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The world took a drastic shift after the second nuclear bomb was dropped, and it wasn't just the beginning of the nuclear arms race, or the end of the war, neither was it the deaths of thousands.

What happened was outside the ability to predict of anyone but the most deranged in the world, and even then, they could barely come close to the magnitude of the change.

When the second explosion rocked the world and bathed the horizon with the radioactive glow of a second Sun, all over the world, explosions just like that one started happening, taking millions of lives in the detonation, and claiming millions more in the aftermath.

The powers that be were running around like headless chickens trying to find why was it that the top secret weapon that no one was supposed to be able to yet produce was suddenly making the surface of the earth like the face of a teenager with a bad case of acne, but no one really had an answer.

A week later, after people felt safe enough, or, to be more specific, paramilitary groups thought it was profitable to send people to die exploring the blast zones, they found something even more perplexing than the possible remains of an attempt against the world.

What they found made no sense, and even to this day, is still something heatedly debated by the brightest minds the world had to offer.

In the center of the blasts were distortions that could not be understood. It was as if the fabric of space was a sheet of paper and someone had crumpled it to the point of turning it into a ball, and, if the scant reports that can still be found about it were true, it was getting noticeably worse as time passed.

No more than 2 days later, humanity would find out that not only were they not really alone in the world, but that they have never been in the first place.

The reason?

The moment those distortions reached a point of collapse, the whole planet was rocked by an earthquake of severity between 5.8 to 6.4, which by itself wouldn't be too bad, but it lasted a whoping 5.511 minutes, damaging most of the still standing infrastructure, and then, mountains, castles, floating islands, volcanoes, and all manners of landmarks that were never there, were now a part of the world.

With it, the species that humanity has thought as fantastic and mythological started moving out of those places en masse, exploring with unending curiosity in some cases, and with unstoppable blood thirst in others.

Humankind, still in the middle of the biggest war and natural disaster they had ever experienced, weary, paranoid and with arms ready, was not caught unprepared or unwilling to defended themselves from these new threats, and responded with absolute hostility to everything or anything that threatened them.

Or so the stories want to say, but the telling absence of many of the peaceful races that were said to have existed by elvish scholars probably meant that they were aiming for anything that looked different at that point.

It was said that the following war, called The Joining War, lasted between 40-60 years, give or take a few. As many proxy wars still raged around the world between the different warring factions, but it was at that point that large scale magic bombardments, curses, pestilences, nukes and chemical weapons were banned during the United Kingdom's first summit, where the leaders of the most powerful factions of all races decided that enough blood has been spilled, and that it was time for peace before the world was consumed in rivers of blood and mountains of ashes.

It's hard to make a true estimate of how many lives were lost during those dark times, but all sentient races were set back by a huge margin thanks to the destruction of sacred libraries, the assasination or kidnapping of ancient scholars and destruction of museums.

But thanks to the united effort of science and magic, the illnesses caused by ancient curses and engineered viruses were cured, many races were rescued from certain extinction, sacred forest and magic leylines devastated by large scale destruction were restored, and the world once again could set their sights in the development of innovative creations, instead of new ways to cause as much rampant destruction and misery as possible.

Some efforts were directed to try and see what caused the divide, more out of curiosity than a real want to bring it upon the world once again, because after almost two hundred after the Great Joining, the races were so deeply intertwined socially, culturally and even through blood thanks to interracial relations, that most generations, even those of long-lived races, didn't know a world before this one.

The leading theory that scientists and mages have created, is that some time in the distant past, the world was divided using some sort of extremely powerful ritual, and that the atomic bombs were strong enough to damage the fabric of space and weaken the barrier enough for it to collapse.

Which makes me all the more thankful to be born in this modern times, because I don't want to imagine a time when people were periodically throwing around large scale curses and bioengineered plagues with the sole purpose of wiping out the opposition...

I mean, I could understand wanting to defeat them, or to drive them to a corner, but the story was never shy with letting it be completely clear that they wished for TOTAL ANNIHILATION of their enemies down to the last.

That's fucked up.

In modern times, most people just live a normal life, you are born, grow, go to school, then to college, find a job and then live out your life, however long it might be depending on your race and lineage of course.

The average life span of people is all over the place thanks to magic, mutations and the mixing of races with things like primordials, elves and such. So, nowadays, most people lived however long they could before they either got killed or bored.

If they had the money, in the case of me and the average Joe's with no access to the amazingly expensive elixirs of life of the ultrarich, it was around the normal human life span, because it sounds good in paper to mix your blood with long-lived races, but their life span goes down to compensate.

But I'm getting sidetracked, back to the modern world, and its mundane wonders!

As I said, there was a lot of mixing of the races back in the day, and thanks to that, people are born with all manners of amazing gifts! From magic, to mutations, to connections with higher planes and elemental spirits, and much more.

There was no shortage of unique abilities to go around!

And there are academies all over the world with professionals able to help people develop those abilities to their maximum (or as much as the budget of said academy could), where you can learn to use them for research, fighting, or simply to be amazing and live a more comfortable life.

Why fighting you ask? After all, I said we are in a time of peace, and there should be no reason to be fighting each other.

Well, we, that is the sentient and rational beings, are still capable of mistakes and of wanting to wipe each other out, so, small wars break out here and there over some resource, slight, pettiness or other things, and added to that, there are quite a few incredibly dangerous animals roaming around, and we need people to defend us if a beast of calamity decides that today is a good day to start the Armageddon.

So, there are many that learn to use their powers for the good of protecting civilization, their countries, simply themselves or plainly just desire fame and power, because with power comes recognition, and with that fame, and fame can open a great many deal of doors for you.

Many aim for that, and go to academies built to teach you how to fight, and those academies are subsidized by the state to make sure there is a steady source of bodies that they can throw at whatever bullshit monster of war appears.

But if you survived all that? Riches, love, fame and everything your heart desires can be yours!!

...

......

If you were a woman, that is. Because the reality is not necessarily the same for a man. It is not as if men don't have those amazing abilities, but the issue lies in the fact that those abilities can go from really strong, to really mundane and basically useless, or straight up harmful to the user in some unlucky cases, and because of that, the moment a man exhibits a particularly useful or strong ability, they are snatched up by a powerful clan to breed that ability into their bloodline.

But you might think to yourself:

"If they are that important, shouldn't that mean that they have power because of how unique they are?".

The answer would be 'yes' if this was a kinder world, but the strong rarely care for kindness, much less a foolish concept such as fairness, and clans desire to stronger than all the other clans to have more power and resources to themselves, so, anything that can further that goal is pursued with no regards for moral or ethics, and while there are laws that protect the rights of most people...

With power and influence, something as inoffensive as the disappearance of one guy is not something that the world will care about.

And, to a degree, it's required of them. Clans are in charge of putting out as many promising warriors as they can to protect their countries from enemies both on the inside and on the outside, and they are measure by how many powerful fighters they can pump out.

How?

With the many tournaments and events that are done all over the world.

No matter the field, there is a tournament for it, but the most famous, prestigious, renown and exciting one is the Grand World Fighting Tournaments.

Kind of a mouthful, I know, but that's how it is. It is a worldwide tournament where representatives from all over the world get to do a... I would like to say dick measuring contest, but there are no men on that competition, only women, so...

A tit measuring competition.

To even get into it you need to be crowned champion of your country, and to even go to THAT championship you need to go through other ones...

As I said, there is a lot of torunaments.

But I neve watch them, even though they are the most famous sport, why you may ask?

Because they are blood sports in the most literal sense of the word. Women bash each other with all their sttrength, and while killing each other is not seen with good eyes... anything less than that it's not really prohibited. So you can imagine how gruesome it can get sometimes.

I focus on my own life, on trying to get through highschool, getting a diploma, finding a job, maybe a girlfriend, live a happy life and try to keep the fact that I have powers hidden from the world.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that didn't I? I am a guy with powers!

How has no one found out? It's sort of a funny story, you see, when you reach 5 years of age you are obligated, by law, to go through a series of tests to define the kind of afinitty ou have, so as to best allow you to prepare for the future.

That's the official explanation, and those results are supposed to be secret and known only to the parents, but people with great potential always happen to meet those of great power and recruited, because there is this saying that "Powerful people have an eye for talent", which is a roundabout way of saying that those tests are not, in fact, secret.

But I digress.

The reson why I am not in some high class room fucking girls for a living, and though it sounds fun, some of the videos shown to me by my aunt have revealed that there is not a lot of fucking involved, is because when my test was done, I came out negative for any and all forms of affinities.

No mutation, bloodline, lineage, magical affinity of any kind, or new power.

Nein, nothing, zilch, nada.

I was part of the 14% of the diwndling population that had nothig going for them. Which was followed by my mother being inexcplicablt too bussy to spend time with me anymore, and most of my friends having better things to do everytime I wanted to play...

It wasn't a nice experience.

But one day, when I was 16, while brooding and wondering why this world was so fucked up that leaving behind your child was not sanctioned in any way, laying on the floor, with no energy to do anything but simply stare at the ceiling. I got the sudden sudden urge to drink a soda, and when I reached to the air, imagining the fridge being close enough for me to just take it, a fucking portal opened in the air.

[spoiler=Portal]

[/spoiler]

I, of course, was completely stoic in the face of this phenomenon, and took it with applomb as was befit by a serious guy like me.

I didn't scream or yell, because that's what idiots do.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAKSDAISYNASRAIYCN!!!!", a totally logical conclusion, as expected of me.

I simply studied the phenomenon and quickly understood that I was the one that caused it.

"OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK, SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL ME A ROB MY HOUSE!! AHHHHH!!", I made sure to move around to strech my muscles, after all, I was probably going to need it.

It was a day of discovery and happiness for me, and I was focused on finding ways to learn more about my new power!

"What the fuck do I do? I will get kidnapped, I will get raped. Oh God's some crazy bitch is going to bust my door open at any moment now. Im so screwed! WAAAAHHHH", I said with complete calmness as I thought about my situation, with manly tears of joy streaming down my face.

It took me a while to get the hang of it and open the portals consistently, and then another while to try and get rid of the extreme ammounts of light they made, because I wanted to use them on my day to day without making it stupidly odvious.

And to avoid getting abducted.

Because I wanted to use my cool portal powers, but I also didn't want to be kidnapped, so most of the training was focused on that.