The World As It Stands

Five years had passed since the event, widely known as the Celestial Rain. The world still measured time by it, as if the stars themselves had chosen a moment to rewrite our future. Everyone remembered where they were when it happened.

Since then, the world has been gradually adapting to the presence of the World Inheritors Network (WIN), the organization that governs the Inheritors. The system was built with them in mind. That may be the case for the Inheritors, but for normal humans, life has shifted. They've become secondary to the power-wielding "super" humans.

In the center of Geneva, the WIN headquarters rose like a government fortress, brutalist architecture, symmetrical, and adorned with silver flagpoles bearing the Network's emblem. Rows of black cars lined the front plaza. Loudspeakers crackled overhead, echoing faint static as engineers fine-tuned the broadcast equipment. Inside the main hall, all dark wood and polished brass, the podium waited beneath a massive seal of the Inheritors.

At the center of it all stood the president of WIN, Oh Seungsik, the voice of all Inheritors, and the man the world had come to listen to.

He was a 54 year old South Korean, standing tall at 180 centimeters, with sleek black hair brushed back and streaks of gray at the sides. As an Inheritor, his eyes were striking, each iris vertically split into gold and red, wrapped around a narrow cat-like slit, gleaming like molten glass under pressure. He wore a sharp, dark suit that caught the stage lights just enough to frame his presence in quiet authority.

At any moment, he would deliver a speech to address the world as it stands.

As cameras rolled, he stepped up to the podium and began his speech.

"Five years have passed since that day, a day none of us can forget.

It was not a war. It was not a revolution. It was something more profound. The sky itself changed, and from it, something was given. Something we did not ask for, did not understand... and yet something that reshaped the very fabric of our world.

I want to remind you all of the day it happened. The day it changed the course of history. The day it led to me standing here, speaking to you now, not just as a leader, but as one of you.

I was turned into a Inheritor, like many of you sitting in front of me. Like many more listening now by radio or television. I did not ask for this fate, and yet I would not turn away from it.

We, the Inheritors, were not chosen by ideology or nation. We were not forged by training or bloodlines. We were transformed by something we may never fully understand. And with that transformation came a responsibility, not just to ourselves, but to the billions who look to us as symbols of hope, or fear, or possibility.

That is why WIN was born. The World Inheritors Network was not built to rule, but to guide. Not to command, but to protect Inheritors from the world, and the world from the misuse of our power.

We are not a government. We are not an army. We are a framework. United not by politics, but by purpose, to understand what we've become, and to ensure we do not lose ourselves in the power we now hold.

And let me remind you of this truth, one many people already know:

Inheritors are not infinite.

The phenomenon of Celestial Rain changed us, but it did not repeat. Children born after that year have never developed Inheritor traits. No new Inheritors have emerged since. We are the sole generation. The only generation of humans to carry this gift... or this burden."

Applause followed.

"This is why our role must be handled with care. With restraint. It is why we do not allow Inheritors to be conscripted into national armies. It is why, even as my homeland faces conflict, we must uphold our neutrality.

I was born and raised in South Korea. The pain of the war there is real to me. But imagine what would happen if even one Inheritor took part in that fight.

The illusion of balance would collapse. We are not just people. We are symbols. Weapons, some might say, though I absolutely reject that word.

I ask all of you to remember this when fear tempts you to act.

I ask you to remember that strength must be guided by wisdom.

I know there are those who question our neutrality, our authority. I welcome that. A power without scrutiny is no better than a tyrant.

But I also ask: look at what we've avoided.

No Inheritor war.

No mass uprising.

No planetary collapse.

Five years ago, we were standing on the edge of chaos. Today, we stand on a foundation that is evolving. Imperfect, but firm.

And that is worth honoring.

So I thank you, Inheritors and non-Inheritors alike, for your patience. Your cooperation. Your belief in our shared future.

Let us look forward to the future, not with fear of what we are, but with purpose in what we can become.

Thank you."

The broadcast ended with orchestral music. The man didn't move for a long moment. The radio's light dimmed, soft crackle of static returning like a whisper beneath silence.

Thousands of miles away, in the heart of Los Angeles, a man was listening to the same speech from a radio in his dim apartment. The only light came from the window, streaks of sun catching dust in the air. The world outside buzzed with energy. Children played in the street.

He sat alone, the weight of the speech settling into the quiet room.

A part of him admired the words. Another part, deeper, darker, distrusted them.

He thought he knew why, but he was still skeptical.

Maybe it was the certainty in the president's voice, like change wasn't something to be debated, only obeyed. Maybe it was how the world moved on without looking back, whether you were ready or not.

He turned the radio off.

Then, quietly, he asked the question that had stuck in his mind ever since the Inheritors' rise. The same one he had asked every Inheritor he'd met.

"Is there... an Inheritor who can heal?"

The room gave no answer.

Only the wind replied, brushing past the window like a whisper from a sky that had once burned.

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