The ruling class possessed what the world called "supernatural abilities."
It all began five hundred years earlier with an absurd and seemingly unbelievable news story: a young girl had made a spoon float in midair.
Scientists attempted to disprove the claim and studied the girl extensively. However, while they found no evidence that could refute her abilities, they discovered numerous findings that supported them.
At the same time, children with similarly inexplicable powers began appearing around the world. Their stories spread across social media, attracting massive attention and countless followers.
An age had arrived in which humanity could no longer deny that this was evolution.
Yet what emerged from it was the bitter fruit known as discrimination.
The small number of exceptional children were mocked as monsters and viewed with prejudice and fear.
As the "First Children" reached adolescence, they gained complete control over their abilities.
Then they committed the first incidents.
They killed the adults who had discriminated against them.
At the time, no laws existed to judge individuals with such powers, and society was thrown into confusion.
In response, the ability users began calling themselves "Evolved Humans" and declared war on ordinary humanity.
By then, more and more gifted individuals were being born, and humanity split into two factions, each discriminating against the other.
Eventually, the number of ability users surpassed half of humanity.
The balance tipped.
The ordinary humans became the oppressed minority.
The power of numbers and the force called democracy granted the Evolved Humans the authority to reshape the world.
Across the globe, ability users became supreme leaders. Within the United Nations, the opinions of the Evolved Humans came to dominate international affairs.
However, many people resisted.
Conservative nations refused to accept humanity's evolution and began persecuting ability users within their borders.
The Evolved Humans responded with force.
Conventional weapons—guns, blades, explosives, and all the tools of war—proved meaningless before their powers.
One by one, the conservative nations were defeated.
The Evolved Humans came to regard ordinary humanity as inferior beings and began constructing legal systems that stripped old humanity of its rights.
The violence of the majority had finally created an age in which ordinary humans became slaves.
Yet among the shadows between towering skyscrapers and within filthy alleyways, ordinary humans continued to survive.
They took on the jobs that ability users despised, struggling merely to stay alive.
But five centuries was more than enough time for prejudice against ordinary humans to become deeply rooted in the minds of the gifted.
One day, a young man possessing the power of fire set an entire district of ordinary humans ablaze.
Men, women, children, and the elderly all burned.
The flames created by ability users differed from natural fire.
They could not be extinguished.
The inferno continued for six months.
Even so, the ability users made no effort to put it out.
What happened to ordinary humans was of no concern to them.
Then, one day, after six months had passed, the flames suddenly vanished.
Only the one who had created the fire should have been capable of extinguishing it.
Yet the fire was gone.
From that day onward, a series of mysterious murders began spreading throughout ability-user society.
Then came a declaration of war.
Figures wrapped entirely in bandages hijacked every major media network.
They called themselves the "New Humanity."
They proclaimed that they had evolved within the flames.
Yes—
From among ordinary humans, a new form of evolution had emerged.
And thus began the endless war between the Evolved Humans and the New Humanity.
[From the Flames] End