Nine centuries ago, Earth began to collapse.

  Not in fire.

  Not in war.

  But quietly—

  Drowned by its own tears…

  The ice caps melted.

  The oceans rose.

  The cities sank.

  And with them, the belief that humanity was ever in control.

  Those who survived fled to higher ground.

  But when the land ran out, they built it themselves.

  Thousands of artificial islands were born.

  Floating carcasses of scrap metal and plastic, powered by solar panels and prayers.

  New cities. New laws.

  And one brutal truth:

  Everything humanity needed… was now underwater.

  That’s where evolution began.

  Not Darwinian.

  Not natural.

  Forced. Engineered. Accelerated.

  Humans learned to descend.

  To dive deeper. To hold their breath longer.

  Their lungs changed. Their blood changed.

  The rich rewrote their genes.

  The rest adapted however they could.

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  A new world emerged.

  A world where people hunted through flooded ruins.

  Where scavengers mined drowned cities for scrap metal and forgotten tech.

  Where breath itself became currency.

  And from that, the system of ranks was born.

  Every diver is tested. Measured. Classified.

  From E to S ranks.

  A strict, merciless scale.

  Fair, they said.

  But fairness drowns faster than most.

  E-rank: Two minutes.

  The bare minimum to avoid death.

  Surface scavengers. Trash divers.

  D-rank: Five minutes.

  They can reach old oxygen pockets, deep tunnels.

  C-rank: Twelve minutes.

  Where real danger begins—unstable ruins, aggressive wildlife, psychological pressure.

  B-rank: Twenty-five minutes.

  They explore sunken labs, irradiated vessels, glass corridors sealed for centuries.

  A-rank: One hour.

  Elite. Modified. Sent where others don’t return.

  S-rank: Two full hours of breath-holding.

  Legends. Monsters.

  Some say they breathe underwater. Others say they became part of it.

  No one really knows.

  But everyone respects them.

  In this world, dreams sink faster than bodies.

  But some people refuse to drown.

  Some dive not to escape…

  …but to understand.

  And sometimes, what they find

  changes them forever.