The sun was bleeding into the horizon, a bruised orange retreating behind crumbling rooftops.
He was running.
Breath like broken glass in his throat, shoes slapping against concrete that cracked with every trembling step. Behind him, the world groaned. Not with life—but with afterlife.
He wasn’t a fighter. Not a Spectral. Just another survivor hoping the Safe Zone beacon was anything but far.
It had been five minutes since he last saw another person.
Two minutes since the shadows started moving on their own.
Thirty seconds since the air turned cold enough to bite.
And now—
Shrrrreee—
A portal shattered into existence behind him, like a glass mirror cracked from the inside. From the splinters of space, they came.
Spectres.
Translucent bodies rippling like heatwaves, bone-thin fingers twitching with malice. Some floated, some crawled. All smiled.
The man tripped—of course he did—skidding across asphalt that scraped skin from his palms. He looked back.
They were already surrounding him.
One Spectre, bloated and headless, tilted sideways as if curious. Another dropped from above like a marionette with its strings cut. Its voice was a gurgle, halfway between a chuckle and a choke.
“Flesh… forgotten…”
He screamed.
Then something else hit the ground—hard.
A thud. A pulse. A flash of green flame erupted between him and the Spectres. And from the smoke stepped a figure—dark hoodie, knuckles glowing.
Nec.
“You’re late,” Nec said, voice flat. “Sunset’s the starting gun.”
The Gauntlet shimmered across his arm, forming as if forged from living shadow and spite. With a twist of his wrist, it snapped into shape—heavy, clawed, thrumming with stored energy.
One of the Spectres lunged.
Bad call.
Nec moved swiftly—first punch took the head off, second cracked it's non-existent bone. The Gauntlet howled on impact, absorbing ectoplasmic remains with a low mechanical ping.
[+25 GP – Wraith-Type Eliminated]
Another came. Nec ducked low, twisted, and launched a shockwave punch that exploded the pavement beneath the creature, sending it back to whatever hole it crawled out of.
[+30 GP – Skulker-Class Spectre Eliminated]
The others hesitated. He didn’t.
A snap kick. A jab. A strike through a Spectre’s core so hard the air screamed. With every blow, the Gauntlet absorbed—changed—evolved. Its plating grew jagged, its glow deeper.
Seconds later, the street was silent again.
Nec exhaled. The Gauntlet dimmed.
“Get up,” he said, not unkindly. “Safe Zone’s two blocks east. Pay them up and save your skin."
The man stared up at him, wide-eyed. “Y-you saved me.”
Nec looked away, already walking.
“Not for free. They dropped good GP. Now go.”
The man scrambled away, limping toward safety.
Nec stayed.
The sky had fully blackened now. In the distance, more portals began to fracture open like broken glass chewing through the skyline.
[Current GP: 490]
[Spectral Arsenal Status: Adaptive – Phase 1]
Nec flexed his fingers. The Gauntlet cracked and shimmered, tasting the air.
Second week of the apocalypse.
He stopped walking, staring at the stars no one trusted anymore.
First night, nobody knew what hit us. We called them ghosts at first. Thought it was a curse. A side-effect of war, maybe. But then the System arrived.
Spectres rose. So the Spectre of Systems rose with them. Gave us weapons. Rules. A scoreboard. Made survival into a damn game.
He looked down at his Gauntlet. It pulsed once, as if listening.
The Night of Hunted Haunters, they call it. Every night since the first one, it happens again. And every night… I get a little stronger. Or a little closer to dying.
Nec cracked his neck.
Another Spectre shrieked in the distance.
Let’s hope it’s the first one tonight.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
And with that, he vanished into the dark.
The rain came without thunder.
It began with the soft percussion of droplets tapping against rusted signage and the fractured shells of abandoned cars. Then, like the sky had grown tired of mercy, it fell in earnest. A curtain of cold water washed the streets, rendering the city in hues of gray and glimmer.
Nec walked through it without flinching.
The rain blurred the edges of reality, smeared the bloodstains from earlier fights, and drowned the whispers that so often clung to the dark. It softened the world, but did not cleanse it. Nothing could cleanse this city now—not fire, not time, not heaven.
His boots echoed against slick pavement. Puddles formed around his feet, rippling with each step.
Screams in the distance. The occasional pulse of a Spectral Arsenal lighting up like a flare—bright, desperate, usually short-lived.
He turned a corner and spotted them.
Four Spectrals. All greenhorns by the look of their gear—standard-issue integrations, unstable energy flux flickering at their wrists. They were surrounding a Spectre that clearly didn’t get the memo it was outnumbered. It moved like smoke with bones, claws dragging sparks off the ground. One of the Spectrals lunged, got backhanded into a crumbling wall.
“Yikes,” Nec muttered.
He moved before they saw him. Gauntlet flaring. One punch dropped the Spectre. A twist of his wrist released a second burst—compressed energy detonating inside the creature’s core. It shrieked, flickered, and vanished in a haze of green neon smoke.
[+7 GP]
He cracked his neck and turned to the Spectrals.
They stared at him, breathless. No one said thank you.
Instead, a girl with a half-burned cape scoffed. “Could’ve handled it.”
Another chimed in, “You just stole our kill.”
Nec blinked, wiped Spectre ichor off his sleeve. “Killsteal?”
He took a step toward them. “Sweetheart, you were about two seconds away from becoming a street mural.”
They didn’t reply. He clicked his tongue.
“Next time, maybe try scratching its itch first. Might purr for you before it rips your face off.”
He turned, rain dripping from his coat, and walked off into the storm.
He hunted through the night.
One Spectre after another, drawn to the city’s carcass like flies. Nec didn’t count the kills—he watched the GP total rise like a silent scoreboard. Every point another ghost laid to rest. Every point closer to his goal.
By the time the sun started bleeding over the ruined skyline, he’d earned enough.
He made his way toward the nearest safe zone gate, the light paling the sky just enough to give the Spectres pause. The gates, thick with reinforced plating and humming with blue sigils, loomed like a final boss room without the drama.
Halfway through the checkpoint, a guard stepped forward, visor flicking up just enough to show dead eyes and a five-o’clock shadow.
“You know the drill.”
Nec sighed, already pulling the chip from his coat.
“Yeah, yeah. Name, Gauntlet ID, Spectral Code, blood type, favorite sins—skip to the punchline.”
The guard snorted, scanned the chip. A soft beep. Nec transferred 5 GP without blinking.
[–5 GP: Temporary Day Access — District 9 Bank]
Districts charged for shelter now. Not water. Not food. Not safety. Time.
He stepped inside.
It was dusk inside the District, though the sun had only just risen. People moved around with tired energy, faces drawn and eyes twitchy, heading to rest as the night warriors returned. The air buzzed faintly—the work of the barrier system granted by the S.O.S., a shimmering dome that flickered like oil over water, keeping the Spectres at bay.
Nec disarmed his gauntlet at a kiosk, the spectral plating receding into the bracer like it was ashamed of itself. He flexed his hand, sore and scabbed.
His stomach growled.
He found a noodle stand still open, tossed some spare GP down, and got a bowl of synthetic miso with something pretending to be beef. It tasted like regret and salt.
A few blocks later, he reached his apartment—cheap, cramped, but his. Rented for 200 GP a week. The price of silence, and a door that locked.
He entered.
Inside, Seele was already back.
She was seated cross-legged on the couch, humming softly, her twin daggers drying beside her. Her hoodie was still splattered with spectre ichor, but she looked annoyingly cheerful—like she’d just come back from yoga and not a six-hour murder shift.
She held up a food box. “Dinner~”
Nec raised an eyebrow. “You smile like that one more time and I’m gonna start suspecting you like fighting those things.”
She grinned wider. “I don't but I do like free food. And this one had actual vegetables.”
Nec dropped onto the couch beside her, kicked his boots off, and took the box. The warmth seeped through his palms, and for a second—just a second—it felt almost normal.
The S.O.S. pinged faintly in the back of his mind, silent for now. But it was always watching. Always waiting.
Tomorrow night, the hunt would begin again.
Seele had always been a bit of an enigma.
Nec glanced at her as she happily chewed through vegetables like they were gourmet. She hummed between bites—some song from a world that didn’t exist anymore.
The world had ended, and Seele had smiled anyway.
Nec still remembered that night when he found her.
A half-collapsed parking structure, lit only by burning cars and the sickly light of ruptured rifts. She was standing there, shaking and wild-eyed, hands bloodied, surrounded by the corpses of Spectres that shouldn't have been hers to kill.
He thought she was dead at first. Or about to be.
But she wasn’t.
She was crying. Not for herself. For the world, maybe. For someone lost. For something that couldn't be named. Nec didn’t ask. He just stood there for a while, watching her cry under the fractured skyline—and, in that moment, decided not to leave.
She was the first person he'd seen cry after surviving.
She'd been with him ever since.
---
Morning no longer belonged to light. The day was dead. Night had become its replacement.
The next cycle, Nec woke to the static warmth of his apartment’s flickering heater, the hollow hum of power running on borrowed time, and the scent of leftover noodles in a cracked container.
He dressed without thinking, armored by routine. Boots. Gauntlet. Coat still damp from rain. It was always damp now.
When he stepped outside, the dome’s artificial sky glowed a muted violet, but the streets moved like it was high noon. Spectrals milled about, sharpening weapons, bartering for supplies, half-laughing through the weariness. The air buzzed with tension—charged, expectant.
It didn’t take long to see the crowd.
Dozens gathered at the Commission Board. The hologram—usually flickering through a rotation of low-grade missions—was holding one in place. Pinned to the top. Pulsing with urgent light.
A green glow. S.O.S. green.
The same shade that filled the sky when the rifts first opened.
Nec stepped closer, and the data unfolded before him like a sealed letter finally opened:
[PRIORITY MISSION: DORMANT NEXUS DETECTED]
ZONE: B-17 — OUTLANDS
DISTANCE: 2.9 MILES NORTH
TIMEFRAME: UNDEFINED
REWARD: 100,000 GP
BONUS: FIRST-ACTIVATOR CLAIMS ZONE OWNERSHIP
INCOME: +10 GP / Individual Entry to Zone (Permanent)
WARNING: HIGH RISK / UNSTABLE REGION
[SOS Verification Level: Black]
Status: Untouched / Dormant / Unknown Hostility
Seele was there, arms crossed, eyes lit with purpose. The green shimmer from the board washed over her features like a candle’s breath—soft, but unrelenting.
Nec didn’t say anything for a long moment.
“...Is that real?” he finally asked.
Seele didn’t look away from the display. “As real as anything else we’ve got.”
He glanced around at the other Spectrals. Some were already whispering plans, forming groups..
Nec scoffed. “That's a lot of zeroes.”
“Maybe,” she said, voice steady. “Or maybe it’s a door.”
“To what?”
She finally looked at him, and the smile she wore wasn’t na?ve—it was something carved out of hope and grief and too many sleepless nights.
“To something better.”
Nec didn’t respond immediately. The green light painted everything in the hue of possibility—and danger. A dormant Nexus. An untouched Safe Zone. One person would claim it.
The rest would bleed for the chance.
He studied the board again. That glow—it was the same tone as the System’s birth. The same light that cracked the sky open on the first night, when the rules of reality were rewritten.
Whatever was waiting five miles north wasn’t just a mission.
It was his calling.
