Greysia

Chapter - 35

In the Era of the Lunar Calendar, Year 500, the world did not collapse because of a king’s ambition or wars between kingdoms. Its destruction came because humanity had never been, and would never be, prepared to accept power that surpassed reason and their own recorded history. Supernatural abilities born from the pressure of spiritual energy shattered civil order within mere months.

Far beyond human sight, nine absolute gods and goddesses watched over their creation from outside the boundaries of the world.

They created the human world, the spirit realm, the hidden realm of beauty, the realm of true monsters, the realm of djinn, and the realm of demons—each separated, sealed, and bound by different laws.

However, those boundaries were not accepted forever.

Their creations slowly began to change. Boredom turned into rejection, and rejection transformed into an unspoken rebellion. They did not confront their creators directly, but instead forced their own existence out of their respective realms. Spiritual energy was driven outward by force, too vast, too wild, surpassing limits that were never meant to be crossed.

That pressure seeped into other realms, eroding the barriers established from the beginning. The human world, never designed to contain such energy, became the most fragile victim.

From this pressure, supernatural abilities were born. They mixed with the air itself. Not as blessings, but as wounds that would slowly kill humanity.

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Around five hundred years ago, in the 900s of the Stellar Calendar, an inter-eyed-race war erupted. Cities that had once been centers of trade and civilization were reduced to smoking ruins. Streets were littered with the corpses of humans of various races and animals alike, homes collapsed before their inhabitants could flee, and sacred buildings that had stood for centuries vanished in a single, inexplicable release of power.

There was no front line. There was no distinction between soldiers and civilians. Everyone was a victim. Everything happened without warning.

Some survivors were enslaved by those in power. Others chose to disappear, hiding in forests or remote regions for one reason alone: survival against the threats of the outside world.

They ate whatever they could find, rationed every drop of clean water, and continued searching for ways to endure until the war ended. That waiting did not last days or months, but years.

On the eastern and southeastern continents, children were killed and buried beneath the ruins of their own homes. The elderly were burned alive by flames that did not come from torches or oil, but from other humans—humans who no longer understood the concept of mercy. Villages vanished overnight, erased from the world map without leaving behind a name or a history.

Supernatural abilities that should have been blessings became calamities. Ancient relics, raw magic, and power from other realms were used without restraint. Each release of power destroyed the structure of the world and the lives around it. Rivers were polluted by foreign energy, farmlands turned into dead soil, and forests became nests for monsters that had never existed before.

Civilization collapsed faster than kingdoms.

Governments lost their function. Laws lost their meaning. The cities that survived were filled with refugees—starving, wounded, and stripped of sanity. Some humans sold other humans to survive. Others became slaves to those who could control supernatural power through contracts.

From that day onward, the world’s calendar was no longer counted as the beginning of civilization, but as the beginning of destruction.

Year 1000 was not remembered as the dawn of history, but as the day humanity realized they were no longer the rulers of the world they inhabited.

The pressure of spiritual energy did not only trigger evolution in land and aquatic animals. On a far more horrifying scale, it opened unseen gates to other worlds. These gates connected the human world to realms of evil and benevolent spirits, hidden realms of beauty, the realm of true monsters, and cursed demon realms filled with horror.

Creatures that should have remained bound to their own realms found ways to cross over. Distances that should have separated them by thousands of years of light became meaningless. By simply passing through these gates, they could step directly into the human world.

From that moment on, the wars that erupted could no longer be called conflicts between kingdoms or races. They became a struggle for survival. Humanity finally realized that the greatest threat did not come from other humans, but from incomprehensible beings now walking their world.

With the same resolve, humanity chose to fight back. Driving away, killing, or repelling these creatures became the only way to prevent their world from being completely destroyed.

Until this era, in the year 1543, that massive invasion failed to achieve its goal. This failure was believed to be due to the existence of the Nine Great Powers, powerful entities thought to maintain the balance of the world. They were believed to reside across various regions: south, west, north, northeast, southwest, southeast, northwest, and one at the center. Their existence was regarded as the pillars supporting the stability of the continents surrounding the human world.

...

October 28. Sunday.

Night in the Luand district felt different from Moran. Here, people grew up with ancestral stories that were never fully dismissed as mere folklore. Belief in the unseen had lived on for hundreds of years, woven into habits, language, and even the way fear itself was understood.

In one of his books, a renowned author named Lucitte Kehlen touched upon this very notion. He was known as a prolific writer, having published dozens of books across multiple continents. Yet one of his works, The World’s Decline, became the most controversial.

The book did not discuss physical destruction, but the decline in how humans perceived reality. Lucitte wrote about fear toward things that were not meant to be seen, or more precisely, things that were never seen the same way by everyone.

He gave a simple example: a strip of white cloth hanging from an old tree. From a distance, two people stood in the same place, staring in the same direction, yet seeing different things. One saw a black-winged creature with a flat, expressionless face. The other saw a worn teddy bear with small, neatly aligned, sharp teeth. The object was the same, but its form changed according to what grew within the observer.

Many laughed at the idea. Some called it impossible. Others deemed it an insult to ancestral traditions. According to common belief, what humans saw was merely the result of their own fear, shaped by long-rooted mysticism, especially in old cities like Moran.

And yet, because of that, The World’s Decline slowly disappeared.

It was no longer printed. No longer sold openly. The name Lucitte Kehlen began to be spoken with scorn, even avoided. Some claimed his writing corrupted ancestral legacies, causing younger generations to question what had long been considered sacred.

Was the book truly wrong? Or was it simply saying something the world did not want to hear?

While walking along Road No. 5 and asking about herbal concoctions, Zavi once again found himself fighting five silent-type Chalog.

Chalog had physical forms resembling black panthers, sometimes vanishing when not struck by streetlight, making them difficult to track.

Even a third-rank spirit struggled against silent-type Chalog, forcing Zavi and Moreira to become separated and cornered by the monsters.

“Damn it… Did those bullets really not injure them?”

Zavi muttered, his eyes unblinking as he observed his surroundings, waiting for the Chalog to strike.

“Huh, did entering their territory make them angry at me?” he murmured, drawing a deep breath. “Could it be that man was being chased by these creatures too?”

The Chalog continued roaming the district streets, ignoring other passersby, yet relentlessly targeting Zavi, Moreira, and the woman with them.

“Huh, is it because I entered their territory that they are angry at me?” he asked himself again.

At that moment, Zavi was slammed against the wall of a building, his body covered in claw wounds from three Chalog that had attacked him. Beside him stood a streetlamp, its light barely enough to illuminate the area and save him from further assault.

“Are they really that afraid of light?” Zavi stared at the three Chalog revealing parts of their bodies, their dark purple eyes blazing as they watched the now helpless Zavi.

“Come on, come on. Why aren’t you attacking me? I’m exhausted, damn it,” Zavi said, then sat down, deciding that waiting for sunrise was the best option.

The longer he waited, the more frustrated he became. Sighing wearily from being stuck in the same place, he desperately wanted to escape. But it was impossible, as the light where he sat was five metres away from the street lamp to his right.

He was annoyed. Raising the revolver with his trembling right hand, he aimed it at the three silent Chalogs not far to his left.

Bang!

After a thirty-minute pause, he fired again, continuing until the bullets in the revolver's cylinder were gone. Zavi knew his efforts were futile; he was doing it to relieve his boredom. Until exactly noon. His body was at its limit, sleepiness began to overtake him, Zavi's vision became blurry, the cold night breeze made him unable to bear it any longer and he fell asleep after a few seconds.

The revolver slipped from his grasp, falling to the left side of his stomach and pinned by his thigh as Zavi curled up from the cold.

Thud!

The sound of something falling could be heard, originating from the three Chalog, originally tiger beetles, held back by Prisoner Zavi's sudden activation after he fell asleep.