My name is Elenor Altarez. I possess a photographic memory, bloody traumas, and a high IQ. My home planet, Nevarion, has a deep history, but it is one filled with endless wars. Eventually, the unification of the Turanya Empire—to which I belong—and our sister empire, Azera, suppressed the other nations. The wars subsided, and progress began in every field. Until everything turned to hell. Right now, I don't have the luxury of sitting here and giving you a history lesson.
It all started in my early twenties. I was a young woman with a passion for motorcycles, developing video games. I won't be modest; I was a planet-wide legend in the field. People called me the "Empress of Gaming." I had founded my own company—a low-key, independent genius. Then everything changed overnight. Cliché and brutal, isn't it?
For hundreds of years, "Rifts" would tear open across our planet, and the monsters that poured out razed everything in sight. We had soldiers in high-tech armor, Mech units fighting giant Titan and Colossus-class bastards, and Awakened hunters. But you know what’s funny? None of it worked. We would close one rift, and bam! A hundred more would open somewhere else. We were stuck in a fucking vicious cycle. The oceans were already lost; we lived trapped on our continent, barely holding the line against the rifts.
And then came the great fracture... Judgment Day. A global cataclysm where thousands of rifts tore open every minute. We call it the "Multi-Rift Fracture." Humanity retreated into underground bunkers, but it was futile; rifts began opening even deep beneath the earth. The town I grew up in, everyone I called a friend, perished in a bloody massacre. Other nations scrambled to build massive spaceships, fleeing with only their elites and military. They abandoned their own people without blinking an eye. Typical aristocrats. Fortunately, the rulers of Azera and Turanya were leaders who actually cared for their people; they chose to stand and fight... but it wasn't enough.
We were losing. Production plummeted to twenty percent, and our ammunition was running dry. We faced endless hordes of monsters, rogue cyborgs, artificial intelligences hellbent on erasing biological life, and the walking dead. On the other side was us—struggling to manufacture our own weapons, running low on food, with population growth grinding to a halt. We were doomed to fail...
Until I put the device my brilliant grandfather left me on my wrist. Sealed on my wrist, looking like a smartwatch but actually a mega-computer integrated into my nervous system, it turned me into an "Artificial Awakened." That mechanism, spreading through every fiber of my body and becoming a permanent part of me, sparked an idea: Why not fight poison with poison?
We needed an army that wouldn't burn through ammunition, wouldn't create logistics nightmares, and could be marched to death without a second thought. And who better for the job than the monsters themselves?
I mastered mind control, brainwashing, and hypnosis. Now, those monsters are my pets. My hounds. My expendable puppets. Those who discovered what I was doing called me mad, a psychopath, devoid of ethics. But guess what? I was right. My hounds tore apart, devoured, and slaughtered their own kind! And we launched a counterattack.
But the secrets I uncovered along the way, the losses I endured, the moral dilemmas I faced, and the physical and psychological torture I suffered... it was all so heavy. Because of the decisions I've made and the biological modifications I've inflicted on my own body, I’m not even sure if I’m human anymore. But I don’t care. I anticipated this when I set out on this path. To protect my loved ones, what remains of my family, and this empire, I will become darkness itself if that's what it takes.
My life has been spent fighting monsters, secret cults, and more threats than I care to count.
Do you want to know? Step forward, and let me tell you everything from the very beginning. It all started on that hot summer day...