The world had found peace—or at least, that's what the skyscrapers claimed.
Tokyo shimmered like a futuristic dream. Monolithic towers stabbed the heavens, their glass skin reflecting the rising sun like shards of a broken god. Neon holograms and digital billboards lit the skyline in a spectrum of color and noise. Above, drones zipped between buildings while hovercars glided silently along elevated expressways. Streets below pulsed with order: pedestrians in sleek uniforms, robotic street cleaners humming as they scrubbed the walkways spotless, vending bots chirping promotions in soothing tones.
It was 2020. Humanity had rebuilt.
After centuries of bloodshed, desperation, and near-extinction, the Zunan Fighters had restored something like normalcy. Zunans—those abominable creatures who once hunted humans like cattle—were now rare. Nearly extinct, thanks to technological marvels like the Saptha System, a global defense grid designed to detect and teleport any appearing Zunan to desolate planets within seconds.
To the public, this was peace.
But peace in this world… was always a mask.
On Tokyo's Skyline Expressway 7, a large fuel truck rumbled along a suspended highway, thirty meters above ground. Inside, the driver—a grizzled man in his fifties, with a greying beard and mirrored sunglasses—tapped the steering wheel to the beat of a pop song playing on the radio.
Just another day.
And then—everything shattered.
The air ahead of the truck shimmered unnaturally, like sunlight dancing on water. It bent. Warped. Folded inward. Then—collapsed—like the fabric of space had been torn open.
A hulking, inhuman form dropped from the rift, landing with an earth-shaking crunch atop a small hatchback, flattening it like tin. Steel shrieked. Glass exploded. The radio went silent.
The driver's eyes widened. "What the hell—?!"
He swerved instinctively. Too hard.
The truck tilted—its massive frame toppling over the edge of the highway barrier. For a second, it hung in the air. Then—gravity claimed it.
BOOM.
A deafening explosion erupted as the fuel tanks ruptured. A shockwave rippled outward, shattering windows, flipping cars, sending bodies flying. Fire roared to life, a swirling inferno that engulfed a hundred meters of expressway in seconds.
Cars melted. Screams tore through the chaos. A child's voice wailed from somewhere in the smoke, a desperate cry for her mother. The scent of burning flesh filled the air. Panic. Hell.
And from the fire… it stepped forward.
A Zunan.
It was tall—nearly five meters, its limbs long and sinewy, its flesh a charred gray-black that shimmered with a strange oil-slick sheen. Its body pulsed with muscle, but not like anything human. Its arms ended in clawed hands with bone protrusions like jagged knives. Most horrifying of all, its face was almost featureless—except for a single, massive red eye in the center of its head. No mouth. No nose. Just that eye, glowing like a furnace.
And on its abdomen—a vertical maw opened.
It stretched from sternum to pelvis, ringed with layers of jagged, canine teeth. It quivered, hungry.
The creature moved. Fast.
It snatched a fleeing man by the skull, lifting him effortlessly. The man kicked and screamed—but then the Zunan plunged him into its belly-maw. The jaws closed with a wet crunch.
Blood sprayed. A heartbeat was devoured.
It fed.
There were no sirens. No alerts. No warning system had triggered.
The Saptha hadn't activated.
The Zunan was here, now, feeding in the heart of Tokyo. And no one could stop it.
Children burned in overturned school buses. Couples cried as they clung to each other amid flames. Some people simply froze—unable to process what they were seeing.
A young girl stumbled across the broken asphalt, barely eight years old. Her schoolbag was scorched, her knees bloodied, tears streaming down her soot-covered face. Her voice was hoarse.
"Mama…? Mamaaa!!"
The Zunan heard her.
It turned slowly, the single eye narrowing. Its maw opened wide, blood still dripping from the last victim.
It lunged.
The girl screamed—too slow to run. The creature was on her in seconds, claws reaching out—
CRACK.
A sonic boom shattered the air.
In a blur of motion, a figure appeared, descending like a comet.
BOOM.
He struck the Zunan with a spinning kick that connected with a sickening crunch. The creature was launched skyward—its massive frame rocketing through the air, higher, higher, past the cityscape, through the clouds.
Silence followed.
The child blinked. The wind had stopped. The fires crackled behind her. And before her now stood the man.
Calm. Composed. Praying.
Hands pressed together, eyes closed.
"I really," he muttered, "despise you creatures."
He inhaled deeply. A low hum began to resonate.
Then he raised his arms toward the sky—and fired.
A beam erupted from his palms—a violent fusion of red and black energy, swirling like a vortex of fire and shadow. It raced upward, trailing a thunderous screech.
It struck the airborne Zunan mid-descent.
KA-KRAKOOOM!
The explosion was apocalyptic. The sky split open with light. The clouds above Tokyo disintegrated—vaporized—leaving a clear patch of blue so vast it stretched across the prefecture.
Ash didn't fall. There was nothing left.
The Zunan had been erased from existence.
People stared. Injured. Shocked. Bloodied. Some were too burnt to speak. Others lay in pieces. Over a hundred lives lost. Hundreds more scarred.
Among the debris, the girl collapsed to her knees. Her leg had been burned—a seared patch of flesh that would leave a permanent scar. But she was alive.
The man turned to her.
He was tall, lean but defined. His uniform was sleek, jet red with black accents and angular armor plates over the chest and shoulders. A glowing symbol sat on his chest — the fused letters Z and F inside a red ring.
A Zunan Fighter.
He crouched and placed his hand gently over her leg. Frost spread from his palm, a cooling mist rising as the wound hissed.
"Don't worry, kid," he said, voice calm. "Luck doesn't want you dead yet. Go find your mama."
She sniffled, nodded, and hobbled away into the smoke.
The man stood. His name: Taneki Iruwaya. A veteran. One of the oldest living Zunan Fighters.
He turned to the blaze. Raised his hand again.
Blue light enveloped his arm. Not water. Not ice. Something colder.
He froze the air itself, sapping all thermal energy until the flames flickered… and died.
The expressway fell into silence.
Corpses littered the road like broken dolls. Metal twisted. Blackened vehicles smoldered.
Peace had been shattered.
And worse—the Zunan had appeared without triggering the Saptha. A system failure. Or… something more terrifying.
Elsewhere — Okinawa Island
Far from Tokyo's carnage, across Japan's southern coast, lay a hidden stronghold: Okinawa Island Military Academy, the most elite training center for future Zunan Fighters.
In a barracks-style dormitory, two teenage boys sat on a bunk bed, eyes glued to a livestream.
The reporter on screen, her hair windswept and face pale, stood before a ruined skyline.
"This is Jasmine Akiratu reporting live from Tokyo. A Zunan appeared earlier this morning in a high-traffic zone. Over one hundred are confirmed dead. Many more are wounded. Zunan Fighter Taneki Iruwaya eliminated the creature—but the real question remains: How did the Zunan bypass the Saptha defense grid?"
The taller teen—athletically built, with sleek black hair that faded to cobalt blue at the tips—shook his head.
"So the Saptha didn't work?" he muttered. "That's not supposed to be possible."
His roommate, leaner with messy brown hair and deep red eyes, leaned forward. "It wasn't just a glitch. That thing bypassed the scan completely. What if it's something new?"
The blue-haired boy stood and paced. "If they've evolved… if even one Zunan can bypass Saptha, then we're looking at another dark age."
"They'd hit major cities without warning," the red-eyed boy added. "Everywhere. All at once."
Silence fell.
Finally, the red-eyed one grinned faintly and stood up. "Well, guess that means our test tonight just got a lot more important."
His friend raised an eyebrow. "You think we'll pass?"
"We better. I didn't train this hard just to die in the exam."
"You've got talent," the blue-haired one said. "I've got strength. If we survive tonight… we become real Zunan Fighters."
"And if we don't?"
"…Then someone else has to save the world."
The two boys bumped fists.
"Let's spar," the blue-haired one said, cracking his neck.
The red-eyed one laughed. "Just don't cry when I beat your ass."
"You wish."
They dropped from the bed, sprinting into the training arena below. The sky over Okinawa turned gold, evening falling fast.
Tonight was the final test.