for her at home.

Then… nothing.

"I miss my family," Luke whispered into the dark.

And as sleep took him again, he could only hope that tomorrow would bring answers—and maybe, a chance to find them again.