A boy looked terribly out of place.
He moved through the cleanest part of the city — where the streets were lined with trimmed hedges and the houses had marble steps — yet everything about him was wrong for the scenery.
His cloak was frayed, his shirt was threadbare, and his boots were filled with dried mud from the lower districts. The sack he carried over his back was almost as large as he was, with its weight making him tilt slightly as he walked.
The mouth of the sack was tied shut with a single length of coarse rope. Even from afar, people knew what that meant.
Conversations faded as he passed. A woman turned her face away. A flower vendor quietly gathered his things and stepped aside. No one wanted to brush against him — no one even wanted his shadow near theirs.
Kael didn't look up. He never did. Because he was already used to it.
And after all, this was part of his job.
***
There was once a time when humanity filled the world.
Billions of people, countless cities, and oceans of light stretching across continents. They said civilization had reached its pinnacle: the age of clean energy, artificial minds, even weapons that could strike from orbit.
It began the day the sky tore open.
They called them Gateways — temporal rifts that appeared without pattern or warning, some no larger than a doorway, others wide enough to swallow entire districts. From within them came things that no weapon or machine could stop.
Monstrosities — beings the world would come to know only as Abjections.
They crawled, flew, slithered, and devoured — reshaping everything they touched into something alien and wrong.
Cities fell in weeks. Nations in months.
The world ended not in fire or plague, but in something far more cruel — in… unmaking.
Even the last machines of war, armed with what humanity once called "god-killers," could do nothing. Their logic and their science has failed to comprehend what they were fighting.
But time, even for horrors, is merciless.
And just as humans could die, so too could Abjections.
They did not fall to bullets or blades, but to their own decay — burning out, collapsing, or petrifying after exhausting whatever strange energy birthed them.
It was from one such corpse that the first miracle — or curse — was found.
In the husk of a fallen Abjection, humanities uncovered veins of glasslike growths embedded within its remains — translucent crystals that pulsed faintly with color and sound, as if whispering from within.
They called them Crystallis.
At first, they were treated as curiosities — dangerous relics, studied under layers of containment. But then came the accidents: the researchers who touched them, breathed them in, or dreamed near them… and survived.
When they awoke, they were… different.
They spoke of visions — of voices that were not human, of memories that were not their own. Their minds expanded, their bodies changed. Something deep within them had turned — as if a new sense had opened.
That turning of the soul, they came to call Metanoia.
And through Metanoia, they gained what the ancients had lost — the spark once buried in humanity since the great shift itself: the Gnosis.
Those who bore it could resist the corruption of the Abjections. Some could even fight them. And so they became the bulwark against the collapse, wielding fragments of the same divine resonance that had once birthed the monsters they now hunted.
It wasn't enough to restore what was lost — the world had already become a graveyard — but it was enough to let humanity keep breathing, even if only through dust and smoke..
***
Kael worked under the City Sanitation Department, a branch of the local government most people pretended didn't exist. Officially, his title was Corpse Handler — the kind of job that didn't even make it onto the payroll lists that got posted every month.
Unofficially, he was what people called a Burner.
In this world, death was never simple.
When a person died — especially one who'd lived too close to the lingering remnant of a Gateways or carried traces of corruption — their bodies could turn. Sometimes it happened days later. Sometimes hours. And sometimes… right there, on the spot.
They became what the people feared most: human-born Abjections.
That was why Kael's job existed. To burn the bodies before they could wake, and to make sure that the dead stayed… dead.
It was filthy work. Thankless, hated, but necessary.
Most of his colleagues worked in the lower districts, where corpses piled high after each containment breach. But today, his assignment brought him here — to the upper district's incineration grounds.
They were always built at the edge of the rich quarters. Close enough for efficiency — connected to the same energy lines that powered the factories and heating grids — but far enough that the smell of death and ash didn't reach their polished windows.
The city liked to keep its decay convenient, but out of sight.
***
Kael reached the end of the street and stopped before a heavy iron gate. The sign above it read: CITY PROPERTY — AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY. And beyond it, faint gray smoke rose into the pale afternoon sky.
Two guards stood by the gate with their clean uniform, but their faces were worn — like men who'd seen too much of what this world had become. One of them glanced up as Kael approached, his eyes were dull and rimmed with exhaustion.
"Delivery from Sanitation?" the man asked, though his tone made it clear he already knew.
Kael nodded and reached into his pocket, pulling out a folded clearance slip marked with the department's red seal. He then said quietly:
"Time of death — dawn. Cause — corruption spreading through the lungs."
The guard took it between two fingers like it was contaminated. He gave it a quick look, grunted, and handed it back.
"Back entrance," he muttered.
"And make it quick."
Kael gave a faint, humorless smile as he turned away.
'Quick…' he thought.
'Like the dead are in a hurry.'
***
The back entrance led into a narrow concrete corridor, until it opened into a vast, dimly lit chamber — the incineration hall.
The space was larger than most factories in the city, the walls were lined with windows, pipes, and blackened vents. The ceiling disappeared into shadow, humming faintly with the sound of the air filters struggling to keep up. And at the far end of the chamber stood the furnace itself — an enormous iron mouth framed by cooling ducts and rusted rails.
The fire wasn't lit yet. The inside of the chamber sat in still silence, cold and waiting. Kael walked to the center of the room and lowered the sack from his back and into the furnace. The rope slid loose with a soft rasp, and he carefully unzipped the opening.
Inside lay the body of an old man. Pale skin, cracked lips, and the faint dark veins of corruption still visible beneath the surface — like something had been growing inside him that was never meant to be human.
Kael stared for a moment, then clasped his hands together in front of his chest. He then dipped his head slightly as he murmured:
"May your soul find its way back."
It was a small little gesture that he always does. No one had ever told him to do it. There wasn't a rule or a reason either.
It just felt… right?
In a world that had already lost nearly everything, a life — even one like this — still meant something.
Especially to someone like him, who had nothing else left to mean anything at all.
Kael was just about to close the furnace when he noticed something strange.
The faint humming of the filters… stopped.
Then came the first tremor. Subtle at first, like the vibration of distant thunder.
He frowned, glancing toward the high windows — and froze.
Beyond the frosted glass, the sky was splitting.
Thin lines of light — gold, violet, and sickly blue — spidered across the clouds, twisting and pulsing like veins beneath skin. Then, with a low, bone-deep rumble, the air itself tore apart.
"A Gateway…"
It bloomed above the horizon, vast and writhing, its edges were spilling a radiance that warped the skyline. Within moments, the city's alarm towers blared to life — long, mechanical howls cutting through the air. Sirens, klaxons, overlapping evacuation calls echoing from every district.
Kael staggered back from the furnace, staring through the window's warped glass as streaks of light erupted from the tear. It wasn't just opening — it was spreading, pulling the sky apart in slow, violent folds.
Then came the shockwave.
It struck a heartbeat later — a wall of force that shattered the windows and hurled him off his feet. The entire incinerator shook. Pipes snapped. Beams groaned. Flames burst from ruptured ducts as the ceiling began to cave.
Kael tried to stand, coughing through the smoke. The floor buckled beneath him, a web of cracks racing through the tiles. Somewhere in the distance, he heard people screaming — faint, muffled by the roar of the collapsing structure.
"Damn it—!" He staggered toward the exit — but before he could reach it, the support above him snapped.
The sound was deafening.
A length of rusted steel came down like a spear. It hit him square in the side, driving him to the floor, piercing through him and into the concrete.
"ARGH!!!"
For a moment, everything went silent again.
His breath hitched. The world swayed, colors bleeding into one another. He could taste iron in his mouth — feel warmth flooding down his ribs.
Until he could only… laughed.
A small, broken sound at first, then louder, shaking. It was madness — or relief.
"Is this… really how it ends?!"
He tried to move but couldn't. The alarms outside wailed on, desperate and distant.
Smoke and dust fell like gray snow as the ceiling cracked open to the distorted sky.
Kael looked up through it — past the falling ash, past the beams of violet light tearing the clouds — and bared his teeth in something close to a grim smile.
"I burned your dead," he rasped. "I kept your city clean..."
His voice broke, rising to a hoarse shout.
"And this is what I get?!"
His laughter turned to a snarl, fury overtaking the pain.
"Damn you!" he shouted at the burning sky.
"Damn your gateways, damn your monsters — damn this world!"
The Gateway above pulsed once — as if answering.
Light poured through the cracks, swallowing the chamber whole. The noise, the fire, the pain — all of it vanished into a single, consuming brilliance.
Then came silence.
And darkness.
A heartbeat later, from somewhere beyond the void, a voice — calm, distant, and impossibly vast — spoke:
"So you would curse the world that made you…?"
"Then let it hear you..."