The year was 2031 when war broke out across the world.
It wasn’t a world war that appeared in pop culture where China, Russia or both went to war with the United States of America and their allies. There was no rising mushroom clouds from nuclear weapons going off in cities like Paris or Tokyo. There wasn’t even any real fighting between different human nations.
That fact may lead people to assume that the war was between humanity and some kind of alien race and they would be somewhat correct. In wasn’t aliens per say but creatures long thought to be nothing but myth and legend.
It was a war between humanity and mythical creatures who had long been hidden, driven to the point of hiding by ancient humans but had decided to come out.
They raged war across the globe with tanks fighting against centaurs in Kansas while harpies took on jet fighters in the skies over Germany. Submarines did battle with sea dragons while vampires hunted squads of special forces at night.
It was a bloody war, made all the worse by the fact that while humanity had more weapons, more people and better technology the mythical creatures had another thing thought impossible.
Magic
With magic a spear could go through tank armor, a brass breast plate was the equal to modern body armor.
However, the most powerful magic was used on captured humans, though their magical means they transformed humans into more mythical creatures to expand their ranks and grow their numbers. With the magic they could transform a captured human into whatever creature wanted. They could even transform a victim gender, age and mindset turning the most loyal human into a warrior against humanity. The war soon became a stalemate with almost 1/3rd of the earth fully under their control while the rest remained in human hands.
In over almost 7 years it became clear that neither side could win. Divisions began to form on both sides, some mythical creatures where happy with what they had gained and wanted to make peace. Some wanted to whip out humanity. On the human side some wanted to make a deal with a couple nations wanting to make new nations where both sides lived together peacefully. While others wanted to launch the nukes and destroy their enemies at the cost of the planet.
Neither side got what they wanted, so a peace treaty was signed.
Humanity had to surrender part of their world and worse of all each still human nation had to surrender part of their population to the different mythical nations to be transformed. This was payback for the ancient humans killing them in the past.
So now while peace has come, some humans will soon find they will have to leave humanity behind and become one of the creatures they had waged war against. Each nation has different selection process, some do it by force, others take volunteers, while others do a lottery while taking volunteers at the same time.