The world did not begin with a bang.
It began with an empty room inside his own head.
When the boy opened his eyes, the roof above him was made of jagged, damp limestone.
Water dripped from a stalactite, splashing coldly against his forehead.
He sat up, his palms pressing into the cold dirt of the cave.
He looked down at his hands.
They were clean, entirely free of scars, but completely unfamiliar.
He wore tattered, ash-stained clothes, yet his skin was remarkably clean, though deathly pale.
Thick, curly black hair fell over his brow, framing a face with a striking anomaly: a pair of weird, black vein-like lines cut from the outer corners of his dark eyes down to his jaw, splitting apart at the bone like the fork of a snake’s tongue.
He had no open wounds, save for a jagged, pale scar cutting straight from the bottom of his lower lip up through his upper lip.
“Who am I?” he whispered.
The words felt heavy, like an old language he had forgotten how to speak.
He tried to reach into his mind for a face, a mother, a home, a single memory.
There was nothing.
Just a vast, terrifying silence.
Before the panic could choke him, heavy footsteps echoed from the cave entrance.
Two figures stepped through the shadows.
The first was a short, loudmouthed kid who looked entirely out of place in a dark cavern.
This was Jahek.
He had a bright, wildly optimistic look in his eyes, a wide grin that revealed a single missing tooth, and a white t-shirt paired with jumper-style shorts.
He wore long combat gloves that were far too large for his hands, bulging out past his wrists, and thick mud-stained boots that made him look less like a fighter and more like a butcher.
Behind him stood a taller, pale, and intensely professional-looking teenager.
His hair was split perfectly down the middle—half white, half black—and his face was obscured beneath a weird surgical face mask featuring a goofy bunny mouth with a large tooth design printed on it, perfectly aligned over his lips.
It was a bizarre, comical accessory that completely contradicted his cold, cool-looking posture, though the sharp symmetry of his eyes made it obvious he was handsomely attractive beneath the cloth.
He wore a formal dress shirt with the long sleeves rolled up precisely just below his elbows, and a tailored suit vest buttoned tight over the top.
He wore no suit coat on top of it, and no necktie, leaving his collar slightly open.
His dark leather gloves were uniquely tiny, so small that they couldn’t even cover his whole hands, leaving half of his palms and wrists exposed to the open air.
Outside the entrance, a nearby guild scout had reported a pair of white walkers lurking around the perimeter.
Zaiden had stepped forward and effortlessly killed the two Gen Z outside, while Jahek—true to his cowardly, go-with-the-flow nature—had taken the easy way out.
The moment the blades started swinging, Jahek had run deep into the safety of the cave cavern, leaving the captain to handle the front gate.
But as Jahek sprinted through the dark, he stumbled upon the pale, curly-haired boy sitting in the dirt.
Cautious and deeply terrified of getting bit, the loudmouth didn’t dare approach him at first.
He kept his distance, shouting back toward the mouth of the cave.
“Zaiden!
Hey, Captain!
Get in here, I found a live one!” Zaiden walked into the cavern, his bare palms resting on his blades as his eyes scanned the boy.
A wave of intense confusion and questions flooded the captain’s mind.
The white walkers outside had been standing right by the threshold.
Gen Z possessed incredibly keen noses, capable of smelling human blood from miles away.
Why hadn’t they approached the cave?
It looked as if they hadn’t been hunting the boy at all—they were actively guarding the entrance to protect his slumber.
Zaiden stepped closer, a dark, menacing aura naturally radiating from his posture as he leveled a cold look at the kid.
“Kid, what’s your name?
Why were you inside this cave?” Sensing the suffocating, terrifying pressure the captain was putting on the dazed boy, Jahek quickly broke the tension, using his loud mouth to be funny and introduce them to make the boy calm.
“Whoa, whoa, relax, ice-man!
You’re gonna make the poor stray wet his pants!” Jahek grinned, waving his oversized gloves.
“Don’t mind him, buddy.
I’m Jahek.
The scary one with the bunny mask is Zaiden.
Come on, we’re taking you back to the guild before more things crawl out of the dark.” The boy looked up, his voice wide with a quiet, hollow peace.
“I…
I don’t know why I was here.
The only thing I remember…
is my name.
It’s Ambo.” With nowhere else to go and his memories completely wiped, Ambo allowed the duo to guide him back to the stone-carved Guild.
Inside the central command center, a sharp, thunderous voice violently cut through the hallway.
“Call me Alexandra again, and I’ll use your jawbone as a whetstone.” Xan, the Acting Leader of the Guild, rubbed her temples in pure exhaustion.
She wore the heavy leather pauldrons of a veteran Culler, her dark hair cropped short.
Everyone in the sector knew her as Xan; nobody used her full name if they valued their teeth.
Standing across her desk, the amnesiac boy was flanked by Zaiden and Jahek.
He had been thoroughly interrogated but really told the absolute truth, changing the topic to understand how this world ran.
“Look around you, Ambo.
This headquarters is called a guild, and the name of this guild is Kampilan,” Xan explained, changing the topic to fill his empty mind.
“We are the current police of this new world.
But we don’t focus on putting laws on civilians.
Our main, absolute role is providing safety by eliminating the Gen Z.
We cull them, carving out more physical space for the citizens who lost their homes due to the endless rampages of these creatures.
The entire surrounding dead-zone capital city we are standing in right now is known as the Ruins of Bembaran, and it is split into four massive cardinal operational zones which we call Districts.” She tapped a heavy finger against the center of her desk map.
“Right here at the heart of the metropolis is the Center District, which we call Katingland.
This hub is where the majority of our human population clusters, and because the economy is slowly beginning to stabilize under our perimeter protections, regular families are actually able to live a somewhat normal, peaceful life.
Paper cash and metal coins rotted into worthless dust centuries ago, so there is absolutely zero currency here.
Instead, people survive by farming the secure plots, exchanging raw sweat, and bartering baseline surface commodities with one another.
But the moment you march past the central fences, the stability completely dies.
To the far right lies the elite, heavily guarded Sidlangan District where the upper aristocrats rule from high-rise estates.
To the far left is the water-logged Kasandupan District.
To the North is the Amihanan industrial chimneys, and to the South is the silent, rotten canyons of Habagatan.
‘Gen Z’ is just a general term—Generation Zombie.
But the guild uses a strict code name system for their classification based on how they behave.” She leaned backward to her chair “We separated them into three types.
First are the White Walkers.
They’re the mindless, standard Gen Z who just walk around aimlessly.
But don’t underestimate them; they are the fundamental enemies of humankind and will instantly devour a regular human if you get close.
All Gen Z possess immense, superhuman physical strength.” Xan’s expression turned grim.
“Second are the Runners.
Be incredibly careful with these ones.
They are pure hunters, chasing targets down at incredible, blinding speeds.
And lastly, we have the Abnormals.
They possess all the strength of a Walker and the velocity of a Runner, but they don’t attack mindlessly like a rampage.
They think.
They have an instinctual awareness to approach or back away if a battle turns against them, and they can literally reshape their own flesh and bones to form weapons.” She pulled a sketch from her drawer.
“Classifying them from a distance is a nightmare.
They all share the exact same distorted, bone-white human silhouette covered in black veins.
They don’t have any reproductive organs despite being completely nude all the time.
They don’t have ears, eyes, or noses—just a flat, smooth white face.
But the moment they smell food, the flesh of their face violently stretches and tears open, revealing a cavernous mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth and a long, black tongue.
They’re animals.
That’s why we call ourselves Cullers—we are culling a hostile species.” Ambo absorbed the words, his heart heavy.
“Where did they come from?” “No one knows,” Xan said, shaking her head.
“And that’s the second priority of being a Culler: investigate, gather information, and solve the mystery of this world.
There are old, discarded books shattered all over the towns if you like reading.
They say the world used to be a peaceful, beautiful place filled with towering blocks of stone called buildings.
They say humanity used to be so advanced that we built machines to ride in—they called them vehicles.
There were vehicles for the surface called cars, vehicles for the water called boats, and machines that could actually fly through the clouds called airplanes.
But you won’t find a single one standing today.
They all rotted to dust centuries ago.” Suddenly, Xan leaned far across her desk, her voice dropping into a low, piercing whisper directly against Ambo’s ear.
“The world is changing, Ambo.
And I don’t think those ancient technologies of the old civilization just disappeared naturally.
The whispers on the surface say they were salvaged by someone who can fly.
The rumors say the Neomans did it—the people who live in Neo Terra.
They flew up into the sky centuries ago, and everyone believed they were left completely untouched by the misery and misfortunes that befell the surface.
Some even say they are a new breed of human, or some kind of Gods.
But regardless of their true origin, despite coming down to the surface claiming they come for peace and with the goal to help us advance our colonies, I think they have deep, ill intentions.
That’s why you must be incredibly careful with them as well.
In this world, the Gen Z is not the only enemy you will encounter, Ambo.
You are going to need someone you can truly trust.” Ambo swallowed hard, the weight of her warning settling heavily into his mind.
Xan leaned back into her chair, her professional demeanor returning.
“Well, you don’t know where you’re going and you need help.
The guild is in dire need of people anyway, since not all people are willing to die facing these hideous monsters.
I’ll help you gain your memories by deploying you to explore a lot of areas—maybe seeing the ruins will somehow bring back your memories, or we can gather intel.
In exchange, you will help us as well.
I’m giving you your very first task, and this will just only be a scouting mission.
You don’t need to engage with anyone.” She pulled out a coordinate map.
“I acquired some intel that there’s a meeting between a mysterious organization and a notorious surface cartel leader named Braxley—the slaver.
Remember him, Zaiden?
The one you let go a few years ago?
I received a tip for where they will be meeting, and you are just going to infiltrate them.
Jahek, go find some clean, extra clothes for this kid.
You two are the exact same body shape and age, so go lend him something from your personal stash for this mission right now.
Ambo, you’re pairing up with Jahek for this sting.” Jahek nodded eagerly, giving Ambo a quick thumbs-up with his oversized leather glove.
“Oh, lending clothes?
Yeah, absolutely, no problem!
I’ve got plenty of fresh t-shirts back in my locker that will fit him perfectly.” Then, as the realization of Xan’s final sentence fully processed in his brain, Jahek’s eyes widened.
“Whoa, hold on!
No way!” he instantly yelled, waving his large gloves in a frantic panic.
He began pacing the room, sweating profusely as he looked for any excuse to push the task away.
“I’m way too busy to go on a field mission, Xan!
I have…
uh…
massive chores!
A ton of heavy logistics to organize!
Yeah!
Why don’t you send Zaiden instead?
Pushing this dangerous stuff to Zaiden makes way more sense!” “Zaiden has a lot of tasks for me to do,” Xan snapped, her voice cutting off Jahek’s reasoning.
“The decision is final.” As the two continued to argue back and forth, the heavy wooden doors of the office swung open.
Drax, the towering lizard-hybrid Demi-Human, stepped into the torchlight, his emerald scales glittering.
“Let me take the kid, Xan,” Drax growled, his yellow slit-pupils narrowing as his tail swept the floor.
“Braxley is mine.
Zaiden pulled me out of that bastard’s slave cages years ago, but Braxley used his telekinesis to force a slave in front of my claw and escaped.
I’m putting him down this time.” Xan stared at Drax’s unyielding, furious posture for a long moment before finally nodding.
“Fine.
But remember: it’s a scouting mission.
Keep the kid alive.”