Five years ago, the world ended. What followed wasn't survival—it was extinction delayed. The Rupture tore reality open, and ninety percent of humanity died in seventy-two hours. Understanding what happened, what came through, and what it means is essential knowledge for anyone who wants to stay alive.
The Rupture
At 3:47 AM UTC on a Tuesday morning, rifts opened simultaneously across the globe. No warning. No explanation. One moment, reality was stable. The next, tears in the fabric of existence spewed forth creatures of elemental fury.
The First Seventy-Two Hours
Hour Zero to Six: Chaos. The rifts appeared everywhere—major cities, rural areas, oceans, mountains. Creatures poured through in waves, immediately hostile to any human they encountered.
Hour Six to Twenty-Four: Military response. Every nation deployed conventional forces. Tanks, aircraft, missiles, everything humanity had built for war against each other. Almost none of it worked. Bullets bounced. Explosives detonated harmlessly. The creatures kept coming.
Hour Twenty-Four to Forty-Eight: Collapse. Major cities fell. Communications broke down. Governments ceased to function. Billions died in fire, flood, storm, and worse.
Hour Forty-Eight to Seventy-Two: Survivors learned to run, hide, and die. Roughly 700 million humans remained when the initial surge subsided—less than ten percent of the pre-Rupture population.
What We Know
- The rifts remain open: New creatures still emerge, though in smaller numbers than the initial surge
- The rifts cannot be closed: Every attempt has failed; several attempts made things worse
- The rifts lead somewhere: Expeditions have confirmed another realm exists beyond them
- Surges occur periodically: Massive creature emergences happen unpredictably, requiring city-wide mobilisation
What We Don't Know
- Why did the Rupture happen?
- Who or what caused it?
- Can it be reversed?
- Is there intelligence behind the incursion?
- Why are the creatures hostile?
Some researchers theorise the rifts are a natural phenomenon—a cyclical event on cosmic timescales. Others believe an entity or force deliberately opened them. A fringe theory suggests humanity somehow triggered the Rupture through unknown means. None of these theories can be proven or disproven.
The Creatures
The beings that emerged from the rifts are uniformly lethal. Aligned with primal elemental forces, they range from human-sized to building-sized, from animalistic to disturbingly intelligent. All are hostile.
Five years on, the threat has evolved. Creatures no longer come only from the rifts—they breed, adapt, and multiply on Earth. Worse, the elemental energy saturating our world has begun transforming native life into something monstrous.
Creature Origins
Hunters now face three distinct categories of threat:
Rift-born: The original invaders. These creatures emerged directly from the rifts during the Rupture and subsequent surges. Often the most powerful, they carry pure elemental essence from their home realm. Rift-born creatures show alien biology and behaviours that don't match any Earthly patterns.
Natural-born: Second-generation monsters. Rift creatures that survived long enough to breed have produced offspring on this side of the rifts. Natural-born creatures retain their parents' elemental alignment but show subtle adaptations to Earth's environment. Some researchers believe they're slightly weaker than rift-born specimens, though this theory costs lives when tested.
Infused: The newest and perhaps most disturbing category. Earth's saturation with elemental energy has begun transforming native wildlife—and occasionally plants—into elementally-charged threats. A wolf pack near a Sun-aligned rift might become ember wolves. Fish in contaminated waters mutate into Ocean-type predators. Even insects have been known to swarm with Nature-element power. Infused creatures are typically weaker than rift-born equivalents but appear in greater numbers and in unexpected locations.
The distinction matters for hunters: rift-born creatures often have predictable behaviours from the Beyond, natural-born show learned adaptations, and infused creatures may retain vestiges of their original Earth instincts—exploitable weaknesses for those who recognise them.
Elemental Alignment
Every creature aligns with one of six primal elements:
- Sun: Fire, heat, radiance — aggressive, territorial, destructive
- Earth: Stone, metal, endurance — massive, slow, nearly indestructible
- Moon: Shadow, illusion, spirit — infiltrators, assassins, psychological threats
- Ocean: Water, ice, adaptability — flood tactics, shapeshifting, overwhelming
- Sky: Wind, lightning, storm — fast, aerial, hard to target
- Nature: Life, growth, swarm — overwhelming numbers, poison, parasites
A theoretical seventh element—Aether—has been proposed but never confirmed. Guilds offer fortunes for proof of its existence.
Threat Classification
Creatures are ranked F through S based on threat level (see Hunter Guilds and Rankings for complete breakdown):
| Rank | Size | Required Response |
|---|---|---|
| F | Small | Trained civilians |
| E | Human-sized | Single hunter |
| D | Large | Hunter team (3-5) |
| C | Building-sized | Coordinated teams |
| B | Massive | Elite teams (10+) |
| A | Catastrophic | Multiple elite teams |
| S | Extinction-level | City mobilisation |
Creature Behaviour
Most creatures appear to operate on instinct—hunting, feeding, territorial aggression. However, disturbing patterns have emerged:
- Pack coordination: Some species demonstrate tactical cooperation
- Siege behaviour: Certain creatures specifically target walls and fortifications
- Human targeting: Many prioritise human prey over easier food sources
- Evolving tactics: Creatures seem to adapt to hunter strategies over time
Whether this indicates intelligence, biological programming, or external direction remains unknown. Assume all creatures are smarter than they appear. Underestimation kills hunters.
The Beyond
The realm beyond the rifts—sometimes called the Wilds, the Beyond, or the Other Side—remains largely unexplored. Expeditions into active rifts have confirmed:
- Another world exists with its own geography and ecology
- Elemental energy saturates everything on the other side
- Creatures there are often larger and more powerful than those that emerge
- The environment is hostile to human life without protection
- Something else may exist there—intelligence, civilisation, purpose
Most guilds forbid unauthorised rift exploration. The survival rate for such missions hovers around twelve percent.
The Spreading Contamination
Elemental energy doesn't stay near the rifts. It spreads, saturates, transforms. Five years after the Rupture:
- Areas near rifts show highest elemental concentration
- Contamination radiates outward, creating "hot zones" of mutation
- Wildlife within these zones increasingly becomes infused
- Even fortress city walls can't fully block elemental saturation
- Some researchers fear the entire planet will eventually be saturated
The implication is grim: even if humanity somehow closed every rift tomorrow, the elemental contamination already present would continue spawning infused creatures for generations. The world itself is becoming hostile.
Materials and Harvesting
The discovery that creature-derived materials could harm creatures changed everything. Within weeks of the Rupture, humanity began the grim work of turning their killers into weapons.
Why Creature Materials Work
Elemental auras protect creatures from conventional damage. Materials saturated with elemental energy can bypass these defences. Every creature, upon death, yields materials that can be forged into weapons, armour, and tools capable of killing other creatures.
This creates the fundamental cycle of monster hunting: kill creatures, harvest materials, forge better gear, kill stronger creatures.
The Harvesting Process
Field harvesting requires speed and skill:
- Confirm kill: Elemental creatures can regenerate; ensure total cessation
- Extract core: The elemental core degrades rapidly; priority harvest
- Secondary materials: Scales, bones, organs, based on contract requirements
- Preservation: Specialised containers prevent material degradation
- Transport: Get materials to processing facilities within hours
See Technology and Weaponry for complete harvesting and forging details.
The Bond: Classified Information
Security Notice: The following information is restricted. Unauthorised distribution is punishable under Emergency Statute 17-C.
Official Position
The Guild Council maintains that creature domestication is impossible. All creatures are hostile. Any hunter claiming otherwise is delusional, lying, or compromised. Reports of "bonded" hunters are propaganda from enemy factions or psychological damage from field trauma.
Reality
A small number of hunters have formed connections with creatures. These bonds are:
- Rare: Perhaps one in ten thousand hunters has the capacity
- Dangerous: Failed bonding attempts usually result in death
- Powerful: Bonded pairs demonstrate enhanced abilities beyond normal hunters
- Secret: Discovery means investigation, imprisonment, or worse
- Illegal: Multiple statutes criminalise creature "collaboration"
How Bonds Form
The process defies scientific understanding:
- Both human and creature must choose each other
- Moments of extreme crisis often trigger bonding potential
- Some form of spiritual or psychic compatibility seems required
- The connection, once formed, cannot be severed except by death
Effects of Bonding
Confirmed effects include:
- Shared awareness: Each senses the other's location, condition, and emotional state
- Enhanced capability: Both partners become stronger than they could alone
- Communication: Understanding transcends species and language barriers
- Mutual growth: As one develops, so does the other
The Controversy
Bonded hunters face impossible choices:
- Loyalty: Are they still human? Still fighting for humanity?
- Discovery: Other hunters, authorities, even civilians may betray them
- Ethics: Their partner was born from the Rupture that killed billions
- Survival: Bonded pairs are incredibly effective—but at what cost?
Some bonded hunters work in secret, hiding their partners. Others have fled to the Wilds. A few have been caught and executed. The truth is that nobody knows how many exist, what they're capable of, or whose side they're really on.
Most hunters dismiss bonds as fairy tales. In the field, survival sometimes requires accepting impossible truths.
Questions Without Answers
- Did something send the creatures, or did they come on their own?
- Is the Rupture part of a larger plan or random catastrophe?
- Can humanity ever close the rifts?
- What would victory even look like?
- Are the creatures invaders, refugees, or something else entirely?
Five years in, humanity is still fighting for survival. Understanding why may be the key to something more than just not dying.