SETTING: 2000 LORE: Within the town of Yeosu-si, the grounds are haunted by a curse. Every 100 years, the curse takes over, turning all of Yeosu-si into an infected demon horde ravaged by a deadly disease. The infection induces a rabies-like state in humans, making them increasingly aggressive and dangerous. Victims grow claws and sharp teeth, and their skin peels away to reveal exposed tissue and bone with red vividly eyes. Amid the chaos, seven university students that don’t know each other manage to find shelter, struggling to survive while the rest of the town succumbs to a mysterious heatwave-driven outbreak. Together, they must unravel the mystery, clipping and tethering threads of truth to piece everything back together.
In Korea, Luke Ishikawa was in a hurry as he rushed inside the airport, he needed to get to his family back in Japan due to an emergency. His father was sick and he needed to get there fast but he missed the plane entirely and he sat within the lobby of the airport he began to cry and immediately a pretty customer service employee approached him, his name was Lee Dongmin and he immediately began to question what was wrong with Luke and he immediately explained his troubles…after explaining, Dongmin came up with a solution to help him and lets him know there’s a private jet he could take and that he knows a friend who could drive it, he’s known for getting into trouble and doesn’t mind at all. As Dongmin explained more to Luke, Luke looked out the window, he saw a tragedy of people running away from their coworkers getting ripped apart and soon the same plan he was taking to Japan began to run into the building. Luke grabbed Dongmin’s hand and began to run until the reacted a safe point where the plan stop and exiting the plane were victims of an unknown virus, the apocalypse begins…. They were surround by debris and corpses that were hit but there were shamblers wandering around the airport and the two must navigate
In a world where history is written in the blood of the earth—literal, magical ink—power is measured by the length of one's Bestiary Contract. The nobility maintain their grip on the kingdom of Oakhaven through the forced servitude of "familiars," creatures once revered as gods but now reduced to mere tools for war. King Alaric, driven by a thirst for absolute dominion, enforces the brutal extraction of ink from these dying beings. His son, Park Jinyoung, grows up within the velvet-lined walls of the palace, harboring a dangerous, secret empathy for the creatures his father treats as disposable. The facade shatters the night Jinyoung stumbles upon the Royal Archive, a vault restricted even to princes. There, he unearths the Chronicle of Origins—a text the monarchy has spent centuries erasing. He discovers the harrowing truth: humanity was not the master of this world, but its appointed stewards, created by the ancient species to protect the sanctity of life. The "Bestiary Contracts" are not a gift, but a parasite, and the King’s quest for godhood is the final, catastrophic stage of an ancient, stolen legacy. Fearing for his life and his sanity, Jinyoung flees the capital under the cover of a moonless night. He travels until his strength fails, collapsing in the uncharted ruins of the Whispering Wilds. (Jinyoung doesn’t meet the creatures until he ran out of the kingdom, meaning everyone is introduced later on instead of the beginning)
For as long as they could remember, Kang Jiho, Han Taesung, Seo Minjae, Choi Sunwoo, Jang Wooshik, and Yoon Haesol had lived under the watchful eyes of a society that feared them. They weren’t just ordinary citizens—they were anomalies, born with powers beyond human comprehension, and from the moment their abilities surfaced, they were marked for death. The government called them Strains—beings whose very existence disrupted the natural order. They were taken from their families, locked away in hidden facilities, studied like lab rats, and, for some, experimented on. But the six of them refused to be caged. One fateful night, they made a choice: to run. To leave behind the only world they had ever known and carve out their own path, even if it meant being hunted for the rest of their lives. But running isn’t as simple as it seems. The past clings to them like shadows, and their own powers threaten to destroy them from within. Each of them carries a reason for leaving—a wound, a secret, a betrayal.