The world came to a sudden stop at precisely 11:45 AM.
It didn't end in flames or floods, nor with the fanfare of trumpets or the deafening blast of bombs.
It simply... ceased. Picture a light bulb being flicked off; one moment everything was vibrant and alive, the next, utter darkness enveloped everything.
Chika's foot hovered just above the dusty ground as he walked alongside Paul and Abuchi, heading to Mama Ngozi's.
The December sun bore down relentlessly. Abuchi made a joke about devouring an entire goat. Chika opened his mouth to respond, but the words wouldn't come.
Because, light vanished...
This darkness is different. It isn't the familiar blackness of closed eyes, nighttime, or power outages. It isn't the shadowy gloom of caves, closets, or drawn curtains.
No, this is an absence so profound that it seemed like the universe had completely forgotten what light was.
Chika's foot hit the ground, and he stumbled. Time seeming to drag on endlessly, each second weighing him down. His arms flings out, grasping at emptiness, looking for something to hold onto that wasn't there.
The street, the sun, the chatter faded away, leaving a void that swallowed everything whole. The air pressed against him before it disappeared.
Every step, every breath, every heartbeat echoed into the emptiness, and his instincts reached out blindly for a reality that no longer existed.
"I've gone blind."
This was his first thought, a clinical assessment delivered with an unsettling calm born from anxiety.
He instinctively reached for his glasses, fingers brushing the familiar wire frames as he began to remove them, a motion perfected over years of nervous fidgeting.
But then his hand froze halfway. Panic is met by logic. If he is truly blind, taking off his glasses won't change anything. If the darkness is real and not just in his head, then slipping them off won't help either.
His hand fell to his side, still grasping the frames, now feeling like an accessory for a world he could no longer perceive.
Slowly, sounds began to break through the emptiness around him.
"What the.." Abuchi's voice rang out, familiar and just a few meters ahead. The exclamation was abruptly cut off, replaced by hurried breaths.
"Don't move," Paul's voice commanded from behind and slightly to Chika's right. It is deeper than Abuchi's, steady even in this chaos. "Stay exactly where you are. Both of you."
Chika finds himself obeying instinctively, recognizing Paul's tone as the one he uses when danger is imminent and compliance is essential for survival.
He stands frozen, one hand still clutching his glasses, the other hanging uselessly at his side.
His heart pounded against his ribs with increasing urgency, each beat feeling prominent, distinct, loud enough that it seemed others must hear it, but they were too caught up in their own fears.
The darkness presses against him, feeling like a heavy weight.
He can sense it brushing against his face and arms, a sensation like silk made of an indescribable material.
It is impossible yet undeniable. Darkness should be nothing, merely the absence of light. This darkness, however, feels present, tangible,and strange.
Other sounds begins to emerge from the void, spreading across campus like ripples from a stone dropped in a pond.
Soon the confusion is interrupted by the sound of footsteps, some hurrying, some just without direction. Nearby, a crash echoed as someone collides with an unseen object. Voices begins to rise in confusion, multiplying rapidly, dozens, then hundreds forming waves of bewilderment.
"My phone! Someone check your phone!"
"I can't see! Why can't I see?"
"Is this a solar eclipse? Do eclipses happen like this?" someone wondered aloud, their voice filled with uncertainty.
"Professor? Where are you?"
"Oh God, oh God, oh Jesus Christ!"
The murmurings quickly escalating into panic.
Chika can hear the wave of fear rising, sweeping through the university, confusion morphing into fear, which turned into terror.
The human mind struggles to maintain calm in the face of absolute darkness...and the unknown.
A sharp,high - pitched feminine scream pierced through the air, slicing through the chatter like a knife.
It struck a nerve deep within the shared psyche, igniting a chain reaction. More screams erupted, each one offering a release for the next.
In mere moments, the campus devolved into a cacophony of terror, a soundscape filled with hundreds battling with an unfathomable reality.
Chika's analytical mind raced to catalog what it could, even as panic begins to claw at him. The screams echoed from all directions, suggesting that the encroaching darkness isn't confined merely to their surroundings.
No lights flickered to life, no emergency beacons shone, and no distant glow hinted at any boundaries to the blackness enveloping them.
The wails spread outwards in widening waves, indicating that students across the campus were sharing in this sudden, collective blindness.
His glasses still rested in his hand. With shaking fingers, he slid them back onto his face, the familiar weight resting on the bridge of his nose.
The motion achieved little but a semblance of comfort amidst the chaos, a return to some semblance of normality in a world gone completely askew.
Next, his hands rummaged through his pockets, fingers fumbling for his phone, trembling with urgency. He finally pulled it out, struggled to find the power button, pressing it firmly despite his shaking hands.
...it remained dark and unresponsive.
He pressed it again, holding it down longer. Still nothing. No welcome screen, no logo just the dead weight of a useless slab of metal and glass in his palm.
"Chika!" Paul's voice cut through the tumult, commanding attention.
"Chika, say something. Where are you?"
"Here... I'm here... I haven't moved…"
Chika's voice shook, betraying him. He forces himself to breathe, to slow the racing of his heart. Hyperventilation won't save him. Panic won't help. "Think, Chika.. you must stay alive."
"Abuchi?" Paul called out next.
"I'm dey, I'm... against the wall. I'm okay." Abuchi's forced casualness did little to disguise the fear lacing his tone.
"Stay put," Paul ordered firmly. "Both of you, stay right there until we know what's going on."
But what was going on? Chika's brain spun through every scenario, each one growing more outlandish than the last.
"A solar eclipse? No, eclipses don't bring absolute darkness, and they wouldn't kill artificial lights.
A power outage? No, his phone had battery, flashlights should be operational, and power outages don't snuff out the sun.
Some kind of assault? But what technology could cause this?"
Then, above the overwhelming screams, another sound rose,people were praying. A chorus of voices, overlapping in desperation, invoking God, Jesus, Allah, and their ancestors.
The prayers carried the weight of those who had turned to the divine after running out of rational options.
Chika's lips moved on their own, forming words his mother had taught him long ago:
"Chineke, biko nyere m aka. Chukwu, hụ m n'anya..." (God, please help me. God, have love me.)
He had no idea if he believed those prayers will work.
In that moment, belief in anything is elusive, save for the darkness and his racing heart, and the voices of his friends echoing somewhere amidst the void.
Nearby, someone tries to ignite a lighter. Chika can hear the unmistakable click-click-click of the wheel being turned, once, twice, three times.
No, still no light...
It was as if the darkness were swallowing any flicker of illumination before it could materialize, consuming light itself.
More people attempted to revive their phones, the sounds of frantic button pressing and muffled curses filling the air as screens remained unresponsive.
Someone mentioned the Medical Center, pondering if it had backup generators. Another suggested the Philosophy building as a potential refuge until the darkness lifted.
How can you shield yourself from a darkness that surrounds you on all sides?
How do you stay hopeful for the return of light when it feels like light has been wiped from the universe?
Chika felt his legs begin to tremble. The rush of adrenaline urging him to either fight or run... but there is no one to confront and nowhere to escape to.
He stood still, his muscles clenching, sweat streaming down his face and back despite the absence of sunlight.
The heat lingered. Even in December, the air feels thick and humid, with no visible warmth to be found.
Time feels distorted. What should have been seconds dragged on into minutes, yet without any visibility, it is hard to tell.
Chika's watch ticked away on his wrist, but it is shrouded in darkness. He pressed the button hoping it would light up the display, but nothing happened. Even that small LED was useless.
Then he hears Paul's voice cutting through the silence, and it is nearer now. "I'm coming to you, Chika. Keep talking so I can locate you."
"I'm right here, still here, I haven't gone anywhere," Chika replied.
He kept speaking, his voice becoming a light in the enveloping dark. Moments later, he felt Paul's hand clasping his shoulder, gripping it tightly enough to be painful.
The contact was an overwhelming relief, and tears threatened to spill from his eyes. He wasn't alone. His brother had found him.
"Where's Abuchi?" Paul asked quietly, his voice close to Chika's ear, almost lost in the chaos that surrounded them.
"He's against a wall," Chika said.
"Abuchi!" Paul shouted into the void. "Keep talking! I'm coming for you!"
"Yo, I'm here... against the... Philosophy building, I think... can't tell... it's all dark," Abuchi's voice quivered, trying to sound nonchalant. "Just follow my voice, man... I'm here..."
Paul's hand left Chika's shoulder. "Don't move," he instructs firmly, then walked off into the darkness.
Chika can hear Paul calling for Abuchi, their voices growing fainter as he moved away by sound alone. He fought the instinct to follow.
Paul told him to stay put. Paul understands survival better than Chika, who is caught in anxious thoughts. Staying still felt like the best option right now.
But how can he wait when everything around him feels utterly shattered?
Screams echoed in waves, crashing over the campus like the tide.
Chika can now distinguish different cries: the sharp, frantic ones filled with fear, the deeper moans of people struggling to hold it together, and the sobs of those who had completely lost their composure.
In the distance, someone yelled about the apocalypse, about judgment day, the end of times. Others cried out for help that no one could give.
A loud crash rang nearby, something heavy falling or breaking. Glass shattered, its distinct sound cutting through the chaos.
Someone was sprinting by, feet pounding against the pavement, clearly in a panic, racing toward the unknown. A collision followed by a cry of pain and curses broke through the air.
The runner had collided with something or someone in the dark. More cries filled the night. Apologies fragmenting in the void, heard but unseen.
Chika's hands came together, his fingers lacing tightly, his grip so strong his knuckles cracked.
The pain was grounding. His nails dug into his palms, creating small crescents of sharp sensation.
This physical discomfort helped distract him from the overwhelming fear of the complete darkness.
Professor Okafor's words echoed in his mind with unsettling clarity: "The true test of moral philosophy occurs in the moment of crisis when you must choose between your principles and your safety. In that moment, who are you truly?"
This is that moment. This is the crisis.
And here stood Chika, frozen, doing nothing, thinking of nothing useful, reduced to just feeling fear.
When it truly matters, who will you be?
The question hung in the darkness with no answer.
Only the screams, the emptiness, his brothers' voices somewhere close, and his heart racing so fast it felt like it might shatter.
Then the words appeared...
They emerged in everyone's sight at the same time, floating like tiny specters in the pitch-black void. Translucent blue letters that defied explanation hovered in the darkness, displaying an eerie clear blue screen.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION: COMMENCING]
[PLANETARY INTEGRATION: EARTH - 0.00%]
[AWAKENING PROTOCOLS: ACTIVE]
[SURVIVE]
Chika stared for a few seconds, his mind struggling to comprehend the strange sight before him. He can clearly see the text, sharp lines, clean fonts, and a gentle blue glow. Yet the darkness was impenetrable.
But how could this be happening?
Soon, a wave of terror washed over him, drowning out any rational thought.
"WHAT THE HELL…!!" someone screamed, sending the campus into a frenzy. The appearance of the text confirmed their worst fears: this is no natural phenomenon. It was something far beyond comprehension, something unreal.
Chika's hands flew to his head, fingers tangling in his hair as if trying to keep his mind intact. The words hung unavoidably in front of him, crisp and clear against the nothingness.
System initialization? Planetary integration? The phrases felt too familiar, reminiscent of video games and web novels, stories his friend Abuchi had forced him to read during those sleepless nights of anxiety.
Fiction. Utterly unbelievable fiction.
Yet there it was, undeniably real.
"It's not real," he thought.
"Everyone can see it."
"THE GOVERNMENT!"
"ALIENS!"
"GOD IS JUDGING US!"
Chaos erupted on campus, voices blending into a jumbled mess of theories, each one straining to explain the impossible. But nothing clicked, nothing is adding up.
Chika's gaze locked onto the final, chilling word:
[SURVIVE]
This isn't just a message; it was a threat. A grim prediction. People will die.
"Chika! What do you see?" Paul's urgent voice pierced through the confusion.
"Text... blue text... System initialization..." Chika blurted out, words tumbling over each other in his panic.
"I see it too. Abuchi?"
"This has to be a joke! This can't be..." Abuchi's voice faltered.
"It's real," Paul interrupted with grim certainty. "We have to accept it."
Then new lines of text appeared beneath the initial message:
[INTEGRATION PROCESS: STAGE 1 - INDIVIDUAL AWAKENING]
[ALL HUMANS WILL NOW UNDERGO FORCED AWAKENING]
[RESISTANCE IS IMPOSSIBLE]
[DURATION: VARIABLE BY INDIVIDUAL]
[WARNING: MORTALITY RATE EXPECTED AT 15-20%]
[PREPARE]
Fifteen to twenty percent.
The cold, mathematical realization slowly seeped into Chika's mind. One in six people. With 7.8 billion humans worldwide, that meant...
Over a billion lives is at stake.
The number felt too vast to grasp, overwhelming and absurd. His mind rebelled against the sheer scale of that suffering. It just couldn't be real. Surely this was some collective hallucination, a shared delusion brought on by the oppressive darkness.
Suddenly, the text pulsed, its glow intensifying for a fleeting moment.
Then the pain began...
It started as pressure in Chika's chest.
At first, it felt like a hand pressing against his sternum, uncomfortable but bearable. He had endured worse anxiety, moments where his ribs felt like they were closing in, making it hard to breathe. This sensation seemed similar...
But within three seconds, it escalated into sharp pain.
He instinctively pressed his hand against his chest, fingers spread wide over his pounding heart. The pressure felt internal, something expanding within him, pushing outward against his ribs.
His heart, swelling, pounding harder with every beat, strained against his bones and lungs.
Gasping for air, he felt the expansion quicken. His heart seemed to double in size; he could feel it stretching beyond its limits, claiming space it shouldn't occupy.
His ribs bent inward, creaking under the immense pressure. His lungs struggled, each breath shallow and inadequate, as if he were drowning in air.
Then it spread…
His blood ignited.
There is no denying it. Every vein, artery, and capillary in his body suddenly pulsed with fire instead of blood. This isn't just heat; it's real fire, raging from within.
His blood boiled, transforming his circulatory system into a network of molten pain that engulfed every inch of him simultaneously.
His hands balled into fists so tightly that his nails pierced his palms. His jaw clenched so hard that muscles tightened visibly, and a thin, desperate whine escaped his throat.
Then, the breaking began.
Not all at once, but systematically. His left femur, the strongest bone in the human body, fractured with a crack that resonated through him, a sound he felt as much as he heard.
His right radius splintered down its length. His ribs shattered in quick succession, each break hitting him like a pulse of agony, sharp and blinding, each a unique universe of suffering.
And then they healed.
The bones reformed in mere seconds, fusing even stronger than before, denser, their marrow transforming in the process. Then they broke again. And healed again.
This cycle sped up, each round somehow more agonizing than the last, as his body retained the memory of each break, bracing for the next in a perpetual state between trauma and recovery.
His skin tore open, blood streaming from invisible seams appearing along paths he never knew existed.
But the wounds closed almost instantaneously, the skin rejoining as if it had never been harmed.
Then they split open once more along new lines, a map of pain drawn and erased over and over across his body.
Chika screamed.
The sound erupted from deep within him, raw and primal, a voice stripped of its humanity.
Around him, others joined in the chorus of suffering, hundreds of voices converging into a terrifying song of agony. The area around the Philosophy building filled with cries that should not escape human lips.
New text materialized amidst the haze of torment, floating before his eyes as reality blurred and his consciousness already in pieces:
[DING: X-CLASS CUSTODIAN DETECTED]
[CHAOS ELEMENT AWAKENING: COMMENCING]
[HOST COMPATIBILITY: OPTIMAL]
[RANK ASSESSMENT: INFINITE GROWTH POTENTIAL]
[DESIGNATION: GUARDIAN OF CHAOS]
[SPECIAL PROTOCOL: ENVOY BESTOWAL AUTHORIZED]
[AVAILABLE SEATS: OBLIVION
DECAY, DESPAIR, DEVOUR ANNIHILATION]
[DETECTING SUITABLE CANDIDATES FOR THE TWO SEATS....]
The words barely registered as mere syllables in a language that his shattered mind couldn't grasp.
His consciousness splintered under a torment beyond the limits of human endurance.
With each fracturing and reformation of his mind, he felt himself diminished, sanity peeling away piece by piece.
The Chaos element surged into him like an uncontrollable wave of distortion. It didn't just flow; it erupted, warping pathways in his body that had never existed, forcing them into creation through sheer brutality.
His cells rewrote themselves, DNA unspooling and reweaving into impossibly complex patterns.
His very atoms buzzed at new frequencies, reality around him subtly warping to accommodate his transformation.
His body rejected the energy.
His body accepted the energy.
The conflicting actions occurred simultaneously, creating tensions that threatened to tear him apart at the most basic level.
Accept-reject-accept-reject pulsed in waves, his flesh caught in a struggle between what he was and what the System demanded he become.
Time became meaningless. Seconds stretched into what felt like eternities. Each breath was a monumental effort, every heartbeat a thunderclap that shook the very ground of his existence.
Vaguely, he is aware of Paul nearby, kneeling in eerie silence, teeth grinding hard. Abuchi lay on the ground, convulsing, emitting sounds barely resembling human speech, wet choking gasps and whimpers.
More text materialized, and this time, Chika's fragmented awareness snatched at various pieces:
[DING: IDENTIFYING TWO COMPATIBLE ENVOYS FOR THE GUARDIAN OF CHAOS]
[POSITION ONE: OBLIVION]
[POSITION TWO: DEVOUR]
[INITIATING BESTOWAL PROCESS]
[PAUL OKOYE - ASSIGNED: ENVOY OF OBLIVION]
[RANK: SSS]
[MADUABUCHI NWOSU - ASSIGNED: ENVOY OF DEVOUR]
[RANK: SSS]
In the midst of the turmoil, Chika grasped the reality. Paul and Abuchi were undergoing a transformation of their own, altered into entities intertwined with him by cosmic forces beyond his understanding.
His brothers... his envoys...
Paul's ordeal was distinct yet equally tormenting.
The essence of Oblivion felt like a void lodged in his chest, a black hole gnawing at his insides.
It seemed as if his very being was being eradicated, leaving an emptiness that tugged at everything nearby. His usual stoicism faltered, and he dropped to one knee, grinding his teeth until they threatened to shatter, resolutely suppressing his cries.
Yet, the agony proved too much, even for his remarkable self-discipline.
A notification blazed before his eyes:
[ENVOY BESTOWAL DETECTED]
[HOST: PAUL]
[DESIGNATION: ENVOY OF OBLIVION]
[RANK UPDATING: SSS]
[TITLE GRANTED: GUARDIAN OF CHAOS - ENVOY OF OBLIVION]
The statements were insignificant against the void that enveloped him. His awareness fixated solely on survival, on resisting the pull of the emptiness that threatened to erase him entirely.
The elemental force surged through him, shattering his limits and rebuilding them to unfathomable heights, the recalibration dragging him toward unconsciousness time and again.
His resolve stood firm.
Despite the excruciating pain, one thought blared in his mind: Precious. Hope. I must endure. I must reach them...