When the last Deviant was dragged through the cosmic gate, the black door sealed with a soft, final thud.
Silence fell.
Mr. Orbis stood alone in the lightless chamber, his starlit body dimming… flickering… shifting.
Then—
FWOOM.
Space folded around him and he vanished.
A heartbeat later, he reappeared on Earth—or what remained of its spiritual layer. His presence distorted reality, bending light, twisting shadow, warping gravity itself. He stood at the center of an abandoned crater where the veil between dimensions had grown thin since the countdown.
The sky above him cracked like old glass.
From that crack, a being of pure shadow seeped downward, forming limbs, a torso, a face that never stayed still. Its eyes were empty voids.
It bowed deeply.
"It is done, my lord."
Orbis didn't turn. His voice hummed like distant thunder.
"Interesting… Is everything in place, Erebus?"
The shadow-being shivered, its form glitching with pride.
"Yes, my lord. Every piece stands exactly where you predicted."
A wind unlike any earthly breeze swept across the ground.
Not air.
Presence.
From the swirling distortion in front of them, a massive serpent descended—its scales made of cosmic ash, its body winding endlessly like a black river suspended in air. A forked tongue tasted the universe itself.
The serpent coiled in a slow spiral… and then shifted.
Bones cracked.
Flesh rippled.
Shadow and skin merged.
And in seconds, a woman stood where the serpent had been.
A breathtaking woman—too perfect, too symmetrical, too wrong.
Cherry-black hair, blood-red lips, skin smooth as polished marble.
But her eyes—
Reptilian.
Slitted.
Ancient.
Predatory.
Her smile stretched too wide, reaching almost to her ears.
She bowed deeply.
"Awaiting your orders… my lord."
Orbis regarded her only briefly, as if she were a mere tool.
Then he shook his head softly.
Erebus stepped forward, lowering himself until his head almost touched the ground.
"Do it, Apopis."
The serpent-woman—Apopis, Devourer of Light, the ancient void serpent—tilted her head, hungry delight curling her lips.
"With pleasure."
She raised her pale hand and—
SNAP.
The sound echoed across the world like breaking fate.
At that exact moment, in every country…
…in every bunker…
…in every underground command center…
every nuclear launch system activated.
Alarms screamed.
World leaders panicked.
Generals scrambled for overrides that no longer existed.
Missile silos burst open across continents.
Warheads rose into the sky—
one after another,
thousands of them,
like fiery pillars piercing the atmosphere.
But they were not aimed at rival nations.
They bent mid-air— unnaturally, impossibly—
as if obeying a puppeteer's invisible hand.
Their targets were the portals.
The ones still open.
The ones bleeding into Earth.
The ones birthing monsters, beasts, new worlds.
The skies turned white with the merging glow of detonations.
BOOM
One portal collapsed, shredded by nuclear fire.
BOOM
A wormhole in South America imploded.
BOOM
A rift over Japan collapsed into a storm of lightning and ash.
More.
More.
More.
Portals across the world were consumed, vaporized, drowned in mushroom clouds.
Earth shook.
Mountains buckled.
Oceans churned like boiling tar.
And above this apocalypse, Apopis licked her lips, pleased.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" she whispered.
Erebus nodded.
"Necessary."
Mr. Orbis watched the destruction calmly, hands clasped behind his back, eyes reflecting the explosion-lit sky.
"Balance requires sacrifice."
"Chaos requires acceleration."
"And the game…"
He smiled faintly.
"…has only just begun."
---
The instant the nuclear cores detonated, the world became a furnace.
Felicia – The Phoenix That Shouldn't Have Survived
Felicia never saw the fire.
She felt it — a wave of heat so violent it stole the breath from her lungs before she could scream.
The street melted.
Windows vaporized.
People vanished into silhouettes of ash.
Felicia lifted her arms instinctively, but the blast swallowed her.
Her skin blistered—
her bones dissolved—
her thoughts scattered into flickering sparks—
and for a moment her existence was nothing more than drifting cinders in the burning storm.
But then—
Something deep within her Will fragment pulsed, like a seed cracking open.
In the heart of the inferno, the ash spiraled inward.
It clung to itself.
It shaped itself.
Her heartbeat returned — but it was no longer human.
It was a rhythm of flame.
A skeletal outline glowed within the whirling ash.
Embers formed veins.
Fire filled her lungs.
Her eyes opened, blazing like molten gold.
She rose—
reborn—
not from salvation,
but from annihilation.
Felicia stood surrounded by fire that bowed away from her body, her hair lifting like a banner of living flame. When she exhaled, sparks drifted from her lips, each one a memory of who she had been.
"So this… is my curse."
The world burned around her, but she did not.
She was the fire now.
---
Siberia – Alex and the Breaking of the Frozen Hell
Blood steamed on the ice.
Alex stood panting, his breath coming in clouds as he wiped monster blood from his face. Around him lay the twisted corpses of the creatures that had burst from the frozen caverns below. Their bodies were long and skeletal, their heads split with jagged teeth like deep-sea horrors dragged into the cold world.
He didn't have time to think.
A boom — louder than thunder, deeper than the earth — shook the landscape.
Then the ice cracked.
Lines split the ground beneath his boots, racing outward like glowing fissures. Snow erupted upward in icy geysers.
Alex froze.
Then he heard it — a roar, not animal, not human. Something huge beneath the ice stirred, its presence vibrating through the ground.
"No… no no no…"
The fissure widened.
Blackness yawned open below him — the same abyss the monsters had crawled from.
A sound rose from the depths — a wet, clicking chorus.
More were coming.
Hundreds.
Alex turned and ran toward the breach, adrenaline cutting through the freezing air. His breath turned into fire in his lungs as he sprinted across the shattering ice.
Behind him, claws scraped against the frozen walls.
He didn't dare look back.
---
Canada – Clara, Falling With the Dead
The shockwave reached her city like a fist.
Clara had been in her hotel room, scrolling on her phone, when the world outside the window turned white. The sound didn't come instantly — it lagged behind the light by a heartbeat.
Then—
BOOM.
The glass exploded inward.
The building lurched.
Clara's body lifted off the ground as the floor tilted, cracking like thin wood.
"No—NO!"
The entire tower folded downward, collapsing floor by floor. Clara tumbled through shattering rooms, crashing into furniture, walls, beams. Pain tore through her body in sharp, blinding flashes.
Then everything went dark.
Concrete crushed against her ribs.
A twisted metal beam pinned her leg.
Dust choked her lungs.
She coughed, blood trailing down her chin.
"I… I'm alive…?"
Her Will fragment pulsed faintly — a dim, protective heartbeat inside her. It wouldn't save her. It wouldn't heal her.
But it kept her breathing.
Through the rubble, faint growls echoed — new, mutated creatures stirred in the ruins.
And Clara was trapped with them.
---
Japan – Hana Watches Her World Burn
Hana stood at the edge of the mountain shrine, gripping her wooden staff as the world below turned into a sea of fire. She watched her village — the homes, the rice fields, the shrines — all swallowed by the blooming light of the nuclear blast.
The shockwave hit the valley like a god's fist, igniting everything in an instant.
She screamed, but her voice disappeared in the roaring wind.
People she had grown up with — elders, children, neighbors — were silhouettes for only a moment before they were flame.
"Stop… please stop…"
Tears streamed down her face, the heat burning them away before they could fall.
Animals fled past her, their forms changing — mutating — their bodies expanding, eyes glowing, bones reshaping as the Will energy flooded the world.
A deer collapsed, its body cracking open, antlers branching into bone-like wings.
A crow landed near her, feathers peeling away to reveal metallic plumage.
The world was not dying.
It was transforming.
Hana fell to her knees, sobbing as her people burned before her.
"Why…? Why them? Why us?"
But no answer came.
Only the distant echo of the apocalypse