The world breathed its last mundane breath.
Somewhere, a barista steamed milk for a latte that would never be drunk. A CEO refreshed his inbox one final time. A child pressed sticky fingers against a tablet screen, watching cartoons that blinked into static.
Then—
Daylight bent.
The sun itself seemed to flinch as the man-shaped void peeled open the sky. Not a being. An absence given form—edges blurred like a photograph left in the rain too long. Light didn't touch Him. It fled Him.
Cameras pointed skyward shattered lenses, sensors overloading as they tried and failed to process His existence. Twitter feeds, news broadcasts, security monitors—all glitched into the same looping frame: Him, hanging there, watching.
Then—
He spoke.
Not words. Not sound. A violation, a voice that bypassed ears and vibrated directly in the marrow.
"Look at you."
A collective shudder. A million hands flying to chests, stomachs, as if they could claw the sound out from under their ribs.
"Everyone is alone."
In Tokyo, a salaryman dropped his briefcase, fingers numb. In Rio, a favela child clutched at his own arms, suddenly aware of how small he was.
"Everyone is empty."
A priest in the Vatican collapsed to his knees, rosary beads scattering. A scientist vomited onto the floor, equations unraveling in her mind.
"We don't really need each other anymore."
The silhouette tilted its head, and for a single, horrifying moment, the world saw itself reflected in that endless dark—cities of glass and isolation, rooms where people touched screens more than skin.
"With so much at our fingertips... we can find a spare for any talent. Any item. Any piece of knowledge."
A pause. Somewhere, a newborn wailed, as if sensing the world it had just entered was already ending.
"Any relationship can be replaced with a simple search and click."
The figure exhaled—a sound like a graveyard sigh—and the planet held its breath.
"I become bored with a world like this."
Then—
He moved.
New York, 2025
Glass rained upward.
Skyscrapers twisted like taffy, steel groaning as it remembered being ore in the earth. A businessman mid-scream dissolved—not into dust, but into threads of light, his Rolex crumbling into rust mid-air, his last thought a frantic "I never called my mother back—"
London, 1989
Champagne bubbles slid back into the bottle.
A stockbroker's skin sloughed off like wet paper, revealing muscle, then bone, then nothing at all, his final laugh still echoing in a room that no longer existed. His last memory: the feel of his daughter's hair as he tucked her in. Had that been yesterday? A decade ago?
Berlin, 1945
Bullets sucked themselves back into barrels.
A soldier's uniform unraveled stitch by stitch, his mouth open in a silent scream as his memories were ripped out through his eyes—first the war, then his wedding, then his mother's face, all torn away like pages from a book.
Philadelphia, 1776
Ink fled the parchment.
The Declaration of Independence unwrote itself, quill strokes vanishing as the signers gasped, their hands crumbling to dust mid-signature. One man's last thought: "We were supposed to be free."
Faster now.
A medieval peasant girl reached for her mother—her fingers dissolved mid-touch, her last sob lost to the wind.
A Roman senator's speech turned to garbled noise, his tongue fusing to the roof of his mouth as his empire collapsed into a time before empires.
A Bronze Age shaman's fire inhaled itself, his prayers choking him as they rushed back down his throat—the first words he'd ever spoken, now the last.
Until—
A valley.
No cities. No wars. Just wind through grass, water so clear it hurt to look at, air so pure it burned lungs accustomed to smog.
The last humans alive—
A president clawed at his throat, his medals melting into his chest, the weight of nations dissolving like sugar in rain.
A billionaire's gold turned to ash in his fists, his last thought not of wealth, but of the stray dog he'd kicked as a child.
A physicist sobbed as the laws of the universe deleted themselves from her mind, equations unwriting themselves until all that remained was "Why?"
The god opened his palm wider.
Their bodies collapsed inward, skin stretching, snapping—
Faces twisted into sentient shadows, mouths open in soundless screams as they were sucked into Him, their last moments not of fear, but of recognition:
"Oh. It's you."
"It was always you."
"We were you."
A final whisper:
"Let's try again."
Then—
A new dawn.