The world was black.
But not the comforting kind of black that came with sleep or silence. It was a suffocating, endless void—stretched far beyond sight or time, pierced only by the flicker of screens. Thousands. Hovering in an infinite sphere around her.
Nadia stood in the center, barefoot on obsidian nothingness, her once-white hospital gown stained with dried blood and bile. Her arms hung limply by her side, knuckles twitching each time another screen replayed it. The same moment.
Over and over.
"No—! Don't—!"
Her voice, hoarse and raw, echoed from the monitors.
She watched, yet again, as her brother—frail, shaking, coughing blood—pressed his hand to her chest. An icy blue glow of energy poured out of him in veins, flooding into her limp body.
He smiled. Gentle. Always gentle.
"Live, my baby sister… You're stronger than me…"
But Nadia knew it was a lie.
He could've survived. His wounds were bad, but not fatal. But when he gave her his remaining chrome energy, the very core of special beings like them…
He died.
As if the torment of such a past was not enough, in this nightmare space of hers, the memory twisted itself, with countless other possibilities. In some screens, she screamed for him to stop. In others, she clawed at his arms, begging him to run. But more often—far too often—she saw a monster in her place. Her face. Mouth parted like a leech, sucking the energy out of her brother's cold body in satisfaction.
A parasite.
That's what she was.
Nadia fell to her knees.
"No more…" Her voice cracked. "Please…"
The screens didn't listen. The loop began again.
He dies.
She lives.
He dies.
She lives.
She kills him.
She kills him.
She kills him.
She kills him.
She kills him.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-"
A bloodcurdling scream of pure agony echoes through the space. However, it meets no salvation. Seconds give way to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days.... Years pass, then decades. The nightmare simply continues.
The screams have long stopped. Now all that remained were lifeless eyes, trying to carve her brother's last image into her very existence.
A sudden thought flickers by her numbed consciousness.
Let's end this.
Once such a thought starts taking root, it's impossible to reel it back in. It would be so easy to just let go. One step is all it would take. Just her will materializing into a verbal sentence. That's all that separates her from her brother.
"I..."
"Enough."
A voice—deep, ancient, and vaguely amused—rippled through the space like a vibration on glass. And just like that, every screen blinked off. Silence crashed down. Finally.
Nadia gasped, as if breathing for the first time in centuries.
A figure appeared. Not with light, but by the absence of it—like the shadow of a god. No eyes, no face, just a presence. A pulse of foreign energy radiated from it.
"You've spent long enough punishing yourself."
"..."
"You want revenge, don't you? For what they did to your mother? For the torment you and your brother suffered at their hands for over a decade? And for them killing your brother?"
Her lips trembled. She was so close to drowning, yet that voice forced her to stay afloat.
"Why do you care?"
The figure tilted its head slightly, then smiled with a hint of melancholy. She couldn't see it, but she felt it—a curl of smoke around her heart.
"Because I've been watching. And because we want the same thing."
Nadia's fists clenched.
Her brother's face. His blood on her hands. The faceless scientists in white coats. The needles. The chains. The laughter. The humiliation. The silence.
"I want them to suffer."
"Good."
The voice grew fainter, as if it were sinking into her veins.
"Then awaken. Take my hand."
The void cracked like glass.
She opened her eyes.
White ceiling. Beeping machines. Blinding lights. A circle of stunned
doctors—and beside them, a man.
Tall. Weathered. Familiar.
He had her brother's eyes.
Her lips barely moved. "…Father."
His breath hitched, but before she could hear him speak—
Time stopped.
The machines froze mid-beep. A tear halted mid-fall down her father's cheek. Everyone. Everything. Still.
Only Nadia could move.
Then—ping.
A transparent golden screen hovered in the air before her.
[SYSTEM OF A FORGOTTEN DIMENSION INITIATED]
How far would you go for your revenge?
She stared at the screen, blank for a moment.
Then, in her mind, a whisper:
"I'll strip them of everything. And I'll burn it all to ashes."
The screen glowed once more.
Request acknowledged.
Binding System Protocol…
Do you accept the terms of contract with the Forgotten Dimension?
Y/N
Nadia narrowed her eyes.
Her breath was calm. Her heart? Silent.
"Yes."
Binding complete.
Uploading system orientation…
Initiating [World Reconstruction File]…
A new wave of light bloomed across the frozen room. Nadia blinked as her vision
blurred—and then sharpened, not on the hospital ceiling, but on a vast sky.
It was as if her mind was being flooded with memories that weren't hers.
[WORLD FILE: POST-RIFT EARTH // YEAR 2100]
The sky was the first to shatter.
On January 1st, 2100, humanity woke to a world split open. A massive rift, deep and infinite, spread across the heavens like a wound in space. And from it, they came—creatures not born of this earth. Towering, crawling, flying, slithering things that laughed at bullets and fed on flesh.
Science failed. Governments collapsed. Earth burned.
In a single month, nearly 80% of humanity was wiped out.
The monsters brought with them a new energy—an otherworldly substance that pulsed like liquid starlight. Humans named it 'Chrome'.
To the invaders, it was like oxygen. But to Earth's survivors, it was
radiation—mutagenic, alien, terrifying.
But then… a miracle occured.
Humans started to change.
Some adapted. Their bodies rewired themselves around Chrome, absorbing it instead of rejecting it. Strength bloomed where weakness lived. These rare individuals became Earth's new weapons.
They became The Guardians.
And with them came war.
The War of the End.
Fifty years of carnage. Chrome-touched humans against monsters from beyond the stars. Cities became graveyards. Oceans boiled. But as more and more Guardians appeared, mankind did not fall.
Humanity struck back.
And by some miraculous odds, they won.
But the rift did not close.
Instead, it vanished, as if the past several decades had been a lie, an illusion, a nightmare.
However, the relief did not last long. The world twisted once more and dungeons erupted across the globe—living caverns of Chrome energy, birthing monsters in waves. If left alone, they overflowed, spreading death.
The Guardians were now earth's new peacekeepers, their duty now was to subjugate dungeons before they could bleed into cities.
Dungeons came in six grades—White, Yellow, Orange, Red, Purple, and Black.
White represented pests.
Black represented walking apocalypses.
Very few could even step into a Black Dungeon and return whole.
Only those of Overlord blood—descendants of the First Five Guardians—could wield Chrome strong enough to walk that path.
The Overlords are the extraordinary among the already special existences. They are outliers with potentials reaching much farther than an ordinary Guardian could imagine.
They were revered. Feared.
And hunted.
[FILE END]
Syncing user data… Complete.
Welcome, Nadia Argyros.
Daughter of Overlord Caelum Argyros.
Species: Human - Overlord
Age: 16
Active Chrome: 1,704 En
Potential Chrome: 349,825 ~ Infinity
Level: 5 (396 En to Level 6)
Objective:
1. Strengthen your body with muscle mass and increase your stamina by two fold. Rewards: 500 En
Nadia exhaled slowly as the light faded. The world around her returned to motion—machines resumed their beeping, her father's arms trembling beside her bed.
But something inside her had changed.
No—awakened.
She had seen it all now. The monsters. The world. The war.
And she would burn through it all until she found every last person who had laid a hand on her family.
Her revenge had only just begun.