Winter, 20XX.
Earth reached a turning point in a new era.
Sudden dimensional cracks, commonly known as Gates, opened, and beyond them, Monsters appeared.
Monsters possessed abnormally strong vitality, making it extremely inefficient to kill them with conventional modern weapons.
However, those who managed to kill Monsters and awaken supernatural abilities, known as Awakened, found it much easier to defeat Monsters.
Gate.
Monster.
And Awakened.
Things that should have only happened in novels or movies had become reality.
[Naia and I were born during such a chaotic time.]
The twin siblings were abandoned shortly after birth in front of an orphanage in a remote village in the United Kingdom.
Their childhood was far from happy.
The Orphanage Director carelessly gave them English names, but their East Asian features—black hair and dark eyes—made them stand out.
Because of their appearance, the two were ostracized and couldn’t fit in with their peers.
[It was an artistically miserable orphanage. The ‘food’ served was garbage even passing stray dogs would sneer at, and that bastard Director’s only talent was skimming donation money to fatten his own pockets. He was a human scourge.]
Under the Director’s neglect, bullying and exclusion toward the two grew increasingly blatant.
But it didn’t last long.
[That pig, worse than a Goblin, told us to work once we turned seven. I wanted—ha… honestly, I wanted to stab that bastard in the gut and run away, but what could I do? I was still a kid back then, and I had to protect Naia. We had to do as we were told.]
Harsh conditions with no guarantee of meals, rest, or sleep continued for three years—until the winter of their tenth year.
Then a tragedy, incomparable to anything before, struck the orphanage.
[A Goblin raided the orphanage. I honestly welcomed it. I prayed that bastard Director would be chewed up to the last hair, and that the orphanage would be utterly destroyed without a trace.]
By the time the military arrived, it was too late.
The orphanage was burning.
The twin siblings, who had killed the Goblin using the children and Director as bait, were the only survivors.
Afterward, they were identified as the youngest Awakened and taken under government protection.
Though ‘protection’ was just a euphemism for training children barely past puberty as soldiers and weapons.
The project was exposed by the media when the twins reached their mid-teens and ultimately canceled.
[Yeah. It was truly a chaotic era. One moment they’d say do this, the next do that—I never knew which way to turn.]
Frey chose the easy path: to distrust everything around him and believe only Naia.
[On the other hand, Naia had a natural insight, or something like it—an ability to pierce through people’s true intentions. She could tell like a ghost whether adults approaching us were hiding dark intentions or acting out of pure goodwill.]
Though twins, Frey always thought of himself as the older brother and acted to protect Naia as the elder sibling.
Naia called him ‘older brother.’
But in reality, it was nearly the opposite.
Just as Naia depended on Frey, he depended on her even more.
After a turbulent childhood, just as their lives began to stabilize, another incident occurred: the Gate Catastrophe.
Thousands of Gates opened simultaneously worldwide, unleashing an endless tide of Monsters.
[Naia eagerly volunteered to fight. I begged her not to, thinking it madness, but she turned it back on me, asking how I could say such cruel things when so many people might die if we stayed still.]
For the first time in their lives, the twins had a fierce fight, but in the end, Frey could not break Naia’s resolve.
[She said if I was scared, I didn’t have to go—that she just needed support from the rear. Did I just quietly take that as her older brother? I had pride. What the hell—why not go out there, kill some Monsters, and save some people while we’re at it?]
The young twins’ battlefield exploits were miraculous.
Amid hundreds of millions of casualties worldwide, the United Kingdom was the only country with casualties around 10,000.
[The media went insane over us.]
They became the focus of worldwide attention.
Unrelenting Gate disasters, a declining population curve, astronomical material losses, and additional damage from the Second Great Catastrophe.
After Gates appeared, humanity gradually lost hope.
Doomsayers were no longer scorned; people passed by their cries with bitter faces as if pretending not to hear.
It was during this time that the twins’ names and feats became known.
[I understand. People wanted hope. They wanted a hero to fall from the sky like a shooting star and save the world. Like a ship stranded at sea using Polaris as a guidepost so it wouldn’t drift aimlessly, people needed someone to lead them.]
This is how heroes were born on Earth, where Gates, Awakened, and Monsters appeared.
“That’s… quite a tumultuous life you’ve lived.” Zion exhaled.
There were many words and concepts in Frey’s story that he did not understand, but it was clear the twins had extraordinary lives.
[Tumultuous? Maybe. Now that I hear it, it kind of sounds like it.]
Frey tilted his head, as if uncertain.
From his memory, others who lived through that era had similar experiences, just varying in degree.
The twins just happened to stand out a little more.
[Well, anyway. No matter how much people revered us as heroes, we were still just two Awakened. The situation didn’t improve dramatically.]
The Gate Catastrophes repeated cyclically.
Scholars desperately researching the phenomenon finally published their findings, but only to Awakened and a few top officials.
The disaster cycle would shorten.
Once it hit a critical point, a Gate that opened would never close again.
Monsters would pour out endlessly.
Human extinction was inevitable.
[Over time, a few more Awakened who earned the title of hero appeared besides Naia and me. Five in total, including us. Each had nicknames: Atlas, Deus Machina, Saint. I was personally close to them.]
Squinting, Frey looked as if he were examining an old black-and-white photo found in an attic.
[On the day the research results were released, Naia called us all together.]
“Just passively enduring this won’t fundamentally solve anything. We need to find the cause and eliminate it.”
“That’s true. But what’s the cause in the first place?”
“I don’t know either. But one thing’s for sure—it’s not something on Earth, so it must be beyond the Gate.”
“Are you saying we should cross the Gate? Is that even possible?”
[It was a notion no one had dared to consider. Nothing beyond the Gates was known. It was only guessed to be a hellish world teeming with Monsters.]
“Why do we have to do it?”
“Because only we can.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Older brother! Why do you always start by saying no?”
“Because I really don’t want to.”
“Then you’re out. We’ll do it ourselves.”
“What the hell, you stubborn idiot?”
[…In case of misunderstanding, I’m not losing—I’m conceding. She’s so stubborn and narrow-minded that once she decides something, no matter what I say, she won’t change. As her older brother, I have to be lenient. What else can I do?]
After huddling to plan, they announced the plan worldwide.
An International Organization was established to oversee the project to completely close the Gates.
Driven solely by the will to avoid destruction, many countries lent their strength.
In the face of survival, ideology and religion no longer mattered.
[The Pendant was created. A unique artifact that amplifies the owner’s power, safely allows crossing the Gate, protects the owner from extreme environments beyond the Gate, and many other functions crammed into one. The only problem: it was single-seat.]
[To maximize success, the strongest Awakened had to go. Naia volunteered without hesitation. ]
[I naturally opposed it. I thought she’d finally lost it. By logic, shouldn’t I, the older brother, be the one to go first?]
Neither yielded.
A second sibling fight broke out—this time escalating beyond words.
The two strongest Awakened in the world clashed.
The Awakened siblings who first defeated the colossal Hydra with 108 heads during the Fourth Great Catastrophe were the Alkoth siblings.
Since then, they were regarded as incomparable even among the five heroes.
But opinions were divided on who was stronger.
Naia proved who was strongest by beating her own brother, skillfully restraining her strength just enough not to kill him.
[It was humiliating. I painfully acknowledged my weakness. I dropped out of the project and roamed the world, killing Monsters wherever I could. There are many ways for an Awakened to grow stronger, but the most effective is killing Monsters. If I could definitely become stronger than her, then I’d obediently listen.]
But Frey took too long.
In just a few minutes, when he returned confident he had surpassed Naia, she had already crossed the Gate by a matter of minutes.
[I always thought suicide was a foolish act by the weak trying to escape reality. It wasn’t until then that I realized it wasn’t so.]
After Naia left, the three remaining barely subdued Frey as he went berserk.
When he came to, he lost all motivation like a broken robot.
Yet those left did not lose hope and waited.
Finally, months later, a terminal device designed to communicate with the Pendant activated.
“Oh… finally connected.”
With a voice as fragile as a dying candle, Naia reported the events beyond the Gate.
A black earth and red sky stretched out, a bizarre world with no distinction between day and night.
As expected, it was a hell filled with Monsters beyond the Gate.
“I call it the Demon World. What do you think? Isn’t it a perfect name?”
The Demon World was home to countless powerful Monsters never seen on Earth, including some that resembled humans and possessed advanced language systems.
Naia tried to communicate with them but was met with indiscriminate attacks.
Though intelligent, they were still a type of ‘Monster.’
They had found the cause… but… “I’m really sorry. I don’t think I can beat this.”
After wandering the Demon World, Naia discovered a ‘Colossal Entity.’
A constantly shifting mass of black mud that endlessly birthed Monsters from its boiling surface and infinitely expanded itself—an transcendental being.
“An unfamiliar small life form.”
Though it showed no sign of intelligence, the entity surprisingly showed interest in Naia and spoke directly.
“Looks tasty.”
The battle was brief.
Had she been fully prepared, maybe she could have won, but exhausted and without supplies, Naia was no match.
She desperately escaped the entity’s detection range and activated the Pendant one last time.
“I think that thing… wants to absorb me whole and make me its own. Maybe not just my power, but my memories and such too. That’s the feeling I get.”
If it absorbed Naia’s memories and could use them to cross into Earth, the future would be unimaginably terrible.
“There’s a way. I’ll completely close the Gate from here.”
Having crossed the Gate herself and intuitively understanding dimensional and world structures, Naia modified the Pendant’s functions for emergencies.
When activated, the Pendant would consume all reserved energy to leap with the owner into an unknown dimension, while causing intense interference at the boundaries between dimensions, isolating the Demon World completely.
The Gate connecting Earth and the Demon World would vanish entirely.
The problem was the success rate.
The Demon World would be completely isolated with 100% certainty, but Naia’s chance of survival after crashing into the unknown dimension was only about 5%.
“If luck’s on my side, I might survive. And I’m pretty lucky, right? So don’t worry, older brother.”
[Naia! You stupid girl! Don’t do this! Why do you always have to be the one to sacrifice yourself? Always like this…!]
“I can’t help it. It’s not because someone told me to, it’s because I want to, because my heart tells me to.”
To Frey, sobbing into the communicator, Naia smiled faintly as if it were inevitable.
「I never want to lie to my own heart.」
That communication was the last.
Since that day, Gate catastrophes disappeared across Earth.
No new Awakened were born.
Earth regained peace.
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