Meltdown: Arc 1
Imran aka. drak just wanted to make it through finals. Instead, he wakes up alone in a world that he has never seen before, no people, no explanation, just trees, monsters, and a being called L, that knows his name.
He survives the first night. Then his friends start showing up too, as they are all pulled from their lives one by one, dropped into the same nightmare with no idea why. Together they carve out a home in a dimension called the Overworld, fighting off zombies, skeletons, many different weird creatures, all while trying to figure out the rules of a world that seems to be making them up as it goes.
Then they start manifesting powers. Fists that hit like artillery. Fire from bare hands. Gravity that can be bent like clay. Each of them gets something, except drak, who starts to wonder if he's the only one who got left behind.
What he finds instead, alone in the dark for what feels like a year, changes him completely. He comes back stronger, faster, and tougher, all while carrying something he won't talk about, even with the people who know him best.
As the group grows, so does the world around them: ancient lords who once slaughtered a village for its power, a primordial being who clearly doesn't understand humans nearly as well as he thinks he does, and a deepening mystery about what Meltdown actually is, and whether you can actually leave this world.
This is a story about found family, the masks people wear to survive, and what it costs to keep being "the strongest" when nobody knows how tired you actually are.